New Year's Day in Paris

A gray, overcast morning eased into a gray, overcast and chilly Saturday afternoon. This weather has become pretty much routine here by now. But it is winter and we are, if you recall, at a higher latitude than Boston, Massachusetts. (Paris is at 48 degrees, Boston at 42 and New York City at 40.)

Accentuated by being up so late last evening ringing in the New Year  our typically leisurely morning risked becoming a leisurely afternoon. But frankly that's just fine with us. Many places are closed today anyway, so our agenda was slim indeed.

Event though the weather promised some form of annoying precipitation,  Susie and I left the apartment about 2pm and headed over to rue Chemin Vert for a short 10-minute walk up to Pere Lachaise. We crossed Boulevard Menilmontant right at the Père-Lachaise Metro stop and entered through the small, but highly popular entrance nearby. (My favorite map vendor was still there, right outside the entrance. selling the what is still best map to the cemetery.)

Anyway, the place was packed; it was as if every tourist in Paris had decided simultaneously to visit one of the cool things to see in Paris that happened to be open. And we were no different, of course. So we wandered for a couple of hours, taking time to pay our respects to Chopin in division 11, and two of my personal favorites, Jane Avril in division 19 and Sophie Blanchard in division 13.

Leaving Père-Lachaise by the main entrance we walked down rue de la Roquette, heading in the direction of Place Leon Blum and Place Bastille. Two blocks from the cemetery we passed the pretty Square de la Roquette on the right. It's hard to imagine that on this very same spot of green space stood a women's prison, and that directly across the street was the city's prison used for those convicted to be deported to Devil's Island or to be executed. (One can still see the slots in the street that held the base for the guillotine, according to a nearby historical marker.)

Anyway, the plan as to head to rue du Perche in the 3rd arrondissement for a free piano concert at the Armenian Church (Ste. Croix), a venue we've been to several times before.  The church was a bit chilly inside but noticeably warmer than outside and we settled in for an hour or so of Mozart, Schumann (Robert) and a half dozen or so ragtime tunes a la Scott Joplin. Quite entertaining.

It was dark as we left the church and found ourselves standing in the chilly drizzle of a New Year in Paris. But a short walk up rue Charlot to Boulevard du Temple near the Place de la Republique and we soon found a bar where we stepped inside for warmth and stood at the bar sipping an aperitif -- Kir for Susie, Suze for me). After paying the check we walked outside into the rain and quickly found the nearest Metro entrance hopping on the no. 9 at Place de la Republique  to the Trocadero to catch the Eiffel's champagne lights twinkling on the hour.

Between dodging the hundreds of tourists who were dodging an equal number of men of color selling Eiffel kitsch in the pitch dark, and trying to keep the umbrella up and not stab someone in the back or eye, we managed to see the lights for about 10 seconds, at least giving us hope for a spectacular New Year.

Then it was back on the Metro, taking the 9 to the no. 7 and off at the Pyramides. A quick walk up rue Saint Anne looking for an available noodle bar or Japanese restaurant -- this was after all the Japanese section of the city. The good news was most were open, but we avoided the queues and settled in at the tiny Yamakawa where we feasted on yakitori and dumplings washed down with a half bottle of Tavel.

After dinner it was back on the no. 7 and off at Place d'Italie. We walked down Boulevard Auguste Blanqui to meet up with up with Matt & Susan, Sarra and Andrea and Barbara at their apartment. we all walked up to the Place and found a brasserie for a late night cafe and dessert. The food was mediocre and service slippery but the conversation was lively and a frankly what could be a better way to say adieu than sitting in a Parisian cafe?

Sarra leaves for London on Sunday, Andrea and Barbara head back to the US on Monday and Matt and Susan return to London for one day on Monday before they too head to the US and Providence to begin a new life and Susie and I leave for Brittany on Sunday to meet up with Richard and Pauline.

So, we say au revoir to the group as they walk down Auguste Blanqui and we turn back to the Place "Deet," sliding down into the Metro to the no. 5 to Richard Lenoir and home. Like all travelers, "we each have our own path to take/our own journey to make."

Wish you were here,

Steve

New Year's Eve in Paris

A gray day in Paris; overcast sky with crisp temperatures giving one the sense that snow is in the air (none is predicted, though). This morning was leisurely for us: coffee and a galette for Susie, coffee and baguette and toast and jam for me.

After rousing from a respite of indolence I showered, dressed and headed out the door and down and out the door to run errands, prepping for our New Year's Eve dinner with the group and A & B's apartment.

First off, down to Place Leon Blum (and paying my obligatory respects to the man himself), to Boucherie Thomelin for two veal roasts, then next door to Maison de Rouyer for pastries (getting a start on Saturday morning): Apricot Ornais and a croissant d'amandes; then to Nicolas for wine and finally to Simply Market for juice, milk and water, the last two stops stoking our larder for later this weekend, and for when we return from Brittany.

