A Paris: Day 11- Saturday 18 June

I accidentally almost slept in today, it was a miracle; not too much to report today, I mostly decided to just take buses, to the point where I accidentally ferried myself out of Paris and off my map. The periphery and areas outside the city were good to see, though, too, a lot more cars and parking [though still not free], fewer shops on the ground floor, more spread out, more office complexes, actual houses on some of the rues. I visited some completely anonymous, random places in between changing buses [did I mention it rained on and off the whole day? Thus my wanting to find shelter] and eventually ended up at Sacre Coeur, which is just a fun place to be, anyways.

The more notable things today were us going as a group to see Moliere's play Les Precieuses Ridicules, which we'd read in class, and enjoying it quite a lot. The theatre was in a relatively small, vaulted, underground tunnel kind of room, which I didn't know if it was originally cellar space or just how the foundations were done or what, but unfinished so you could see the stones, and the cast was only five members who seemed to have a lot of fun performing, and did bits of it amongst the audience. My modified clique went to the Centre Pompidou across the street and managed to get in for free with our student IDs, and spent the time until closing looking at Art and out the windows, because it had a pretty good view. We walked around the shopping area for a bit after getting kicked out, had dinner at a Lebanese place nearby on their terrace, then went our separate ways, as tomorrow we're going to Giverny in the morning.

Today's edition of Weird Things About France: This one is more fun to witness, actually, but people like to get married in Paris. I already mentioned seeing the fleet of brides that one day I was in the Bois de Vincennes area, and I saw one in the parc yesterday, and so on, but this also means you see bridal parties and bachelor groups occasionally. Today's collection was better than usual, and first I saw a guy dressed only in tights, a thong, a raincoat and an explanatory sign waiting very publicly for a bus, then saw another one in a dress on the metro, both with groups of giggling thugs [I exaggerate, though], then I saw two bride-to-bes in the Montmartre area, one just dressed oddly being led around in a blindfold, the other mostly only wearing underwear who was being drawn in marker on by strangers.

the pretty new Sacre Coeur Basilica, as seen though the touristy bits of Montmartre