Nightmares

 I am well and truly prepared to have nightmares tonight but I’ll get to that in a minute. We got up and made coffee. The coffee that came in the room, in the little coffee maker was on the minus side of So so.  To my dismay last night the light in the little coffee maker area did not work, the USB plugs beside my bed did not work so my watch died mid-day yesterday, and the light by the window, didn’t work either. I was going to share that information with management on the way out but there was no one at the front desk to share that information with. Honestly for the price of this room it’s definitely not a do over no matter how cute the view was.

But we enjoyed each other and drank our coffee, got ready and left.  

We went to a little place called The Attic for breakfast, it was lovely, definitely a do over and possibly the culinary highlight of the trip.

After that we went down and sat by the river it had really cooled off and we enjoyed a lovely day. Towards the end of our time hanging out on the river guess who showed back up! Yep you got it!

We have named her Nelly as she is some thing else. So I am all prepared to have bad dreams again but no Jodi here to make fun of me this time. In addition we had Culver’s on the way home so I’ll probably have bad dreams about eating too much as well.

  We’re home safe and sound ready for our next adventure.

Later is Now

We had another chance to grab a weekend together and decided to come back to Madison Indiana.  It is intriguing to me that many folks said: “what are you going to do there?”  Pretty much nothing but relax but still it is charming little town and we enjoyed it here last Fall.  

We agreed we didn’t want to do the same B&B we did before & since I was too tight to do

The Cotton Mill Inn last fall, I decided to stay there this go around.  What changed?  My best friend died a couple of months ago and while I love her hubby, and am glad  he is squared away.  I also watched someone work their whole adult life , retire and fairly soon after die.  Seems that it is true that you can’t take it with you.  Not that I seriously ever thought that but I think we get so caught up in saving for later that we forget that later is now. The hotel is cute a nice mix of the old and modern. Comfy bed, the only sad thing is no bath tub.  C’est le vie!

We went for a short walk along the river and sat down to listen to an open air concert.  It was nice, until…..

This more than portly woman with crazy blond hair constrained a bit with a headband pulled up in a red jeep, music blaring, got out of the car, leaving the door open and started doing some moves.  Jodi said: “look at her.”

It was a mix of karate Kid, bad slo mo ballet & jazz all mixed together. She walked out to this little fenced overlook area and did her her moves. Jodi kept saying look at her and I kept thinking if she’s as crazy as she looks, I don’t want to provoke her.  Her blaring music drowned out the band that was playing and Jodi made up a story about her and a

Couple that walked up and Jodi aid one of them was her ex & she was showing off her moves to let them see what they lost. Regardless she made quite the impression. So much so that I had a bad dream about her. I was dreaming that she chased me into a public bathroom stall and  she had me by the hair and was trying to yank me to her via the space besides the door.  Jodi woke me up laughing, wanting to know what I was dreaming about.  I said I was hollering  for help in my dream and she laughed more.  Jodi said I was saying hootie hooooooo and it didn’t sound desperate. It just goes to show that an ugly image at bedtime is not so good

I got up this morning g pretty late for me and ran down to the lackluster breakfast, but it was food. I have a goodie for breakfast in the AM, included or not.

We went to a little store called Olde Tyme Marketplace. And we found the cutest denim jackets with a swing back!  We each needed one and I found a cute top to take on vacation! Also Jodi found a solar candle, can’t wait to  see how it works!

We tried out a place called the crêperie for lunch and while charming, the food was weird and definitely not French!  

I had the Tomatoe Tatain, which looked

Interesting, and it was but not in a good way.  It was too too too!  I had to eat a few M&Ms to be done with the taste Jodi had a banana crepe

And it was just ok.  So probably not a do over.  

I want a pic of downtown but alas there was a farmers market there and not the image I had in mind  so we headed to Clifty Falls State park,  it was 4 degrees cooler there than in town!

I’m lounging and reading a cute book by Nan Reinhardt.  

Dinner was at the Red Pepperoni the cheese bread was not a hit, salads ok,  pizza good.  

We got back to the room and not a thing had been done.  This hotel was a splurge and we came back to an unmade bed.  They had not serviced the room, at all.  The front desk said that they were supposed to ask if we wanted servie and they forgot, but it is usually every other day and since we were jut here for 2 nights……..It just lost mega points.

Disgusted we went for a walk, the weather is quite nice  not after a nice showers while we were dining on pizza. 

A child or animal cold get lost down this open drain!  

