Paris in the springtime

The weather seems to have skipped spring in fact and moved straight to summer, it's still 24 degrees at 9:30pm and it's been gloriously sunny all weekend. we celebrated the arrivale of the beau temps by having a picnic lunch and a moules-frites dinner outside on saturday - the moules frites were pretty good, at the horseshoe tavern in Odeon, and today we took a stroll in the jardin des plantes before lunching on oysters from the market. Sam just made a salad nicoise for dinner.

In the afternoon we saw a parade commemorating the deportation - there weren't many people, just 5 police drummers and a flag carrier from each departement, then about the same number of civilians walking behind. there are lots of plaques on the walls around our area remembering large groups, mostly families with children, who lived in those buildings and were sent to death camps. i'm surprised the parade wasn't a bigger affair. i guess if you deport enough people then there's nobody left to remember them. meanwhile, certain sections of the media are making contemporary comparisons after Sarkozy's interviews on french TV during the week, where he reaffirmed his commitment to deporting all the illegal workers in France (there are about 300 000 apparently). This probably means they lose the argument by Godwin's law, but still, the undercurrent of xeonphobia in french society clearly remains strong..