Change of plans - and a reason to prefer a non-itinerary!

     When I began to write yesterday what I thought we'd do today, I realized it probably wasn't the best idea...and it turned out that we didn't do either of those today. Our first experience was an open-air market under the Metro across from our apartment - amazing the variety of what's for sale - and it looked like it must take several hours to set up and take down. I was glad that we weren't in a shopping mode because today, we had a schedule.

A small section of the market

     The Opera House only offers guided tours in English on Wednesdays, so we decided we'd better get to that today, since we'll be on the way home next Wednesday. The Palace Garnier, home of the Phantom of the Opera - was amazing. We had a guide (we have chosen mostly find-your-own-way-around visits, but were very glad we'd gone through this with a tour guide) whose first language was Spanish, and she was describing the French Opera House in English. Cultural fusion!! She said she didn't have a very loud voice, and handed out voice amplifiers with an earpiece (made me think of students who are hearing-impaired), which was great - she could be anywhere in range and we could still hear clearly. The Palais Garnier is nothing less than impressive...and...it was on this tour that we learned the answer to yesterday's wondering - the high-up art is done in a studio and then glued where it is seen. Ha! I would never have thought that was how it was done, (obviously, from yesterday's post!) but it makes so much sense - a blinding glimpse of the obvious! We saw THE chandelier, THE staircase, and learned a lot about the place that we would have missed if we had not done this tour. (I suppose the same is true for most of the places, but we've been overwhelmed just looking without having a lot of extra information to process - at least I have been!)

    This the chandelier seen from the seats

This is a closer view of the artwork around the chandelier - Marc Chagall

     After the Opera tour, we took a different train, which went through a huge station - and there were lots of shops there, one of which was a bakery with pastries. Mmmmm...I decided I had to have a macaron - a meringue sandwich cookie filled with buttercream. I couldn't decide, so chose pistachio again...it's always a safe choice for me. The macaron was HUGE - and I asked the clerk/baker if I could take his picture. (I ended up carrying that macaron around until we got back to the apartment - a little worse for the trip, but still quite good.)

Just to show how big this particular macaron was - look closely - that's one of my rings next to it. Yes, I shared it!

This guy was so happy to be asked for a picture that he grabbed his tongs, then had me wait while he grabbed a baguette with them. Hahaha!!

     The tour at Palais Garnier was supposed to be at 11:30; it was overcrowded, so they added a 12:00 tour, which started about 12:20. These Parisians have a very relaxed attitude toward time. Ok...that left us plenty of time to get to the 3:00 wine tasting - if we could have found it. Oh, we tried to get to the wine tasting, but kept going around it and never found it. It was in the middle of a busy, crowded section of the city, and it was not the kind of lost one would enjoy wandering the streets of Paris. It was in an upscale neighborhood, and we tried with the GPS on the phone, and I must have asked at least seven different store clerks (figuring they worked in the neighborhood, they should know...), and the only person I asked that actually had a clue was a butcher in an outdoor boucherie (meat market) - all smelling of fish, and slippery, wet floors. Sigh. I supposed that the butcher might have delivered meats and seafood to the place, as it was a wine bar that also served food. Unless we have an entire afternoon open (the wine tasting is at 3 pm) we'll probably miss this one. Good thing I'm not able to drink wine, really. Maybe that's why we didn't make it - someone up there was steering us away, every time we got close. France, - what better place to try wines, right? Oh well - we had a wonderful experience prior to getting lost looking for "Ô Chateau."  (no photo for obvious reasons...)

     The stop from the train was at "Les Halles" - a huge, 3-level underground mall, which also presented its challenges in navigating. We rode a lot of escalators, climbed up and down a lot of stairs, asked a lot of people for directions, many of whom gave us wrong information, and were ready to get something to eat and call it a day. So we did.