Dans le coin: Canal St. Martin

Here are some pictures from my walk this evening.  I'm a little disappointed at how the sky turned out in most of them - it was really nice, but really subtle, and because the light conditions were low, my camera did a really good job of adjusting its settings to let in more light, making the very subtle, darkening sky not quite as subtle or dark as it really was.

We're so, so lucky to be staying in the Canal St. Martin neighborhood.  It's so cute, and so "authentically Parisian" without being touristy at all!

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This shot is looking right down at our street.  There are SO many bike lanes in Paris now, and public bikes everywhere!  It is amazing!  I'm getting so much exercise and getting to see so much of Paris.  I love it.

Public bikes!  And a lot of the bike lanes go in between the parked cars and the curb (or here, between the parked bikes and the curb), so you're protected from traffic.  It is awesome.

Sunset at 10:15?  Don't mind if I do!

This café/brasserie has been calling my name since we got here.  They had live music on Friday night, and it just looks so very cozy.  It's right across the street from us, too, so we'll definitely have to go at least once before we leave.

The past few days have been tiring, but beautiful, but sometimes a little discouraging.  Tiring because we've been posting a lot of flyers, a little discouraging because we haven't gotten much of a lot of response yet, and beautiful because this entails walking and biking all over Paris, which is of course great, and I've been sleeping really well!

It's been raining off and on the past two days, too, and we even got a heck of a thunderstorm the night before last.  I love summer thunderstorms and I've missed them, and there are few things more romantic than lying in bed in Paris with the windows open, listening to the falling rain.

I went for a run along the canal yesterday and got caught in the pouring rain for a while, which was fun but not something I want to repeat every day, so between that and all the walking and biking we did yesterday, and then the drizzle that was coming down this morning, I was sore and not feeling like a second day of rain-running in a row, so I didn't run this morning.  That worked out fine, because we did lots more walking and biking today, so I definitely still got my exercise in.  Even though I'm eating at least one pastry a day, I might end up losing weight on this trip!  Gotta love that French paradox.

My Facebook friends may have already seen this, but when we were posting flyers today, I had the following exchange with a French police officer:


French police officer: You can't put that poster here.
me: But then why is this other poster already here?
him: Because they put it up when I wasn't looking.
me: Ok, well, we'll take it down, then.
him: Ok, you can put it up when I'm not looking.


Oh France.  I have missed you, and you are much easier to love when I'm only here for a few weeks.