This is the last of the posts which were written/put together before the shootings at Charlie Hebdo and the Vincennes grocery store. Today, Sunday Jan 11th, we're going to try to participate in the rally at Place Republique. We'll have photos and thoughts from that. But, we're spending the morning catching up on things, including documenting our trip as we experienced it...
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Friday
we took it easy. Didn’t even leave the
apartment till after lunch. I took the
metro over to Hotel de Ville so I could walk across to Notre Dame. Spent a little time there. Then continued the rest of the way across the
river to Shakespeare & Co so I could pay homage one more time. Then home.
Maxine did some shopping and enjoyed the city on a beautiful,almost warm and sunny day.
I think we’re so behind on blogging because we see the
end of this trip coming and are trying to get every last Paris experience, even
repeats of things we’ve already done, into our days. So, we’ve tried to keep notes on the week
towards this entry.
Monday I had in mind to go to an area called
Belleville. We were there 8 years ago
for 2 Meet the French events, the first to meet one of the best bakers in the
city, and the second a coffee roaster.
Unfortunately, today was Monday and both were closed! So, we walked the streets but it was a
relatively short visit. We then hopped
down to the area by Bastille and managed to find a great lunch. Again, an example of our “new French”
restaurant experience, each day this place makes batches of 6 different soups
and that’s what you eat, along with salad and cheese, if they haven’t run
out. No table cloth. Simple service. Great food.
Le Bar de la Soup (or that’s what we recall). Dinner was a bit of a challenge with places
closed because either a) they still thought it was Xmas/New Years break, or b)
they just aren’t open on Mondays.
*Maxine’s been doing our food commentary, as is
appropriate! I just wanted to add that
even for someone like myself, who’s largely indifferent to food, it’s
impossible to stay that way in France.
Truly, they celebrate it. The
window displays are often amazing, and there are MANY of them. The restaurants are respectful places where
you get such a cross section of people.
Yes, their approach is changing and you do see both fast food and eating
on the run. But, because of the food
culture, you get caught up in planning your next meal, and the meal after
that. And they’re so good that I’ve been
doing very little snacking on this trip (which isn’t to say that I’ve lost
weight…).
Tuesday Maxine went to the last museums on her list –
Picasso and Carnavalet (history of Paris) and I did a wander through some “best
of” parts of the city. The Picasso
Museum reopened in October after a major remodel and she wanted to see it. In the end, while it was an interesting
presentation of his work, she decided that she’s not a big Picasso fan.
I took the local bus, which (pretty ideally) goes past
the Eiffel Tower. Interestingly, when
the bus was stopped for a light I looked out the window to see 2 plain clothes
police frisking a couple guys. Having
never seen that done before, it all seemed more amicable than I would have
expected. One of the guys being frisked
kept his cigarette in hand the whole time.
I then headed to the 6th arrondissement, which
is the area where we stayed with Cassie 8 years ago. My biggest worry is this – I just don’t have
the depth of memories of the neighborhood that I think I should. Half seems to be the fact that there’s been a
fair amount of turnover in businesses, and the like. The other half – my memories are
fading?!?!?!? Even some areas where
intellectually I know I should have vivid memories (where we took Cassie each
morning or evening) the memories are vaguer than I’d like. Not good!
I don’t mean that I don’t remember having been there, only that the
memories don’t have the depth of “you were there” that I can evoke thinking
about our home in LA despite having not been there in 3 months. Or, for that matter, of my parent’s house
which I haven’t been to in even longer.
The winter sales are starting tomorrow. Yes, they legislate sales. And the official one starts tomorrow. I saw numerous stores with “soldes” signs up
and prices/percentages blocked out. I
saw one store whose sign read (roughly translated), “prices murmured
inside”.
A comment on international retailing… There’s a company that makes heavy cookware,
Le Creuset, and they’ve got a store that I walked past. 20 or 30 years ago I would have mentioned the
store to Maxine and she might have gone there on her own to see about buying
something. But, things are different
now, retail is international, and Le Creuset has an outlet store 20 miles from
our home! Good ideas go international,
which is good for the consumer but bad for the uniqueness of the place.
I eventually wandered to Place Madeleine where Fauchon
and Hediard are. They’re “high end”
grocery stores, or used to be. Now they
seem to have reoriented themselves to be food souvenir stores. Equally high end. But more oriented towards the crowd looking
for “something to take home”. Oh well.
One last story for the day about Parisians and life
here. At one point in the day I was
heading towards a bus stop to catch a ride.
I got there a minute or 2 late and the bus was 20 feet down the block
(past the bus stop) and waiting at a red light.
I gave the driver a pleading look and showed him my metro pass through
the window. He nodded surreptitiously
and opened the door to let me on the bus!
Tuesday night we went back to Frenchie’s Wine Bar for
dinner. We got there early since they
don’t take reservations and were seated overlooking the kitchen. Maxine describes the experience in her post
with photos.
Wednesday was a good day and a bad day. The bad, of course, being the Charlie Hebdo
shootings… Again, Maxine and I are doing
some “best of”’s. So we started with a
hop on the bus down to the Avenue Wilson Market, the best of the nearby
ones. It was, for us, very very
poignant. We could recall things we’d
seen at the market 2 ½ months ago, meals we’d planned on purchasing there,
unfulfilled Paris dreams. We surprised
ourselves – after all, after 3 months shouldn’t we have done EVERYTHING!
Lunch was back at Hugh Desnoyer, the raw meat place. (Actually, he’s a butcher shop with seating
for 8-10 people lucky enough to get to eat his products, cooked or otherwise,
and as fresh as fresh can be. We both
had the steak tartare again. In my case,
because raw meat seems enough of a risky thing that I’d only want to have it
someplace really safe and this is probably the best anywhere. Along with my meal I had a glass of champagne
and later of Bordeaux. Maxine had a
Burgundy and then the Bordeaux. Along
with good food, he serves very good wine!
There was one very odd thing during the meal… French people are generally very quiet (in an
earlier post I mentioned that it was the only place that I’ve ever seen people
holding iPhone microphones to their lips so they could talk more quietly). So, we were surprised that at one point the
people at the next table had a smart phone out and were watching streaming
video. It didn’t last long, but was
odd. Later, at the end of our meal, I checked
my emails to find one from a friend in North Carolina asking if we were safe in
light of the shooting. What
shooting!? Thus the meal ended.
We did stay with our original plans for the evening. I went to a Philosophy debate group and
Maxine to the Full Moon Picnic on the Pont des Arts. My group debated a Charlie Hebdo topic,
whether the pen was mightier than the sword.
Just an apple for dinner after our big lunch. My group event also (started and) ended
earlier than Maxine’s so I met up with her and others on the Pont des Arts for
a glass of wine. After the picnic, we went
out with a few people to have a beer (Monts des Cats) at a place suggested by a
guy we met who pilots one of the Seine boats.
Really fun to feel more and more part of things.
One Emmy story…
Late at night, I’m walking her and she engages with a Jack Russell
terrier (apparently the most popular breed in the city) and I say a couple
words in French to the girl who owned the dog.
No big deal, Emmy’s friendly and it happens every day. But when Emmy decided to leave, the girl
said, “Have a nice evening” in English, completely startling me. Why?
Not a touristic area. Out at
midnight. With a dog…
Thursday was Maxine’s and my day to check out the
sales. We started, though, at Place
Republique, where they had the Charlie Hebdo memorial the day before. Sad, very sad. Melted candles. Piles of pens people had left behind in
memory. Puts things in perspective.
Dinner was another one of our “best of”’s, a restaurant
called Verjus, which Maxine will separately write about.
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