I have had a lovely couple of days here in my Belle Epoque city. The sun came out and the temperature has been in the mid sixties. It is asparkle with brilliance! Yesterday in the early evening we went to a restaurant sprawling along a charming and completely pedestrianized street, where, from the chairs at our table, we sized up the comfortable looking linen clothes displayed in front of the store a few unobstructed steps from our table. Between those clothes and us, life's rich pageant promenaded along providing an endless entertainment.
People really aren't so bad when they are, um, walking.
At this restaurant/cafe, we had a coffee and a St. Germain Spritz. The spritz came with a rather generous plate of what seemed to be pan fried pita that was quite nice, and a small bowl of pretty good olives!
We spent an hour there. The bill was 9.50. Happy hour. C'est normal.
Today we wandered the breadth of our city. My wife had a couple things she was shopping for, but there was no urgency. I took some aimless pictures while she was in the stores. We ventured twice to the beach, alive with an almost summery quality for the first time since we've lived here, people in bathing suits and something verging on crowds. I'm not sure about that in a foreboding kind of way. We covered the ancient town fully, stopping for coffee at The Claque, which was almost as good as the first time we were there. We stopped for a really good street musician who caught our attention by nostalgically playing "Purple Rain".
Aw.
We spent 34 years in Minnesota.
How did he know?
Then he played "With or Without You" very nicely and mournfully. He accompanied himself on the guitar but did not augment with recordings or "karaoke" style backing, which we always deeply appreciate. We tossed money in his case and went our way while he played an equally good third song maybe by Radiohead. He didn't acknowledge the money, which isn't best form, but maybe he was really into the singing? And, after all, it's not like he was begging.
Last stretch home along the gambetta we investigated a really nicely laid out vegetable stand for possible future use. We picked up a package waiting for us at a randomly assigned store. And we got gelato from my, so far, second favorite gelateria. The banana and mango ones were as much fruit as gelato, but with a perfectly blurred line. The white chocolate gelato went very nicely with the banana and was a lot of fun.
I wanted to tell you all of this to set the stage for some complaining about this city.
But let's just enjoy ourselves and leave that for another time...
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