English Opera, Opera Tour, Beating Taxi Drivers, and more

(Just to explain...I don't mean beating taxi drivers as in hitting them...)
So like I said, I live in the 16th, which is the Upper East Side of Paris. Old ladies in fur coats are a plenty here. There are also a lot of shops on rue de Passy, which I would take to be one of the main streets (also the street our school is on), where I would guess window shopping was invented. Because all these stores have these big window displays of their items on sale (in France, they're only allowed to have sales during January and July...so everyone is shopping now), and it's very customary to stop in the middle of the very narrow sidewalk and look at the window display for about five minutes, before moving on. Very annoying, but also amusing to see everyone get frustrated at walking down Passy.

Also, another thing I noticed, is that they're very big on juice here. No soda for refreshments, just juice and water (no one drinks tap, even though it's good, everyone just buys those huge water bottles and pours them into cups). And the juice is legit, like our hostlady didn't serve us Motts apple juice, but legit apple juice, which I've never had before. And they have clementine juice...which is so good. But enough about juice, another thing they're big on is buying this bread that is basically the whitest bread you could find, with all the crusts cut off. Like for toast or something, if they don't want a baguette every single day. I see whole wheat offered in some places (but for like 50 cents more than the original price) and I felt like a traitor/cheater when I bought some whole wheat bread at the best supermarket, Ino, that was called "American bread." Oh well. I can't eat baguettes every minute, now can I?

Now I could be wrong about all these assumptions/observations. Because I hope I'm wrong, but it seems to me that coffee isn't the greatest here. I've gotten a cafe au lait, which was eh (I'm sad to say that I like the one in Le Pain Quotidien in New York best of all), and the only coffee I've really liked was surprisingly at the FIAP breakfasts (because everything else about the FIAP food was awful). Every other coffee has been watered-down espresso. And I'm not big on espresso, because it's expensive for such a little amount--like a shot, but maybe I'll try it soon. I've been severely missing Starbucks, not because of the brand (I refuse to miss the brand and give in and buy it here) but because of Dining Dollars, ha. I didn't really ever have to pay for coffee in New York because it was included in my meal plan, so I got it every day, usually twice a day. Now my only option for getting coffee is at the coffee machine on campus, which is instant--and at home I want to shudder at the idea of instant coffee. But I guess here it's not so bad. Oh well.

So to put all these assumptions/observations aside, I guess I should recount what I've done these past couple of days. Thursday night I went to the opera at L'Opera Comique, which isn't the famous one in Paris, but still really pretty nonetheless. It was in English, and based off of Shakespeare's A Mid-Summer  Night's Dream. And four hours long. Basically, they acted the entire play, but less in Shakespeare's actual words, and the opera parts were these barely-brief pauses in the play to entertain the Fairy Queen, or whatever. So the opera parts, although sometimes beautiful, were hard to understand (even though they were in English) and had nothing to do with the plot. A lot of NYU people left at the half-hour intermission, but I decided to try and stay because I felt guilty leaving. And I'm glad I did, the second half, although containing the longest and most boring opera song of the night, was amusing. But I'm really glad I went and that my first opera was in English, so it was kind of like a transition into better operas.

Later in the semester we're going to be able to go to operas and ballets at the famous opera theatre, L'Opera Garnier, for free, but I found out we can also student rush the shows for only 8 euro. That's less than a movie ticket...On Friday afternoon I randomly went on the walking tour that one of the professors was giving at L'Opera Garnier, and I'm really glad I went. It's so beautiful inside and outside, and the professor knew a ton about everything to do with the building. And then after the tour, she took us to the bank right across the street that was based off of the architecture of the Garnier, and then we went to the Galleries Lafayette, which is also really beautiful. And we went to the roof of the Galleries Lafayette, which was FREE, and had the best view of Paris I've seen (besides Montmartre). Everyone should go because it's FREE, unlike most of the other views. But because I went on the tour so last minute, I forgot my camera. I'll just have to go back there! Oh, and I forgot to mention that there was also a really cool exhibit going on at the Garnier of Stravinsky's Rite of Spring, which included his actual NOTES (really cool), and all the costumes that they used, which were really cool (and scandalous at the time) as well.

But yeah, and that Friday night I went to an American bar with some friends, but hopefully this won't turn into Florence (which only contains American clubs) again...I really hope not, I would like to go to some FRENCH bars and not act like an American tourist. Unfortunately we didn't get the time right of when the metro closes, so I had to take a taxi home. And the taxi driver tried to rip me off, telling me he didn't have change (it was an 11 euro cab, and I only had two tens), and basically I surprised myself (because in any other circumstance I would have given in...I was just too cranky to let him rip me off because I was so tired) because I stayed in the cab, with cars honking behind us, demanding him to either accept 10 euro only, or to give me change. Because he obviously had change. And in the end I won. Take that, stupid taxi driver! I'm still proud, because if you know me well, you know that I don't normally stand up to people like that. But I'm too stingy here (because Paris is expensive!) to get ripped off.

So yeah, that was the rest of my week! Right now I'm about to head off to the Louvre (it's free on Sundays...see more stingy-ness, but amazing-ness as well). Just another Sunday in Paris...