At least, this is how one particular Frenchman eats them.

France, and in fact, Europe is having day after day of rain making it hard to get any photos although I’m sure some photos with glistening streets reflecting lights and puddles reflecting clouds might be interesting but I have to get out of the apartment first and the sound of rain falling on the tin lining outside our bedroom window always discourages me. I see there is a weather report of partly cloudy tomorrow and I must get out and breath in some fresh air and have a look around, camera in hand. Here are some photos from two weeks ago when the sun last shined all day. (April in Paris.)

The trees at the Palais Royal garden. Look: there are shadows from the sun!

Nothing to do with light but I’m always intrigued with this red velvet couch in a bistro in the Passage Vivienne.

A tea shop in Passage Vivienne with the sun coming in from sky lights up above.

There is all sorts of rod iron in the Palais Royal and most of it has the nice gold spears on top.

On the weekends in Paris, if the weather is nice, you can find musicians all over playing or singing their music hoping to make a little money and maybe sell a CD.

I’ve seen this guy all over Paris and even saw him on TV. I guess he has some sort of thing with wheels to move the piano around. He was very good.

This group was at the entrance of the Palais Royal.

This man was singing soprano as you can hear. He was very intense.

Once again I have some unrelated photos, at least as far as location. I guess I could put them all under the title of “Weather”.

This being April and April being a month with unpredictable weather, I’ve been seeing a lot of dark skies and then, suddenly, sunshine. I like dark skies, really-so dramatic. I saw this view when we were at the market at Nation and liked the tower against the gray sky and the green chestnut tree in front.

This was especially dramatic with the sun shining on the white building and the dark sky behind. It was on our block across the street from our apartment building. It poured rain that night.

What better way is there to warm up on a cold, rainy day than with a pot of tea? I loved these little pink metal pots and the tea was good too-bourbon vanilla.

That diet. So, in case anyone was wondering how that Dr. Dukan Diet is going I thought I’d report in. Maurice and I are both now in the 3rd part, the part where the diet is finished and you are in the maintenance phase. In fact, I just couldn’t reach the weight I was supposed to and, after a week, I decided to stop anyway as that seemed to be where my body wanted to be. I was so nervous about putting on weight in part three that I went down to the desired weight. In part three you can now have a piece of fruit each day, two pieces of whole wheat bread and one normal meal a week with a starter, main plate, dessert and wine. Each time we’ve had this we have gained weight the next day which is discouraging. Oh, and one day a week you are back on strictly protein. It’s really hard for me to do this as I start craving the bread and, usually, my apple. I haven’t stayed at my weight that I worked to hard to reach, but sort of hover above it sometimes more, sometimes closer. I’m just hoping that when I am able to eat two normal meals a week that it doesn’t all start coming back. I have to stay on this part three until July 10th (5 days for every one pound lost). I’ll even have to try and eat as I should while I’m in the States which may be difficult. I don’t think Mexican food will do me any favors.

I sometimes find myself in the Madeleine neighborhood and, if I have time, I take a look around the the area surrounding the church as there are always interesting windows.

The church in the middle of the square. As you can see, it’s close to raining. We’ve been having a rainy week with more to come.

l’Ecluse is a very good wine bar with the wines all being from Bordeaux.

A shop selling Russian caviar.

There is a new Mariages Freres Tea shop there. They are selling a new tea called dragon as you can see by the window.

Across the square is Fauchon with its pink umbrellas for eating outside.

Fauchon’s almost always has luscious looking lips somewhere in the windows.

I went with a friend, Barbara who does fabulous gourmet tours (www.paristalks.com) recently to a dim sum restaurant called Yoom. It’s sort of a high end dim sum place with individual tables (though very reasonably priced), not one of those places where they wheel out metal carts of dim sum which you choose from while sitting at big group tables. The food was very good. I’ve read about Yoom several times on the Internet.

A look at some of the dim sum that we ordered from the set menu-six different kinds.

I really liked the rice side dish.

This was really good too-filled with shrimp with a sauce.

Although my birthday is about two weeks past, my friend told the waiter that it was my birthday and they brought out this typical Japanese dessert with a little candle which was sweet. It was a great meal.