Just Another Day in Paris

Our day started out with a walk around the block so I could do my business. Then Mom had to stop to have her petit dejeuner of croissant and cafe au lait. We're looking for THE BEST PLACE; the criteria for THE BEST PLACE are CHEAP with FLAKY croissants, and BIG cafe au lait. So far we are not having any trouble with #2, but #1 and 3 will take more looking. Today when we were running errands, we passed a place that looked promising, but it's farther away. Mom likes her petit dejeuner very soon after she gets up. Me, too. I don't want to wait long for breakfast.

Living in the city, at least for us small-town folks, presents unfamiliar challenges for familiar errands. We had to locate a vet for dog food, and then we had to find that location. Thank goodness for mappy.com! The dog food had to be ordered, but will come very quickly, and Mom got to learn some new words in French. We asked the girl at the vet about taking the pousette on the metro and she said of course it would be all right, babies have to go on the metro in their poussettes all the time. So we headed for the nearest Metro "bouche" (entrance; literally, "mouth") to buy tickets. Of course, there are stairs to negotiate. Going down isn't too bad - Mom takes it slow so I don't bounce out, and she has gravity working for her, but going back up was a lot more difficult. We need to observe how Moms and their babies do this. Fortunately (for us) there was a homeless man at the top of the stairs who called, "Madame, madame!" and came down to help us carry the poussette to the top. When we got there, Mom thanked him profusely and he quickly picked up his sign in case we had missed it on the way down. Mom was ahead of him though, and was already reaching into her purse for a euro. We sure hope there are homeless men at the other Metro bouches too. The help is definitely worth the price.

In the afternoon, Mom wanted to go to an antiquities fair at Parc Monceau so she loaded me up in the poussette and we set off to the 17th arrondissement. Paris is divided into 20 areas called arrondissements. We are staying in the 7th and the park we were going to is in the 17th. It's a long walk, but not as far as it would seem, because the arrondissements are arranged in the spiral pattern of a snail (makes sense since this is France, right?) starting with the first arrondissement in the center of the city and coiling around eastward with arr. 2, 3, and 4 where it crosses the Seine river and starts coming back west again until it gets to 7 where we are and so on and so on. So to get to the 17th we just had to walk north across the river, which is nearby, cross arr. 8 until we arrive at the 17th.  This walk took us through one of the most posh areas of the city where the haute couture designers, embassies and offices of large corporations are found. Mom was interested to see that the general attire was substantially more upscale here than in our neighborhood. The suits the men were wearing definitely did not come off the rack and the women were also impeccably groomed and faultlessly dressed. I, however, was paying more attention to the four-legged inhabitants of Paris. I've noticed that a lot of the dogs that don't have tails back home, do have long tails here in Paris, for example Yorkshire terriers. I mentioned this to one I met and she said that in some European countries it's against the law to dock tails and ears. BOL! It's about time humans came to their senses! What gives them the right to cut off a dog's body parts because it's fashionable? Speaking of body parts, the other thing I've noticed is that most of the male dogs are still in possession of the family jewels. Lucky dogs. I guess that's what accounts for some of the wild behavior I've seen!