After returning to apartment and unloading, Susie and I headed down rue Chemin Vert to Gerard Mulot's pastry shop, a quick but not terribly scenic walk to the edge of the Marais, where we stocked up on a raft of desserts for the evening. Our assignments for dinner were now fulfilled.

That afternoon we headed off to the Champs Elysees to the Village du Noel, the Christmas Village that was set up on both sides of the street between the Place de la Concorde and the Rond Pont des Champs Elysees. Consisting primarily of vendor tents selling food, there were some cool crafts to be found, and we indeed found the soap maker that Susie had discovered in the Saint Germain neighborhood some time back. Anyway, it was primarily food that was the big attraction, as one might expect in France:

Smoking salmon on the spot

And of course champagne to go

Chocolate

About half-past six we left the apartment and, carrying meat in a backpack and desserts we walked the five minutes or so to the no. 5 line at Richard Lenoir.

Ten minutes later we were standing outside the door of A & B's apartment ringing the buzzer. Andrea let us in. a few minutes later and I had aproned up and was browning the roasts, preparing them for the oven, while Andrea prepped the salad.

Matt & Susan arrived with the cheese and more wine, and not long afterwards Sebastian (a friend of Andie's who lives in Paris) brought the champagne.

Dinner was tasty, the wines were wonderful and the conversation warm and lively -- although I'm still not sure who "Jackie" is. Anyway, the evening once again slipped into night and then into early morning as we said adieu to 2010 and bon jour to 2011.

Matt

Susan and Sarra

Eventually we had to leave and after saying good night Susie and I headed off to the Place d'Italie and the no. 5. Fortunately, this is the one night of the year the Metro runs all night -- and it was free to boot!

Wishing you a most happy and wonderful New Year!

Steve & Susan

A few tips on traveling to Paris

A few things you've probably already read or heard about traveling to Paris but I'll reinforce them here anyway. I also be adding more over the next few days.

• When using the Metro keep your backpack securely sealed and if possible wear it on your front. Trust me on this.
• If you're going to be in Paris for at least a week get a Navigo pass for the Metro and busses
• If you don't use a Navigo Metro pass always carry plenty of Metro tickets with you.
• Carry a good pocket map of the city -- preferably a map arranged by arrondissement. You can find them for just a few euros at nearly any bookstore in the city. 
• Use your credit card when possible unless your fees are exorbitant but always have plenty of euros.
• Unless absolutely necessary do NOT use currency exchanges to get euros. Use your ATM card to get cash just like you would at home. You may have to pay a small fee but it's certainly better than the currency vendors terrible exchange rates. 

Thursday in Paris - New camera, Favorite stroll, dinner at L'avant Gout

Susie at L'avant Gout

We missed the Orsay on Thursday.

Originally we had talked of meeting up with Matt & Susan for an afternoon of centering our intellectual chi at the Musee d'Orsay but with the arrival of blue skies and a committed sun we felt the driving urge to be outside. (Of course the sun would trick us later. . .)

First stop of the morning was to pick up our train tickets for Brittany and get a new camera, an inexpensive one to use while we're in France. After doing a bit of online checking with the large electronic stores here in Paris (Surcouf, FNAC, Darty),  I had pretty much ruled out the more obscure, brands such as Ingo and models such as the "Hello Kitty" (in pink but hey, it's less than €70) and settled on a Panasonic Lumix.

So we bundled up and headed out a little after 10am, walking to the the Richard Lenoir Metro and taking the no. 5 to Place d'Italie. After climbing out of the Metro and then back down into the bowels of the shopping center, we walked straight to the SNCF store, where there was a queue (of course). Susie got a waiting number and since we had a few minutes I popped around the corner and checked out the FNAC store's camera selection. They had a wide variety of models but not the one I was looking for, so I went back to keep Susie company waiting for an agent.

(And no, we still cannot use our US-based credit cards to retrieve tickets from the automated kiosks -- seems dumb to us but then we're just tourists.)

After a few minutes waiting we were called to one of the agents, and moments later we had our tickets in hand and on our way upstairs to the Darty store. They didn't have the exact Panasonic model I was looking for but the next model down in the line and that worked for me and the price was right. The salesman printed out the receipt, we stood in (another) line to pay and then went to the back of the store to pick the item up.

With new camera in hand we found our way of the building, and headed straight for avenue des Gobelins, a stroll through familiar territory, a walk we had made many times when we lived in the 5th.

