Paris Werewolves

Wheelchair Rugby, Paralympics Preliminary Rounds, USA vs. Japan, Champ-de-Mars Arena We took the five-minute walk from our apartment to the Grand Palais Éphémère at the Champ de Mars to watch a wheelchair rugby double-header, Great Britain vs. Denmark, followed by USA vs Japan. It goes without saying that I knew nothing about the sport going into the arena, and only slightly more after having watched two complete matches. But that didn't really matter because superficially, the game shares the basic structure as rugby, soccer, basketball, hockey polo or lacrosse. A squad from one team possesses an item (ball, puck or human skull) with the intent of of placing it within the confines of a demarcated scoring location, while a squad from another team attempts to prevent them from doing so. If successful, the other team possesses the item and the roles reverse. If unsuccessful, possession of the item is up for grabs. I guess in this regard, American football follows a similar blueprint....

Should she squint, she'll surely see Sugar. Parque das Virtudes, Porto. Cascais Belem, Lisbon

Lisbon's crafty recycling bins. Portugal is a normal country . Though that makes it sometimes tourist-tacky , there is still enough beautiful weirdness and macabre oddities to keep it lively. Red junglefowl ( Gallus gallus , the progenitor species of chickens) roam the Parque da Cidade do Porto. Carmo convent, Lisbon. A baby-eating monster (probably not a werewolf) adorns a baroque 17th century carriage in the National Coach Museum, Lisbon. The Coach Museum's most modern installation: Tom Slick 's Thunderbolt Grease Slapper, converted for the 1967 Apple-less Indian 500.   Two images of the divine from Lisbon's National Tile ( Azulejo ) Museum in the former Madre de Deus convent: the mortal remains of an unnamed martyr (left) and a tile effigy of Bacchus (right).

Porto as an idea. Porto in reality. How I felt nearly all of the time in Porto: besieged by werewolves. More and more places are realizing that they're ill-equipped to deal with the number of people who want to visit them. Venice, Barçelona and Amsterdam are probably the best-known examples of locals turning on the droves of tourists who descend each vacation season--seasons that are getting longer and longer to the point where the idea of an "off-season" starts to seem like a quaint relic of a more innocent age. Our first night in Lisbon, we made an ill-fated choice to walk down Rua Augusta , which turned out to be one of the cookie-cutter retail streets you see anywhere in European cities now, marked by chocolate shops and "luxury" brand outlets. But Rua Augusta also had a lively trade in street merchants, selling everything from clothing to handbags and liquor from blankets spread out on the ground. Between the vendors, the tourists, buskers and break-danci...

Sugar, with her latest Fernando Botero piece, Maternidade (1999), Parque Eduardo VII, Lisbon. Early in the morning, the day before the opening ceremony of the Olympics, we made our way in a taxi to Orly airport. The driver had to make several detours around barricades and fences to get out of our neighborhood, which had become virtually locked down to vehicle traffic in the days leading up to the games. Nonetheless, by mid-day we were seated outdoors at a restaurant in Lisbon, drinking Super Bock beer to try to beat the heat. We'd known for months that we did not want to be in Paris for the Olympics--a decision that proved prescient as huge swaths of the city became cordoned-off Green Zones for the benefit of the executives and favored clients of the Games' corporate sponsors. I suppose for some regular ticket holders, as well. In our neighborhood it started slowly, month by month beginning around January when the lawns at the Champ de Mars failed to reopen. Then the gardens w...

Invader Museum, 3rd Arrondissement Walking through parts of Paris at times feels like being in an architectural museum. Sometimes you catch glimpses of the city framed through a window, usually when you are supposed to be paying attention to something else. Musée de la Vie Romantique, 9th Arr.   Pavillion de l'Arsenal, 4th Arr. Grand Palais Éphémère, 7th Arr. Église Saint-Eustache, 1st Arr. Palais des Papes, Avignon

Get ready for your close up. Just like the US has spelling bees and England has full-contact cheese rolling, France has la dictée , dictation contests where people transcribe oral passages and get graded for spelling, grammar, and proper verb conjugation. All of these are extremely tricky for those of us new to French. For example, in English, the verb "eat" is spelled and pronounced exactly the same in the sentences "I eat," "you eat," and "they eat." In French, the sentences would use mange , manges , and mangeant , respectively--spelled differently, but pronounced exactly the same. And that's just a basic word. So it heartens me a little to know that these skills are also difficult enough for native French speakers that they can be used to sort out les superieurs from les inferieurs . Competitive dictées are very popular, often attracting thousands of participants and broadcast on television . Contests split into divisions for students ...