Attendre.

So today was all about waiting. For the second day of "Les journees du patrimoines", Katie and I decided to visit the "Palais de l'Elysee", also known as where Sarkozy lives, which is only open to the public these two days out of the year. Well, we weren't alone, at all. We both got there around 8:30, which is when it opened, and the line already went down the entire street, and wrapped around the park at the other end. Since we didn't really have anything we were going to do, we decided to wait. And wait. And wait some more. And finally, after SIX HOURS (or 360 minutes, or 21,600 seconds -- choose whichever sounds most painful), we entered the Palais.

It was indeed pretty amazing! I don't know about 6-hours-of-waiting amazing, but at least now I can say that I've been there, and never have to go again. They had a tour set up through about 4 rooms on the first floor -- mostly "salons" and a few "salles a manger" -- one which Pompidou had completely redone to be all white and modern. Very odd. Then we had to go outside over to another part, which was the grand ballroom. They had the whole table set like it was for a formal dinner which was pretty neat -- incredible ceiling! We then continued on to more "salons" and offices, and got to go upstairs where "salon vert" was, which was set up for a conference. The tour concluded with the president's (and former presidents') cars in the front courtyard which were very cool!

Anyways, overall, I'm glad we went. It was, I think, the longest I have ever waited for something. The security and logistics for the entire thing were amazing -- apparently, Sarkozy and Carla were there yesterday morning to great people, but not today. Oh well. Maybe another time!

When we finally left, it was about 4pm and we hadn't eaten lunch (and we all know that I'm a delight to be around when I have low blood sugar...). So we looked around for some place to grab lunch, which because it was a Sunday afternoon, was not easy at all. We ALMOST (I repeat, almost) resorted to going to Starbucks, but then found a boulangerie that had sandwiches and the like, so we decided to go there. I got a salad which had tomatoes, corn, carrots, turkey, and some cheese, and Heinz "Salad Sauce" in the little packets. Yum! At least it came with a piece of bread...

We headed home after that and I watched some French TV (which was actually some terrible American teen show dubbed over in French) and waited for Alain and Marilu to return home. Simple but delicious dinner of pasta with tomatoes and olive oil! Yum! And grated gruyere on top. And the pasta was in shapes! I was suprised that that wasn't just an American thing...

Long day, so it's time to head to bed! (They make it pretty easy when they start watching tv in Portuguese...)

Photos of the day: Me and Katie in front of the Palais/Fountain and the Grand Salle in the Palais

                                                                    A tout a l'heure!