Tuesday November 18 – Thursday November 21

We’re always behind on these!  The pictures from this time period went up days ago!  Well, here goes…

Tuesday, Maxine took the day off from Paris.  Stayed home.  Read.  Organized lists of restaurants.  I went on a neighborhoods walk.  Paris is always a pretty city, and there are countless interesting streets to explore.  On some future occasions (I did this once the first week we arrived), I plan on taking busses to wherever they go, but for now we’ve worked from the idea that having one specific thing we want to see (or place to eat) is an organizing principle for checking out an area. 

I’ve had in mind that I wanted a bottle of Calvados (apple brandy).  I started the trip with some absinthe, but that had run out.  So, as my organizing principle, I headed off to a store called the Maison du Whiskey.  It had been on my list 8 years ago, but I never got there.  The closest metro was the one that let me off outside the Grand Magasins, so I got to check out the upside down (4 stories worth) Christmas Tree at Galeries Lafayette.  There were pictures of it in the blog earlier in our trip.  Also got to check the Paris branch of Uniqlo, which is a Japanese chain that I’d read about and had visited the Santa Monica branch of, which is the size of a 7-11 and difficult to figure out the theme.  Here it was obvious – discount fashion staples. 

Along the way I passed a knife store and checked out the Laguiole knives.  That’s sort of troubling in a sense.  That sense being that they look great, but I’ve already got one and have used it perhaps 3-4 times in the 2 years I’ve owned it (for slicing open case packs of soda and waters from Costco…).  So, I’ve got no purpose in looking at their knives.

Hopped the metro back towards Champs Elysees and in the general direction of our apartment.  Took a walk down Avenue Montaigne, yet another spot I didn’t get to 8 years ago.  I had a note that it was supposed to be “interesting shopping”.  It was high end, Prada-type shopping.  But, interesting windows.  Hopped the bus home in time to have lunch with Maxine at a café close to the apartment that she’d been interested in trying.  It was authentic – I asked for my steak to be “medium” and it came out “blue” (the French have some aversion to cooking their beef much at all).

Later that evening we made our way to the 11th arrondissement where we met an Australian friend for dinner.  She’s someone that we first met here in Paris 8 years ago.  In the time since then, she’s done all sorts of interesting things and traveled to more interesting places on at least 3 continents.  In the interim, we’ve done???  She’s now living in Provence and it was fun to catch up.  And, Maxine got to check out one of the restaurants on her list, Au Passage.  Maxine’s note:  highly recommend Au Passage – interesting, small plates food, casual & fun atmosphere, reasonable prices, good wine.

Wednesday

Did some more walking, this time heading largely south from the apartment.  This was an area that I’d spent no time in till then.  Sorry to be boring here, but again, interesting buildings and food in windows. 

As a second organizing principle, I followed the walk with lunch at my 4^th beer place, called Falstaff and over by the Montparnasse tower.  Had a very good burger which I paired with Gulden Draak.  And Lindemann’s Framboise with my chocolate mousse dessert. 

For the evening, we went to a UCLA alumni event.  Had some very interesting conversations and actually met a couple from New Jersey who knew one of my college friends and live very close to our Paris apartment.  Small world. 

I wanted to make note of something – we’re out and about every day, and, unlike in LA, aren’t bringing our cars with us to carry our stuff.  So, I’ve been carrying a messenger bag.  With the weather starting to turn, I’ve been packing it with a scarf, gloves, various maps of the city, a French language guide, and…an umbrella.

Which brings me to my next topic, weather!  Yes, I really do believe that Los Angeles has about the best weather in the world.  So, I’m spoiled.  But, I’m not complaining here about the weather that arrives – we’re prepared, albeit grudgingly, for cold and rain.  I’m complaining about how BADLY(!) the weather forecasters are at predicting the weather.  At least 4-5 times we’ve been surprised by rain.  Surprised when the forecast SAID 0% likelihood of rain.  Maxine and I find it odd given that a) the weather comes from the west, so the forecasters could just call over there, and b) Paris is a pretty big city – you’d expect them to try fairly hard to get the forecasts right.  Anyway, we’ve been rained on.  And now my messenger bag pretty much permanently includes an umbrella.

Thursday

We ate raw meat.  Maxine covered our lunch at Hugo Desnoyer in another entry, so I’ll only quote what a friend said when I told him we were going to do this, “When I go out to eat, I prefer that the chef do some work, like cooking the food”.  It was a good meal though.

Thursday was also Beaujolais Nouveau day.  It’s a made up festival, the 3^rd Thursday in November and when the first of the first wines from that year’s harvest is available.  There’s nothing special about Beaujolais that would make its wines the first to be available, but the head of one of their wineries decades ago came up with this as a marketing angle.  And it’s worked!  The wine is air shipped everywhere, to the US and to Japan (to pick 2 different directions).

We made plans to try some of the new wines with a new friend.  It wasn’t tricky to find a bar serving the Beaujolais Nouveau’s, they’re everywhere.  Our goal though was to find it at a less touristic place and also one, ideally, that served good (in a relative sense) Beaujolais Nouveau.  Found an article that listed a dozen places, picked one, and agreed to meet there at 7.  They weren’t open yet!  So, found another place down the street and had some of the general purpose, quite mediocre, stuff at 7E/glass.  Basically, a rip off.  However, after that bad start we went back to the now open L’Entrée des Artistes and had a nice evening.  We 3 were probably the only Americans in this tiny bar.  Dark.  60’s American Jazz posters on the wall.  Tables pushed aside to make room for everyone.  Unlabeled bottles behind the bar.  A small green metal tool box for a cash register.  You know, typical.  At least it was my ideal for how to do this!

Tried 2 different Beaujolais Nouveaux at 4E each, played balloon soccer with another patron (to my credit, I did it with a glass of wine in my hand and mostly we passed the balloon back and forth with head shots).  I’m not a soccer player, but balloons move pretty slowly.

One last digression…  Every day, in fact many times every day, we use our map of the Paris Metro system.  So, I offer praise to Harry Beck…  In 1931 as a personal project (meaning, because he believed it should be done – he wasn’t paid to do it), he designed the London Underground Map.  You might not have seen it, but if you’ve ever seen the underground rail system map for any city, and in some cases, the above ground mass transit maps, they all look the same.  Broadly speaking, they look like electrical diagrams with straight lines, the various lines colored differently, not much in the way of references to what’s above ground.   In other words, plain and simple, BUT, easy to figure out.  Personally I think it’s incredibly cool that Harry Beck’s idea of what a transit system map should look like has been replicated around the world.  Look him up if you’re curious.  I just know that in our current era of Steve Jobs where we’ve over-personalized our homage to design (you know he really didn’t design the iPhone, right?), in this case it really was the work of one person.