Neighborhood and First Michelin Meal of the Trip

The "Big" event for the first half of this week was the Salon du Chocolat.  We both went -- it merits its own blog entry.

Aside from that, Monday was a beautiful day so we did a walking tour of a nearby neighborhood, the region around Parc Monceau (from Paris City Walks -- thanks Bridget).  It's almost too cute.  From what we've seen, it's the most made up park in the city.  They've got staged areas with what look like Roman ruins, others with what appear to be old statuary, small streams, bridges, and open fields.  It really is very pretty.  We walked there, as well as the neighborhood, for nearly 5 hours.  Emmy hasn't been getting enough exposure to the streets of Paris, as far as we're concerned.  So, she came with us.

And we ended up eating lunch at a chain called Hippopotamus (a bit like Denny's).  When we went inside I carried Emmy and asked the hostess if she (Emmy) was permitted.  "Of course".

Tuesday, we went to Au Trou Gascon, our first Michelin starred restaurant, for lunch.  Maxine describes it in more detail in the blog entry with pictures of the meal.

Finally, Wednesday was the Salon du Chocolat.  There's a separate blog entry for it as well.  Eating chocolate all day, and watching everything, had me feeling dazed (to some degree it's the same feeling of being at the mall just before Christmas, where you're trying to see and buy everything all at once).  So, rather than a big dinner Wednesday night, we went to Le Trois 8, a newer Paris beer place (Maxine was humoring me!).  Our dinner charcuterie picture is in the other blog entry.  But, as for beer reporting, what I had was: Correzienne brewing's HopHopHop Mosaic, followed by Brasserie Artisanale Pleine Lune's Lun'ion Jacques.  They had 8 beers on tap.  7 were French and one French-Canadian, which Maxine had, Rescousse by Dieu de Ciel.

Salon du Chocolat

Many years ago we were here in Paris and just missed the dates for the Salon du Chocolat.  Luckily though 8 years ago we were here and I was able to go.  This time Maxine decided to come too.

It's a consumer oriented show.  The focus is chocolate.  All the big chocolate producers are there.  The high end guys who charge a few dollars for a piece.  The MOF's (today was the opening of the show so there were lots of interviews going on and one of the local TV stations was broadcasting live from the event!).

MOF's.  The French government has a program to acknowledge leaders in certain fields.  One of those fields is chocolate.  Each year they acknowledge one chocolate maker as "the" best in the country.  Once you're a MOF, you're one for life.  You get to wear a chef's smock with the colors of the French flag on the collar.  So, with today being the opening day of the Salon, there were a ton of MOF winners there, serving their chocolates and giving interviews.  And various chocolate judgings going on.  And classes.

I forgot to mention -- they were giving away the chocolate.  Pretty much anything was available (aside from the stuff that was there purely for photographic/visual purposes).  You just walk up to people and they give you chocolate.  Really.  And often you can pick what you want because they've got a number of chocolates there!

It bears repeating -- you can eat as much chocolate as you want for the entire day.  The entrance fee was $18...

Now the pictures:

Not just all French chocolate.  This is sort of a trade show too, so other chocolate producing countries were represented too.

Five different chocolate fountains at this booth.

Chocolates sculpted to look like produce.

And flowers.

These are the true "art" pieces of chocolate.  They're each behind plexiglass cases.

This is part of the judging of chocolate cakes.  The woman in the foreground has a tray of samples of what's being judged for the audience.  I managed to taste 2 different competition candidates.

"Live TV from the Salon du Chocolat"

Chocolate cooking demo that Maxine went to.

Interview with one of the rock star chocolatiers.

Some MOFs

Those are stacks of chocolate.  They keep breaking them into pieces and handing them to me (and everyone else).  Will this never end!?!??!

Dresses with a chocolate theme.  Some seemed to be made of chocolate

20th Anniversary celebrations too!

Larger than life size chocolate French royalty.

And French chocolate monsters!

Pictures -- Around Town Oct 27-29

Monday was a beautiful day.  We walked around the Parc Monceau area and stopped at a cafe.

On Tuesday we tried our first one-star Michelin restaurant, Au Trou Gascon, in the 12th arrondissement (not a likely neighborhood for this type of restaurant).  The food was delicious, the service only so-so which was a disappointment.  But let's focus on the food. 

First, an amuse of chestnut soup with a comte cheese mousse at the bottom.  Yum!

Tom had warm mushroom pate made with cepes (porcini mushrooms which are in season right now) and garnished with ham.

I (Maxine) had the salad with frisee, duck confit and egg.  I could eat this every day.

Tom had partridge with a hazelnut crust (tastes like chicken!).  The green vegetable that looks like brussel sprouts is actually cabbage stuffed with more partridge which surprised Tom when he cut into it.

Maxine had rack of lamb with white beans.  Not so photogenic but it was delicious, especially the beans.

