Tom's Photos Jan 1-8

Ice Skating at the temporary rink they set up in front of the Hotel de Ville (city hall)

Some pictures from my day at the Louvre.  First is looking out from inside, at the Pyramid, and down the Tuilleries and beyond to the Arc (our neighborhood)

From the Luxembourg Gardens.  We've got a similar picture to this (roughly the same location and view) in the last Paris blog, with Cassie in it...

French Senate building

Eglise St. Sulpice (the church around the corner from the apartment we rented 8 years ago)

Note the car parked face into the curb.  You can do a lot when your car is very small!

Maxine's Photos January 1-4

Here are a few photos from the first week in January.  

We've learned that President Hollande's tax and fiscal policies have hurt small businesses and we see many empty storefronts.  He is the most unpopular French president in history.  These first three photos are of handbills posted on the door of our local florist.  

 "Seriously damaging to the health of France"

Top:  "The man is not worth one Euro"

Top:  "Francoise Hollande, creator of poor since 2012."

Below are some photos of Opera Garnier.  What a beautiful building!

I love the Chagall ceiling in the auditorium.

Thursday Jan 1 – Sunday Jan 4

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 1^st, 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 2^nd, 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 3^rd 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.

The official video of New Years at the Champs Elysee

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x2dt3iw_paris-celebre-le-passage-en-2015-avec-un-spectacle-exceptionnel-sur-les-champs-elysees_people%20via%20@DailymotionUSA

Je suis Charlie

We're safe.  We feel a great deal of empathy for Paris after 3 months here.  We'll get back to blogging soon.

New Year's Eve 2014-15

We already told you about our shopping trip to buy the components of our New Year's Eve dinner.  Here are the results:


Homemade foie gras (made by Maxine in her cooking class a couple of weeks ago) with a sweet wine for the Jura region of France.

Pate en croute from Hugo Desnoyer with a red Bordeaux from the Medoc.  The pate was outstanding.  So good, that we plan to buy more when we go there for lunch next week.

Maxine's version of veal milanese with a side of roasted broccoli.

Our cheese platter included Livarot, aged Comte, and a goat cheese (whose name I forgot).

Our dessert course -- raspberry cake from Lenotre with champagne.  It was beautiful and delicious, tasting like the essence of raspberries.

The cake was so beautiful, I had to include a second photo.

New Year's Eve at the Arc de Triomphe.

Including several hundred thousand other people celebrating the beginning of 2015!

This is Happy New Year in Swedish (thank you Google Translate).

Happy New Year to all our friends and family!  All the best to you in 2015.

Tom's Pix Dec 19 - 31

From a week of wandering Paris

A store:  "The bazaar for women.  Men forbidden..."

The ever present Eiffel Tower.  This view from Trocadero, at the Tokyo Palace (where the city of Paris modern arts museum is)

As I'd mentioned previously, we didn't have a Christmas tree this year.  Here's where we kept our stockings...

As with the Eiffel Tower, the ever beautiful Notre Dame...

A small portion of the crowds looking to get into the Louvre on the day I had my bright idea that I'd be the only one there...

I've written several times about the poverty in Paris...  This is a man sleeping on a grate.  It was cold enough that day that my thighs felt it through my jeans...

Earlier in this blog there's a similar picture --- except in that version people are wearing T-shirts...

Maxine's Pictures December 29-31

Some pictures from the past few days.  

It's the end of the month and we've seen many moving vans.  This is how the moving men get belongings from upper apartments to the truck at street level.  Makes sense since most buildings have tiny elevators, if they have one at all.

Emmy playing in the park with her friends Coco and Lola.

At the Arc de Triomphe which is down the street from our apartment.

