Here’s part two of my trip down Parisian memory lane:

Let me start this by saying that I love living in a city where there’s enough going on to discover something new every day—even when you don’t leave your neighborhood. I’m having so much fun simply figuring out how all the streets connect. I’ve gotten completely lost twice in the past two days—within a few blocks of my apartment!—just because the streets intersect differently here.  And what they say about French drivers is only partly true. Yes, they drive less cautiously than American drivers (though I think they might actually get in fewer accidents; I have a theory that they can do this because they’re actually better drivers than those of us in the States), but the drivers are no match for the crazy pedestrians. I don’t know why they even bother having a green and a red pedestrian light. Nobody pays any attention to the red. I’ve actually seen people step out in front of moving cars…on a regular basis. But here’s the strangest part of it, for me: I’m doing it too! Me, who absolutely refuses to cross against a red light, even when there’s not a car in sight! It must be a contagious disease.

Enough about the streets. Since the last time I wrote, I’ve visited the Louvre, the Musée d’Orsay (my favorite museum so far), the Picasso Museum, the interior of the Opèra Garnier, Belleville , and the Père Lachaise cemetery (burial place of many celebrities including Jim Morrison, Oscar Wilde, Balzac, and Chopin). It’s incredible how much history is packed into a single city. And it’s even more amazing that it’s kind of thrown in amidst the modern-day buildings and offices. I’ll be walking in a business district, and all of a sudden, there’s some museum or monument that seems to appear out of nowhere.

On the less touristy side, I’ve had some really fun nights closer to home, too.  I’m starting to develop some good friendships here, which of course means late nights going out or just talking until all hours. This past Friday night, a group of us went out for a drink then went to a club (called Wax, interestingly enough) and danced until almost four o’clock in the morning. It was quite the enjoyable evening, though the enormous amount of cigarette smoke everywhere we went took some getting used to. Saturday night I had a girl’s night with a few of my friends. We went out for coffee, picked up dessert on the way home (we ended up making friends with the man running the boulangerie; he even gave us some free pastries!), and watched a movie while we ate our dessert. It was a nice break from the more lively nightlife.

The food here is still amazing, and I’m still enjoying every bite. I’d like to write a letter thanking whoever invented the baguette. That person deserves a medal of some kind.