Paris-Lyon 2009: Le Bon Marché / La Fille du RER

We attempted to go to the Catacombs on Friday morning, but when we arrived, we found a nearly unmoving line of well over 100 people waiting to get in, and quickly decided it would be better left for another day (when we can hopefully get there slightly before they open!). Aaron had read about the architecture of the department store Le Bon Marché (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Le_Bon_Marché) and was curious, so we got back on the metro and headed up to that area of the Latin Quarter to check it out.

It is indeed a lovely store; we wandered around a few floors admiring things, not having any real thoughts of buying anything until we headed down to the lower level, where we found...TOYS! I resisted the temptation to buy "Trivial Pursuit - Alsace"; after running the numbers, I determined it was probably not worth the investment (cost of game = 59 euros; Aaron's knowledge of Alsace + Amy's knowledge of Alsace = 0). We did, however, pick up a game called "Indix!" for 10 euros that involves reading the other player(s) clues (indices) about a well-known person, place, or thing; points are allocated based on the number of clues it takes you to guess the answer. It seems to be aimed at 10-year-olds, but it's a fun way for us to practice French together.

Besides this impressive Lego storm trooper that was on display, Aaron saw a kit for building a Lego Millennium Falcon for the bargain price of 595 euros (he decided to sleep on it).

After Le Bon Marché, we walked through the Latin Quarter a bit more, stopping to check out the Village Voice, one of the well known English language bookstores in Paris. They had a copy of Hemingway's A Moveable Feast in stock (my high school classmate Brendan had recommended that since Hemingway wrote it while living in Paris), but I decided to save the 14 euros and hold out for a copy from the library once we get home. If I run into a used copy somewhere else for under 10 euros, I may have less self-restraint....

Soon after the bookstore, Aaron and I parted ways -- he hopped on the metro to head back to the apartment and start his work day, while I headed on in search of the one movie theater in Paris that still listed the film "La Fille du RER" ("The Girl of the RER" -- see http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1183672) to see how much of the plot I would be able to follow in a French movie with no subtitles. The good news: I was able to follow the general story line just fine. The not-so-good news: I felt like I was only understanding 10-20% of the dialogue. (But at least that's an improvement on 0-10%!)

It turned out the movie theater was quite close to the Jardin du Luxembourg, and I had some time to kill before the movie, so I went to see how the spring flower planting is coming along. Looking good! (although there are still large swaths of empty dirt in parts of the park awaiting the arrival of flowers)