Monday Dec 29 – Wednesday Dec 31

Monday I had the “bright” idea that, since it’s so off season, no one would be at the Louvre and I could have my only and uninterrupted day looking at the art.  I was wrong!  I got there at 10:30 to find the longest lines I’ve seen there to date.  Outdoors hundreds of people waiting in line.  And down below an equally long line snaking its way through the Carrousel du Louvre mall that I talked about in a prior blog post.  Seeing all of this and still having a hope that I could get in, I recalled various articles I’d read about “secret” entrances to the Louvre.  Googled them and found that the first suggestion was through the Louvre Carrousel – not really a secret there.  Second was a side entrance, which I found had a couple hundred people waiting at in the cold.  No Louvre today for me!  I walked the Tuileries Gardens for a couple minutes, an area Maxine and I walked in t-shirts back in October.  Now everyone was bundled up as much as they could.  Quite a contrast.  Decided that my Plan B was to read in a café, so I found the nearest Anti-Café and spent a couple hours reading, drinking hot chocolate and coffee, and just hanging out.

From Maxine – I also had a museum day.  I went to the Musee du Luxembourg to see the Paul Durand-Ruel exhibition.  He was an art dealer and gallery owner who helped to popularize the Impressionists in the late 19^th century.  The exhibit was filled with Renoirs, Monet, Manet, etc.  It was way too crowded but still very worthwhile.  From Luxembourg Gardens, I headed over to the 5^th arrondissement to explore.  It was a crisp, cold, sunny day and it was fun to walk around the area.

Monday was also a day where dinner was a Plan B.  A couple weeks ago we went to a wine bar, run by a Frenchman, ironically called “Frenchies”.  Great food and wines, and we thought we’d go back.  But, they’re closed for the holidays, so we ended up at Willi’s Wine Bar, which I’ve written about in prior blogs.  Good food, spotty service, but a fun end to the evening.  The next table over was a set of 4 French men who were enjoying 2 magnums of red wine.  Stuff that was good enough that Mark Williamson, the owner, was pouring it for them!  They were in a good mood (no surprise!) and when we started to talk to them, one of the guys decided we needed a pour of their wine too.  1995 Burgundy.  Nice!  Who says the French don’t like Americans!

Recall that our apartment is close to the Algerian embassy.  There’s something tied to year end going on that we don’t understand.  But, apparently some Algerians need to camp out over night at the embassy to be in line for it.  It’s very cold out, and we feel bad that their government is putting them through this.

Tuesday was a great day, the sort of day that does have us asking ourselves if we should/could move here.  Yes, it was cold, much colder than anything we’re used to in LA.  And the bulk of the time we spent shopping for one meal’s food (New Year’s Eve), taking buses and trains and walking to do it, but still!  We started the day with a trip down to Hugo Desnoyer, one of the best butchers in the city, to pick up something to build the meal around.  I was concerned that there’d be a line out to the street to buy their meat, but luckily it wasn’t too bad.  We got some veal and a pate (Maxine will cover the meal much better).  When our butcher pointed to the size slice of pate he was going to cut, I said “parfait” (perfect).  He replied, “that’s my name”, and once we understood what he was saying, we all enjoyed his joke in English.

It was now nearly 11am and we needed to take a break!  So we stop at Eric Kayser’s bakery for coffee and a chocolate croissant (Tom) and kouing amann pastry (Maxine).  In another post I talked about how some French food providers (e.g. Poilane bakery) got funding and have gotten large.  Eric Kayser is also in that category.  Eight years ago he had one location, now there are 40 including one in New York that we visited each morning during our Christmas visit to the Northeast last year.  Now that we were sustained (!) we took the bus up to Lenotre (bakery) to pick up dessert.  This, of course, required a consultation with one of the girls who worked there.  Maxine asked about our different choices including a meringue cake, chocolate mousse layer cake and we ended up with a framboise cake (raspberry).  I don’t think our picture of this cake does it justice – it’s actually so gorgeous it’s food-art!

Home for lunch, then back out for more New Year’s Eve shopping.  We’re on a roll, having a great time, and, again, really loving Paris.  First stop of the afternoon was for a bottle of red wine.  There’s a small wine shop on the rue Poncelet market street nearest to the apartment.  We stop in and are greeted by the owner, who as with everyone else, realizes we don’t speak French very well and switches to English, this time with an English accent.  It surprises me when he says he’s from Brittany (France).  He and Maxine consult on wine choices and we end up with a bottle of 2002 Bordeaux.  One of the things that we’re pretty definitive on as a result of this trip is that we prefer Bordeaux to Burgundy for red wines. He also assumes that we live here (!) and tells us that if we need a plumber or other trades person, he maintains a list!  Nice!!!

