News You Can Bruise for 2016 April 24

Sumana and I just returned from an anniversary trip to Paris, courtesy of Sumana's mom. We had a great time, and as time permits I'll be putting up mini-travelogues of the major sights we saw. I'll start things off with a catalog of our lesser adventures and discoveries.

As always, I travelled exclusively by private bus. We had to make some minor livery changes to make my usual ride street-legal in France.

We skipped the Eiffel Tower and the Louvre, Paris's two biggest tourist traps. However we did take a boat cruise of the Seine the first day, so there is proof that I was near the Eiffel Tower at some point.

We were more enthusiastic about Montmartre, home of the perspective-tastic steps seen in Celine And Julie Go Boating.

I loved the Jardin du Luxembourg. For some reason people were always taking selfies next to this statue.

Also in the garden but a bit harder to find was this awesome metastatue! The Luxembourg also features a functional Beaux-Arts latrine (not pictured).

The most touristy thing we did was a walk down the Champs Élysées, which was the Paris equivalent of walking through Times Square on Broadway, then crossing the street and walking back. It was cool at the start (Arc de Triomphe), and again later on once it turned into a park, but I'm gonna let this picture sum up the middle:

We ate a lot of great food! I won't be sharing pictures of the food because I don't take good pictures of food, but I'll say that raw milk cheese is fabulous, and pastries and bread were routinely as good as the best you can get in New York. High-quality carbs and cheese: the culinary highlights of my trip. We went on a food tour with two other tourists and since three of us were from New York, when we went into the cheese shop the tour guide said "Look, you can get most of these at Murray's, so we're just gonna focus on the raw milk." Much appreciated. We didn't eat at La Grenoille but I thought it was cute and it can stand in for a lot of Paris restaurants. I tried escargot, as well as the mysterious Futurist dessert known as the floating island, and my verdict for both is "meh".

We also didn't eat at this restaurant, because it was closed, and because the passive-aggressive note taped to the window ensures that no one will ever eat there again. (My translation: "We will reopen upon completion of the work to stop the recurrent floods of fecal water from the WC installed in the basement. We are waiting on the leaseholder to act.")

But I'm sure you're asking: what do the French think of America in today's Je Suis Charlie world? Well, here's the answer, in sidewalk menu form. Bad luck, rest of the country! According to France, New York City is coextant with the United States, and Toronto stands in for all of Canada. It could be worse; in the airport I saw a French guidebook for "New York + Brooklyn". I mean, I get it, we didn't really leave Paris, but I know there are different regions in France.

This tote bag we saw in a €1.20 store (i.e. a dollar store, but more expensive) managed to achieve greater overall accuracy by avoiding pesky details. Not sure where that subway map comes from though.

Okay, that's it for now, but tune in soon for scientific instruments, Duchamp's obviously fake readymades, and the Tetsuo Milk-approved netherworld of Versailles. Just to whet your appetite, here's the sort of thing you see in the Musée des Arts et Métiers, a really cool museum that wasn't mentioned by either of the guidebooks we used, but was mentioned by every French person we asked.

An early steno keyboard! Awesome. See you next time.