Globetrotter Day 4

Today I walked to a nearby church (Notre Dame1) and caught the last few minutes of the noon Mass before they kicked out everyone (about twenty-five people).

The park next to the church had nice benches and a whole slew of Parisians biding their time. As the African woman next to me napped, I read my magazine ("The New Oxford Review").



Some observations in the "people watching" category:

1. I see no laptops. And I don't mean fewer laptops. I mean I've seen none - nada - zero. Not in any parks, not in any cafes.
2. There is a similar lack of people thumbing away at their cell phones. Surprising to me, since I thought that the text-message craze came from Europe...well, England at least.
3. In the park, people are actually READING BOOKS. It's crazy.

I went back to the Hotel about 2pm to meet back up with Breon, who had been out looking at more books. After fighting with the fraud department of his credit card (who found it hard to believe that anyone could be simultaneously buying high-dollar items in Canada and Paris), he was off for yet another go at it while I lounged in the room.

Now (7:45pm) we are back from dinner and in for the night (unless, having napped for a couple hours, we get all restless and decide to paint the town red sometime after 10pm).



1By the way, since "Notre Dame" means "Our Lady", there are a BUNCH of "Notre Dame"s in Paris. This was NOT the famous one.