Our first day out; Paris DAY 1

5/ 19/2011

We arrived last evening from San Francisco and settled into our apartment.  In the morning, after wandering around the Bastille area, we finally found the the Puces D'Aligre (the local flea market) with tons of junky stuff and some nice looking produce.  Not the treasures we had hoped for but interesting nonetheless.

We decided to suck it up and drop a few Euros on entrance to a huge antique fair and secondhand market which was set up along the Boulevard Bourdon (pictured.) Melissa fell for a rose colored crocodile leather bag but choked on her Orangina when she thought she heard 3 hundred plus euros!   Twasn't meant to be.  It was super fun though and gave us good ideas and prices for when we got to the Puces de Vanves on Saturday.  The view was beautiful and the weather was sunny and really ideal.  The vendors broke for lunch, uncorked their wine and tucked in. We took the opportunity to steal a few snapshots.

Next we walked our toes off when we should have bused it to the Cinematheque Française for the Stanley Kubrick Exhibit

This was a great show of all the film notations, still photos, props and video segments of all the movies he directed from Flying Padre (his first short) to Eyes Wide Shut (unfortunate.) Between those are some of Ned's favorite films including The Killing, Dr. Strangelove, 2001, A Clockwork Orange, Barry Lyndon and the Shining.  Although it was not allowed, Ned managed to take a few photos of the props from Dr. Strangelove before being asked to please stop:

The War Room in miniature. (No fighting allowed)

Wing Attack Plan R avec survival kit. 'A fella could have a pretty good time in Vegas with all that stuff.'

The Nuke (ne pas toucher) 'cause you know everyone wanted to ride it like Slim Pickens

Oh, and the space suit from 2001. Hal was just around the corner but I got caught just then.

Next, we rested at our apartment and headed to the Pont des Arts to watch the sunset.  For those who don't know it, it is an overly romanticized yet very pretty bridge covered in padlocks with the names of sweethearts.  These lock are removed yearly, otherwise they would probably compromise the integrity of the structure from too much weight. Seriously, there are like thousands attached to it. 

On our way there, we saw the coolest paint job on a SmartCar. Wicker, wow!

C'est fini!