Heading Home

We had a lovely Valentine's Day brunch yesterday at Boulette's Larder, a tiny place with food worthy of multiple stars, and this morning we're off to Paris once more.  Why?  Like Laduree, one word: love.

Thanks to all our wonderful friends and relatives who made us so welcome again in the Bay Area; we love you all, too.  Now please figure out how to join us in Paris so all our loves will be together.

Betwixt and Between

We're being asked daily "So how does it feel to be back?"  And our response has been some variation of "We don't feel like we're back."

The other day I caught myself saying "When we go home..." and meaning Paris.

We're seeing friends and family we miss a lot and that's wonderful, but Gene and I look at each other and say "It's not Paris."  It's like being in love with someone who's not around.  You may be having a great time, but something's missing.

What is this infatuation?  We miss the architecture, the street life, the cafés, the style, the sense of timelessness, the turning the corner to see something we haven't noticed before, the plaque testifying to the fact that in 1672 some person we've never heard of had lived in the building we're passing.  It may wear off.

We might feel differently if we were living in our own house, following our usual paths, driving our familiar streets, but in fact we're living in San Francisco, a place we've never lived in before, in a city we've only visited for a few hours at a time, even if on a daily basis.  It's great, but it's not being at home.  Oddly enough though, right now we don't miss the Berkeley street where we do our marketing and the canyon across from our living room window. 

Right now we're ready to go home.

Water, water, everywhere

 

No, it's not Venice.  This is what much of Paris looked like exactly 100 years ago.  This photo is of rue de Seine, about a block and a half from where we're living, and it comes from the exhibition at the Galeries des Bibliotheques Nationales called Paris Inondé.  A combination of extraordinary weather events and progress, including the new Metro system whose tunnels allowed rising water to infiltrate deep into the city, caused flooding that lasted for several weeks and brought the city to a grinding halt.

The water rose to levels never seen before or since.  Here's where the water level usually is in January.

It's a fascinating exhibit and you can see much of it by clicking on this link Paris Inondé .

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.

The Boring Stuff

It may seem from what I've been telling you that living here in Paris has been non-stop excitement, glamour and glory.  Would I lie to you?  But then you have to do laundry.

We actually do have a washer and dryer in the apartment.  In fact they inhabit the same small body, a combination machine tucked away under the counter in the bathroom.  A full load for our little helper would be a sheet, with maybe some underwear thrown in for balance.  Toss a towel in as well and you're pushing its limits.  To wash this load requires about one hour and ten minutes.

Yes, that's right, over an hour.  And then you have to dry it.  Depending on just what you have in there, you can select ten minutes, thirty minutes, fifty minutes, or more.  Ten minutes to dry virtually anything is to laugh.  Suffice it to say that the 50 minute button is the most often used, and that sometimes several times in a row.

You will recall that we just washed and dried a sheet.  One sheet.  OK, maybe I exaggerate.  There may have been a couple of pillowcases as well.  There's usually another sheet still to do, not to mention the towels.  And the shirts.  And the T-shirts.  And the undies, although usually we hang those to dry on the nifty towel-warmer bars they have here.  And of course the jeans.

So when people ask us how we spend our time in Paris, we lie.  We're actually doing laundry.

Rainy Days and Art

We've been abandoned by that glorious sun of the last few days and the streets are wet and shiny.  Kids coming from school are bundled up in hooded coats, leaving their backpacks to get soaked.  With any luck the ink on their homework assignments will run and they won't have to complete them.  You can tell what kind of student I was, can't you?

My path today took me through the Place des Vosges.  On many days, in fact, my path takes me through the Place des Vosges, a circumstance that once seemed so far from likely as to be almost unimaginable. Sorry to belabor the point, but I still can't believe I'm writing that.  Okay, deep breath.  Today I held an umbrella in one hand, trying not to get too wet, while simultaneously taking a picture of the naked headless mannekins mooning me from their 17th century perch.  My head spins.

I was on the way to an exhibition appropriate to a rainy day, a collection of Flemish paintings from Transylvania.  The Samuel Brukenthal Collection, which includes Breughel, Memling and Van Eyck, among others, was on display at the Musée Jacquemart-André.  I love this museum, which was left to the state by Nélie Jacquemart, who with her husband Edouard André spent a considerable fortune collecting  art and filling their huge townhouse with it.  They were talented collectors, amassing not only French paintings but also a spectacular collection of Italian art, including the large Tiepolo fresco on the main staircase and of all things, a Tiepolo on the ceiling of the café, which was once the dining room.

