They take the whole “day of rest” thing really seriously around here. Even the people above us take a break from their loud sex and even louder vomiting to switch on a televised mass, but that’s not the half of it.
I woke up to church bells this morning–that wonderfully presumptuous clamor that tells the world that it is time for services. And since then, there has been near silence from outside of our apartment (unless you count Blake knocking on the door with all of his suitcases, fresh from 24 hours at Charles de Gaulle–I hear that you people are having a bit of weather). Considering that we live near a playground and an ambiguous intersection that turns ordinary drivers into fuming, gridlocked madmen, this day truly is unlike all others.
None of this even begins to address the fact that everything outside of the Marais closes for the day. Okay–not everything. The French are smart: they make sure that a grocery store and a bakery near you is open Sundays, although they will typically be overpriced and underwhelming. It’s kind of like with liquor stores in New York–except that it’s everything.
I mean–imagine, say, Macy’s closing for a full day each week. But not just them: every major departments store, 90% of the grocery stores, all the florists, candy shops, boutiques, restaurants. This isn’t a thing where the local businesses have always traditionally shut down, but at least you can run out to Giant Chain Store for some milk and paper towels. Giant Chain Store is down, too.
I’ve decided that I like it. Nick and I run around like headless chickens on Saturday (this week it was mostly wedding-related errands–and hey, check out the real thing, although it’s blurry:)
and then sit like cozy lumps on Sundays:
Speaking of which, how bourgeois are we, with this breakfast??
Anyway, the whole thing is just absurdly French-feeling. We wake up, we laze around, we clean a little, we watch TV, we make three full meals. Everything that could be done for the week has been done; no one has any expectations. There is no work, no stress, no guilty sense of what we could be doing right now, no time running out all too quickly before the whole thing starts all over again; it’s a lost art on the East Coast, I think.
It’s just…a day of rest. You should try it.