Saturday Maxine was in charge of the daytime activity, so
naturally we went to an outdoor food market.
Food markets in France can be pretty extensive. Not as much in the way of prepared foods as
we’ve seen in some in the US (e.g. Portland), but they can be quite large and
worth walking through. This one, since
it’s in a more residential neighborhood, seemed to have lower prices than the
Raspail Market where we went our first week in town. They had a stand dedicated to potatoes. They also had one that I thought was amusing,
a stand dedicated to spherical things to eat.
That’s not how they identify it, but if you consider that all they sold
were olives and nuts…
From Maxine – I
can’t believe it’s taken a month for me to find the outdoor market on President
Wilson adjacent to our neighborhood!!!!
This is a great market with a wide variety of vendors, good prices, some
delicious looking prepared food. We
bought a roasted chicken and potatoes for a future dinner. We also bought a camembert from one of the
cheese stands. You tell them when you
plan to eat the cheese and they find one that is appropriately ripe. The market is open on Wednesday and Saturday
-- I plan to come here at least once a week for shopping.
Saturday night we went to a free wine tasting! Unlimited wine. People to mingle with. A great event. Recall that very early in this trip we went
on that bicycling adventure – the one where we all pedaled while sitting around
a table drinking wine and otherwise enjoying ourselves. As I type this it strikes me that there
really is a difference being here in France.
Biking isn’t something you do strenuously in stretchy clothes. It’s a social thing! (I realize that using that experience to
generalize is a reach, but humor me!)
Well, the guy who organized that biking event also organized this wine tasting. He was contacted by a French market research
company interested in learning what kinds of wines Americans liked, with the
thought that they would export the most popular ones to the US. We were, of course, happy to oblige in this
market research project. We saw some
people we’d already met at other events, and met some new people.
Sunday was really about one thing. We went to the Cat Stevens concert. Maxine and I are both old enough that we
remember his music from our teenage years.
He stopped touring in 1976 – the concert video from his last US tour was
actually found (!) in 2004 and released.
It was filmed (I think they probably DID use film) at my old college and,
when I watched it 2 years ago, I recognized people in the audience! So, we were excited to have a chance to see
Cat Stevens in person.
The concert was great.
He made some odd choices about the songs he performed, doing 5-6 covers
of other peoples’ work. And he didn’t do
enough of his own great songs which, of course, isn’t possible since his work
could fill several concerts. BUT, he did
a wonderful job with the 10 or so “oldies” that he played, including an INCREDIBLE
rendition of “Father and Son”, which is a dialog between a father and son. It seemed all the more poignant since, when
he would have last performed this, his age was the “son” and, now at 66, he’s
the “father”. The acoustics were
outstanding and we could hear every word of every song. And it was different to be in Paris and hear
6,000 French people singing in English. Maxine
was seated next to a French woman and they both enjoyed singing along and
together. At the end the woman hugged
Maxine and thanked her for sharing the joy of the event.
Someone in the audience put it up on Youtube. Note as they zoom in that you can see a sign
saying “Paris”.
Monday started with an errand. A month ago we bought SIM chips for our
phones – they’ve proved absolutely invaluable.
The trick is that they’re sold in one month usage increments. Meaning that we had to renew and pay for
another month, now. I tried last night
and again this morning to do it on line, but Bouygues’ site wouldn’t accept the
payment, so we made the trek over to the store.
In all, counting the walk and the wait in the store, we spent nearly 2
hours on this should-have-been-simple errand.
We just sigh and say “France…”.
The guy at the store even said it was normal for the website to be down.
In the afternoon we had timed entrance tickets for the
Hokusai exhibit at the Grand Palais. They
took over this grand, two story building to run a retrospective on a 19th
century Japanese painter/wood block/magna artist. Despite it being a Monday afternoon, in
November (for an exhibit running for 5 months), it was mobbed! I guess we could have assumed it would be
since we read a write up of the exhibit LAST SUMMER, in the LA TIMES! We enjoyed it, and as a souvenir, I bought a
book with prints from the exhibit.
From there we took a metro over to drop off our rent
check. We’d intended to spend the
afternoon walking our way over, enjoying looking at streets and a neighborhood
we hadn’t seen, but it was raining. The
rain surprised us – nothing in the forecast, and we’d trusted the forecast and
did not have umbrellas. So, it was a
rushed visit, with a stop for coffee (Maxine) and hot chocolate (me). Dinner at home after a stop at the local
Nicholas wine store since the rain had us cocooning
Some other random observations and happenings from the
past few days.
1 Christmas
is coming! The local café has 2 trees up
with red lights on them. And, the
holiday market at the Champs Elysees is open, with perhaps 200 stands selling
everything from stocking caps and candles to hot mulled wine and sausages. It’s not that far, and I imagine as the
season progresses, we’ll be back there more than once.
2 There
are differences in the quality of baked goods.
At home we probably buy one loaf of bread/month, but here we’re buying
about 5 loaves a week. It’s that much
better, very fresh and often still warm, and an accompaniment to meals. When we were in the Bastille neighborhood
last week, we found a bakery even better than the best of our local ones, a
place called Ble Sucre. Maxine tried a
kouign amann there – a pastry from
Brittany of brioche with layers of butter and sugar – that she absolutely loved. It doesn’t seem as common as other pastries
but she’ll definitely be looking for more versions as we continue our bakery “research”. And, an interesting thing I noticed
today. Many, many times we’ve seen
people with baguettes poking out of their backpacks or bags. It reminds me of LA, except in LA it would be
purple yoga mats sticking out.
3 The
other day, walking Emmy in our neighborhood, we passed a building with a French
police man guarding it. We asked him
what he was guarding and he reluctantly told us that it was the Israeli
ambassador’s residence. Note, this isn’t
a secret address or anything.
4 Historically
France has limited stores to 2 official seasonal sales/year. The winter one will be shortly before we pack
up and return to the US (we’ve already got it on our calendars). But, we’ve
also noticed quite a number of spot sales on this trip. Don’t yet know what the story is and why they’ve
relaxed the laws.
5 This
is a city where men wear scarves and that suits me fine. I hurt my neck (osteoarthritis) wrestling in
high school and my neck is most comfortable when it’s warm. So, I own perhaps 8 scarves and brought 4 of
them on the trip. It’s hard to wear them
in LA, both because the weather is warm, but also men just don’t wear scarves
much unless the weather really demands it.
Here in Paris, it’s nice to be among people who wear scarves all the
time!
6 Things
we brought with us that have proved to be even more important to our
comfortable existence than we expected:
cell phones, the netbook computer, and the Bing translator software
(installed on the phones and ipads).
7 Emmy
has proved to be our way to meet and talk to Parisians, as I hoped she would
be. Today at the cell phone store, she
wandered over to the businessman in front of us in line, and we had a
conversation with him while he played with Emmy. She also “met” a mother and daughter in line
behind us. And, this evening, we met a
French/New York couple after Emmy started to play with their dog. Finally, on multiple occasions, Maxine has
run into a woman at our neighborhood park and they’ve talked to the point that
Maxine greets Enzo by name and the woman does the same with Emmy!
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