nawl

First of all was Notre Dame, which was easy enough since it was just outside the metro station. It was as I remembered it, with the hundreds of stone gargoyles, cheap souvenir shops, and non-French tourists in plastic ponchos everywhere you looked. Inside, an actual church service was going on, but the great majority of tourists wandering around inside seemed completely oblivious to the fact, and didn't cut down much on the shuffling, rustling, chatting, and flash photography. The pews were maybe a third full, and a man with a beautiful voice was singing. I couldn't tell what the priest was saying - cathedral-style acoustics are apparently not very well suited to microphones. It was depressing.

After that, we hopped over to the Quartier Latin, ate a quick dinner, and went to see two Ionesco plays, "La Cantatrice Chauve" and "La Leçon" (extrait) in this teeny theater (Theatre de la Huchette) which has apparently been showing them continuously since they opened 50 years ago. I enjoyed them, but found myself trying not to think about how I would have to analyze them in French class. I feel sorry for existentialism, the absurd, all those wonderful mid-20th-century French philosophic traditions which have become for me now the easiest era to bs about in a school paper.

I'm looking forward to the chance to go back tomorrow and explore more. I saw more bookstores today than I think I've seen in the entire rest of my stay in the south of France. Despite the massive number of tourists everywhere you go, the city really is still beautiful in the rain and mist. The architecture is exactly what you expect after being fed movies that love Paris (Amelie, Moulin Rouge for some recent examples), random cafes on the street are cheaper than the equivalent in Nice or Antibes, everywhere you look are reminders of the city's culture ("François Poulenc lived in this building until he died.").

I wonder about coming back someday, trying to find my niche in such a place.

Now if only it would stop raining...