Day 8- 3 June

[Keeping in mind my first post:] Apparently the odds of there being a protest in the square outside my hotel on my first day were better than you'd think- I ran into another one today going sloooowly through St Michel. The first indication, though I didn't know it then, was the sudden appearance of vans loaded with men in riot gear. Then the police started closing off streets, and heads started turning as the tourists with the sharper ears heard it coming, like a wave .... and the Frenchie French mostly paid no attention. This one was not about retirement age, but concerned both French involvement in the Middle East and the imprisonment of a soldier over there, and was a lot smaller- the police probably outnumbered the protesters. I also saw vans marked, I don't know, something to the effect that there exists a division of the police that protects citizens. So there were police protecting the protesters, other police making sure the protesters didn't start a thang, and still other police redirecting traffic. Just .... really strange.

Today was a lazy window shopping day, because my feet hurt, and the most notable places were a seven-story bookstore and a small district just north of Notre Dame that had multiple small shops selling plants. The first one I went into was awesome- it was a rare plants place, and I'd never seen easily 3/4 of the plants there, and for me that's saying something [just because I pay more attention to that stuff than other stuff, you know]. Makes me wonder what kind of restrictions France has [or doesn't have] on foreign plants, and what geography has to do them, because some of these things were awesome! There was this dome of bark that looked ancient and had a dinky vine coming out of it, and I think that was the whole plant, and an exotic sort of ruffled cactus, and crazy cool flowers, and a lot of different kinds of bonsai and a palm tree and so, so much more. The other plant stalls/small stores were less overwhelming awesome, but I'd still never seen variegated roses before and quite a few of the other plants. There was also a nice place that only did orchids, and another packed with hydrangeas. The funny bit was that easily half of the plants that I'd seen in the United States cost over 15 euro, and the most expensive, I forget what but something pretty cheap in Florida, was 50 euro. One place was selling Spanish moss, the stuff that UF pulls out of trees by the truckload and burns, for 15 euro. It was like the other day, when I was in Jardin des Plantes, I recognized some and went up to them, and yup, they were weeds from they United States, and they were being cultivated.

Weird stuff about France for the day: Protests. Also, in the bookstore in the French literature section, probably 90% of the books had white spines. The covers would be different, some with pictures, but again, most of the covers were mostly white, too, and the brightly-colored ones with covers over their covers [you know what I mean] I looked under and THEY were white. And they don't seem to do hardback. And so there were rows of shelves of just blank titles, and little stands in front showing select books or ones they're trying to get rid of, all brightly colored, but underneath they were all white, too, and it was we-eird ....