A New Low

Trampolines, carousel on the bench, nap, trains, dinner, bed.

I would end it there, but luckily a few interesting things allowed me room for a little story telling!

We ate some breakfast, pan au chocolat (the cheap kind that comes 10 to a bag), croissant (same deal), some tea for me, juice for Ben.

Trains. Of course.

Then we headed to Tuileries to do some trampolining. On the way, we passed the Tuileries playground and were met with this picture. Any guesses?

The rest of the playground was fine, so these are my theories:

1. Some prominent tourist had their kids injured on both of these, complained, and the garden caretakers taped them off. Until the tourists leave. At which point they will reopen them for some other unsuspecting tourist.

2. Some bums used them as rest rooms.

3. The garden people are claiming which pieces of equipment that they are going to take home to their kids for Christmas.

4. They feel that there are already too many things for kids to play on in Paris.

After that we hit the tramps, then the carousel, then headed back.

Then we passed a bum. This is a bum I haven't mentioned before because she was just another bum. She works in the tourist section just beyond the Louvre on the street with all the tourist items (scarves, I love Paris t-shirts, little Eiffel towers, etc.).

The first time I passed her, she had her head down and an inhaler sitting next to her in her begging cup. I felt her prop was a little odd, but gave her mental kudos for the effort.

This time, we passed her and I almost stopped. Almost. I was this close.

She had her head down again, but the inhaler was gone, and she miraculously had a baby. Sort of. It was blankets wrapped in the shape of a baby (a 4 month old at least). The blankets were perfectly round, so that if it were an actual baby in there sleeping, it would have died of heat stroke on that hot day because it had so many blankets wrapped around it.

At least she's trying new things...it can be tough to figure out what works when you have a new job. I should tell her about the puppy tactic that the uptown bums use, maybe she could incorporate it.

Anyway, pesto noodles for dinner with grilled chicken mixed in and cut up tomatoes with Parmesan on top. Baguette and wine too, but that's kind of a given. We used to eat that all the time at home, so it's nice that we can make something very similar here.