180 days abroad: Biden in Paris

Today's walk took me along l'avenue Montaigne (an idle thought.. why is one of Paris' most exclusive shopping streets apparently taken over by the Italians? ( Fendi, Dolce Gabbana, Ferragamo - the power of marketing, I suppose.) and then past the l'Elysee, the British consulate, the American consulate, le Petit Palais, and les Invalides. All along the route, tempers were flaring, horns were beeping, and cars were madly inching ahead. I put this down to afternoon craziness, until I reached the esplanade des Invalides, only to run into a massive group of CRS (probably about 20 vans.) I asked one of the rare CRS agents who wasn't talking on a cell phone just what demonstration they were preparing for, and he replied that le manif wasn't exactly a manif: Joe Biden had just left Paris for London. He had come in early today from Munich to discuss American support in Mali over lunch at "a palace." I would assume from the catering trucks that this palace was les Invalides (under the shadow of Napolean!) I hadn't seen anything about his visit in the NYT or WAPO, so when I got home, I googled "Joe Biden a Paris" and sure enough, the French media is full of stories about these meetings, yet, as far as I can tell, there isn't a word about his visits in the mainstream American media. I'm not quite sure what this means, except today is our new Secretary of State's first day on the job, and he seems to be in Washington.

Update: March 22. It turns out that Biden had quite a time in Paris. A half a million USD worth of time to be exact. Wow. I wonder how many people were with him.