My sister Anna came to visit this weekend. We had lots of fun. She is studying abroad in Cork, Ireland this year. So she flew on Ryan Air, which means that she got to experience the joys of the Beauvais Airport. Not for nearly as long as I did, though. Her flight to Beauvais was delayed by about half an hour, so I ended up waiting at the sad little bus parking lot at Porte Maillot for a little while for her. The guy who rounds up the passengers for the buses asked me where I was going (in English). I explained (in French) that I was waiting for my sister who was arriving from Shannon and said, “Mais les arrivées sont plutôt par là?” (“But the arrivals are over there, right?” or to engage in a more Benjamin/Spivak translation style: “But ze arrivals, zey are more over zere?”). He gave me a nice nod to show his appreciation for my knowledge of his ingenious arrival/departure system, and I went and waited on the grass, away from the crush of passengers trying to get on buses to spend two hours waiting at an airport where there is no source of entertainment.

Anyway, Anna arrived and we got on the Metro (the 1 to the 6 to the 4, rather than the 1 to the 4, because the 1 sucks, and the 6 is above ground and goes right by the Eiffel Tower). And we had gnocchi for dinner. The next day we went to the Eiffel Tower, the Louvre, and Notre-Dame. We had dinner at a place called “Flagrant Délice,” which had a very good 10 euro menu (but the wine was really expensive). On Saturday we went up to Montmartre and then back to Notre-Dame so that we could tour the inside.

One thing we noticed was that everyone around us was speaking English. And yes, we were in tourist areas heavily populated by American and British tourists. But for a lot of the people we heard speaking English, it was not their native language. So even in Paris, English is apparently the global language.

Saturday night we went to B’s punk show. He is in a band called “Blutschwester” (Blood Sisters), which started as a girl band, but he auditioned to be their drummer and they liked him. The show was a lot of fun, even though (or perhaps because?) the band was sort of not very good. I particularly enjoyed the songs “Reise” and “Go Fuck the Bitch,” their closing anthem.

On Sunday we tried to go shopping, which we should have done on Saturday because everything is closed on Sunday. Anna wanted to buy a scarf in Paris. Near my house, the little discount stores were open. One of them had some scarves, but these were not ideal. So we walked around for a very long time looking for any store that was open. The Galeries Lafayette at Montparnasse was closed. Everything on the Boulevard St. Michel south of the Sorbonne was closed. We finally found one store open, “Miss Coquette” or some such, on Boulevard Saint-Germain, right after the Sunday afternoon rollerblading crowd passed us. Anna found a perfect scarf, and then we saw a bunch of solid-colored scarves behind the counter for a good price, so she picked up one of those for good measure. And we found a souvenir store open at the end of Saint-Michel. So we felt good about the shopping excursion.

And then we had dinner at Buffalo Grill, which is a French simulacrum of an American steakhouse, down to the polite waiters in cheesy cowboy outfits. The minute we sat down, our waiter brought us two “Welcome Salads.” The place has a cigar Indian outside, faux swinging saloon doors painted on the front, a totem pole immediately inside, a popcorn machine, a selection of cacti, and several video game machines. On the wall above our table was a map depicting Buffalo Bill’s tour route through Europe. The food was good, and the prices were reasonable. I think it’s my new favorite restaurant in the neighborhood.