Forgot to take photos of the desserts -- pear tart with chocolate ice cream for Tom and berry crumble with sheep's milk ice cream for me.  And several little sweets after the meal.

We decided to walk off lunch at the Promenade Plantee which is a 3 miles long elevated walkway built on top of an old railroad right of way.  You might ask where are the plants -- sorry, no photos of those.  But we thought this 2 part building with the walkway in the middle was amusing.

That night, Maxine went to hear an author presentation at the American Library.  This was her view walking there.

The presentation was by Mimi Thorisson who writes the blog Manger about living in the Medoc region of France.  She writes and cooks and her husband takes beautiful photos.  mimithorisson.com

Charcuterie platter that we ate with the beer at Aux Trois 8 on Wednesday.

Paris view from the other day.

We saw this walking back to the Metro on Wednesday night.  And this is a "minor" church not on the tourist path!

Some Random Observations

The French still smoke cigarettes!  It surprises me that they do since they've adopted any number of other commonalities with our American experiences (kids with computer games, jogging, fast food are ones that come to mind as I type this).  But, they still smoke.  Which surprises me given that the French government seems so paternalistic (rules, rules, rules) and the fact that since there's "socialized medicine" the government is paying for future illnesses  arising from a cigarette smoking population.

Weather patterns.  We're here through mid-January, so we know we've signed up for colder weather than we get in LA.  We'd been envisioning it as somewhat like what we experience for during our annual Christmas time trip to NJ.  But, on those trips we're passive participants.  Siblings have to deal with snow, heat, etc.  We're along for the ride and delighted to be spending time with family, but we also know that ultimately it's their world and we'll soon be back on a plane to LA.  Not this year...  Recall my comments about dragging food through the streets of the city in a small cart?  We can only just imagine (and cringe) at what that's going to be like in 2 months.  It's also one of the reasons we're here -- to see if it's something we might do again.  So, we've got jackets and scarves and wool hats and heavy gloves.  I still assume we'll need all of them.  But, we do have a spot of hope...  At dinner the other night when we talked to the Dutch couple, the husband explained that the dominant weather pattern in Western Europe is a clockwise sweep of air that, for us, begins in the Mediterranean before making its way up the coast.  So, at least according to him, it will be temperate.  He advises that inland (e.g. Germany, Poland, etc.) they're exposed to the southbound side of the wind flows, meaning the air is cooled over the Arctic.  I’ll keep my fingers crossed.

I don't speak French well at all...  But, I'm halfway confident when I try, and someone (at Jim's last night) asked for advice.  I had three suggestions to help with the known difficulties (aka differences from English).  First, don't make the slightest effort to remember the gender of nouns.  Yes, here the nouns are masculine or feminine.  Windows are feminine, I think.  And, doors masculine.  OK, I don't actually have any idea whether windows are feminine or doors masculine. I do know that concept exists, but I'm not going to try to incorporate it into my language skills.  I'm sure that some of the time it will get me into trouble, or at least, keep me from being understood, but I'll pay that price! 

My second suggestion is to keep everything in the present tense.  E.g.  "I am here", versus "I will be here" or "I was here".  French has something like 16 tenses, each with different spellings for verbs.  I'd rather invest my language learning time on vocabulary.  Ha! (to my high school French teacher).

The third way I've streamlined my French language efforts is to largely ignore the casual/formal usage of the word "you".  Yes, there are both!!!  The informal one, "tu" is supposed to be reserved for very close friends and family.  "Vous" is for everyone else from casual friends, to co-workers, to revered older relatives.  Supposedly (according to my reading on this as well as high school French classes), there would be an actual agreement among people to move from using "vous" to using "tu" with each other.  Sort of a sign that "I really like you".  It's just easier to use "vous" for everyone.  You won't really get in trouble and it saves more of my limited bandwidth for French language learning.

Thanks for listening to my "observations" here...

Great Weekend Oct 25-26

Starting to get into the groove of living here. 

Saturday began with the husband of the woman who first "lectured" us, and then welcomed us (when she realized that we were good neighbors).  He was coming in, greeted us briefly, and crouched down to pet Emmy spending more time with her than us!  Probably in his 70's.  He wasn't surprised to see Emmy -- probably had been briefed by his wife. 

Saturday we went to a new neighborhood, in the 14^th arrondissement.  I wanted to buy some comfortable shoes.  There's a French manufacturer, Mephisto, that makes ones that work pretty well for me (Maxine – have to interject – he’s understating how much he likes Mephisto shoes!).  I’d been to their LA store, which is tiny, smaller than our living room, and was entranced by the idea that they had a store here that was over 3000 square feet.  So, Maxine humored me and we trekked over there.  Two different metro lines and around 40 minutes later, we made it.