Next stop, the cheese store, Alleosse, also on the market street.  While we’d feel better if they recognized us (this is probably our 4^th visit), they are helpful.  We had some nice cheeses on Christmas Eve at Bill’s house and Maxine has written down the name of the one I liked best so that we can be sure to have it on our New Year’s Eve cheese plate.  We walk out with 3 different cheeses.

Here’s where we make a very food-centric decision. The coffee roaster isn’t open for another 20 minutes, so rather than skip him and buy grocery store coffee for our last 2 weeks, we do go to the grocery store, but come BACK to the coffee roaster when he opens at 3.  Probably an extra half mile of walking, but it’s pleasant out and we’re really enjoying the experience.

OK, now to talk about dinner…  Plan A here was Restaurant Pierre Sang, who was a finalist on the French version of Top Chef. The restaurant doesn’t take reservations and we can’t find a phone number so we decide to just go over there for an early dinner.  But this is a time of year when people close up, and Pierre Sang is closed.  Plan B is another nearby wine bar, but also closed. Finally we end up settling on our last beer event of the trip, a return visit to Brewberry, this time for dinner as well as beers.  All in all it takes us 1 ½ hours from the time we left the apartment until we’re finally there.  As for a beer report, we had Jack’s Abbey’s Mass Rising, Evil Twin’s Yen Imperial stout, Nogne’s Imperial Stout, Laugar’s Kiskale Brown Ale, Emilisse’s Earl Grey IPA, and De la Senne’s Jambe de Nois.  These are all small pours, 4 ounces each.  The food was good too – ask Maxine about the “burning pig” if you’re curious.

My evening walk with Emmy…  We’ve come to realize that one of the things we’re enjoying about being here in Paris isn’t just that it’s Paris, but that there’s simply a lot we do during each day – much more than our average day in LA.  We’re not yet sure whether that means we should do more in LA than we do, or if this is characteristic of a mass transit city.  Which brings up my next point, we are having lots more people contact than LA’s car-centric world.  And, in fact, a man stops me this evening and tells me that he likes my dog and we should have a Happy New Year.  A really great day in Paris.

Wednesday, New Years Eve, isn’t too bad either.  I head over to the city of Paris’s Modern Arts Museum (Maxine was there earlier in the trip) for the Sonia Delaunay exhibit.  Early 1900’s modern art apparently is my favorite style; Kandinsky is from the same era.  Ms. Delaunay likes semi circles  to excess, but I enjoy the exhibit.  From there I take the shuttle bus from the Arc du Triomphe to the Fondation Louis Vuitton building in the Bois du Bologne.  I’m there just to look at the Frank Gehry building, which is nice but seems like a cheaper version of the same thing as the Disney Music Center in LA.  Cheaper in the sense that the “skin” is more of an evident skin than outer layer of the building like in LA.  I’m back early…

From Maxine – Since it was a pretty day, I decided to bundle up and walk down Avenue Victor Hugo to window shop.  It was a fun walk and I followed the street to the end then got purposeful since I planned to visit the Musee Marmottan Monet in the area.  It’s a great small museum with an amazing Monet collection bequeathed to the museum by Monet’s son.  I really like Impressionism and it seems to be my art theme this week.  I’m already planning to go to the Orangerie to see the Monet water lilies murals on free museum Sunday this week.

Maxine and I have one last New Year’s Eve food errand to get to, bread.  We’ve got cheese and foie gras to eat tonight and I’m afraid that with our normal bakery closed from Christmas to January 2nd, there might be a bread shortage at the bakery across the street (our next-nearest bakery).  So, for our afternoon errand… 

But, things don’t go like the clockwork I’d imagined.  We’re taking Emmy out for her afternoon walk as part of this, so we swing by the Avenue Foch park, where we’re waved over by the owners of Emmy’s friends, Coco and Lola.  Both the husband and wife are there (yesterday afternoon it was only the wife and Coco who were there to play with Emmy).  The dogs play, and we talk some, then, after 20 minutes or so, wish them a Bonne Annee and head 2 more blocks up to the Arc du Triomphe, where we get a couple of our fellow tourists to take some pictures (on our camera) of us with Emmy, and with the Arc in the background.

