There was a really long wait for the bus 21 to get me to the Palais Royal Musée du Louvre métro stop (it's right next to the Comédie Française), and while waiting, an old man asked if I'd like to sit down, and I said no, it was good, I'm young, I can stand. He was really old. Typically, young people are supposed to give old people the seats (it says so in all public transportation vehicles). An old lady showed up, one who had waited at this very stop with me just the day before, and the old man stood up and gave her the seat. She looked at me, and asked if I'd like to sit down as well, because there was enough room. I said no, again. At this point, the old man (who was an Orthodox Jew, I might mention, and he was there with a daughter or granddaughter or something) came over to me and said that he just had to tell me, even though he didn't know me and would likely never see me again, that he could tell by looking at me that I was going to succeed and have a very happy life. I didn't know how to respond, so I said "merci," and he told me not to thank him. No one knows the future, he said, but I should thank God because he made it very obvious that I was blessed. At this point, everyone was staring, and wondering why I wasn't running away. I think he meant well...but all this he can tell from me not accepting a seat?
The bus was super crowded, but I did finally get to the Palais Royal, where I waited for Mélanie to get there (she was a little late...but hey, French people tend to be exactly 15 minutes late for everything). At the square in front of the museum, there was a festival of Spanish music and people were playing strange oboes, and other people were dancing! I'd post a video, but it took so long before, I'd prefer not to. Eventually, I met Mélanie and we went into the Comédie Française (a gorgeous building) an hour before the performance to see about their last second discounts. We got 16 euro tickets in the front first balcony! Excellent, excellent seats—better than what CUPA got us as a group three years ago (we were basically in the very back of the last balcony).
Just one picture of how beautiful this building is—a bit like the Richelieu site for BnF, which is conveniently a five minute walk away.
As Mélanie and I were walking out of the theater with our great tickets in hand, looking to get a dessert or coffee or something, an usher came over and asked us where we were from. Mélanie said we were from there. He said, no, I can tell. I said I was American, and he politely complimented my French, then turned to Mélanie and asked her where she was from. She got a bit annoyed, and said she was French. I mean, she is. She really is. She's not from Paris, she's from a little town in the north called Villers-Pol, but she is French, lives in Paris, and doesn't have any sort of accent that I can hear. She studies at one of France's most prestigious Grandes écoles (Sciences Po) and she works for their Assemblée Nationale. She is basically as French as it gets, and to top it off, she was dressed like a true Parisian—all in black, everything she had on was made in France!
So, to spite him, we went outside and took lots of touristy pictures in the garden!
In case you can't tell, this is my Matilda pose! They should have won best musical, so I'm bringing them to Paris, one touristy picture at a time!
This guy is Marivaux! He writes cute plays that I've always enjoyed reading, but have never seen...
Mélanie with Voltaire. They're both French!
Just one room in this amazing building!
The play was very strange, and I'm not sure I really understood it. From what I gathered, it took place in some Middle Eastern country, where the people in power all frequented a brothel a lot, and one guy got arrested with a prostitute, and to get him out of jail, his wife switched places with the prostitute in the prison so people would think he was caught with his wife and not with a prostitute. But her condition for doing this switch was that her husband should send her away, deny her, or basically just denounce her. Then, she went to the brothel and asked the prostitute the husband was caught with to teach her to be a Courtisane as well, and then all hell broke loose. To me, the play was trying a bit too hard to be politically and socially relevant—it was clearly a modern thing written to serve as a vessel to embody all the issues happening now, like gay marriage, the Middle East, political corruption, etc. Anyway, it was well done I suppose.
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