Great choices for me, and prices around 20% less than in LA.  The sales clerk was the most helpful we've ever had in Paris.  Untypically, she made suggestions.  Pulled out additional choices.  Expressed preferences and told us when she thought shoes didn't fit well.  And then finally, brought the pair Maxine had been interested in up to the counter when I went to pay for my shoes, on the thought that Maxine wanted a pair too. 

Once we discovered that we were walking in the direction back to our apartment (on General LeClerc, whoever he was), we decided to explore the area.  Ended up on yet another market street.  They're always fun, as I mentioned in another post.  A combination of fresh food stands (mostly ingredients, but some prepared foods like roasted chickens too) and store fronts (cheeses, bakeries, chocolates!), there are several that are on the radar in tour guides.  We don't think this one was.  Much more local.  Maxine set a goal that we find lunch for less than 15E each (trust me, that's not easy to do!) and so we ended up at a couscous place.  From the looks of things, there were 3 people working there to serve 40 diners.  Someone in the kitchen who we never saw.  A woman who took orders and delivered food.  And a guy who stood at the door and smoked cigarettes, the smoke from which wafted back into the restaurant...  Despite this, it was a good meal.  And very filling.  In the Paris scheme of things quite a value too.  And we left delighted that we'd gotten so far off the normal sightseeing route.

Sunday we went shopping yet one more time...  The thing I need to communicate here is this.  When we go to the grocery store or Costco at home, we fill up the trunk of my car.  In addition, like everyone else, we have a certain quantity of "staples" at home to start with.  Here, we have none of that.  And, we have to get everything home w/out a car.  The apartment came with one of those NYC-type carts, and we each have a bag/backpack.  But, all in, it's no more than 1/6th the volume we get into our car trunk.  And, (it bears repeating), we have to get it home on our backs and with the cart, then carry it up 65 steps to the apartment...

We've been fairly unhappy with the local Monoprix/Franprix selections.  The stores are small.  They're mazes. And to be honest, a lot of the products we don't even understand (we're reminded of a friend who spent time in Europe years ago and mostly ate junk food for the first couple months because it was the only packaging she could understand).  Anyway, on our walk Saturday we'd discovered Carrefour (another chain) and it turns out they have a good-size store nearby.  So, we stocked up!  I even bought a 1/2 bottle of Absinthe.  No, I'm not drinking it now....

We also stopped at the Picard store.  They're a food store, but a French oddity.  Imagine a store which is filled with freezers of frozen food– in French, surgeles.  Nothing on shelves.  Nothing at room temperature.  Yet, they've got everything!  Entrees.  Main courses.  Desserts.  Chopped vegetables.  Appetizers if you're having a party.  Not just ice cream but everything else to make up a meal.  So, we did some stocking up there too.

Sunday night, we did what we'll probably do most Sunday nights while we're here.  There are two different people who run group dinners, mostly for English speakers, at their homes, "Patricia" and "Jim Haynes".  This night we went to Jim's.  This is probably the 4th time over the years we've been to his, ever since we'd seen a write up about him in the United Airlines flight magazine two decades ago.  He's an expat American who runs a “salon” at his apartment every Sunday.  What makes it fun is that everyone who comes is there to meet/talk to people.  You never know who you'll end up talking to.  A French Architecture student.  An art dealer in town for the contemporary art faire.  Visitors from NYC.  It's completely random and usually very interesting.  Patricia's and Jim's are probably NOT the sort of thing you'd do if you were in Paris for a short visit, but with any amount of time, they can be a very interesting option.

Oct 20 - A Weak Week for Pictures

Maxine shopping at the local market.  The grocer didn't have enough change so he gave Maxine an orange instead.

Emmy's view from the cafe we'd stopped at on the Canal St. Martin.  When you look at it this way, it probably isn't as much fun for her to go as it is for us to bring her...

The name of this restaurant, "The Bad Boys".  Just something amusing I saw while out walking.

I actually like AllSaints Spitalfields.  But, like I said in the blog text, it's a bit weird to see chain stores making it to Paris.  Especially ones I've seen in London and Las Vegas.  Makes the world just a little bit too small.  And makes Paris feel a bit less unique.

Same thing applies here!  A Los Angeles retailer with branches here.  

Getting home always involves finding the nearby metro or bus stop that will take you in the right direction.  Sometimes it involves a pleasant surprise.  This metro entrance had been redone in glass.  We have no idea why.  But it was very pretty.  It's the sort of odd, out of context, attractiveness to Paris.

Separate Interests. Oct 23&24.

Thursday we decided to each do individual things. 

Maxine spent the morning walking, and exploring, the area of our apartment -- the 16th arrondissement.  We're at the north end of it, and it extends to the Seine River across from the Eiffel Tower.  So, walking her way down for a view, she had the chance to check out some more of the area around this place.  She ended up at Trocadero with a wonderful view of the Eiffel Tower.

