There was a slight thaw overnight and the early morning snow did not pitch. Even so it was trecherous underfoot with lots of black ice. Our early morning shopping was undertaken rather carefully.
It has been thirteen years since either of us spent any part of winter in Europe and we had forgotten just how cold it could get and how trecherous it can be when the beautiful white snow turns to dirty slush and then freezes into black ice. Even so, life goes on in exactly the same way it does, for example, in Adelaide when the temperature goes into the forties. People still have all the requirements of life to fulfill, shopping, school, housework; you name it.
In a tiny flat such as the one we are renting it is very easy to get "cabin fever." So, in order to avoid ripping each other to shreds, we took a metro trip to the Carousel du Louvre which for those who may not be acqainted with this is an underground shopping centre actually in the Louvre. Needless to say all of the shops, not just those in the Louvre Carousel are full of Christmas goodies. The boucherie have ducks and geese and chickens and swans. Unlike the poultry displayed in Australia, these are complete with their heads and feet and feathers still on. When you buy a fowl here, you know what it looks like in its "unsanitized" form. Virgina says that it is not for those with delicate constitutions.
We found the shops in the Carousel very over-heated and wandered out to street level and on to the Hotel de Ville where they are opening the winter ice-skating rink. Then it was on to the bus and back to Montmartre.
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