Note to self: France is closed on Sundays

Well so far my stay in Aix has been somewhat uneventful besides the general annoyances with the bureaucratic regime of residence halls.  Today, I was happy to find that although the French tend to not care too much about space or the lack thereof, they do enjoy parks.  There is a lovely park right done the street from my residence hall that had benches and pathways all around it.  It was fairly large, and I am very glad it was because I found out that Sundays are the days to go to the parks.  There were people everywhere with their children on bikes or roller skates.  There were also what can only be described as French hippies with music playing and a ton of games and tricks going on that each dread-locked member seemed to be quite adept at.  So I spent my lunchtime in the sun (the first that I have seen since coming to France) and watching the general relaxation of the other park-goers.

I also found out today that everything, everything in France shuts down on Sundays.  I have no idea why given the country is self-declared a-religious.  But it seems that the French do love their weekends so I guess this is just a good way of making the most of it.  The Australian girl that lives next to me invited me to go find a cafe with her for dinner, but after standing at the bus stop for about a half hour we realized it wasn't coming.  After asking a passer-by, we found out that nothing runs on Sundays.  Good to know for the future.  Get everything you need on Saturday so you can hunker down and do nothing on Sunday with the rest of the country.

I do admire them though.  Americans never stop.  Everything is open, every day of the week, and we get annoyed if they aren't open.  I wonder if we wouldn't pay less for our anti-anxiety medicine if we were absolutely forced to sit down in a park on Sundays.  It would be an interesting experiment to try.  

Well, it seems that the French have decided it does work so I need to remember to grab an extra baguette on Saturday.

Elise