THEN, bread!!!  No, they weren’t sold out, but stocks were getting low.  We get a standard baguette and a “Tradition” (Maxine’s favorite).  We head toward the apartment, but decide that we need one more French experience for the day, so we stop in at the café for spiked coffees (Irish with whiskey for Maxine and French with cognac for me), with Emmy sitting peacefully on my lap and no one questioning that she’s there.

NYE DINNER

We planned our amazing dinner to end around 11:30 so we could walk over to the Champs Elysees to ring in the New Year with everyone else.  I read one estimate that there’d be 500,000 people, but it seemed like many more than that.  The crowds were so intense that we were on a fringe street, with wall to wall people.  They projected images onto the Arc and then at midnight set off a nice fireworks display.

At 1:30 our evening is nearly over, except for Emmy’s last walk of the day.  I’m walking down our street with her, when I hear someone from the 5^th floor of the apartment down the street.  “Bonne Annee” from a voice above.  I reply in kind.  Then I hear, “Bonne Annee au chien”.  I have to laugh.  Emmy and I turn the corner to see hundreds of people still streaming away from the midnight celebrations and one stops to wish her (not me) a “Bonne Annee to the puppy”. 

From Paris, Happy New Year to all!

Christmas Pictures

Here are some pictures from our Christmas in Toulouse:

Tom & Maxine with Tom's goddaughter.

The entire family.  It was nice to feel so welcome in their home.

Emmy has a new friend.

Christmas 2014 How It Went

Things were as we hoped they would be!  On the 22^nd we walked over to the Hertz car rental location, about 10 minutes away.  And we stumbled through our explanation about having a reservation, in our broken French, only to have the Hertz guy reply in English.  We drove back to the apartment and double parked across the street.  I loaded the car, and Maxine went upstairs to get Emmy.  Soon we were on our way to Toulouse.

A lot of the next few days is something of a blur…  Late nights.  Wine.  Rich food.  Traditional Christmas!

We feel very lucky that we could spend the holiday with our good (and old) friends.  Yet, as I type this on New Year’s day I feel a certain poignancy.  It will be 2 years, and perhaps longer, before we next see them.  And yes, it is do-able --  Bill and I seem to very quickly come back into sync in the ways we’ve interacted for decades now.  But, while it is do-able, is it good?  To see friends so infrequently.  Is it possible for this to be otherwise, with friends and family airplane hours away…

Somehow I got a touch of food poisoning which showed up shortly after we arrived in Toulouse.  As a consequence I didn’t get out of bed till 4:30pm on the 23^rd, and then only barely.  Maxine, Bill, and others made the drive into the city to visit the Christmas market in Place Capitole and had duck breast and foie gras sandwiches.  Bill’s father-in-law made dinner that night.  His specialty, Beef Carrots with Reunion Island spices was delicious (or so Maxine told me).  That night we also celebrated the last night of Chanukah.  Maxine lit the candles using our lucite "travel menorah" and explained the story of the holiday to the group.  Later Bill thanked her for sharing and for helping to broaden his daughters' knowledge.

Christmas Eve was the big formal celebration dinner.  We started with foie gras and Sauterne then oysters (both cooked Reunion style and also raw) and champagne.  Our main courses were langoustine (also Reunion style) and chapon (capon in English) with a white Burgundy and a red Bordeaux.  By now it was after midnight and we still had the cheese course (6 different cheeses) and 2 desserts – a homemade buche de noel with candied chestnuts and a chocolate ice cream cake.  Dinner ended after 1 am and we fell into bed knowing that it would be an early morning with the kids excited about opening their presents.

I imagine you’re asking, “what would this blog be without beer”, so I do need to report that I got a beer gift pack as a present from Bill, Waterloo Double Dark 8, and Waterloo Triple Blond.  Christmas morning was it is in any household with kids.  Fun.  And wrapping paper flying. 