Our neighborhood is very residential which has its pro's and con's.  On the con side, it isn't as loaded with things that we as tourists want to do.  Not as much cute shopping or cute restaurants as you'd find in the 6th or the 4th arrondissements.  But, the pro -- quiet and residential with very many dog owners and French locals.  We've taken to walking Emmy to avenue Foch which has a very long grassy area.  We're clearly not the first to think about taking our dogs there; we meet other owners almost every visit.  The one bridge to tourism is something that we discovered the other day.  From one spot on avenue Foch, you can look ahead of you and see the top of the Eiffel tower.  Turn 90 degrees to the left and you have a full view of the Arc du Triomphe.

Tom did his wandering in the late afternoon.  First, to the Marais (4th arrondissement) which has really grown up.  Tons of small shops.  But unfortunately also some chain stores.  Not to be a snob here, but American Apparel.  Really!  Also amused to find a branch of another chain, Spitalfields.  We first saw them in London 2 years ago, then again in Las Vegas.  And now here.  Anyway, cute streets and small shops.  Also stopped for a hot chocolate and was truly amused to see someone I knew walk by -- one of the people who ran that bicycling adventure from the past weekend.  In some ways, this is a small city.

Dinner was falafel at L'As Du Falafel.  It’s sort of famous if you care about falafel.  I'd never had it before, so I'd just call it a cheap stand up vegetarian sandwich.  No complaints at all -- I'd go back if only to eat some vegetables.

Ended the day at Notre Dame where I sat thru the last 1/2 hour of evening mass.  The stonework in the darkened building had a majesty that made it compelling.

Friday was also a chance for small activities and personal interests.  Maxine stayed home, relaxed and read with Emmy (our apartment is very comfortable and suited to this) while I took a random bus ride.  With our unlimited use transit passes this is sort of a fun thing to do.  I took a nearby bus, thinking it would end at Tour Montparnasse (the tallest tower in the city and something of an eyesore in a city where most buildings are limited to 7 floors).  But, I misread the bus map, overshot Montparnasse and ended up at the north side of Luxembourg Gardens.  Now, I wasn't looking for alcohol at lunch, but...  There's a place I'd been to last time called the Academy of Beer that was a 5 minute walk from where the bus route ended.  So, I gave in to the temptation.  Had their version of a Crocque Monsieur sandwich (grilled cheese!) and 2 different beers.  First, since it was on tap, Monk's Stout from Brasserie Dupont.  A bit thin for my tastes, which have admittedly been beaten into submission by strong American beers.  Followed it up with a bottle of Trappistes Rochefort 8, which BeerAdvocate.com called "world class". 

We took Emmy back to the park and ran into the husband of the couple with the Jack Russell terriers.  He was with another dog owner and, as we walked up, I heard him say something about "Los Angeles", so we felt good about being remembered.  He later told us that he was going to Poland for vacation/work so not to expect him or the dogs for the next week.

We took Emmy off her leash and she joined the dog games, one of 5 playing in the park.  And of course we felt good that Emmy was helping us meet French people as the other dog owners tolerated our bad French and talked to us.  One even tried to convince Emmy that she had to drop the ball, which we'd given up as a lost cause a long time ago.

We took the metro to "our" old neighborhood, the 6th, for a wine tasting at a shop called the La Derniere Goutte (last taste).  Ended up in conversation with an English guy shopping for good Armagnac.  He told us that he'd had 6 bottles of old brandy stolen from him and that the insurance company had given him $6000.00 to replace them so he was looking for good spirits.  While he didn't offer to share with us, he did make the offer that he'd take us to his Single Malt, Single Barrel, Scotch drinking club if we were heading to London on this trip.  Unfortunately we are not...

Ended up "entering the scrum" for dinner.  The area most dense with restaurants in this city is the "Latin Quarter", where it seems that every storefront is a restaurant.  Very touristic.  Almost all of them have someone out front hawking their cheap menus.  We were in the mood for a cheap dinner and Maxine had her heart set on French Onion Soup, so this was perfect.  And, the meal was both good and a good value.  They seem to have improved things with the restaurants here, and we'll likely be back.

Tuesday Oct 21, Wed Oct 22.

Not much Tuesday!  Catch up at home.

We did meet our landlord though, which was a good experience.  We'd emailed the rental manager to let her know that the coffee maker leaked, and to take her up on her offer to loan us a computer printer for the duration of our stay.  She replied that our landlord, Richard, would stop by with both items.  He did.  He's close to our age.  And like most French men (and unlike this American), he had a very full head of hair!  Dropped off the printer and coffee maker, petted Emmy, and was on his way.  We were a bit surprised that he didn't seem to make any effort to check on how we were treating his place.  Trusting fellow.  Cheerful too.

