Yesterday morning I left the apartment at about 10:30 and dropped off a pair of shoes for new heels, dropped off my dry cleaning, and was standing in line at the post office by 10:40. Not bad. Bought postcard stamps, sent a priority envelope to the bank, picked up a baguette, and back to the apartment by 11.
Then I walked to the Saturday market, where I was again grilled about my origin (this time from another butcher), the fish guy gave me a free lemon and the vegetable woman chatted with me in Franglais about my French lessons.
After unloading the food I went out again and got a haircut, which was my first in France. I purposely had my hair cut at the last possible minute before leaving the states in order to put it off in France for as long as I could. But it was getting long and unruly and I really couldn't stand it anymore.
While I waited my turn, I frantically text messaged two friends and asked "Do I tip for a haircut in France?". The answers came back: "Only if the service and the haircut are really good" and "no way!". Ok then. Then another message beeped in:
"Welcome to the land of no tipping!"
There were two people working when I walked in, a smooth middle-aged guy with a pony tail and a tall, svelt black girl with blonde hair. I thought "This is going to be cool. I'm going to have a real French haircut". The shampoo girl washed my hair, then led me a chair next to where the black girl was working. Then she walked away and a small Asian woman replaced her. She said (I think) "How would you like your hair cut?"
So my first French haircut was in fact conducted by a Philippino woman. Who actually reminded me a lot of my friend Terry's mom. After I realized the resemblence it was oddly comforting.
The haircut wasn't great, but all that I could expect for not being able to communicate.
Back home, I made our lunch, which I took a picture of to share the global range of our meal. We were still finishing off the English cheese that Adam brought over, plus a block of American cheddar my parents brought and a bit of provolone we got from the Italian booth at the market. When I was in Valencia I bought a bit of meat, and we had some additional meat from the grocery store. Voila.
Anyway, after that the weather was decent and we decided to go into Paris. We visited the 
Viaduc des Arts, which is a group of boutiques in the vaulted spaces beneath an old railway. The shops were all closed, but the area above (where the tracks used to be) was converted into a long garden with nice views of the streets below.We left the gardens and walked to the Bastille, then a busy narrow street of bars and restaurants. We had dinner in a small Mexican restaurant, an early anniversary dinner because we didn't want to deal with the hassle of finding an open restaurant on a Sunday night.
Today Dave and I took a walk into Levallois-Perret and found that the entire town had been converted into a giant garage sale. Which answers the question "How do people in apartments have garage sales?"
Several roads were blocked off and each family was assigned a table to display their stuff. As we walked through the crowds, Dave said "Wow, they have the same junk we do in the states". We kept an eye out for a city bike for me, but the only one we found was 140 euros.Dave soon got tired of the crowds and went
home, but I walked for a bit longer, stopping to look at interesting antiques and shoes. I saw wine for sale, (how French), and buffalo skulls (how odd), and a box of old wedding rings (how creepy).
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