On the 26^th Isabelle and her parents drove up to Versailles to see more of her family, leaving Maxine and me with Bill, his brother and nephew, and Bill’s daughter (my goddaughter) Emily.  We spent most of the time doing what I enjoy most at the holidays, sitting around talking.  (We also did manage to kill off a box of chocolates…  And to go out for pizza…).  Our last night, we had raclette for dinner – melted cheese, charcuterie, potatoes, egg, salad – and a beer tasting of the beers Bill’s brother and I received for Christmas.

Our drive home on the 28^th took a lot longer than the drive down.  It was Sunday night of Christmas week and we were doing something that surely characterized us as French-for-a-day -- sitting in traffic with everyone else trying to get back into Paris.  A 6 hour drive, with stops, took us 10 hours.  By that night, the 28^th, people were putting discarded Christmas trees into the recycle piles along Avenue Foch.  Walking Emmy that night, I saw the trees on the coldest night since we got here, with the puddles freezing over!

Christmas 2014

What could be more pleasant than this moment?  Yes, this was happiness, there was no other word for it.  To be walking through a beautiful valley on Christmas Day with the laughing children of an old friend who used to kick your ass at tennis and had just kicked it again at Ping-Pong, this was the thing itself, and Steiner, for once, seemed to actually know it.

-Christmas in Paris 2002, Ronald K. Fried

The above doesn't really describe my experience this year, but close enough.  It's from a novel, someone else's imagined experience of visiting France and staying with his college friend from years ago.  

Maxine and I are in Mondonville, a suburb of Toulouse.  In the South of France.  With my college roommate from 35 years ago.  We've just been playing with his daughters.  Bill has never beaten me at tennis or Ping-Pong -- we don't do that.  But, we do sit and talk for hours, which is its own form of recreation.  Also, another form of the word recreation, we're recreating what we used to do all those years ago.  Just talking.  Exploring our differences.  Enjoying the time together.

So, while it's difficult at times (at least for me) to really understand happiness, I'm going to echo the author and call today by that name.  We, Maxine and I, are extremely lucky to live the life we do, and especially  to be here living our own version of what the paragraph above describes.

(Written and posted from Paris before we made the drive south.)

Merry Christmas to all!

Tom & Maxine

Mondonville, France

Friday Dec 19 – Sunday Dec 21

I’m starting to think of Paris -- and probably France too, although I don’t have the same exposure -- as in a very strong transition right now.  I mentioned in an earlier post about the financial “crisis” which still continues.  Everyone reads about how coddled some French workers are.  The 35 hour work week (revised upwards, but in exchange people were given 2 more weeks vacation).  The extremely good social services.  Very early retirement.  And then, of course, the French lifestyle.

But that seems to be changing.  Quicker lunches.  Companies coming up with ways to lay people off.  Businesses that have closed.  New restaurant concepts successfully competing with old ones (more on this in a couple paragraphs…).  What I wonder about is this.  France is one of the largest economies in the world, not a small social experiment.  And the whole “French thing” from lifestyle to employment to food to architecture and beauty, all of it is something that has always struck Maxine and me as apart from our US experience.  But is it changing, and changing to more of a US/21^st century model (I’m treading carefully with my words here to avoid being too pejorative)?  Some portion of that strikes me as inevitable.  If you want to be productive, you’ve got to get more hours out of your workers, all of that.  So, is the France (Paris) that we’ve come here to see an archetype of a lifestyle that is evaporating in the face of exposure to the rest of the world?  I don’t have a conclusion, but I suspect that it is.  And then I wonder what’s left.  Over time is France reduced to a French speaking America, with Gap store and even French *chain* retailers?

OK, enough of that.  Friday, Maxine walked through the 16^th arrondissement to the Musee d’Art Moderne.  They have wonderful Matisse murals which turned out to be closed that day!?*!  But she really enjoyed the Sonia Delaunay special exhibit.  To be honest, she’d never heard of Sonia Delaunay before this but there are posters up all over Paris and this prompted her interest.  Definitely worth seeing.

