April in Paris - III

May 1, 2014

That 2½ hour Easter dinner was really something. The elegant Chez Francois, featuring quiet piano and accordion music, offered only two choices .. a three-course menu for $69 and another (with champagne) for $81. Both included a creamy little egg quiche follow by our choice of three entrées, main courses and deserts, plus coffee and wine. As entrées we chose foie gras (with rhubarb sauce) and white asparagus. Our main courses were beef (with béarnaise sauce with meat glaze and a molded gateau/cake of artichokes and potatoes) and lamb (on grilled vegetables, bulgar and pine nuts). Then chocolate for dessert (with praline cream and pear in Amoretto) and a cheese course (hard white, soft goat cheese and Roquefort), plus a bottle of Bordeaux (of which Elsa had just one glass) and two types of coffee. As much as I can recall after all that wine, it was a riot of subtle and contrasting tastes, colors and textures.

After Sophia left, we made a list of Paris sights we enjoy but hadn’t visited yet .. perhaps the world's most spectacular stained glass at Sainte-Chapelle, the medieval Unicorn tapestries at the Cluny (Museum of the Middle Ages), earth-shrinking navigation instruments at the Institute of the Arab World, the impressionists at the Musée d'Orsay, the raw North African Aligre market (video), and, if good weather holds, several lovely parks. 

Because we were there so long, we could roll with the punches. One morning we took a bus to the Musée d'Orsay but found an endless line (the longest we'd seen) with waits of probably a couple hours. And it was starting to mist. No problem, we could come back the next week when maybe the spring breakers have left. Instead we were soon on another bus to a threadbare little four-screen movie complex on the busy Boulevard Saint-Germain (where we once lived) and caught a matinee showing of the wacko/delightful "Grand Budapest Hotel." Luckily it had the original English sound track with French subtitles (except when they spoke French). Then lunch at 3:00 in a nearby restaurant we know. Then a bus to shopping and another one home. But in front of the Louvre the driver loudly ordered everyone off. It's happened before, I have no idea why. But soon a following bus came by and carried us homeward, where we bought deli lasagna and salad downstairs for our supper upstairs. A day with six bus rides, nothing special perhaps, but adapting like locals and enjoying Paris without getting caught up in must-see-the-d’Orsay-today tourist crazy-ness. 

Meanwhile the visiting hoards were gamely riding those windy open-top busses despite impending rain. One of them, a rotund clueless American, blustered onto our bus and swung his over-size backpack wide as he sat, mindlessly bashing a prim little Parisienne. So thoughtless. Like the 26 eighth-grade French students from Connecticut in Paris for spring break, yelling at each other from front to back of the bus. We never saw European kids do that. Actually, very few of the tourists we saw (i.e. people carrying cameras) were Americans. But those camera-carriers who were noisy (and overweight) often were.

Many American tourists seemed to headquarter in the nearby Rue Cler area so popularized by Rick Steves. While his books can seem simplistic and superficial, they do provide lots of practical advice. We had his Paris 2014 book on our iPad and referred to it for directions, admission prices, and the hours and days the museums are open.

We celebrated Elsa’s birthday by going first to the Museum of the Middle Ages for a noontime concert of Gregorian chant and 12th-century polyphony. It was in the part of the museum that was once a Roman bath. There I made my customary pilgrimage upstairs to my favorite room in all of Paris, sitting for perhaps the last time (with a lump in my throat) before the six incomparable 15th-century tapestries known as "The Lady And The Unicorn." Of course we then spent lunch wondering where next to spend a month  :-)

Elsa’s birthday lunch was at a Lebanese restaurant we’d once visited with our son Rolf. We each chose sampler meals of four mezes (tapas) and a main course served in an ornate hammered "muffin tin" with indentations for the glass bowls holding our food. All at an ornate hammered tin table. Between us we enjoyed a falafel ball on pumpkin puree with yogurt and lemon, chicken rolls with garlic cream, hummus with sesame paste and lemon, pureed eggplant/parsley/mint/radishes/tomatoes, artichokes sautéed in olive oil and tarragon, smoky grilled and pureed eggplant with yogurt and chives, a lamb confit served over cinnamon pilaf and chickpeas, and a stack of thin-sliced potato rounds grilled with yogurt and coriander alternating with grilled fish rounds served over a salsa of tomato and pomegranate syrup. They even surprised us with the “happy birthday” song and little baklava cakes and a candle! Such diverse eating opportunities are another reason we like it here.

Although we anticipated both warm days and rainy days, we got neither. I always wore a sweater and a jacket. And it wasn't till April 26, and only that one day, when  we might have needed umbrellas. Instead we stayed home and read after morning coffee downstairs at our usual window seats.

My book that day was an unusual "traveller's guide" to the D-Day invasion. It takes you through the intense combat at the Normandy beaches and then, after each one, devotes a few pages to your actually visiting those beaches today by car .. pointing out battlefields, remaining German gun emplacements, key bridges, rebuilt church steeples, parachute landing places, etc. complete with landmarks, hiway numbers and mile markers. It includes thoughtful quotes from soldiers on both sides. Surprisingly, it is available at amazon.

France may have no Silicon Valley but our flat was surely inter-connected. Shortly after we arrived and the television service was upgraded, we also got new phones. Though they're cordless, they don't connect to their own base station but rather through the flat's wi-fi network. I'd never seen that before. As I said, we got SO many international channels, from the US to China and all over the Middle East and Africa. And our internet service was 10x faster than at home. And our own just-for-France cellphone (which we never used) was so cheap. Not only is this TV/internet/phone package faster, more integrated and more imaginative than at home, but I'd wager it's cheaper as well. Why is that, in a country where there's undoubtedly more regulation, not less?

Often the TV programming was so thoughtful. Like an Al Jazeera feature about a controversial Serb general leading a Bosnian army unit in that 1990s war. Or German TV exploring Istanbul and a famous writer there a century ago. Or non-stop classical music .. like Minnesota Public Radio .. except these were all video performances. Some nights two or three operas at once. Somehow they covered the weather in just 30 seconds. What’s behind such sophistication? Economic reasons? Cultural reasons? Who watches all this anyway? Do such challenging and educational offerings just reflect the culture? Or perhaps help shape it?

In our last days, a little more exploring. Final shopping at Longchamps. A leisurely late-afternoon coffee and people-watching on Saint-Germain waiting for an overdue bus to come around the corner. 

But it's increasingly irritating to sit outdoors like the people in the above photo (not ours). Since France very successfully banned indoor smoking, the air can be really blue out there. You now must go INSIDE for a breath of fresh air.

Then back to Giallo Oro below us for our third feast of smoked salmon ravioli and rigatoni all’ amariciana. And Carla’s parting embrace and a full three-cheek kissy-poo, not just two. Then we got up early, stripped the bed, turned off the lights, locked the door and boarded our airport shuttle exactly on time at 6:35am. At the airport we again avoided Starbucks for a place that looked more French, but we left it, and  Paris, with the taste of the month's worst coffee lingering on our tongues. C’est la vie.

Back home, our own comforter and mattress never felt so luxurious.

Why so few of our photos in this blog? Don’t know, it’s like we’d taken them all before. Only twice did I carry my camera .. once up the Eiffel Tower: 

and with our German friends to Versailles (which again struck us as Louis XIV's arrogant excess).

So why do we travel this way, staying a month in one place? Because we like the way it makes us feel. Not smarter or braver or more elitist. Just more alive, alert, eyes wide open. This time, however, we moved a lot slower. So will we do it again? Maybe to Como or Montreux or Ravenna or Croatia or Palermo? You’d better watch this same blog spot in six months or a year to find out. So will we   :-)