Wednesday, October 22, 2014

Walking the Streets


There's been a strange end of summer feeling in Paris this week, warm weather and sun much of the time, interspersed with gray skies and sudden downpours.  We went for a walk along the Berges de Seine, the quays that used to be a highway along the river and that have been turned into a pedestrian playground.  The beach chairs remain but the seats are damp from the last rain shower.


The river itself is still a highway however.  Barges cruise along, most of them still carrying cargo, while others are living spaces for nomads who like to wake up somewhere different each morning.  In today's world they take their cars with them.


The establishment of the Berges de Seine has inspired a lot of new eating places along the river.  A few are still open until the end of the month and we were able to have a glass of wine and a snack virtually underneath the Pont Alexandre III.  If you want to be even closer to this bridge, a fancy restaurant/club called Faust has been installed in the pillar of the bridge itself.


The weekend was a real throwback to summer.  Temperatures reached 75F and the city hit the streets.  Café terraces were jammed and the parks full of people on the lawns or stretched out on lounge chairs.  October is very strange this year.



A walk on the Right Bank yesterday took us through the Passage Vero Dodat, one of the classic passages build for middle-class shoppers in the 19th century.  


Most of the shops are galleries and ateliers, and I never seem to be there when these shops are open.  What was open was the major tenant, the shoemaker Christian Louboutin, he of the red soles.  And just adjacent, a shoe repair shop, apparently specializing in these pricy pumps, which will replace your red soles as needed for a mere 96 euros a pop.

He's now moved into the nail polish business apparently.



We tried to drop in to the Louvre for a spare hour (how jaded does that sound?) but forgot it was Monday, the day many other museums including the Musée d'Orsay are closed.  The line to get into the pyramid wound around it and we passed.  After trying another entrance that was not much better we decided that just getting an espresso was the better part of valor.

We've been holding off on going to most of the exhibitions around town at the moment since my sister arrives for a visit this week and we'll go with her.  On the list is the scheduled-to-open-this-week Picasso museum and the new Frank Gehry designed Louis Vuitton museum in the Bois de Boulogne.  This is apparently a soaring glass boat that has been getting a lot of press and I'm anxious to see.  Report to follow.










Monday, October 13, 2014

Rainy Sunday


A gray and rainy Sunday in Paris.  Luckily we were invited to brunch at Alisa's new place in Saint Denis.    Just outside Paris proper but still on the metro line, Saint Denis is a mixed bag.  Around the corner from a temporary residence for undocumented African immigrant men is the Stade de France, the huge stadium that houses football games and rock concerts in one direction and a tiny street with big houses behind forbidding walls in the other direction.  Alisa's family is in one of the houses.


Floor to ceiling glass walls, a garden, huge volumes, a mix of Danish and French antiques and decoration, and a long table ready for brunch.  These are some of our favorite people and we don't get to see them, particularly the children, enough.  A lovely way to spend a lazy Sunday.



A long metro ride back home and we got ready to have drinks at the temporary home of a friend from French classes back in Berkeley, along with another friend from that class, along with spouses and traveling companions.  A large and comfortable apartment, champagne and getting acquainted, and we were off to dinner around the corner.  



La Ferme Saint Simon has been there for years and years but we've never tried it.  With two new young chefs, a husband from Argentina and a wife from Japan, the food is excellent and inventive, the wine list wide-ranging and not too pricey, the service warm if a bit disorganized, and the experience very pleasant.  Dining par hazard in Paris with a group of folks from Berkeley...who would have thought it?

We realized yesterday that we have exactly one more month here and there are things to do, other than our usual hanging around.  Lots of museum expos, for one thing.  This afternoon we go to the Musée Luxembourg, just up the street.  Gotta get me some culture, you know.  Bracketed by café sitting of course.



Friday, October 10, 2014

A Day's Worth of Looking and Eating



Delicate, aren't they, these ruffles?  Hard to believe they're ceramic.


As is this lovely undulating form.  Just a couple of the photos I was obsessively taking at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs exhibition this week.  The museum invited a number of important French interior designers to each select a piece from the collections of the museum and build a room around it.


Some of the spaces were wonderful, some merely odd, but virtually all were treated as if money were no object.  Walls of marble or metal or layered glass or precious woods, floors of onyx, furniture representing the annual earnings of a bourgeois family.  