From Maxine -- dinner Tuesday night was something of a specialty restaurant.  A place called Pomze, a French version of a farm-to-table restaurant with a gimmick.  The name is a play on the French word for apple and most dishes had some kind of apple in the recipe.  The restaurant also specializes in hard ciders (usually apple but also pear) which they match with the food.  We had the cider pairing with different ciders for each menu item and it was amazing how different the ciders tasted and how well they complemented the food.  The food was beautiful to look at (should have taken pictures) and delicious.  I (Maxine) went with a seafood starter with razor clams and crab.  It was arranged on the plate to look like a tree with the rectangular shell of the razor clam as the trunk.  Tom had melted Brie with an apple sauce that tasted as rich as it sounds.  The main courses were a little more conventional – shrimp in a curry sauce for me and steak with chanterelles for Tom.  For dessert, I tried Normandy cheeses while Tom had an apple filled chocolate cake with chestnut ice cream (doesn’t that sound like fall?).  The food was good and the ciders were an interesting addition.  Probably only a do once but we did enjoy it.  Pomze.com

Wednesday we needed to do some shopping so we headed over to the 10 minutes away, mid-sized market (the small one is 2x the size of a 7-11, this one is the size of a very small grocery store).  The small outdoor markets are one of the things we truly love about Paris.  The cynic in me, having read that most street markets are not run by farmers, looks at them as simply grocery distribution the old fashioned way.  BUT, the care they put into the displays.  The choices that look so tempting.  And the cheese, always the cheese...  So, our shopping was first to the street market on Rue Poncelet, then Monoprix (the chain store), then back to the street market.

At the street market, the guy selling Maxine figs didn't have 0.01E change so he tossed in an orange...  At the cheese store, the cheesemonger (I've seen "that" word in print!) and I made a joke about how I got the sack of cheeses and Maxine had to pay.

As an aside...  One of the things we've read that a longer term visitor should strive to do is get known by the local merchants and thus treated as someone who will come back and buy again.  I've accidentally stumbled into a way to cement that relationship.  They most certainly identify us as Americans as soon as we go in.  But, my conversation with the cheesemonger was about the French word for "to pay".  Enlisting his help with my French education will, I hope, pay off.

Busy afternoon!  After lunch at home we decided to explore the Canal St. Martin area.  It's one of those up and coming, cheaper rent, artsy areas.  Several interesting shops, but not an area we'll bother to return to.  The real trick for the afternoon was that Emmy came with us.  On her leash she walked through the metro station (easily a 1/4 mile walk), then hopped into her travel bag for the train ride itself.  Not a problem.  In fact, no one gave us the slightest "look" over the fact that we were walking our dog through this underground station.  And during our time at the Canal, we stopped for a hot chocolate and tea.  At the door to the restaurant I asked if Emmy was permitted inside and the answer was "of course".  I've got a picture of what that was like from her perspective.

Dinner at home.  Pasta and some wine.  And chanterelle mushrooms fried with garlic and olive oil, a dish Maxine created for this meal!

New Memories and Reliving Old Ones, Oct 20

We continue to settle in.  I'm sure some might ask, and we do retrospectively, what takes so long to settle in?!  Truth is, it's easy enough to visit Paris for a week.  Pick up a metro map at your hotel, set your sights towards the Louvre or Notre Dame or a food market street you've read about, and you're done.  We're actually doing all of that too, but more as a byproduct of trying to set up life here.  We've got to buy toilet paper, to figure out which exit from the Metro is closest to the apartment (it matters if you know you're coming up those steps 100 times or more!), whether it makes sense to shop at the nearby market (less of a walk) or the further away store (more choice).  All the sort of things that, in all of our real lives at home, we've already settled on.

So today was a combination of new things and old.  It started with new.  Recall that we're living on the top floor (called the 4th floor in the American system and the 3rd in the French because they think of the ground floor as 0).  The day we moved in we were "greeted" by the woman who lives on the French 1st floor.  She sort-of lectured us, telling us we'd be good neighbors if we were quiet.  We've tried to be.  So, this morning as we went down the spiral staircase past her door (there's a landing at each floor, maybe 5'x5'), she opened the door.  She told us we were being good neighbors and crouched down to spend some time petting Emmy and praising her as a good dog, who fortunately was a bit timid (rather than her typical hyper jump up to kiss you on the face mode).  Our guess is that a) we had shown ourselves to be the good and quiet neighbors that she was hoping we'd be, and that b) she was sort-of waiting for an opportunity to come out and tell us.

She'll have plenty more opportunities to stop us on the staircase.  Emmy requires 3 trips outside a day, and each one takes us 65 stairs down, and then 65 stairs up.  Our legs will be tougher from it!

We've also now checked out the relative benefits of the 2 nearest grocery stores.  Hey, it's a project!

For dinner, we did relive old memories.  We went to a restaurant that we really enjoyed 8 years ago, enough that we went there twice in our 2 months.  The sort of tiny place where the owner came over to tell you what he was cooking that night and his wife served you -- no one else working there.  Unfortunately, social media has its drawbacks.  He's gotten a lot of good reviews, spiffed the place up and raised the prices enormously.  Even bought real wine glasses.  We're sad to discover that even Paris changes.

