La Rentrée

When vacation time is over it's officially dubbed, 'la rentrée' or the return. People return to their jobs and kids go back to school. It's amazing that around here things shut down the entire month of August. I actually really liked it. It was much quieter outside. Parking is free. Metros aren't quite so busy. The only down side is that everything shuts down, including our neighborhood boulangerie and haircutter. If we wanted a baguette we had to walk further down the street and Doug actually went about 3-4 weeks longer without getting a haircut. Both were pretty annoying. The other bad thing is that buildings are left mostly empty with people going on vacation, so burglaries are a common thing during the month of August. The only people left in Paris were the tourists.