Unfortunately the rooms set aside for special exhibitions like the Flemish one are quite small and because the shows tend to attract large numbers of viewers, it gets a little crowded in there, particularly when the museum allows guides to take groups through and stand blocking the paintings for many minutes.  Do I sound annoyed?  I was very polite, though, as I elbowed my way past them.

A prohibition on picture taking inside stopped me from photographing the paintings, but how could they object to me pointing the camera outside from the window of the grand ballroom?

From Right to Left

It's hard to resist a lovely afternoon.  Gene was feeling better, the sun was bright, the sky still blue and we decided to walk from our place to the Left Bank and maybe see a movie later on.  This vintage Citroën Deux Chevaux parked in front of a Thai restaurant on rue de l'Ave Maria begged to have its picture taken.   A bit farther along we came across the back of the church of St. Paul shining in the sun.

Nearby, someone had left an entire bag of baguettes lying on the ground near a municipal trash bag (no cans here for fear of bombs).  A small mystery: why weren't they in the trash bag? What could have happened to cause someone to discard them?  And would anyone have the nerve to eat them? They were left across the street from a low-income assistance office.  We didn't wait to learn the answers.

When we reached the river we took a closer look at an art installation that had been up on the quays since late September.  Enormous eyes had been posted along the quayside walls and on some of the bridges.  They're beginning to peel off and I think it makes it look even more intriguing.

 

Photographed and installed by a French photographer known as JR, it's part of a project called Women are Heroes (www.womenareheroes-paris.net) focusing on abused women around the world.  The eyes are those of some of those women.

Across from the eyes was this little vignette.  It looked like a photo shoot for a poster or an album cover.  That's got to be a band, right? Is there any other excuse?

The riverside was popular that afternoon.  There were sitters and strollers on the walkways down by the water.

 

And the old buildings along the Quai de Bourbon on Ile St-Louis were as beautiful as ever.

It's pricy real estate over there, but there must be some residents who are hanging on in unrenovated garrets or this would have long ago disappeared.

Yes, there's still an operating public bathhouse on the island.

And on that other island, a view of one of Notre Dame's towers from the Square Jean XXIII, a refuge from the crowds at the front of the Cathedral, where you too might be lucky enough to hear a sole musician playing the recorder in the sunlight.

We did see that movie, eventually.  It was The Informant!  We liked it.

Discount Divas Down the Street

For the last week people have been lining up every morning to spend lots of money on our little street.  Several doors down from us is a private sale store.  These ventes privées are not unusual here.  In order to shop there you have to be a member, which entails buying a card for 20 euros a year.  That entitles you to shop when they have a sale.  For 90 euros a year you get priority access and can shop for two days before the sale opens to the 20 euros crowd.  The merchandise changes every week, some high end, some more mid-market, whatever manufacturer is off-loading overruns or last season's unsold goods.

This week it's Jean Paul Gaultier.  We've been here more than six weeks and this is the first time there are lines to get in, red velvet ropes, doormen, black-suited security guards.  It's like a daytime night club.  For some reason about 80% of the people in line are black.

And when they're finally allowed in, they apparently have to stand in line to view the goods.  One window of the interior opens onto our courtyard and I stopped to look at what was going on inside.

The window was very dirty but you can see that people are waiting their turn to go through the boxes set out on the tables.  These boxes are holding the merchandise and it would seem that you get your chance to look at it while being aware that there are dozens of people waiting behind you, hoping you move quickly and that you don't find anything so there will be more for them.  Your basic relaxed shopping experience.  You can see the shoulder of the guard standing there to keep order in case all these desperate shoppers break ranks and run amok.

And what are the prizes they're after?  What I can see through the smudged window are bags for 350 euros, 120 euros,  200 euros.  One of these bags is close enough to the window so that I can see the original price tag.  It reads 2,350 euros. 

Excuse me while I line up.

Day by Day

I may be the only one blogging from Paris who hasn't mentioned last Saturday's Nuit Blanche, the annual  open-all-night art spectacle begun by mayor Delanoë in 2002.  That's because we only participated peripherally, passing some installations in the Marais on our way home from dinner at Frenchie, a great new restaurant in the Sentier district, near rue Montorgueil, our old stamping grounds.  There were lots of people on the streets, wandering from one installation to another.  I read later that one and a half million people had taken part this year.

We saw only a couple of pieces we thought interesting, including this video and light piece called Electra in the garden of the Bibliothèque Historique.