We went out for dinner to Frenchie’s Bar a Vins, another great wine bar, another of those places that flies in the face of conventional French food.  Waited in line to be seated.  Hung up our own jackets.  We sat at high stools and shared a table (that’s how everyone does it at this place).  No idea who exactly was our waiter.  No table cloth.  A serve-yourself pile of silverware in a basket on the table.  And prices nearly as high (for the total meal) as a Michelin 1 star restaurant.  Yet, we paid it willingly, and we’d go back there again, ahead of the 1 star.  Why, interesting and great food and fun atmosphere versus stuffy and quiet.  This is what I was talking about a couple paragraphs back.  People, young people?, are exploring.  They are breaking out of the mold of what a restaurant “should” be.  They’re creating casual experience.  And, let’s be realistic here, they’re taking money away from the French restaurant establishment.  Last trip, Maxine and I went to a 1 star in Paris every 2 weeks.  This time, only one for the entire trip.  We’re looking for good food, good wine, a comfortable experience, and to feel welcome.  The wine bars, the cocktail bars, the craft beer bars are the ones getting our attention.  (Of course, to counter argue all of this, we had a phenomenal beef bourguignon at a 30 year old restaurant a few weeks ago).

Emmy continues to be the clock that drives our day.  Maxine walks her first thing in the morning.  We switch off on the late afternoon walk.  And I do the 11pm one.  Recall that it’s 65 stairs up to the apartment.  I think I disappoint my dog both when we head out and when we return.  She races ahead of me and is waiting at the far end of the hallway, looking to go outside, way before I get there.  And on the return, she zips up a few stairs, then waits patiently for me to catch up, time and time again till I unlock the door and she races up the last flight of stairs inside the unit, to Maxine.

And the day ended with some more observations on surreality…  In the evening I started watching Love Actually, which if you haven’t seen it, is a movie set in London during the Christmas season.  I got through the first ½ hour which has a lot of scene-setting segments showing London at the holiday.  At one level, this all made sense. After all it is the Christmas season.  But, when I paused the movie and took Emmy outside, as I stepped off the building curb, it struck me.  I’d become engaged in London Christmas for the last ½ hour, but my feet were touching ground in Paris-Christmas.  Once more, I feel fortunate being able to do this trip with Maxine and Emmy…  To conclude things, during the walk, Emmy and I passed the Serbian and Congo embassies.

Saturday was sort of mixed.  I went out for some Christmas vibe, which I got, and some last minute Christmas shopping, which was much more difficult.  By mid-afternoon I was beat and trudging through the streets.  I called Maxine back in the apartment.  I was looking for a magnum of champagne to bring the friends we’re visiting for Christmas.  It’s available everywhere, but we wanted to get a special bottle, and I didn’t see any options during my trudge.  Maxine did a search and, from what she’d found, the “best” place in the city was the one where we’d done the champagne tasting last week.  So, we took the ½ hour, 2 metro lines, trip over there…  And they were out of everything.  And, it was raining despite a 0% probability of rain in the forecast.  I got grumpy and we headed home to a dinner of some cheese, and the foie gras Maxine made!

Sunday we’re getting ready to go out of town.  We’re spending a week in Toulouse with our friends, my friend from college, and his family.  We’re picking up the rental car tomorrow morning and making the 6-7 hour drive down there. So, we’re getting caught up today.  Some more shopping. Getting the blog current before we forget things we’d prefer to remember here.  Packing.  Although tonight we’re both going out.  I’m going to a Philosophy club dinner.  And Maxine is going to a Chanukah menorah lighting and concert.

Monday Dec 15 – Thursday Dec 18

Monday we continued to look for interesting food and drink, focusing on new, rather than traditional places.  We’re just not finding mid-range, traditional French food that’s compelling on this trip.  Instead, we’ve continued to pursue new avenues in the northeast corner of Paris, a cheaper area where younger chefs seem to be experimenting.  So, tonight we went to Le Mary Celeste, another place recommended by Parisbymouth.com.  They labeled it one of their top cocktail bars, but they also gave it very good reviews for small portion (tapas-like) food items.  That sold us.

The food was international fusion.  Nice spice and interesting flavors.  The drinks were interesting, with intriguing ingredients, but I felt that the place I went to 1 ½ weeks ago, Sherry Butt, was better.  So, for a nightcap after dinner, we headed over there.

