Almost Just Like Home

Yesterday Kiley and I started off the day (more like mid-day, as we had gone out on Friday night) with a run. It was my first run in Paris. I had previously managed to convince myself that due to the excessive hours of walking every day I would not need any further exercise but Kiley, who had already been here a semester, convinced me otherwise. So I will attempt to run once in a while. We ran to a nearby park called Parc George Brassens which, to my surprise, was filled with French runners! It was freezing out, and my lungs ached all day, and I ran for only half the time that Kiley ran, but it was still nice. In the springtime, the park should look something like this:

Later we met up with some other girls from the program to check out one of Paris' museums of fashion. Sadly, it was closed, despite the internet having stated otherwise (oh Europe and your endless excuses for breaks/closures). Instead, we came upon a cafe which turned out to cater to chocolate lovers. The four of us sat in the back of the place and ordered delicious dark hot chocolates and played several games of Bananagrams, none of which I won. I actually thought that I had won three of the four times, and had yelled out "I WIN!" and every time I ended up having some bogus word which I had either neglected or thought was real (doesn't "spanse" sound like a real word though?).

Enticed by signs pointing to a nearby aquarium, we were only disappointed to find that the prices were rather astronomical (as they are at most aquariums, really). Instead we settled for some greasy French snacks--fries, croque monsieurs, crepes. Later we walked around the Trucadero district and spent an hour or two in the Museum of Architecture. It smelled very pleasant which is rather unusual for European museums. It was full of models, recreations, and ideas for future housing projects in Paris.

The combination of rainy grey weather, being outside, hot beverages, and crossword games really lent a Seattle feel to the day. Of course that night we went and undid all of that with mojitos at a hotspot on the oversexed Boulevard de Clichy.