a day in the life of...

After returning from Madame Desbordes house (described below), my friend “BJ” and I looked around at the sunny blue skies and decided that it was just too nice of a day to waste inside a house, so we set off for the city without much of a plan except that we wanted to walk along the river and see the bridges. So, we did that for a while, trying to ignore that the weather was getting cold...we started by walking down an island in the middle of the river that has a garden containing a replica of the Statue of Liberty. We then took a train to another part of the city to see a garden that we had heard of, but when we came up out of the metro it had begun to rain. So we pulled out the one gimpy umbrella between us, and tried to press on to the park in spite of the weather change. As we walked down, what would have been a picturesque promenade by the river, trying to keep our already broken umbrella from blowing inside out, we finally found an arc in a bridge that we could stand under for some relief, and conveniently could also see the garden from there. I finally saw a snack bar close to the garden, so we made a dash for it because hey, it had a roof. Once there realized it was a waiting dock for those taking a river cruise...so we tried to act cool and stay under the dry place for as long as possible...but once the boat was about to leave it was clear that we were not paying customers so we had to go back into the storm. We then spotted a department store with a sign for a café inside. So, forgetting that we were drenched and disheveled, we made our way to this fancy store. Once inside we realized how terrible we looked as we left a trail of water behind us, oops. We did a little exploring and after about 15 minutes finally found the cafe...which of course had closed 15 minutes earlier. So we made our way back down stairs only to realize that the store had also already closed, and we could not get out the way we had come in...so we kept wandering around looking for a door and finally a man unlocked one to get us out of the store :) We then began the search for a restaurant that fit our price range and appetite (which is a common problem for me here), and after wandering for at about 30 minutes we finally found one and had a, much deserved, delicious dinner. You never know what you will get into in this city, but you always have to consider it an adventure.