Everything works easily if the metros are with you.  They were and it was only 15 minutes to the Bastille stop.  But, as the photo shows (the other blog entry) it’s a big metro stop (the photo is of the Bastille area above ground).  So, with the bigger metro stops, the trick is to exit nearest to the direction you want to go.  Here if we’d have flubbed it the walk just to get to the correct starting point (around the radius of a circle) would probably be over ½ mile!  We got it right, but when we got close to Sherry Butt (PS, it’s the name for a storage vehicle, that’s all), I couldn’t actually find it.  Fairly non-descrip entrance, and there’s a photo in the other blog entry.  But, I recognized the bartender outside finishing a cigarette.  He remembered me, we shook hands, then went inside.  I told he that we’d come from Le Mary Celeste and that the drinks weren’t up to his level of taste or craftsmanship.  Interestingly, he praised them and mentioned that he was friends with their bartender.

Tuesday was the first night of Chanukah.  Maxine and I went shopping for her present.  She found a small store (in the northeast) with nice scarves and sweaters when she was out exploring a couple weeks ago.  While she was trying things on, I spoke to the owner (the only person in the store).  Turned out that she had been General Manager of Woolmark’s French operations, until “the crisis” 4 years ago.  “The crisis” is the term several people have used to refer to the economic hit the world took a few years ago.  In France, the hit remains, unemployment is high, and people are worried.  The owner was, as you’d expect, extremely knowledgeable about fabrics.  It seems to have forced a level of entrepreneurship onto the fabric of the city.

After checking things out there, I prevailed on Maxine to try “one more place” that had nice scarves, and was a short bus ride away.  This worked out conveniently for us since it put us adjacent to the core Marais district.  We were able to have falafel once more at L’As du Falafel for lunch.  The scarves at this other place were pieces of art, but not compelling enough, so we went back to La Boutique Extraordinaire and I was happy to get Maxine her presents!  Maxine’s note:  Tom bought me a beautiful, lightweight, reversible cashmere scarf and a very soft merino wool tunic/sweater.  I love both!

From there, Maxine went home to take care of Emmy, who’s really gotten used to being alone for 6-9 hours at a shot, which isn’t something she ever had to deal with in LA.  I went over to the “Grand Magasins” and made my way to the roof deck at Galeries Lafayette.  The weather had cleared up and it was amazing to be outside.  The shopping, however, was discouraging.  Two things.  First, French department stores all seem to be organized by brand.  So, if you want to buy a shirt and aren’t sure which brand, you have to walk to each of the different sections of the store and check out the different manufacturers.  Tedious.  The second reason is that shopping is awfully, discouragingly international.  In other words, if it’s popular here, it’s also popular in the US.  So, not much unique shopping.  And crowded, so I headed home.  We had reservations for a special dinner at Spring as part of our Chanukah celebration.  Maxine will describe the dinner in a separate post with photos.

Wednesday was a quiet day for Maxine since some part of last night’s dinner didn’t agree with her.  We did make one excursion, to do this month’s renewal of our cell phones.  Recall that last month we couldn’t renew online because Bouygues’s website wasn’t working.  Still not…  So, we made the 15 minute walk to the store and had them do it in person.  This time, humorously(!), their credit card processing systems weren’t working either.  So, we paid cash.  And no, this wasn’t a scam.  It’s just ironic that cell phones, certainly reasonably high tech, are supported with such wobbly technology.

In the evening with Maxine resting at home, I decided to do a wander of the city.  We did this a bit in London 2 years ago, pick a bus and let it show us the city.  That, however, worked better for us in London.  We’re just too familiar with Paris for the bus to show us very much new and interesting.  Plus, the busses are designed more for transport and less for sightseeing.  I hopped off at the Hotel de Ville (picture of ice skating and penguins) then tried to get ice cream at Berthillon, but they were closing.  So, I made my way across the Seine and walked over to Shakespeare & Co. 

