La maison

Hi everyone,

As promised, I have lots of photos today.

This is my bathroom. Very cute. 

These two photos are my bedroom. Nice and cozy with a big roof window (I've forgotten the word in English). 

Kitchen, obviously. 

This is a bad picture of the living room. 

And this if, of course, the front. There are three floors plus a basement. 

Later in the day, I went to the Holocaust museum (Memorial de la Shoah). From the outside (pretty much the only place you can take pictures), it looked very nice, right? There are several very large monuments, some nice quotes in Hebrew and French, and a large wall of names. All of this is very misleading. Now I know that I have seen the best Holocaust museums in the world (Israel and US), so I know that I have very high standards, but still... The permanent exhibit had a bunch of blown up film posters of movies relating to the Holocaust and the physical files that the Vichy government (French government during WWII) had gathered on the Jews. Apart from an obligatory bookstore, some conference rooms, and one temporary exhibit, that was it. I was out of there in 30 minutes. Yes, their permanent exhibits were nice, but I was just a little surprised at how small the museum is. It is right in the central of Paris, very close to the river, but still... It was free, so that was nice, and it was of course better than not having any museum at all. 

The next picture down is a picture of the Seine from my neighborhood. The Seine runs all over France. There is a large section that goes through the city, but it also loops back around through the northwest suburbs where I live. A little further down the river Monet's old house has been converted into a restaurant. 

Today I went to the grocery store for the first time, and it was a pretty good experience. For those of you who have never lived with me, going to American grocery stores is always a bit of a pain for me. I have to weave in and out of the aisles and aisles of processed snacks that I do not want, and when it comes time to check out, the cashiers always try to give me about 10 times the amount of plastic bags that I want. 

This is not the case in Paris. They still do have processed snacks and all, but they also have much more exciting things. For just a short list of some of the cooler items that I saw, they had pre-made crepes, refrigerated apple crumb cakes, and ready-to-go beef carpaccio. I did not get any of this, but they did have a good supply of fruits and vegetables and cheeses. I was also able to get a big bag of quinoa for only 2 euros, which I thought was quite a bargain. However, the best part was that the cashiers do not even offer you plastic bags. At the register there were probably about 3 plastic bags left, and they were clearly not a popular item. I just brought this large bag in the picture with me, and it worked out perfectly.