There were things I would have liked to have seen, like the world's largest disco ball hanging over the bassin at the Jardin du Luxembourg, but they were all at some distance from our itinerary that night and we just didn't feel like braving the crowds for the most obviously popular ones.  So if you want to know more about this year's Nuit Blanche (which means sleepless night, by the way), you'll have to use my old friend Google.

What I can tell you about is the great meal we had at Frenchie.  A tiny place, it holds only about 8 tables and offers a prix fixe menu of 26 euros for two courses and 31 euros for three.  There are only two choices each for the entrée and plat and three for the dessert, but they were all delicious.  We had very lightly smoked trout with an onion confit on puréed something (I've forgotten, not having made any notes.  Bad blogger!), followed by a roast pintade (guinea fowl) which may have been the best poultry I've ever had.  Others in the group had Nile perche with dill, also perfect.  I had made reservations several weeks in advance and people were turned away at the door if they didn't have them, so if you're tempted, do call ahead.

On Sunday evening we went over to the Pont des Arts, the pedestrian bridge over the Seine which connects the Louvre with the wonderful domed Institut de France on the left Bank.

Sitting on one of the benches watching people walking by was a particularly pleasant way to wait for the sun to set.

The young man above made a discreet fashion statement  in the sea of muted colors, most of which matched perfectly the skies and water.

 

Fall has Fallen

Jardin du Luxembourg, by objetsparis.

It rained today. I tried to sneak out quietly this morning to buy a fresh bread, leaving Gene still sleeping. As I pulled the street door open and saw the wet pavement and falling rain I realized I'd need to go back and get an umbrella. And by the time I opened the apartment door, poor Gene had already been awakened by my back and forthing.

So we stayed in, toasting up the remains of the bread and eating the last of the yogurt and persimmons. I adore persimmons, both the soft and hard varieties, and look forward to fall every year to get my fill of them. I wasn't sure they were available in France until I saw them in a market a couple of years ago, under a sign that read "Kaki", which is what they're called here. About the same cost as at home. Last week I helped a little old lady open one of those sticky plastic bags that make you crazy while we companionably discussed our mutual love of the little orange fruits. She put half a dozen of them into the newly opened bag, leaving only a few for me to choose from.  Hey, it's a war out there.

Later in the day the rain stopped and we went for a walk, winding up in the heart of the Marais, having coffee at Les Philosophes. We chose an outdoor table under an awning, looking to cover our bases, but by then the sun was shining brightly and the waiter rolled the awnings back, at which point the sky clouded over immediately and looked like it was going to rain again. Discretion being the better part of valor, we paid the bill and headed for home, taking the long way around just to thumb our noses at the rain god.

We're staying in tonight. I made soup, we finally bought that bread, and we have a fireplace that's begging to be used.

Moony about Paris

Tonight is the second full moon in Paris since we arrived.  This takes us into uncharted territory; we've never been here longer than one month before.  It feels great.

We've long felt at home here, but we're surprised at how much at home we feel now that we can think of ourselves as living here. i.e. cooking, eating at home, shopping for household goods, making haircut appointments, having dinner parties, thinking of a budget for the longer term rather than spending as if we were on vacation.

Every day brings something new and we are startled to see how busy we are.  A bit too busy if the truth be told, and the huge bag of books I brought along, assuming long evenings reading at home, hasn't had much of a dent made in it as yet.  The other day we attended a book signing by Eric Karpeles, who wrote Paintings in Proust , a book about the art Proust mentions in A la Recherche de Temps Perdu.  Oh, that's another thing.  I've decided I finally need to read it, and have actually gotten about 100 pages into Swann's Way.  If I keep going, that bag of books will remain untouched until we go back to California.  If you put all her books together, Jane Austen didn't write anywhere near as much, proof that masterpieces don't need to be long.  I've never managed Henry James either.  OK, I did read Portrait of a Lady.

We've been extraordinarily lucky in terms of weather.  The long Indian summer finally seems to be over and last night was the first time I put on a jacket.  Until now a light sweater was the only thing I've needed and even that was frequently tucked into my bag.  The fallen leaves are crunching under our feet although the outdoor cafés are still open to the elements.  Later in the fall they'll enclose the terrasses but even now they are beginning to use the outdoor heaters.  This afternoon we saw our first hot chestnut vendors. They all seemed to be Indian, for some reason.

We imagine that with the colder weather we'll spend more time indoors and have put off most of our museum going for now.  It's just too gorgeous outdoors.  That's not to say we've entirely neglected the cultural offerings to date.  We spent most of this afternoon at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs visiting an exhibition of dresses designed by Madeleine Vionnet in the first half of the 20th century, a stunning collection of groundbreaking fashion, several of which I'd love to wear today.  On the way there we saw a very amusing exhibit of posters honoring Toulouse Lautrec.

