PARIS ’97: day 4: anybody know how big a cubit is?

Deb ran off this morning by herself to nurse the muse. She left us a note that we found about an hour after we woke up. So we decide to explore up the other side of Fg St. Honore. Know what we found?
RAIN.
Well that and La Madeleine, a very Roman pillar and pagan looking church smack dab in the middle of town. Very nice, still wet though.
Shoes got a bit soggy from walking all that way but as soon as we found a store we popped in and bought some serious rain proof shoes. Mine are lumberjack boots, and of course, I had the lumberjack song in my head all day!
Found Achilles an umbrella so that he wouldn’t be totally soggy, and off we went. As you walk up the Fg. St Honore it changes into Blvd. Haussman and then it turns into Montmartre. To solve an old mystery that we have been questioning for a while, we stopped into McDonalds and looked. Quentin was wrong, its Royale Cheese, not Royale with Cheese.
Geez, those Hollywood types.
The Hard Rock was about 10 feet from the McD’s so I stopped in to get my customary guitar pin, I’ll try to take a picture of my hat with all of the pins from the various locations.) The conversation I had with the guy there was great! We alternated in French and English and talked about San Francisco vs. Paris. They covet our ocean, by the way, referring to the Seine as “that dirty thing in the middle of town.”
Having accomplished that vital mission, we cut across Rue St Denis past many charcuteries [butchers] complete with goat’s heads in the window (you know someone would scream satanism in the US, geez), rabbits, chickens (whole body, sometimes even with the feathers to make it look nice…) and basically things referred to quaintly as “variety meats” and I’ll spare you further details.
Gosh, no thanks, I’ll just go get a baguette. Ewwwwwwwww.
Dropped into Gare de L’Est for Amsterdam info, and after having located the info, ran into a guy from Dallas (who’s HS turns 100 years old in NY city), who is doing the as many countries as you can pack into 2 weeks. He sold us his leftover metro tickets and we chatted a bit and then Ack and I took the Metro home.
When we arrived back at the hotel, Deb was there all smug in that she smote the force of evil and chaos and managed to get some rice that would do for risotto. The risotto was a success, even with a minimal kitchen and forces of nature against her (terribly yummy risotto) Early-ish night since we’d been walking out in the rain and were kinda cold.
estimated miles walked: approximately 4 1/2