The lighting and art were spectacular.  I wouldn't have lived in any of these rooms on a bet, but they were super to look at.


We also made our usual pilgrimage to Merci, the "concept store" on the border between the Marais and the Bastille (can't get any hipper than that), where the designer of the month or season or whatever the designated time period is was a woman from Los Angeles who hand dyes fabric to make clothes.  The large center space was filled with what looked like drying Victorian lingerie.



But one of our primary reasons for going that morning was the breakfast.  Some years ago we discovered that the absolute best things to have for breakfast in Paris were the oeufs a la coque at the bookstore café at Merci.  Perfectly cooked and served with toast fingers made of delicious bread served with Normandy butter, fabulous.  Add freshly squeezed grapefruit juice and a grand creme and heaven has been achieved.


And then you can shop.  


Monday, October 6, 2014

Fall



Well, you wake up one morning and suddenly you are in another season.  I knew it was coming but I don't remember ever before noticing such a drastic shift between summer (extended, admittedly) and fall.  We had been having a glorious Indian summer, absolutely T-shirt weather and bright sun on Saturday and on Sunday morning we were scrambling for the sweaters and scarves.  Oh well, I guess it had to happen.

It's been busy, with our friend Lisa still here for a few days when we returned from Italy and Paulette arriving over the weekend with Donna from The Hague.  Their first stop was the Porte de Vanves flea market on Saturday morning and we went along for the company.


I think I've lost my taste for digging around on overladen tables of junk for my particular treasure, but Gene did find a small 19th century watercolor of a ruined church in Calvados.  Quite nice.  

Prices seemed way to high in general.  These clock faces at 10 Euros? Puh-lees!


Sunday morning started with a demonstration at the Place de la Republique, in favor of allowing gay parents and would-be parents all the rights of straight ones.  As of 2013 gay marriage and adoption became legal in France but some additional rights are still limited, among them the right to in vitro fertilization for lesbians.  


Having planned to meet our friends Liz and Marcos and their adorable toddler at the manif, we found them, listened to a few speeches, were interviewed for French radio (I have no idea if or when that might be heard) and went merrily off for brunch.  A very French morning.  What's a visit to Paris without  a manif?

Next stop was meeting Paulette and Donna in the Marais for some shopping and a coffee at the newly opened Carreau du Temple, an old metal and glass marketplace that had fallen on hard times and was recently revamped by the city as a community center with theater, café, etc.  Le Jules is a visually interesting café in a corner of the old building, and as it was, as I mentioned, suddenly quite cold we were happy to go indoors.

Sunday afternoons in Paris are liveliest in the Marais, one of the only areas with stores open for business on Sunday.  The center of the neighborhood is car-free on Sundays and the streets are typically thronged. Yesterday there were fewer stores than usual open, probably because it was the day after Nuit Blanche, the night the city puts on events all night long and many people never manage to get to bed.  We were not among them.






Wednesday, October 1, 2014

Settling Back In


The California state absentee ballots above may not be what you expect to see on a blog post from Paris, and they weren't what we expected to see in our mailbox when we returned from Italy late Saturday night, but there they were.  We had completely forgotten that we had asked for absentee ballots to be sent here for the 2012 election and we had never rescinded that request.  Voilà! We can vote in November after all.

So what have we been doing since we got back?  Looking through my photo stream I notice way too many pictures of food.  Our meals have been so pretty I haven't been able to resist the bad habit of shooting them before digging in.  Here are a few:

A lovely sunny lunch in the Marais at Carette consisted of huge salads along with the people watching in the Place des Vosges.




At le Comptoir with Lisa on Sunday night, a special of pavé of veal and a bottle of delicious Brouilly.



At Café Trama on rue du Cherche Midi Gene had the boeuf tartare he couldn't resist when he saw it on the next table.


Lisa had a delicious octopus salad.


And I had a soupe de pistou.


Moving from one meal to the next, we had wine and a couple of small plates at Frenchie Wine Bar as a farewell to Lisa who was flying home at an ungodly hour of the morning.  This might be the prettiest burrata ever.


And I've never before seen a zucchini flower done like this:


Hard as it is to believe we do occasionally eat at home, where the fare is usually much simpler, a salad, some charcuterie and even occasionally an unadorned piece of fish.  Nothing worthy of having its picture taken.