Soft drinks and the Rodin Museum

Wednesday, July 07, 2010 Day 7

I haven’t had a soft drink since we left the States. I had wine and water and some juice on the plane, and almost exclusively wine, iced tea, hot tea and water since then. I brought some Crystal Light water flavors along but haven’t even been inclined to use them. I wanted to give up my soda habit while I am here, and I have gotten off to a great start! I don’t see it changing much, either. I think soft drinks are pretty expensive here, and I just seem to be satisfied with water. It helps a great deal that we haven’t bought a 6-pack or 12-pack (not sure the latter are available here) and stowed it in the refrigerator. That doesn’t mean I won’t have one once in a while, maybe at a restaurant with some pizza, but we don’t eat pizza much, so the occasion will seldom arise. Definitely a habit to give up – I wish I could break all my bad habits this easily!

We are working to try to figure out our phone. Roger managed to take a picture of me, which I will not share. But he cannot figure out how to erase the picture. There is a little video he was watching which was supposed to explain the procedure, but it was a bit of rap in French and he didn’t get it.

We had our first venture into a pharmacie today. Roger is almost out of his Sensodyne, a toothpaste for sensitive teeth. A young clerk advised us that a particular box on the shelf would be what we needed, and we bought it along with some vitamins and took them home, literally around the corner from our house. When we got home, Roger read the side of the box, which indicated that the contents of the box are meant for the relief of gum pain from dentures, braces, etc. I opened the box (not sealed or glued here as in the States) and read the enclosusre which clearly indicated it was a gingival gel meant for rubbing on the gums after each meal. We had lunch and returned to the pharmacie. We had not gotten a receipt, and we wanted to deal with the same clerk since we needed to exchange the original purchase. We had to wait in line, but we got to see the same clerk, who remembered us from 30 minutes earlier. We found Sensodyne on the shelf, made the switch, paid an extra 7.5 euros (two tubes to the package) and left. Another small victory – we made an exchange.

After lunch and two trips to the pharmacie, we walked to the Rodin Museum, about a half-hour walk. On the way we got to see shining gold dome on the Hotel des Invalides, which houses a hospital and a retirement home for war veterans, the military museum of the Army of France, a Museum of Military Models, the Museum of Contemporary History and the burial site for some of France's war heroes, most notably Napoleon Bonapart. I think Roger will check that out while I am in Austria in a couple of weeks. I have no desire to see these, having done Napoleon’s tomb on our last visit to Paris. It was a warm afternoon for a walk, and an even warmer afternoon for museum touring in Paris. The museum is not air conditioned, a fact which surprised me since there are a large number of paintings and at least one large tapestry as well as the sculptures. Rodin is an amazing artist, both in sculpture and painting. He did prodigious amounts of sculpture, every one of which is stunning. We did not see many of his paintings, but his work really wows me. It is truly curious that he had to struggle to find acceptance in his early work, and even his later work met with much criticism. The building which houses the works is airy well ventilated with high ceilings, so it was tolerable, and the stroll in the gardens was quite nice under alleys of tall trees. It was made even nicer by mango-flavored sorbet. Roger had an aribican-flavored ice cream, which was pretty good as well. On our return walk, we took an alternate route just to see different sights. We must have returned home around 17:00.

After chilling for a couple of hours with some iced tea and our computers, we went to eat at a Japanese restaurant on the next street over from ours. We don’t really care for sushi, but there were a couple of other offerings on the menu. We had little mini-kabobs of meat, although two of mine were of cheese instead of meat. Interesting, but not thrilling. We also had some spring rolls which were quite good, and two glasses each of white wine. We finished with lychee fruit which reminds me a lot of canned pears – pretty bland. I had had them before, but this was Roger’s first time.

We returned to World Cup football and our computers again. There is joy on the street – Spain defeated Germany in the semifinal.