These next couple posts 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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The trip is winding down
L. We have managed to feel like we live here; at
the same time we think about the ways it is different than (and we sometimes
like more!) living in LA… More
reflections on that in a future post.
For the record though, I’m starting this entry on
Saturday and from a countdown standpoint, this is “10”…
The 1st, we pretty much did nothing. Almost everything was closed down (except
bakeries!), so we had a repeat of portions of our New Year’s Eve dinner
(including the champagne) and took it easy.
Friday the 2nd, we were back in gear! First thing we had to do to actually *move*
was to buy metro tickets. For the past 2
months we’ve been using monthly passes, but they follow a rigid day of the week
sequence and it isn’t worth our while to buy a full month pass. So we’ll be using single use tickets through
end of day Sunday, then a weekly pass for next week. Anyway, we started off heading over to the
Marche Aligre, the food market which is nearest to the apartment we nearly rented
3 years ago (until Cassie screwed us – see earlier post). We needed sustenance, so on the way, we
stopped at one of those places that has the “best” croissants and pain au
chocolats, Ble Sucre, for coffee and… for sustenance. Nice Pain au chocolat, but possibly a little
too buttery. The market was interesting,
but we’ve come to the conclusion that, when looking at apartments to rent, it
isn’t worthwhile to think in terms of which market is nearest. Even on a trip of this length, we didn’t need
to do too much shopping. And, there’s
always a market near enough. What you
need to focus on is where the nearest metro station is, and whether it’s one
well connected to the other lines. The
Argentine one (this trip) is, the Mabillon one (8 years ago) was not.
From the Marche Aligre we made it back to Montmartre for
one last visit through “time capsule” Paris, views of the city, some souvenir
shopping and some onion soup.
For dinner we had to go the “Plan A”, “Plan B”, “Plan C”
route again with only a limited number of places open at the tail end of the
holiday week. We started at a place
called Candelaria where we had great cocktails.
But our hope that we’d also eat there didn’t work out – it’s one of
those places where you need to wait till someone leaves and take their
seat. All well and good, except the
entire restaurant has possibly 16 seats!
Plan B was too crowded. So Plan C
it was, couscous at a restaurant that gets good reviews, Chez Omar. Fine, but I don’t think it’s a meal that
appeals that much to me. Aside from
eating half of Maxine’s grilled lamb!
Saturday the 3rd we’d planned on going back to
the flea market, but woke up to rain, and predictions of spotty rain all day,
so we’re going to push that one to closer to the end of the trip. In light of the rain, I decided to stay
home. Maxine went to see the movie Gone
Girl. So, trying to make this a little
like life at home.
For dinner, we went back to Juveniles. I might have mentioned in an earlier post
that they’re sort of a spin off from Willi’s Wine Bar, or were at one
point. Second, we actually went there
for the first time earlier in this trip and had a great lunch, so we decided to
try for dinner. It was great, which
flies in the face of our semi-belief that only the new and non-traditional
restaurants are worth going to.
Juveniles has existed for 20? Years and is run by a second generation
English woman (her father the originator was there that night too). Best duck breast I’ve ever had. Great terrine and bavette (skirt steak) with
potatoes dauphinoise (a cross between scalloped and au gratin). And good wines to go with the meal. All really delicious.
I took Emmy out for both her afternoon and night walks
today and a couple observations. First,
during the day, Emmy stopped to “talk” with a French dog. The owner asked Emmy’s gender and when I told
him Emmy was a girl, he replied that but of course then his (male) dog would be
interested. French attitude(!). When we said good bye, the man, who up till
then had spoken no English to me, made a real effort to say “Happy New Year” in
English. He had trouble with each word
and I appreciate the effort he was making to be welcoming! Finally, at night Emmy and I walked past the
Christmas tree recycling area. You can
smell the fragrance of the sapins (Christmas trees) from 100 feet away!
Sunday was the monthly free museum day. Maxine made it to the L’Orangerie (part of
her Impressionist week) and also tried for the new Picasso museum, but the line
there was too long. She ended up going
to the Opera Garnier (not free). See the impressive building pictures in her
separate post.
I decided to finally suck it up and spend the day at the
Louvre. That day was nearly cut short
when, over the building’s speaker system, they announced in 405 languages that
everyone needed to evacuate for security reasons. I was surprised to see how slowly everyone
moved, and how indifferent museum staff seemed to be as I made my way to the
ground floor. I’m still not clear on
why, but by the time I was near the exit the evacuation seemed to have been
called off. Not announced as such, but
with people heading into the cafeteria and others heading towards the
galleries, it seemed that way.
I'm sure all of this would have been handled differently, post-Charlie Hebdo..
I
completed my 5 hours of wandering one of the most exhaustive museums in the
world. Enormous! And since I’ve been there a few times already
in my life, I resolved that today I was simply going to wander from room to
room and look at whatever caught my eye.
Took all the pressure off!
Dinner was back at Jim Haynes’ salon. I mentioned him in an earlier post since we
went to one of his Sunday dinners back in October. This one was a completely different crowd,
but interesting in its own way. And,
we’re more and more feeling a part of this city – we ran into someone I met at
a Philosophy event last month.
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