A No Fuss Flâneuse

On our first trip to Paris together around 20 years ago, The Husband and I were debating on how to spend our last night there. I wanted to ride the bus to Place de Pigalle. The Husband said he couldn’t read the bus map. To this day we argue about it. He, an Eagle Scout with a built in man-compass, maintains his temporary map illiteracy argument. I maintain that he is a ‘fraidy-cat chicken-head. I’m into name calling.

The truth is I’m not careless, I just don’t fear the same things The Husband does. Me, I fear the really scary stuff like spiders, heights and tiny hands.

So here I am in Paris again.  The Husband is in school from 9am-1pm. This frees me up to be a flâneuse, in French, an “aimless wanderer”.

Though I did set out on foot today with a purpose. I needed to find the closest Monoprix to buy toilet paper but I never found one. I did, however, buy a smoothie at a Monop’, which is a smaller version of Monoprix. Yes, they do sell toilet paper there but stop hassling me. 

Smoothie in hand, headphones banging, I discovered these two cats sitting inside a restaurant on the dining tables (and all the people with cat allergies say wwwttttfffff?). 

I sauntered through the fabulous passages of the 2nd and 9th arrondissements.

I crossed the garish bridge over the tracks of the Gare du Nord. 

I stumbled into a gritty and not yet gentrified neighborhood in the 10th arrondissement and a charming playground park where milky children were being guarded by their black nannies. I kept going well past Place de Pigalle till I reached the périphérique, the barrier between Paris central and the (sometimes scarier) suburbs.

As if that wasn’t plenty of excitement for one day, I got a swell video of the always popular Easter Rooster.

The moral of the story is–Don’t be a ‘fraidy-cat chicken head and… 

We still don’t have toilet paper.