Happy New Year

The name of this metro station is nearly appropriate for the day; the only thing it's missing is the word Année to help us wish you all a happy, healthy, prosperous, safe, loving 2010.

I grabbed this shot from a moving train, through a dirty window, so please forgive the quality.  It's a station in the 9th arrondissement and the name is the French equivalent of the old English word "gospel", which means "good news". 

I love the sign because of the wavy letters.  For some reason they haven't been applied evenly and so this wish for a Bonne Nouvelle Année takes into account the fact that not all will go smoothly in our lives in the upcoming year, but that we all hope for good news.

Happy 2010!

Chillin'

The snow is gone, but boy is it cold out there!  If it weren't for the holidays fast approaching, I suspect most people would be huddled indoors warming their hands around a glass of vin chaud, but instead the streets are pulsing with people and the stores, emblazoned with sale signs, are full.  It's a rare brave patron though who sits in an unenclosed cafe terrace.

Most people are bundled up tight and moving fast between destinations.

The sale situation here is interesting.  By law, stores in France are forbidden to put their regular stock on sale at any time other than the authorized periods in January and July.  Exceptions exist, primarily for going out of business sales or sales in anticipation of store remodeling.  It seems to me that half the stores in Paris have decided to do some remodeling this winter; they all seem to have huge signs advertising 30%, 50%, 70% off.  I suspect the remodeling consists of little more than a new carpet or shelving installed to meet the letter of the law, and I suspect the authorities are turning a collective blind eye in the face of what's known here as la crise.

It appears to be working.  People in the street are nearly all carrying shopping bags.  The buses and metro trains are jammed to Tokyo-like limits. Gene says he hesitated at the door of an already sardine-can-packed metro car the other day and found himself pushed on by someone behind him.  When he looked to see who it had been, he saw a Japanese woman.  Apparently she takes that kind of thing in stride.

Wall to Wall

I keep meaning to post about the Christmas decorations going up all over town, but I don't seem to be feeling very Christmas-y yet.  It's the other decorations that are drawing me recently, and may of them are in fact drawings, others stencils, and some simply found art.  The multiple Madonnas above are on a wall in the neighborhood and are as interesting as any of the gallery windows further down the street.

This character appears again and again, usually with a balloon that he's holding, or catching, or letting go of.   The artist's name is Nemo and he has worked with Jerome Mesnager as well as on his own.

Another repeated image is this cat, so well known that he has a website devoted to his appearances.

I'm rarely as intrigued by traditional graffiti (amazing, isn't it, to think of it in those terms?) as I am by the Nemos and Mesnagers and Miss-Tics on the walls, but this one was worth noting, if only for its sheer exuberance.

But to tell the truth, I really love the wall art that is revealed inadvertantly, that's art because it is, not

because it's meant to be, like these walls in Anvers metro station.

Wandering through the Weekend

You may not believe this, but one can get tired of croissants.  Not that I have yet, but it's possible, I understand.  And so ex-pat Americans are always in search of the perfect bagel. You can find bagels in Paris and some of them are reputed to be not bad, but the search continues.

On Saturday night I went to a book signing for Marc Grossman's new cookbook "Bagels*like in New York" at the charming little food-specialized bookstore La Cocotte on rue Paul Bert.

Marc is a New Yorker who runs Bob's Juice Bar (why Bob? I guess Marc sounds too French) and the Kitchen in Paris, both foodie favorites.  Bagels is his third American cookbook (in French) after Smoothies and Muffins.  You get the idea.  Alisa's Cupcakes is part of this series for French publisher Marabout and she'll get her book signing date soon.

Unfortunately Marc says that making good bagels in enough quantity to sell profitably is too difficult a project and he won't be offering them at his shops.  The search continues.  What, you thought I was going to bake them myself?

Gene had come down with a cold so I took the Métro over to meet Alisa, her boyfriend Jeff, and her two adorable girls at La Cocotte and for a drink after at Pure Café.  I'm not a fan of children as a rule, but these two are worth hanging out with. When we got to the café I realized it was the one from the movie Before Sunset, with Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy, a gorgeous tour of Paris in the guise of a love story. 

On the way over to La Cocotte I came across one of the ubiquitous Métro musical offerings, which include American hippie guitarists, Scots bagpipers (oh gawd!) and others.  This little orchestra was worth listening to though.

Suitably uplifted I went on and found continung uplift at the other end of the trip.  The end of the day sun had turned these buildings into pure gold.

Sunday morning was time for the market once again and we did our usual rounds.  We've now identified our favorite vendors: the pretty Italian woman who recommends different pastas each time, the woman who takes the time to explain the different types of apples, pear, tomatoes, etc. to clueless Americans, the fishmonger with the longest line and freshest fish, and the stand with the incredible array of mushrooms.  Winter vegetables are all over; I'll have to find a recipe for pumpkin soup.

