My mom's is better

Dinner tonight was delicious. Françoise made French onion soup for our first course, followed by gnocchi with crème fraîche and what was essentially a cross between bacon and ham (I forget the French name for it), and for dessert, tarte aux pommes (apple tart). We had delicious white wine with the gnocchi and dessert, and lots of good conversation. (I think any conversation is good if I am able to communicate clearly in French. Even the most menial of subjects somehow becomes more interesting to me if I can talk about them fluently in another language.)

Another thing that made today one of the best days I've had so far: Tanya's and my favorite boulangerie reopened this morning after a ten-day vacation. I went there for a chausson aux pommes for breakfast. The smell of freshly baked bread and warm pastries was divine. The baguettes from this place are the best I've tasted. On several lucky occasions, I have timed my visit to coincide with a fresh batch of bread, toasty and crunchy on the outside, warm, soft, fluffy, melt-in-your-mouth on the inside. The aroma is almost as good as the taste of the bread itself. And I've just written an entire paragraph about bread. Welcome back, boulangerie, welcome back.

Ingrina is in town for a couple days, so I hung out with her for most of the afternoon and showed her around a bit. It was fun playing host for a few hours. The weather was pretty gloomy this morning, but as is custom in this old city, it cleared up into a beautiful afternoon. The sunset today was one of the best yet. We visited the Museé d'Orsay, the Louvre (just the outside to take a picture of the pyramid), and Notre Dame. The Musée d'Orsay used to be a train station, a fact that is obvious upon entrance. It looked a bit like Grand Central Station in NYC, but much prettier (not that Grand Central isn't cool). I absolutely loved it. More than the Louvre. We got a fleeting glimpse of the inside of Notre Dame before the security guard rudely kicked us out. You'd think they'd show a little more grace in a church. No worries, though.

We relaxed from a full day of walking (I walked all day, from my house to BU, then from BU to the Musée d'Orsay (and all of its exhibits), to the Louvre, to Notre Dame, which is probably 4 or 5 miles total) with some café au lait and pain au chocolate from a nearby café. The pain au choc was grossly overpriced, but it was Ingrina's first, and I approved of its taste, so c'est pas gràve. I dropped her off with Jorge in the Latin Quarter before heading home to dinner with the host family. (--> a really huge, really cool clock inside Musée d'Orsay overlooking Paris and Sacré Coeur)

I did not do a lick of homework today. And it was splendid. I'm going to bed now, and I've done nothing productive in the way of academia. But I think today's activities were infinitely more valuable than teaching myself the conjugations of the conditional passé or the passé intérieur (which no one uses anyway), so no worries.

The delicious dinner was the crowning point to my wonderful day.

A final word about the French onion soup: Françoise's was good, but my mom's is better.

Sunsets and Chocolate

Not much time to write anything, as I have to study for midterms (I'm not sure how I feel about abbreviated semesters...), but I caught a beautiful sunset over the Seine this evening on my walk home from school. These are proof that my two feet beat the métro any day.

[the tippy top of the sunset]

[crossing over to the Right Bank]

[the Passy viaduct]

[sunset over the Right Bank]

And introducing.....pain au chocolat...aux amandes! (My favorite pastry made even more succulent with the addition of what is essentially an almond paste. It tasted kind of like a mélange of galette de roi and pain au chocolat, my two favorite desserts. It was good, but a bit too rich for me. I think I'll stick to enjoying the two separately.)

[a rich little piece of heaven]

C'est tout. "La Cantatrice Chauve" is calling my name.