A casual stroll up rue Mouffetard (and there's really no other way to stroll through the "Mouff" than casually), led us place many familiar sights:

Rotisserie chicken

Fishmonger

La Fontaine wine shop - a past favorite

And a few not so familiar:

At last we reached the Place Contrescarpe -- hangout for Hemingway & Crew in the 1920s -- and turned down rue Lacepede turning right on rue Monge and a few doors down stopped in at Pascal Pinaud's pastry shop to say hi. Pascal was there and so was his brother Jean-Marc -- but the visit was brief, they were deep in work it seemed so we didn't tarry long.

Stepping back out onto rue Monge we walked across the street to check out the window of a new boulangerie -- neat Christmas decorations and a brisk baguette business it seemed, and perhaps that partly accounted for the air of detachment we sensed at Pascal's. After all, things change and being a pastry chef in Paris has to be incredibly stressful and demanding. Only a few, a very few, get to the top and the rest. . .

Anyway, we walked over to the Jardin des Plantes and past the newly opened greenhouses. Be aware there is a fee to get inside. As we strolled through the "gardens" toward the Seine, the absence of color seemed to fit nicely with the gray overcaast sky and sense of winter in the air. But this barrenness is merely preparation for the lushness to come, a springtime in Paris that we know so well.

From the Jardin we crossed the busy Quai Saint Bernard and walked down to the edge of the Siene, passed the large river police (fluviale) to stroll along the Jardin Tino Rossi. Our walk naturally took us through the Musee du Plein Air, the open air museum where you can find some truly fanciful and remarkably imaginative sculpture hovering right along the edge of the river.

There were few others braving the swollen Seine -- house barges were uncertainly and awkwardly moored to the quai and one can only wonder what havoc was being created in the underground network of channels beneath the city. In fact, the flooding was so bad at that by the time we got to the Pont de Sully we had to leave the river's edge and move up to the street level. The tradeoff was we got to browse the handful of bouquinistes who were open for business on such a chilly afternoon. It was also curious to observe how the closer one got to Notre Dame the less "books" one saw and the more tourist kitsch.

One curious phenomenon we came across concerned the "locks of love" on the Pont de Archeveche. We first saw this strange tokenism of love undying in Florence, on the Ponte Vecchio some years ago and apparently the trend has taken root in numerous other locations around the world.  Not surprisingly Paris has it's own version. We were there just in time to see a wedding couple place their lock, their symbol of eternal affection (or obligation?) on the railing of the bridge.

From the bridge of love we resumed our stroll on the left bank, chilled to the bone we were in dire need of heat -- and so set our sights on the bookstore complex Gibert Jeune, near the Place Saint Michel. Skirting Shakespeare & Co., we crossed rue Saint Jacques, and turned down rue de la Huchette, a very old thoroughfare and now the very heart of tourist Paris. We quickly threaded our way through the mass of humanity in search of plastic Eiffel towers and t-shirts that clearly prove they were in Paris, and scurried inside Gibert Jeune -- and found ourselves amidst a mass of Paris and French tourists.

C'es la vie.

We browsed for a bit -- Susie on the 2nd floor among the baking books and me on the ground floor among the Paris books. (I was successful, she was not.)

Eventually we had to leave and after paying for my selection on impossible-to-find books on Paris cemeteries (in French) we headed back outside, into the cold, into the waves of flesh and crossed onto the Ilse de la Cite, the heart of Lutece, the beginning of the city. As we approached parvis de Notre Dame, the open space that marks the most famous view after the Eiffel Tower in the city, one started to see the horro: a snake coiling around and around, for hundreds of meters, a coil of bodies waiting to get inside the church as if their very lives depended upon this one thing, that they would once again be whole and complete but until that moment when they would cross the threshold of ancient marble and stone they were doomed to remain unfinished, deformed, incomplete, unclean.

We opted to remain unfinished and gave the lines wide berth as we hurried onto the right bank in search of mid-afternoon tea, coffee, warmth and quietude. We found it back at Carette along the edge of the Places des Vosges.

After recovering ourselves a bit from the cold pavements, we walked home, passed Gerard Mulot (and we would come back here tomorrow), passed the Laguiole knife store, onto Boulevard Beaumarchais, turning east onto Chemin Vert and through the garment district and home.

Once again we had rediscovered Paris, the places we knew, or thought we knew, we saw in different eyes. The city had changed, perhaps, but really it is we who have changed -- and that's the beauty of coming back to Paris again and again. It's all about recovering your spirit as you rediscover yourself.

Later that evening we hopped back to the no. 5 at Richard Lenoir and got off at Place d'Italie, turning down rue Bobillot, walking past the commuter traffic jams, to meet up with the group at L'avant Gout for dinner. Barbara, Andrea and Andie's friend Sarra were already outside waiting for us and the five of us went in to get warm and ready ourselves for another dining adventure.