It was a glorious fall day and the crowds in the Marais were taking full advantage of it.  The streets were closed off to cars and the Place des Vosges lawns were covered with basking adults and running children.

 

I took a bus across the river to say goodbye to some friends leaving town and couldn't resist taking pictures out the window.  I have a feeling these blue skies won't be with us for very much longer.

 

And walking home I found myself kicking through piles of leaves.  The season has definitely changed.

 

Outside the Comfort Zone

Yesterday we spent time in a Paris virtually without Parisians, or at least the European, beret-wearing, baguette-carrying stereotypical version of a Parisian.  We joined a friend of a friend who was putting together a walking tour of an area most tourists never see, the western half of the 10th arrondissement. 

The arch above was erected by, or at least for, Louis XIV, the Sun King, at the Porte Saint-Denis, one of the original entrances to the then fortified city.  At the time, anything beyond this point was bridge-and-tunnel territory, not truly Paris.  And now, this quartier is home to Africans, Indians, Pakistanis, Turks, Lebanese, and, let's not exagerate, French of European origin as well, but it feels entirely different than the more central and more touristed parts of Paris.

We had lunch at one of the dozens of Indian restaurant to choose from in the Passage Brady and walked past shops selling entirely to customers of ethnic origin: African wig and clothing stores, Indian spice shops, Turkish DVD stores, restaurants of virtually every country with an average daily temperature of 80 degrees Fahrenheit or more.  It's fascinating.

Because at one time this area had been very fashionable (think late 19th century here), there are remnants of those days still.  Brasserie Julien, now a member of the Flo group of restaurants and not much more than a tourist destination empty at lunch, contains one of the loveliest Art Nouveau interiors open to the public.  As an aside, the original Brasserie Flo, in rue des Petites Ecuries nearby, was full of lunching Parisians.  Presumably they know where the food is better.

Behind a locked street door (the secret is to follow someone who has the code to enter) is the onetime home of Marie-Louise O'Murphy, the daughter of an Irish shoemaker who became a mistress to the king and received this house as her reward.  She didn't last long, being unwise enough to annoy Madame de Pompadour, the official mistress, but the house remains, as does the famously erotic portrait of Marie-Louise at 14 years old by Francois Boucher.

Later in the day we found ourselves having to take the metro and change at République station, which is undergoing extensive renovations.  What this meant was that the usual connecting stairs and tunnels were closed and we were directed by extremely unclear signage up, around, over and under nearly every corner of this huge station.

Having finally reached the correct platform (no leg exercises needed this week, folks) we were taken aback to see a line of tall men of clearly African origin wearing flourescent vests and carrying on their heads piles of flat construction material, balanced on syrofoam pads with little help from their hands, for all the world as if they were still in Dakar or Abidjan. Not a wheelbarrow to be seen.

And for the first time I can remember, we saw a NY style graffiti-covered car on a metro train.  I've so far been amazed that the RATP metro system manages to clean the cars so well, but this one was a beaut.

And here, just because I thought you might want to see it, is a shot of some passengers waiting for the next train.

 

What Am I Allowed to Hope?

You come across the most interesting questions in public restrooms. No, not those questions.

The question above was etched onto the mirror in the toilettes of Les Philosophes, a popular café in the heart of the Marais. Given the name of the place, I suppose it's appropriate, but it struck me as particularly appropriate for us at this moment. What do we hope for from our time here? We're working on it, as the RATP, the Metro system, is working on their stations.

Do we expect our life here to be an endless series of lovely days in charming spots like the one below?

Of course not; we're not fools. We expect a series of ups and downs, of extremes even, just as Paris has extremes. Walking down the same street you can find this:

and this:

But it's great to be walking these streets. I put our name on the mail box and buzzers today. Now we're official.

Housekeeping

Metro entrance, originally uploaded by objetsparis.

It's such an indulgence to know we're here for the long haul. Dinner last night, I'm almost ashamed to admit, was half a ham sandwich at 9:00 p.m. and a bowl of cereal at 2:00 a.m, both part of the emergency rations we bought yesterday. And we didn't feel guilty about just hanging out in our Lufthansa jammies on our first night, when typically we'd feel we had to go out and Take Advantage of Being Here. Instead we admitted we were tired, didn't feel very hungry, and would rather read old New Yorkers.

Having finally broken down and popped an Ambien after the cereal, we slept until noon and managed to get out of the apartment before 3:00 p.m. We're now clutching our Navigo Metro passes in our hot little hands, Gene's got his new cellphone number, and we picked up the train tickets for our overnight on Friday to Lille, where we will be attending la Grand Braderie, the biggest flea market in Europe it's said, with more than a million attendees and 60 kilometers of stalls. Why, you may ask. Why not, we would answer.

We'll let you know if it was a good idea.