And yet another Parisian morning

My last entry  with that title, a couple of days ago, has vanished. Cant figure to where, I guess into thin air. And, sadly, I don't remember what I wrote about.

So it's on to another day. And in ,many ways, each day is like the one before. Which is a good thing. What I was attempting to say last night is that I don't feel the need, this time around, to run around visiting as many museums and doing as much as possible. Even though I'm
only here for five days, and then two more when Loring arrives tomorrow. I am as content to sit on my balcony writing, or  in my living room/kitchen eating biscuits with butter and marmalade as going out gallivanting.

I was planning to visit the flea market, the marche au puces, today. But I remembrred wrong, it isn't open on Friday. Good thing I checked first. It's really too high end and pricey for me, more of an antiques market. But there's one store where I've purchased eyeglass frames in the past. Dont need any now. What I'd really hoped to get this time around was old stock hair combs, the kind I wear  every day. It's hard to find nice ones in the states. And I'd left my bag of them somewhere along the way, either at the hotel in Villenueve d'Avignon or in Avignon in the room I rented there. I've got to try to track them down. I could go to the market early tomorrow before Loring arrives, but sometimes in July they haven't been open, and I can never remember the name of the place.

Enough of my travails, which of a minor sort anyway. yesterday I got a typically late start. Decided to go to the Pompidou. It's always a lively spot, tourists but also local hanger-routers. It took me quite a while to get there. Walked first thru the Marais, once the Jewish corner, in recent years a much more trendy place. There are still some old world ,traditional Jews,  and some stores selling Jewish foods or Judaica.

Some of the old storefronts with their beautifully tilted signs, still remain. But most now house fashionable clothing or design stores. On one wall is a plaque commemorating victims of  a bombing in the 1980s. I remember when that happened. But I doubt that many do, or even notice the plaque. I've written a before about the other plaques, in this neighborhood and others, on buildings from which people were deported durIng,, World War Two, usually never to return. On a previous visit, some years ago, I came across one on what had been a Jewish school. It's still a school, and I wandered in to the courtyard where parents were. Picking up their children,  before getting stopped by the protective guard. The plaques here predate the more recent stumbling stones in Berlin, where they began,  and other cities to which they spread. I first stumbled upon one, strangely, in Oslo, in front of an antique store, a couple of years ago.

I have been to Auschwitz and Daschau, some of the most disturbing places I have ever visited. But in some ways, It's the everyday places, where people live and work and kids go to school, that haunt me the most. The places where people live their lives, and nearly no one remembers or notices what once happened there.

Well, on that somber note, I'll stop, and return later, recount more about the Marais and the Pompidou. Will I ever catch up to my life in real time?

Now for some bread and cheese,and the last of my dellcious melon, while I decide what to do today.