 

We've seen a number of photography shows, starting with one by Henri Cartier-Bresson. At the Maison Europeene de la Photographie we saw another by the Sicilian Ferdinando Scianna, as well as something called Art Outsiders 2009 which included photos of people standing underwater in the remains of cities drowned by the water of the Three Gorges Dam in China.

  

We've found lots to keep us occupied and we're only beginning to take advantage of everything the city offers.  Not to mention that the rest of Europe is only hours away by train or plane and we haven't even decided where we want to go.  So what am I saying here?  That we're thrilled and excited to be here, and not one bit homesick. 

Yet.

The Barber of Paris

Moustached gendarme by objetsparis.

Gene wears a beard, always has, as long as I've known him, and it sometimes gets a bit shaggy. One of our BHV purchases recently was a beard trimmer that works on 220 voltage. But before using it he made an appointment at a barber. A real barber, with barber chairs and hot towels and stuff.

This is a shop I had spotted several years ago in my wanderings through the Marais and noted because of its out-of-time look. The sign hanging outside is the shape of a mustache. It's called Alain and is near our apartment, and last week Gene went to have his beard trimmed.

Because we were pretty sure the two barbers didn't speak English, Gene practiced how to say "tailler la barbe" and went off hoping for the best. He came home with a great trim, a nice haircut and a grin on his face. He had had his first "real" conversation in French, without me along to buffer the rocky spots, and he had loved it. They had chattered away together and apparently the barber now knows where we're from, what we're doing, how long we're staying, and maybe Gene's mother's maiden name for all I know.

And Alain is not quite as old world as I thought. He was told to make his next appointment by email. 

Alain, Maitre Barbier

8 rue Saint-Claude

75003 Paris

01 42 77 55 80

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.

 

We're Off to See the Ham Fest

When I first heard about the Foire National aux Antiquités, à la Brocantes, et au Jambon, I found it hard to believe.  Who in his right mind would organize a fair that combined antiques and ham?  It had to be seen to be believed.  And so we went, we loved it, and we've been back three times, the last being yesterday.  In our family it's known as the Ham Fest.

This fair, now in its 79th year in this incarnation, has roots dating from medieval times.  Hard to say if the pork sellers or the used stuff dealers came first, but at some point they decided that working the suckers together would be in their best interests. 

It takes place twice a year at Chatou, on an island in the middle of the river, just upstream (or down, who can tell?) from the Maison Fournaise, the site of Renoir's famous painting The Luncheon of the Boating Party.  Which, by the way, is still serving luncheon.

The fair is set up with hundreds of stalls, some more elaborate than others,

which are organised along "streets".  There is a mix of good antiques and not so good collectibles, but since the vendors pay hefty fees for the right to sell here, I assume they all expect to make a profit and someone's "I wouldn't have that on a bet" is someone else's "Oh, honey, I know just where that will go".

Some little girl is going to adore this set of doll furniture,

These Empire style ladies would be charming in someone's fireplace, don't you think?

And I was sorely tempted by this set of chairs if only I had somewhere to put them...oh, and the money to buy them.

Not so sure about this though.

I had a lovely conversation with the man selling these antique trunks and valises.  I understood only about a quarter of what he said to me, but we both seemed to enjoy it.  The Goyard trunk, pre-World War I, still had stickers from its travels, including one from pre-Revolutionary Saint Petersburg.  A bargain at a mere 6,500 euros.

The middle street is the one with the food.  Not all the food vendors are selling ham, but one of the most popular sells a plate of rotiserried ham, cut right from the bone, served with roasted vegetables for 15 euros.  This, along with a glass of wine and an expresso to finish, is what most people are having for lunch at the tables set up in the food street.

Most of the antiques vendors have brought their own lunches, which they are enjoying in their stalls, along with all the nearby vendors, at tables for sale, on dishes for sale, and drinking out of glasses for sale.  You try to buy any of these items at your peril.  "Madame, on dejeune!"  which is French for "Don't bother me lady, I'm eating here!" These folks know what's important.  Give up lunch to make a sale? Ha!

They may want to rethink this attitude actually.  It might have worked in prior years when American antique dealers and decorators were rushing over to give them handfuls of euros, but yesterday the fair was rather sparsely attended and not many lunches were disturbed by importuning buyers.  We did overhear a quartet of American Southern ladies chatting over their ham.  Not sure how it compared to the Virginia variety.