"Billy Idol!"

The Eiffel Tower makes it official -- we were in Paris:And it was a lovely holiday! While not exactly "spring" in Paris, we had amazing luck. Consider the following sequence of events and corresponding weather patterns:

Walk to brunch place near Centre Pompidou -- sunshine
Eat decadent brunch and watch world -- hurricane, complete with umbrella casualties of outrageous proportions and small children blown over (moral dilemma for mothers: hang onto umbrella or child?)
Wait in line at Pompidou -- sunshine and woman playing zither
Observe world from within Pompidou -- full force gale, apocalypse

In general, this was our rule: promenade in sun until rain clouds appear, then duck into bar. We remained dry, but only in the most literal sense. It also gave us the opportunity to check out local fashions -- as Sarah discovered, butt crack is in:Pompidou was great, though I might suggest that Louise Bourgeois had a difficult childhood:Misha was particularly inspired:
I liked the rhino (Ian photo credit):Sarah stuck to her eat-a-thon promises and provided amazing hook-ups. Let it be said: the Israeli-run L'As de Falafel knows what it's doing. Happy smiles = Falafel smiles:
We had a night out with her brother's boyfriend Paul, which meant his local Moroccan restaurant (more couscous than humanly consumable and merguez and lamb galore), and a recommendation for what became "oignon soup and duck gluttony" the next night. Perhaps, though, it was our post-duck adventures that were the most memorable...

We stumbled into the very quaint bar "Louise et Georges" (dying red roses, portraits of owner on the wall, old wood beam ceiling -- Sarah suggested you couldn't set-dress a "French bar" better) and ordered a bottle of wine...and then discovered the entire bar of extreme regulars was in the middle of a game, facilitated by Georges and his iPod...

The Game:
1. Georges picks a song on his iPod, which is plugged into stereo system
2. Crowd listens for .001 seconds before shouting out the name of the artist ("Le Clash!" "MC Hamm-air")
3. Much drinking

Wanting to fit in with our new friends, we desperately hoped to shout an answer and have the entire bar cheer us and thereby accept us into their fold. Unfortunately, that plan was ruined by Ian's very raucous guess of "Billy Idol!" for what was obviously a CCR tune. Alas. We regained some of our cred when we told Georges we were okay with smoking, thus allowing him to draw the blinds, lock the doors, turn off the front lights and hide the bar from the smoke police. When Misha lit up (luckily, he'd un-quit only that afternoon), the whole Billy Idol issue was smoothed over.

Now it's back to work...though we have a giant chocolate egg to get through before then...

LB for IB