Bonsoir de Paris!

My mother and I arrived in Paris yesterday morning, after a sleepless night flying over the Atlantic. We didn't feel too adventurous after our flight, so we toured around Montmartre, the neighbourhood our hotel is in. The afternoon in Montmartre left me a little worried, since the area resembled, more than anything, the most touristy parts of Quebec City and Montreal's Old Port. There were, however, a couple of cool things:

-a church across the street from our hotel, where the organist gives free concerts whenever he feels like it

-the Musée de Montmartre, featuring various cool posters etc. from earlier in the neighbourhood's existence, when the likes of Debussy and Satie played in Montmartre's cabaret halls. I found an AWESOME set of six cabaret songs, scored for voice and piano accompaniment, with beautiful illustrated title pages à la Toulouse-Lautrec.

Today's meanderings proved my Montmartre-fuelled doubts wrong: the areas around the Musée d'Orsay and the Quartier d'Opéra resembled much more closely what I had thought Paris would be like. Big avenues, beautiful buildings, all the nicest stores....

After a very enjoyable (read: pastry-filled) breakfast in our hotel, we headed over to the Musée d'Orsay, home to one of the world's greatest collections of Impressionist paintings. I especially enjoyed seeing many less-well-known paintings by some of my favourite artists.

After our time at the museum, we took the metro to Place de la Madeleine, home to many gourmet food shops. Funny story: in the Maille boutique (yes, an entire store devoted to mustard), there was a group of people we assumed (from their generally obnoxious behaviour and their refusal to speak in French to the saleslady) were American. Only when they started going on and on about how you can only buy two types of mustard in Canada (which just isn't true!) did we realise they were Canadian, just like us! I would like to think this experience would have taught my mother and I not to stereotype, but after we left the store, my mother turned to me and said, "well, I suppose they must be from Toronto!"

We had aspirations of walking across the Seine to the Louvre and the Jardin des Tuileries after lunch, but we never made it. Instead we spent the rest of the day wandering along the Boulevard de Capucines and the Boulevard Haussmann. Over the course of the afternoon/evening, we visited the famous Café de la Paix for coffee and pastries, saw the Opéra National de Paris-Garnier, and shopped at two of Paris's oldest department stores (Au Printemps and les Galeries Lafayette).

Anyway my turn on the computer has far exceeded my mother's patience, so I suppose I should giver her a chance to check her email now. À bientôt!