Eating, drinking, and breathing in France

On our previous trip to France, in 2002, we ended up eating almost every meal at an outdoor table, even if it was windy or rainy, because indoors was full of cigarette smoke, and outdoors there was at least a chance that the wind would blow it away so we could taste our food.

I think the laws have changed since then: there are ashtrays on the outdoor tables, but not indoors, so we're eating indoors even when the weather is gorgeous, in order to avoid the cigarette smoke and taste our food. It's an improvement, I guess.

On our previous trip I noted that "water and soda, by volume, are almost as expensive as wine." Presumably because of the number of American tourists, every place we've eaten has been willing to serve us plain water, usually chilled, usually in a carafe or large bottle, and usually gratis. We usually order Orangina or Fanta or the like as well, so they're still making some money on drinks.

Another odd daily-life thing I noticed: we've had high temperatures in the 60's Fahrenheit basically every day, and we've been wearing long-sleeved shirts, sometimes a light sweater, while the locals are all wearing coats, fleece jackets, down jackets, etc.

Planning ahead, continued

After day-trips by train the previous two days, we decided to stay in Paris today, doing things like the Louvre, Notre Dame, the Sainte-Chapelle, etc. Of course, all of those require tickets -- gratis in the case of the churches, but still advance reservations. So I looked on-line, and got tickets to the Louvre for Wednesday afternoon. For Notre Dame and the Sainte-Chapelle, nothing was available before we leave Paris. Which isn't the end of the world: we got to both of them in 2002, examined the St. Louis shirt as closely as we could through the glass display case, venerated the Crown of Thorns from a few inches away....

So we're not sure what we're doing today: the weather is nice, so probably something outdoors. Or we might day-trip to Chartres, which is a good deal closer than Rouen.

UPDATE: Delayed getting to the train station, just missed our intended train (although we hadn't had time to buy tickets for it anyway, so no money down the drain), decided not to spend three hours round trip on the train for three or four hours in Chartres. Went to les Arenes de Luteces, which we remembered from 23 years ago as a grassy Roman-era amphitheatre where the locals sit and eat lunch. Since then, the center of the amphitheatre seems to have been excavated, leveled, and sand-paved into a sports-and-performance space; we sat in "the stands" snacking, surrounded by art students drawing the surrounding buildings. Got a good hearty lunch at a neighborhood brasserie, then glace Berthillon, then returned to the room to decompress and recharge. After dark, went out for dinner at a crêperie.