But, to drown our sorrows, we went elsewhere for a post-dinner drink.  With social media being the downside to life, technology does have its benefits.  We vaguely thought we were in the neighborhood of Willi's Wine Bar, a place we've been to a number of times before.  Smart phones = the ability to verify that and to get directions via Google Maps.

Willi's is a special place for me (Tom).  A million years ago, just out of college, and having never been further than 1000 miles from New Jersey, I happened on a tour book which had a picture from Willi's in it, the restaurant’s first art poster.  Every year they commission a new one, by a different artist in a different style.  Here's the one that hooked me on Paris all those years ago: 

http://williswinebar.com/photos/products/affiche-willis43-picture-140.jpg.

I've got the reissue of the poster hanging in our home.  And on a different visit, my friend Bill and I stopped by there so he could buy the one with a topless Marianne (woman/symbol of France) on it.  Our waitress told us that Bill's favorite was sold out -- the favorite of the men...

Over the years we've been there a number of times, brought friends, been there alone (Maxine once) and recommended the place to others.  It's sort of a French comfort food experience for English speakers.  Good and well executed food.  Excellently curated wine list.  And English speaking wait-staff.  Tonight we only each only had a glass of wine, but we're certain to be back once or more during our stay in Paris.

Oct 18-19 Pictures

Emmy in the park with the Jack Russell terriers in the park.  Emmy has been responsible for just about all of our non-commercial interactions with French people so far!

Louvre Museum during our Saturday walk.

Notre Dame at night during my walk home from the Philosophy dinner.

Pictures from our "bike ride" Saturday afternoon.

Settling In -- Over Jet Lag (Sat Oct 18- Sun Oct 19)

The weekend -- our first of 12 weekends here.  A combination of settling in, and starting to do the sort of things we had in mind while we were here.

Saturday we'd made plans for our first meetup.  Eight years ago, Meetup was just starting out as a website where people could create events, mostly casual and improvisational.  We were lucky back then to connect with Andy Coyne, an American here with his family on a long stay.  He was effectively "Mr. Meetup", the ultimate networker and purely for the sake of connecting people.  We went to a bunch of his events, and then shortly after we left, he and his family moved on.  His efforts have spawned dozens of groups in this city now.  Everything from conversational groups, to group dinners, to pub crawls, to almost anything else you can imagine.

We signed up for one that involved pedaling around Paris on a 16 person party bike, while drinking wine.  Sounded like just the sort of thing to do on a day with glorious weather.  The group was meeting in an area of the city we hadn't been to before, so we planned to arrive a couple hours early, look around, and have a nice lunch.  We found a bargain restaurant, Au Roi du Cafe, with huge portions and good prices.  Afterwards, the bike ride...

I should mention that earlier in the day, Emmy demonstrated what I've believed would be one of her most important roles on this trip.  We’d taken her to the (very) nearby park and shortly after we arrived, another couple showed up with their 2 Jack Russell terriers.  The man took his dogs off their leash, which we took as a cue to do the same, and the dogs frolicked for 20 minutes.  We talked a little with the couple in French, and as we were saying our goodbyes, the wife told Maxine that there were a number of dog owners who meet every evening so the dogs could have some fun together.  So, that, along with Friday night when Emmy's friendliness led to a conversation with a student at the takeout place, proves my point.  Every conversation with a Parisian, in a non commercial setting, has been a result of our dog.  She's doing her part to help us feel welcome here!

Sunday was something of a day for old memories.  After a late start, we took the train over to the Blvd. Raspail farmer's market.  Sunday it's a "bio" market, but from my perspective, eh...  It was one of the nearest markets to the apartment we rented on our last trip to Paris, and I wanted to go back.  It led us on a walk towards our old apartment.  Maxine stopped at Pierre Herme for macarons (she thought they were the best last time), which we ate in the square at St. Sulpice church.  St. Sulpice is memorable for 2 reasons.  First, it's around the corner from the apartment we rented last trip and thus very familiar.  Second, there's a big scene from the start of Da Vinci Code set there.

We wandered our way towards the Seine, reveling in the glorious weather (possibly a little too warm!) and ended up in front of the Louvre Museum.  From there a short walk through the Tuileries Gardens and the metro home.

At the Metro station we actually completed the last of our settling in errands.  Unlimited use passes for the bus/train system are a real bargain.  A month of use costs about the same as 2 tanks of gas for the car at home.  And it gives you the flexibility to just hop a bus or train to get anywhere.  So, Maxine had theorized that the attendant at this stop, so near the Louvre, probably got lots of English speakers and would be sympathetic to our language struggles as we bought the cards.  He was!  He let us stumble along in French for a few minutes, but when we ran out of vocabulary, he switched to English.  We thanked him, and he in turn complimented our French. 

