Paris : A blink of the eye

 I'm not sure what happened, but those of your reading this blog just received an installment about my flight from two years ago!  Please note the dates! This is the correct one for February 10, 2016!

My time in Paris, all of 4 days actually, just flew by.  Jet lag and fatigue had the better of me, and although I walked around a lot, I did very little.  The short winter days--waking up to dark mornings--did not help, although much of Paris is sublime at night.

leaving Chicago

The apartment was just as I had left it--I had taken my winter clothes to Chicago with me, leaving the summer ones for Burkina Faso in the closet, and they awaited me there.  I had left in haste, and now discovered that the cheese that I had bought for Fina had started to develop mold, so it would need to be replaced.

I spent a fair amount of time catching up with people on my laptop, finishing up odds and ends left over from my time in Chicago. The lecture I planned to attend at the Cité Universitaire on the History of the Codex Calixtinus, that 12th century document which served as a travel document for pilgrims walking to Santiago de Compostela, turned out to be in Spanish.  Since the Spanish I studied 50 years ago was not going to be adequate, I decided to forego it altogether.  This was a disappointment because the subject interested me, as I have spent considerable time over the past three years walking portions of the so-called Way of Saint James in both France and Spain.

My last full day in Paris, I walked around some more, with errands to the grocery store for cheese, and to the post office to mail letters, getting caught in a heavy downpour along the way. The hood on my rain jacket was fine for little sprinkles, but serious rain is no fun.  Ducking into a small shopping arcade, I emerged 45 minutes later with two women's tee shirts -- the winter sale season in Paris is winding down and it was now the time for the dernière démarque [the last markdown]. These winter sales officially continue this year until February 16th, but in many stores there is absolutely nothing left.  I was fortunate to find anything in my size, and my plan was to leave my purchases in my apartment and wear them when I returned in late March. I would probably need something a little less winter-weight then as my clothes on-hand tended to fall into winter [January weather in France] or summer [Burkina Faso all year round] categories.

Inside the shopping arcade

 In this particular arcade there was a piano made available for people to play at certain times of the day ["à vous de jouer" = "it's your turn"]. As might be expected, there were some young people there, a would-be singer, accompanied by a reasonably talented pianist, and a few of their friends. These pianos are scattered all over the country, mostly at train stations, and I think there was some sort of contest last year sponsored by Yamaha, the Cité de la Musique and the SNCF, but nobody has removed the pianos.

The piano player

On my way back to my apartment I ran into a small Asian  restaurant celebrating the Chinese New Year with colorful costumes and loud music.  I joined the small crowd outside for a few minutes and snapped these pictures. For those unaware, this is the year of the red fire monkey, and one has just gone inside of the restaurant in the second photo below.

Year of the red fire monkey

The flight to Ouagadougou was uneventful, even shorter than planned, as the usual stop in Niamey [Niger] was dropped and I was able to arrive at the Paris Charles de Gaulle airport a couple of hours later than originally scheduled. By the time I made it out of security in Burkina Faso, it was already dark, hence no photos.

I'm not sure what happened, but those of your reading this blog just received an installment about my flight from two years ago!  Please note the dates!