And what food it was! I had the breaded lamb's tongue roasted with kohlrabi (incredible) and the calf steak with a delectable "potato" roll. Matt, sitting next to me, got the pot-au-feu, which came with broth on the side and little containers of red onions and cornichons. All was washed down with an Alsatian pinot blanc and a Rhone Saint-Joseph.

Matt and Susan

The evening slipped away into night as we talked, sipped and smiled our way into the moment, with few worries about what the next day may or may not bring. Life is short.

After paying the bill -- something that's really become a bit of a nuisance I must say -- we all walked back to the Place where we said adieu and got back on the no. 5 to Richard Lenoir, and home.

Wish you were here,

Steve

L'avant Gout. 26 rue Bobillot, Paris 75013. Phone: 01 53 80 24 00. Website.

Wednesday in Paris - Gustave Moreau, the Passages, more food and a stolen camera

Another leisurely morning sipping coffee and eating baguette toast, sliding into another gray day in Paris. No drizzle though and that's a good sign.

The plan for the day, or as near as we plan for any day here, was to meet up with Andrea and Barbara and Matt and Susan around 10:30 at the Gustave Moreau Museum. However, phone problems thwarted the best laid plans of mice and women so Susie and I strolled through this incredible little jewel in the northwest corner of the city. (Gustave, below)

The first floor consists of Moreau's personal apartments where he lived with his parents for upwards to 40 years. The next two levels, connected by a spiral staircase, are devoted to exhibiting his largest pieces as well as many easily accessible panels.

Here one can sit on handy stools and view hundreds if not thousands of his sketches and studies, pieces that would eventually become some of the other larger canvases on display. Impressive to see art presented in this way and Moreau's art is certainly dramatic. In all there are more than 6,000 pieces on the walls and in the various panels around museum.

Helene a la porte  de Scee 

Orpheus at the tomb of Eurydice

Fleur Mystique 

Les Licornes

If you're fond of Symbolist painting this gem is not to be missed. Although we had little background to appreciate this particular style of art, the excellent signage and interpretive information throughout the museum placed us at ease.

After about a half or so, Andrea and Barbara caught up with us but before long we had to leave since the museum closed for lunch. In satisfying our own appetites, the four of us walked a few minutes over to the nearby Rose Bakery. Susie and I had eaten here before and we are convinced this is one of the best places in the city to grab lunch. It's not traditional French and the ambiance would make the Spartans look ostentatious but the food is incredible, tasty and priced right.  We had a variety of salads, all freshly prepared. I ordered the assiette legumes, which was a collection of several different salads that were wonderfully delicious. 


Rose Bakery. 46 rue des Martyrs, 75009 Paris. Phone: 01 42 82 12 80. They also have shops in the 3rd and 12th arrs. as well. And you can get their salads to go, of course.

We had no sooner paid our bill and walked out on rue des Martyrs than Matt and Susan called from somewhere on line 12 on the Metro. A quick check of our map and we arranged to have them meet at as a Metro stop not too far from where we stood at the moment -- Paris transport can be so incredible useful The four of us  -- and before long the six of us were exploring several of the various passages off rue Montmartre and rue des Martyrs, and where I stopped at my favorite vendor to pick up a few more vintage postcards of Pere Lachaise.

We eventually led the group back toward the Seine, stopping at Librarie Gourmand and then at Dehillerin before popping across the street to have an aperitif before we had to go our separate ways for the evening. 

Time is so fleeting as a rule and never more so than when you're with amiable companions, sipping one of God's treats and laughing at the follies of the world. Only for a moment, it's true, but those moments are so terribly important, aren't they?

After paying the bill (a continual hazard here in Paris) we were soon back out into the cold and the six of us walked A & B to the Metro so they could meet up with a friend coming in from London. M & S and Susie and myself walked back in the direction of Dehillerin but stopped short, taking them instead to Detou. One of our favorite shops in the city, it is also one where many local chefs come to purchase their supplies. Susie was there specifically to buy Valrhona chocolate pastilles (€17 per kilo) and 50 vanilla beans (€23) Matt and Susan picked up a can of truffle oil for less than €8, something they could not resist. And so easy to pack.

Since M & S were hungry we pointed them up rue Montorgueil, right around the corner from Detou, and one of the city's better known food streets. Susie and I then headed back to the no. 4 where we switched to the no. 9, getting off at Place Leon Blum (Voltaire actually). It was then that Susie noticed the outer pocket of my backpack was unzipped and we quickly learned that the camera was gone.

We stopped to buy a couple of things for a quiet meal at home and to learn to live with our loss -- and in the overall scheme of things in the world, this was no big thing at all.  

C'est la vie.

Steve