Tonight Maxine and I went separate ways.  Me to my second meetup, a Philosophy discussion and dinner.  Her, to a quieter evening with Emmy and dinner in a cafe.  Both worked well.  I participated in a discussion on the topic, "Does technology deepen our experience of life" and she got to meet more French people via Emmy.  That couple's advice from yesterday held -- there were several people exercising their dogs at the avenue Foch park and Emmy got to join in.

Bedtime at midnight as we're trying to keep a schedule more suited to this city!

First 48 -- Some Pictures

Emmy immediately after we picked her up at baggage claim.  The door to her crate is still zip tied shut (TSA).  We're not sure if the look on her face is one of jet lag, or, "You guys have got to be kidding me, what's been going on for the last 14 hours!?"  Either way, she seemed to have jet lag too...

First night in Paris.  The Arc is less than a 5 minute walk from the apartment.  We see it every time we go out for bread or go to catch the Metro!

First 48 Hours! REVISED & REPUBLISHED.

First 48 Hours

 

They're always the toughest.  A lot of running around, then waiting.  This time with the added tension of transporting Emmy -- and doing everything we can to make sure that goes safely.

 

This entry is going to be more in the form of impressions and vignettes than any particular narrative...

 

WEDNESDAY

Got to LAX in plenty of time, 3+ hours early in fact.  And, I'm the sort of person who in the early days of work travel used to pride myself on walking up to the gate just as they were opening up boarding.  We introduced ourselves to Air France who was quite cooperative in letting us check in our 160 pounds of luggage (yeah, it was that much!)  We're spanning seasons, dressing up for nice dinners and not, and having 2 holidays here.  We even brought 4 pounds of cranberry jelly and canned pumpkin.

 

We'd taped pictures of Emmy with each of us to the outside of her crate; the suggestion came from some website we'd seen.  The thought is that if she were to escape her crate and be caught running down the runway, they'd at least have a picture to go with the miscreant.  Anyway, we got points from the AF staff for having done it -- anything to make sure Emmy gets careful treatment.

 

Lots of little airport issues:  Air France computers went down during check-in -- does the computer know about Emmy?  Turns out the oversize item check in guy wasn't trained on how to check dogs in, and, for reasons that still remain a mystery, had no ability to call TSA.

 

(Wednesday) THURSDAY

We were flying on an Airbus A380.  I think it's the largest commercial jetliner.  Two full floors.  Most of the time extremely smooth, more than most, but there were 3-4 hours of pretty bumpy air.  Enough to keep me from sleeping, and probably enough to stress Emmy out.  I kept visualizing her crate, two stories down below in the hold, being tossed around.  I'm sure I was adding to my own stress thinking like that.  But, when we got her she had peed in her crate and we felt guilty.

 

Here's a picture of her at Charles de Gaulle airport, still in her crate, with a "WHAT DID YOU DO TO ME?!?!?!?" look on her face.

 

Car service worked great -- remember the tonnage of our luggage...  The guy helped us carry everything up to the 4th floor, no elevator, apartment.  The place was exactly like the pictures we'd seen, we were shown how to use the appliances, then left on our own.

 

Took a 5 minute walk to the Franprix store (something about 3x the size of a 7-11 with real food and wine choices), stopped to pick up sandwiches, then home for the night.  Just before bed one last walk, to give Emmy a chance...  We are 5 minutes from the Arc du Triomphe, so here's a picture of Emmy's first visit there.

 

FRIDAY

Thanks to Google Street View (!) I already knew where the two local bakeries were.  Probably not well enough to walk there unaided, but more than familiar enough to recognize things along the way.  OK, I'll admit it...  In LA, I'd probably spend 8 hours "walking" the neighborhood via Street View...

 

We had a couple projects planned for today.  First stop was Darty (there's also a FNAC store across from it) to check out Soda Stream devices.  Maxine likes bubbly water and it's a lot cheaper and more convenient to make your own than to buy and carry bottles back.  Next stop was Monoprix (big sister to yesterday's Franprix) for real grocery shopping, which is quite different when you have to carry/cart everything home and up 65 stairs to your apartment. 

 

The afternoon project was the big one -- trying to have a semi-technical conversation and buy SIM chips for our phones and ipads (If you've read The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy you probably get how useful an ipad can be on unfamiliar streets while traveling).  I'd read that (and I'm sure that I've got this wrong, but in ways that I don't even understand) the best rates would be at Bouygues Telecom, so we went there.  Here's where the French willingness to be patient with the customer at hand came into play.  Our representative, Nancie, spent over an hour with us to sell us 90E worth of SIM cards while 6-8 other customers patiently waited for the single other clerk in the store.  She spoke no English and we speak crappy french, but things went fine (so far as we can tell) and we've got a month of phone usage with unlimited domestic calls and texts, plus 2gb of data.  And the phone "tethers" to our ipads, despite Nancie telling us that was impossible in France (I'd had other info here -- I'd checked with my friend's 17 year old son last month who'd confirmed that it would work...)

