Carol & David's Excellent Adventures... 
     Part II - Happiness Is Just Around the Corner
      - David Braun
     Copyright 1998
     
     We're situated in temporary housing.  We could have done worse.  Our 
     place sits at the edge of the pedestrian area, downtown.  There is an 
     underground parking lot across the street.  It is under the Maison du 
     Tourisme, which besides the tourist office, train ticket office, and 
     local transportation authority office (trams and buses), houses one of 
     the main post offices.  A tram runs literally right by our building.
     Being on the first floor isn't so bad because what Americans call the 
     second floor is what Europeans call the first floor.  And that's the 
     floor we're on.  We can see two completely different sets of Alps by 
     looking out two different windows.  And... there is a sort of a 
     department store right downstairs called Prisunic, which is a sort of 
     a cross between Sears and a 7-11, with a bakery/deli counter thrown in 
     for good measure.  And, of course, you can buy spirits there, too. 
 
     Yeah, we could have done worse.
     
     The pedestrian area is like the world's biggest, coolest shopping 
     mall.  Except the whole place looks like it fell off the end of some 
     set at MGM or Universal Studios.  We keep thinking we're going to 
     round a corner and find out that it's all a fa*ade.  No... those 
     crisp, tall, snow-covered mountains at the end of the street are real 
     all right.  
     
     There are two fresh, farmer-type, markets within a hundred meters of 
     home.  But, they close just after noon.  So the shopping must be 
     accomplished early.  And speaking of closing, the stores you want to 
     go to close in the middle of the day.  There is no rhyme nor reason to 
     the hours.  Pick a time between eleven and two.  That's when they 
     close their doors.  Pick a number between one and four.  That's how
     many hours they're going to be closed.  Each business has set hours on 
     which you can depend.  But your guess is as good as ours (if we've 
     never been there) what those hours might be.
     
     There are a couple of BIG stores that are anchors for shopping centers 
     in outlying areas.  After a few trips to these, we decided that the
     prices are not all that advantageous even if the selection is a bit
     larger.  The shopping carts here have casters on all four wheels, 
     making them a royal pain to steer.  On the plus side, you can always 
     find them because people always park them back in the rack because you 
     have to stick a ten franc coin in one to use it.  You get your (~$2) 
     coin back when you return it and plug it back into the one in front of 
     it in the rack, which is why folks do.
     
     Our temporary digs are a brisk five-minute walk (or a leisurely 
     ten-minute saunter) from the apartment we rented.   Most of this walk 
     is along the tram track through the pedestrian shopping area, past a 
     McDonald's (of all things).  You just about can't throw a golf ball
     and not hit a bakery, chocolatier, or fromagerie, along the way.  The 
     reason for the temp place is that all our stuff is presently on a 
     boat.  Since we can not live in an empty apartment, HP got us a 
     furnished, temporary place.  We, mostly Carol, are using the ocean 
     transit time of our chattal to prepare our rented apartment for our
     occupation by liberal application of her decorating sense, and elbow 
     grease.
     
     Three days after New Years, we found that the Indian market around the 
     corner from our rented apartment has black-eyed peas (a required dish 
     in the south of the United States, yet virtually unheard of in the 
     south of France).  Not only does the Indien Bazar (open Sundays!) 
     carry black-eyed peas, but they also carry a selection of Olde El Paso 
     products (along with a kick-ass selection of items from the 
     sub-continent).  
     
     There is a restaurant in a plaza not too far from home claiming to be 
     Mexican.  However, we have our doubts about the authenticity of one
     menu item, "Mexican fondue."
     
     Looking out the windows of our (rented) apartment, located above a 
     bridal shop, we can see the neon of the movie theatre in town that 
     features the most V.O. movies.  V.O. means version original... 
     generally English with French subtitles; although sometimes they are 
     originally in German or Italian or summat.  We can also see Chinese
     and Vietnamese restaurants, as well as a bakery artisan, a butcher,
     and a couple of shops that sell stuff like Caswell Massey, bed and 
     bath items, linens, and such.  
     
     One Saturday evening, after an afternoon of steaming and scraping funky 
     old wallpaper, Carol and I stopped at a Haagen Dasz shop for a couple 
     of cups of cafe au lait on our way "home" (to the temp place) from our 
     (permanent, rented) apartment.  We had taken a new and different route 
     to see what we might discover along the way.  As Carol sat sipping her 
     caffeine fix, she expressed her opinion that this was the best cup of 
     coffee she'd had in France, and that she was really happy right now I 
     started laughing.  When asked to explain, I said,  "You know... if you 
     look past that carousel, we live just around the corner.  So, from our 
     temporary housing, happiness is just around the corner." 

<end - part 2>