Here’s the local meat market. It competes with two supermarches in town and it is doing quite well. We needed two pieces of bacon for a quiche I intended to do for dinner tonight. So off we went. While we were there, I took some pictures so you too could see la boucherie!!
I took the picture of some of the workers while waiting in queue. It’s very interesting. Every one gets in line as they enter the shop. There is no number system. There are no ropes. Every one just knows that it is the polite thing to do and they do it. Very impressive. Anyway, I told Ray one of these guys was going to get stuck waiting on us. The butchers take turns waiting on people. Anyway, our brave butcher arrived and somehow we conveyed that we wanted deux pieces of bacon. As he was ringing us up, he and one of his co-workers came up to us over the counter and started speaking francais very quickly. It somehow involved the camera. I offered to take a picture. They waved me off. I offered them the camera. They waved me off. Finally, I brought up the picture I had taken of them…bingo. That’s what they wanted. They were delighted that they could see their picture. So I took another!! And they posed!!!
Besides meat, pig hooves or ears, veal head…you could purchase all kinds of other things which is pictured above.
Fun place to go. We loved this place and will miss it.
Then we walked down to the boulangerie and bought a baguette (finally found out how to spell). In francais I said, “Nous allons demain pour nous maison.” (We go home tomorrow) She had no earthly idea what I said. Ray started a sentence but got stymied at the word “leave”. I flapped my arms. I think she thinks we’re looking for bird houses. Who knows!!
I took a picture of dessert for tonite but haven’t imported it into the computer. I’ll feature it in the Paris blog entry.
You all are probably wondering if I spend hours doing this. And you are thinking, ‘why don’t they go see something if she has all that spare time?’.
Well, all TV channels in France are in francais. So, even if I wanted to watch TV to brush up on my francais, I would only be able to take so much of not knowing what is going on. Ray watched part of Gulliver’s Travels with O’toole and Danson the other nite. Dubbed, of course. I, on the other hand, wrote in my blog!!
I will report, though, that we haven’t missed TV much. An observation. Their news is adult-like. No talking head stuff. But they remind me of CNN in that they run a Headline News type show on several channels. We only get about 12 channels so can’t speak to all of TV.
Funny conversation. The first nite in Thorny Brasseries, the other visiting couple from Ireland were discussing TV. They asked if we watched The Wire on HBO. We said no. He said it was a fabulous show and as a result of watching it he really wanted to visit Baltimore. Who knew? The Chamber of Commerce of Baltimore might want to underwrite re-runs!! Too funny!! We sure had fun with them. Great couple.
Okay, what else? The rest of the yesterday’s free time was used up cleaning house. And while I was dusting the tile floor, I moved a chair, apparently grabbed a leaf of a fairly large plant, and the plant (planted in a terra cotta pot) took a dive. So then it was off to the quincaillerie (hardware store) to buy a new pot. Took a piece of the old one in case we needed to “communicate”. No problems. OH, and the other thing we did was try to plan our assault on Paris. We reserved a taxi for Wednesdays trip to the airport at 4:15 in the morning (ugh). We verified that our hotel in Paris has no parking. And we located a few places we want to go on the map.
Our friends Bob and Linda Brownson loaned us their Paris Michelin map which they swear by. We have deduced that they are much smarter than we are because they used it effortlessly. Well, we’ll see. More to come!!
Oh, the other city we “nick named” was Vierzon. We called it Verizon. It’s nearby and we saw it all the time on the signs and it was just easier to say. We laughed every time we did it. Fun stuff.
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