 

By then we'd pretty much had enough navigating the novelties of Paris and decided not to buy our Navigo cards today (like my word alliteration?)  The cards are unlimited use passes for the busses and Metro and incredibly valuable on trips like these.  But, they're pretty easy to get and we don't actually need them till Monday AM.

 

I was done by then, and figured we'd want to be asleep before we finish dinner and prevailed on Maxine to give up on the idea of eating out.  So, we found a nearby takeout place, brought stuff home, and ended the adventure

Loose Ends

We're leaving in under a week and feel like we've got a million loose ends to tie.  Today we spent a couple hours at LAX airport.  First stop was the USDA office to get them to stamp Emmy's paperwork.  Since Maxine has been handling this, I'm not sure whether the USDA was approving Emmy leaving, or pre-approving Emmy coming back.  Or, staging things so that the French immigration people will let her in...

We also started packing last night.  Not packing in the sense of putting everything in the suitcase so you can head to the airport, but instead pulling out the things we've been contemplating bringing, to see if it will all fit.  It's difficult to envision exactly what we'll need since the trip spans Fall and Winter.  Especially since it also covers Thanksgiving and Christmas.  And, it's winter of the sort that we no longer have much experience with.  We're each allowed two 30" duffel bags and a backpack.  100 pounds in total!  Looks like stuff will fit.  That's the preliminary verdict so far.

Emmy will make the trip in her crate, in the hold of the plane.  Supposedly commercial airliners have a section of the hold that they can heat and illuminate where they keep the dogs (and cats, although why take a cat?...).  When we did a trip like this 8 years ago, our last dog Cassie, was small enough that we could bring her with us into the passenger compartment.  But, at 17 pounds, Emmy is a bit too big.  So, right now we're working out what to do about feeding her and giving her water.  Obviously, there's no way for her to relieve herself for the roughly 14 hours she'll be in the crate, so that adds to the quandry.  We're thinking of a clip on dog bowl with some treats (hoping that she doesn't eat them in the first 15 minutes and then stay hungry for hours).  As for water, the only real solution is what I call a "gerbil bottle". It's the hanging water bottle that we all had in gerbil or hamster cages growing up.  They've updated them and added a couple ball bearings to the spout, with the intention being that this keeps water from leaking out of the bottle.  It doesn't really work.  Any shaking (e.g. turbulence, a baggage person moving the crate) causes the ball bearings to move up and down and the water to come out.  So, we're experimenting with ice hoping to reduce how much water actually can come out.  Too much leakage and Emmy is laying on wet towels for 14 hours...

Again, I keep thinking of the million other things to do.  As an example, here are few.  

1. The first few weeks are likely to be our best weather.  But, they (especially the first few days) would tend to be the ones where we're the most lethargic (jet lag, change, etc.).  I'm trying to create a list of things to do the first week to motivate us to act.  E.g. Buy transit passes, buy SIM chips for phones and ipads, outdoor sightseeing priorities, etc.

2. Remaining Emmy prep.  We'd read a suggestion another traveller had made about taping a picture of you and your dog to the outside of her crate.  Helpful in the event the dog escapes.  Or there's some problem matching you to your dog.  Other things: zip tying the crate shut, that whole water bottle problem, etc.

3. We're planning on spending some time during this trip thinking about our future.  We re-watched the movie Bucket List last weekend.  Lots of food for thought.  So, I want to dig out various folders and exercises I've done over the years that will prompt thoughts on this topic.  I don't actually know where those folders are..

4. Christmas presents and things to make French Thanksgiving (yes, we are having a turkey dinner with our friends who live in Toulouse) more American.

Enough!  Time for me to get back to work!

Emmy -- Traveling Dog

When we brought Emmy home from nearly two years ago, we had in mind a traveling dog.  In fact, I can remember the ride home from her foster care house in Fullerton, with Emmy in Maxine's lap and me saying that I wanted the sort of dog we could toss in the car and head out of town.

Especially after Ally, who'd rather be left home in the garage for the weekend than get in a car.  And Cassie who would travel only because she was afraid of all of life except for us.

Not knowing any other options, Emmy has become our traveling dog.

Exploring the Pacific Ocean in San Diego.

On a boat in Long Beach.

With her "dog cousin" Stella in Leucadia

In Paso Robles at the Firestone Walker brewery. 

Emmy has always been an explorer.  Sometimes more than I'd prefer.  Early on, it drove me crazy.  Taking care of a 9 week old dog in my home office, she didn't want to sit still and was a large distraction to my plans for the day.  I had my back to her, heard a noise, and when I turned, found this. 

We've raised Emmy to be the dog who we could take along, and in a few weeks, that's going to be at a new level, to Paris, France...