Beautiful weather in Paris

The nicer the weather gets, the less reason to go to the library. When it's very sunny, you can't read the microfilm, since there's a giant skylight in the middle of the room where they have everyone read. Great for people who are reading actual books and want natural light to help them forget they're being antisocial, and annoying for those of us who have to read the microfilm. On Tuesday, at the BnF-Richelieu, I could barely read at all, so when it was like 80 degrees and sunny Wednesday and Thursday, I just didn't bother, given how impossible it would have been to read. Today, it was sunny, but I also don't want to be at the library on the weekends, so I sucked it up and headed to Opéra. Before the research, I decided to go to that fast food place in the Passage I mentioned in an earlier blog post, and I got a very interesting smoothie: apples, cucumber, and fresh mint. It was delicious!!! And I got a salad with olives, grilled zucchini (the French word is courgette...not sure why it's so drastically different from the Italian), tomatoes, French parmesan, and balsamic dressing. Yummy! 

Anyway, at the BnF today, I FINISHED!!! Afterwards, I went upstairs, and asked the people in manuscripts if I could look at the real things since the first page was really hard to read. They put in the request for me, so fingers crossed, on Monday I might be touching Victor Hugo's love letters! After that, I headed over to Berthillon and got my old favorite combination: caramel au beurre salé and café. In line (because the nice weather brings lines of tourists to what should be my own private ice cream store...), the people behind me were Italian, so I chatted with them. Italian's seem so much more complimentary about language skills than the French. I'm sure my Italian is nowhere near as good as my French, yet I get complimented about it just as often. I guess I'll be able to make a more informed comment about it when I'm in Italy next month!. 

After my ice cream, I went over to the normal BnF, in the 13th, to look at an edition of Hugo's complete works that supposedly had a printed copy of the Reliquat in them. Well, if the volume I looked at was the only one that had that Reliquat (and according to David Bellos, it is), then there was only one mention of Mme Biard and no transcriptions of her letters, so I guess all this work I've been doing isn't for nothing! Tomorrow, I'm planning on going back and looking through the other 17 volumes, just in case. The 11th is the one that had Les Misérables and its preparatory documents. That library is enormous, silent, and inefficient, but for some reason I still love it. Maybe it's because I spent my semester abroad thinking that I should have been working there, but working there makes me feel as though the work I'm doing is infinitely more important. They have people there to fetch the books for you (and it takes them half an hour per book...), and you sit there at an assigned seat at the bottom floor of the whole complex and twiddle your thumbs until they bring you the book. Well, in this case I read an Italian book...I'm not very good at twiddling my thumbs. The Italian book is really good though! It's called Seta by Alessandro Barrico and I actually bought it in Paris last summer, but then never got around to reading it. 

After spending two hours in the BnF (François Mittérand) typing up anything that might be of interest out of this particular edition of Les Misérables, I went to Prêt-à-manger for dinner. So good. Really, I wish they had had it when I studied abroad here! 

Picture time!

I would take buses so much more often in America if you could see amazing buildings like the Opéra Garnier as they take you where you want to go!

I think I went to Châtelet on Wednesday, but I can't remember exactly. But here is the Tour St Jacques, a very nice tower, right as the sun sets. All buildings in Paris get that lovely reddish/gold color as the sun sets. 

He's not just from Harry Potter—he was REAL!! Whether or not he actually discovered the philosopher's stone is another story...