les grèves et la neige

Today, Jer and I had 2 firsts in Paris, snow in April and dealing with a strike. The snow came as a surprise, the strike I have known about for a few days.

In the first weeks of being in Paris, I have been warned that Parisians love to strike. Even if they get want they want, they still strike out of principal. In Paris there are 2 groups that run public transportation. SNCF, this is for what would be equivalent to the regional rails in Philly (they run the train system throughout France) and the RATP, this if for the buses and metro (subway). Today the SNCF was on strike. Instead of the trains coming ever 15 minutes, it could be an hour. And since there were less trains, they were packed to the point it was uncomfortable. The grievance was due to ‘staff filed a notice as part of the negotiation of the branch agreement on the organization of working time in the rail sector’ per google translate. Overall, my day was not too interrupted but some train line were 100% down.

Snow. It snowed this morning and while I am writing this at 20:00 it is sunny snowing showering, again. Jer told me it snowed earlier today (because it didn’t snow at work) and I told him to go get his eyes checked. Woopsie. Granted it is not accumulating at all, but it’s April. Come on month nature.

When I got off my train, Jer met me and we picked up bread (which is starting to be a daily purchase), meat for dinner and dessert. I am so excited for dessert. We stopped at Aux Merveilleux de Fred. We got a Merveilleux which is a dessert of meringue, chocolate whipped cream, coated with shavings of dark chocolate. There is always a line at this place. It is totally worth it. I included a picture below so your mouth can water too.

-Kasey
Step Count: 5,429, 2.57 miles