 We watched a American River Cruise board dock at 8 PM?  It took forever and it is an odd thing to us.  Who goes to Madison Indiana at 8 PM looking for much of anything?

Paris is SOBBING over my departure!

I was sick all night long so I got up kind of slowly this morning and got myself dressed and about 10 o’clock. Martine came. She brought me a lovely scarf with a map of Paris on it and an approach to hold it and she was appreciative of the goodies that I brought her. We chatted for about an hour and a half in the mixture of French and English. She’s taking English classes, incidentally, we found out that we both like to paint she paints china, it was really fun to visit with her.

After she left, I took the box to the post office and boy am I glad it did because it started pouring after I got home. I decided I felt OK enough to try and my Kougan Aman that I had purchased yesterday and that went well.

I subsequently took myself off to the fifth via the bus, but it was pouring and not very pleasant. I find items I needed and I could not resist one last shot at Amorino. 

I went back home around for a bit then went to dinner. On the way to dinner the sun came out.  

 Dinner seemed to have gone OK too. ( at least for me, the couple beside me were German and they were fighting! ) I had to have fois gras one last time and it tasted good.  

And I am now relaxing with a glass of Cremant, Martine is from Burgundy and you can only be champagne if you’re from Champagne so in Burgundy, they call their fizzy wine Cremant. 

High on the hog ‘ain’t so good for you.

I had a 10 o’clock appointment at the Conciergerie so I got up early went to the bakery and bought some thing called a toursade which is really just croissant dough twisted rather than rolled up with almond paste in it it was delicious with a cup of coffee.

 I made my way down to the conciergerie via the Latin Quarter because that’s the way the bus goes.  The one thing about the bus here as while it’s very user-friendly it’s also not particularly dependable in a Time wise.  You can wait 25 minutes or you can wait two minutes either way and sometimes you see one next one right after the other which I’m sure can happen anywhere. The Concergerie was originally a palace, then a prison and now a museum.  

There’s a main area where the soldiers hang out and then you can see a vacant area that was a kitchen that was separate from the building due to fear of fires. And I can see why because they had these huge fireplaces four of them one in each corner to roast meat for all those soldiers.

There was also some explanation about the justice system at the time which was pretty grim quite frankly. One of the things people wanted it through the course of the revolution, and there were several, but one was to have better punishments,  more humane punishment.  

I was a little frustrated at the souvenir stand right before you go into the “Marie-Antoinette area“ because I feel like it kind of made light of her situation. Pretty roses, cofffee cups and lovely pillows.  It would have been a pretty horrible place to be for her but for really anyone it was not a good.

(You got your hair cut off here before you went to the guillotine)

If your family could pay for you you got a  bed not a very good one, but you still got a bed.   If your family could not pay then you slept on the floor on a straw pallet with several other people, so many that not everyone could lay down at once..  Old Louis the XVIII created a Expiation Chapel here too, in the area she was imprisoned.

This room delineates Several thousand names of people who were murdered during the revolution. It is very interesting how they have delineated who is who. 

There were  Separate areas for the men and women as they kick them out of their cells during the day and they had to be outside,  if they had any opportunity to clean themselves or their garments it would be in this basin here. 

 I have a funny feeling it probably was not as pretty then as it is now either. By the way the men did not have that basin. Always watching out for the frailty of femininity.

From there I want it back to Boulevard Saint Michelle and over to Saint Andre des Arts to couple of little restaurants I knew they’re hoping for some French onion soup, something light before that cooking class I was going to do later.

This little partially covered alleyway is very very old and it’s very fun to go see. I did find French onion soup and I also had a salad-Chevre.  I had some inventive presentations of chevre of this year it’s not that exactly what one expects.

I went back to the house rested for a little bit and then headed out for class there’s a bus that goes specifically from here to there which is amazing.  Especially at night when I’m by myself, it’s kind of nice to not have to walk very far to get the bus after dark.  I did have to wait to wait 25 minutes for it though, In the rain, after dark, all by myself……….There were class of eight of us, two newlywed couples which was very fun.  One couple had gotten married in Paris the other couple head I got married in May and this was their honeymoon. Two ladies from California one which of which was a nurse and a young man from South Korea who bless his heart just didn’t really understand much of what was going on. But he did try and he was he was sweet.

We made Oeufs en Meurette, Fricassée de Volaille aux champingions and PdeT Rôties (PdeT is short for pomes du terre),and Poires Pochées Sauce Caramel. 

It was a fun class and the food was awesome.  I was a bit iffy at an egg in wine sauce, but the French do lots of fun things with eggs and this was no exception.