Fin des vacances

I've had a pretty great vacation, though I've passed it lazily. For instance, today I woke up at 9, went to the market down the street (the market wasn't as inexpensive as I had hoped, but they did have black beans!), and then came back and made some scrambled eggs and read all day. Ironically, maybe magically, I've just started an excellent book called The Savage Detectives by a Mexican-Chilean writer named Roberto Bolaño, which begins journal-style with one sentence for November 2 and then three pages for November 3–which was yesterday, and my birthday. I know I've commented before on how much I love just walking with friends aimlessly around Paris–and how, for a poor young person, this is how the city offers itself to my heart–so that's mainly what I did. We stopped at some English-language bookstores and a coffee shop on our way through Montparnasse and the Latin Quarter over to Chatelet and the Marais, and then over to Bastille and then to Belleville. I've made a little map, which doesn't include all of the little diversions, but it says we walked 7.8 kilometers, or about 5 miles:


Along the way, we stopped and ate some amazing Lebanese and, when the bartender found out it was my birthday in the process of flirting with one of the girls who was there, we got free drinks and little pastries. We went to Belleville to recover a scarf I had left at a Halloween house party–we got stuck in the rain, soaked, but I got the scarf. Belleville is much cheaper and less pretentious than most of the rest of Paris, so we stopped in at a bar to have drinks and chat, and that's pretty much how we spent the rest of the night. Despite the rain, it was a great day.

There's been less to growl about lately, thank goodness. The apartment is holding up pretty well, and I've been decorating a little bit with some birthday-gift postcards. I've posted some pictures on my flickr, so go check that stuff out. It's not as easy as I had hoped to post a set of pictures to my blog, so I will only have photo posts if they relate directly to the things I'm writing about. Otherwise, you know where to find them. Thanks to everyone for all of the birthday wishes sent my way yesterday!