I’ve written before about the special place that bookstore has for me, based on memories from 20 years ago.  And while it always will, it’s a bit diminished now.  Unless my memory is *really* failing me, they’ve done two things that trouble me.  First, cut the number of rooms dedicated to being “the store”.  Second, they’re much more new book sellers now than used books. But, it’s still a great experience for me in this city.  So, after wandering the stacks for a while I found a leather chair to sit in upstairs, pulled out my iPad, and read 50 pages from the novel I was currently reading.  [Maxine’s note:  yes this is ironic!]  Lovely place to do it!  And, I’ll always have fond memories of the way George Whitman inspired me.

Thursday was tourist day for us!  Eiffel Tower.  Rodin Museum.  Montparnasse.  A drink at a café.  La Defense Christmas Market.  We can’t recall the last time we were up at the top of the Eiffel Tower, but today was a good day for it. So close to Christmas and early in the day – we had no line other than at security.  Little in the way of crowds so we felt like we could stay up top as long as we liked and enjoy the views over the city. We probably were a bit silly as we kept trying to identify from a distance sights that we knew.  But, it was fun. 

And only a short bus ride to the Rodin Museum.  And we do know when we were here last, 1998.  A huge sculpture garden.  But again, I suspect this was the sort of place that could get very crowded in good weather.  The mud was a deterrent for us, but gave us private time in front of just about every sculpture casting except The Thinker.  Interestingly, we found a half dozen lounge chairs and 2 dozen more Luxembourg Garden-style chairs at the far side of the gardens.  We felt a small bit of dismay that we missed coming over earlier in the trip when better weather would have invited us to hang there for a while.

Lunch at one of the many restaurants along Blvd Montparnasse.  It’s an area we don’t know well, but fairly well developed.  There are a number of “famous” restaurants there, but they were all very expensive.  So, we ended up sharing a salad and a croque monsieur at a no-name place instead.  Home for a short break, then we had to take Emmy out for her mid day walk.  Usually we take turns, but one of my remaining trip To Do’s is to take her out for more than just bathroom breaks.  So, we went back to the café down the street.  As before, they were almost surprised that we asked permission to bring Emmy inside.  And literally not one of the 20-30 other patrons who passed our table gave her even the slightest look.  In other words, common place. 

This day was, as I said, a full and touristic one.  We dropped Emmy at the apartment and caught the metro out to La Defense to check out their Christmas market.  We made some friends in Paris who recommended it over the Champs Elysees one and they were right.  Much more interesting stuff to look at and to snack on.  The decorations were also beautiful along the La Defense Esplanade.

A long day!

P.S.  One other thing.  With all the ways Paris has changed, WHY do so many people still smoke cigarettes???

Maxine's Pictures -- Dec 13-18

Looking at these pictures, this may be the most touristy post yet from me.  You'll see what I mean below.  But, first, a picture of Tom and Emmy bundled up for the cold.  I just thought they both looked cute!

On Sunday, Dec 14 we walked around Montmartre and saw famous sites around every turn.

The Montmartre vineyard.  Unfortunately, we arrived in Paris just after the wine festival in October.

Just a pretty scene, so I made Tom pose for me.

On Tuesday night we went to Spring for dinner.  This was on my must-try list and Tom suggested we make this part of our Chanukah celebration.  To be honest, I have mixed feelings about Spring.  The food and service were both outstanding.  But I was really sick the next day and will always associate that with Spring, fair or not.  But let me tell you about the dinner.

I don't have a photo of the amuses -- fried oyster for me, pickled cauliflower for Tom, paper thin slices of Spanish blood sausage with apple, pumpkin with hazelnut.

Our first courses were showered with truffles:  brill fish for me and truffle salad with toast for Tom.

Sauteed foie gras in duck broth

Venison with nasturtium roots and chestnut puree

Cabbage with game -- hare and venison -- and black trumpet mushrooms

There were actually 4 desserts -- lychee ice cream with coconut cream, tropical fruit tart, chocolate gateau, coconut balls.  All but the ice cream are pictured here.

On Thursday, we played tourist in Paris.  These pictures are from the top of the Eiffel Tower.  It's great to be in Paris in the off season.  No lines or crowds that morning.  What great views!

Later that morning, we visited the Rodin Museum.  It's amazing how the Eiffel Tower sneaks into photos everywhere!