If I had a camera.....

     So it is day .......what......5? already in Paris and how many pictures have Nate and I taken? Zero.  That's right.  No pictures of the Luxemburg Gardens and the great children's play park there, or our lunch by the Eiffel Tower or our wide eyes at La Grande Epicerie or our puzzled faces in the Metro. These are now all left to our memories alone.
     The apartment that we're renting for a couple weeks  is on the fourth floor, 3rd etage ici, approached by circular, center-slanting marble stairs.  We have a small, no, miniscule kitchen that one can barely turn around in.  We've stocked up on coffee, tea and chocolate and really, not much else...which is good because anything else would be impossible to prepare.  We've done one load of laundry in the washer/dryer, taking about 12 hours to complete a cycle with fully dried clothes. 
     What is it that makes a Paris apartment so uniquely Parisienne.  Why do their sloppy bookshelves look better than our sloppy bookshelves, their cracked plaster more shabby chic than our cracked plaster?  Without a doubt, they've cornered the decor market on gold, maroon, olive and black with bits of that Versailles blue sprinkled about...those same colors of all the old Moulin Rouge posters.
     We visit the boulangerie around the corner in the morning and over-purchase coma inducing croissants, pan au poire, and other things that I don't know the names of.  Here, Nate knows the weakness of my willpower and deftly orders before I have a chance to object.  I sent him this afternoon, by himself, to buy some pizza-like thingys for lunch and in minutes he returned with a duplicate order of this morning's fare.
     So far, no one has allowed us to try our French.  As soon as the bonjour is out of my mouth, they are speaking English.  Perhaps it's our smiles that give us away.  The French as a whole seem pretty dour when walking about and carrying on their business in public.  A smile will get you nowhere here, nor will one Euro.  Touted as one of the most expensive cities to live in in the world, I am now deliberating whether or not to purchase anything here at all (with the exception of chocolate, of course).  Most of our clothes we've been wearing for seven months now and are becoming increasingly transparent.  I was going to buy Nate converse sneakers yesterday, but they were 70 Euros.  Ouch!  We had a mock argument and got the hell out of that store but not before I had to purchase a few Star Wars Legos.  I thought it was a good trade.  Boys trousers were 85 Euros and sweatshirts 65 Euros....where is the Marshall's of Paris?  I'm going to try Marks and Spencer in a few days when I've recovered from sticker shock.
     By the way, Happy Thanksgiving.....missing you all!