"You're not a tourist anymore. You're a real Parisian now."
Today I found the bicycle with the highest cuteness-to-price ratio in this entire city at a huge flea market: a sea-green peugeot commuter bike, for 25 euros! It needs a little work and accessorizing (new tires, bell, light) and the chain kept falling off on the way home, but I think black chain grease all over my hands is quite charming.
Finding it was an adventure-- Emily told me this morning that she'd found a used bike shop that was open on Sundays, so I met her out there on the metro and we asked the owner for used bikes. All of his were too expensive, but we asked where we could find some and he sent us to a market at Porte de Montreuil. We had to change metro lines twice and we spent most of the ride there builing up a fantasy version of this market. A collection of booth after booth of cheap amazing French used bicycles! French women weaving bicycle baskets! A booths specializing in varieties of bells, or reflectors! The best sandwich booth in the world! (I was getting pretty hungry at this point.) What we found was greater than we ever could have imagined.
Hats. Boots. Shampoo. Blenders. Alarm clocks. Rotary dial telephones. Fur coats. Tools. This place was huge, booth after booth, tons of ex-pats selling bins of cheap junk. And they weren't all up in your face trying to sell you stuff when you were looking. And it was there that I found my beautiful sea-green Peugeot women's commuter bike. It took some convincing to get the guy to pump up my tires and raise my seat (he only had two bikes, mine and a red one, and his booth seemed mostly concerned with selling old radios, clock alarms, and radio alarms), but finally I got him to admit that he did have a pump in his van, all was good.
Post-bike-purchase, I spent the rest of the afternoon in Marais with Perrine, a friend of mine from BU who was here visiting her French family for the break. We got tea with her grandmother and her mom, who complimented me on my R's! Now I just need to use the semester to especially concentrate on my vowel pronunciation, and also improve vocabulary and grammar. Anyway, it was really great to see Perrine in her home country, and made for quite a charming afternoon.
I had to bike all the way across Paris to get home, so I took the bike path along the Seine to make sure I wouldn't get lost, singing Natalie Cole's version of "This Can't Be Love" because the lyrics basically describe how I feel about Paris.
I've now got an address and a phone number here, so let me know if you want that.
I've also got a class schedule, but only for Tuesdays and Thursdays. Because those are the only days that I've got class. That's right.
Finding it was an adventure-- Emily told me this morning that she'd found a used bike shop that was open on Sundays, so I met her out there on the metro and we asked the owner for used bikes. All of his were too expensive, but we asked where we could find some and he sent us to a market at Porte de Montreuil. We had to change metro lines twice and we spent most of the ride there builing up a fantasy version of this market. A collection of booth after booth of cheap amazing French used bicycles! French women weaving bicycle baskets! A booths specializing in varieties of bells, or reflectors! The best sandwich booth in the world! (I was getting pretty hungry at this point.) What we found was greater than we ever could have imagined.
Hats. Boots. Shampoo. Blenders. Alarm clocks. Rotary dial telephones. Fur coats. Tools. This place was huge, booth after booth, tons of ex-pats selling bins of cheap junk. And they weren't all up in your face trying to sell you stuff when you were looking. And it was there that I found my beautiful sea-green Peugeot women's commuter bike. It took some convincing to get the guy to pump up my tires and raise my seat (he only had two bikes, mine and a red one, and his booth seemed mostly concerned with selling old radios, clock alarms, and radio alarms), but finally I got him to admit that he did have a pump in his van, all was good.
Post-bike-purchase, I spent the rest of the afternoon in Marais with Perrine, a friend of mine from BU who was here visiting her French family for the break. We got tea with her grandmother and her mom, who complimented me on my R's! Now I just need to use the semester to especially concentrate on my vowel pronunciation, and also improve vocabulary and grammar. Anyway, it was really great to see Perrine in her home country, and made for quite a charming afternoon.
I had to bike all the way across Paris to get home, so I took the bike path along the Seine to make sure I wouldn't get lost, singing Natalie Cole's version of "This Can't Be Love" because the lyrics basically describe how I feel about Paris.
I've now got an address and a phone number here, so let me know if you want that.
I've also got a class schedule, but only for Tuesdays and Thursdays. Because those are the only days that I've got class. That's right.
posted by Sarah Beth Glicksteen at 4:56 PM
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