Bastilling

I will be honest, I have been a bad traveller the last two days, having spent a lot of it holed up in my apartment.  My excuses for this are threefold: (1) It rained for roughly six hours this morning, mostly very hard, making any outdoor activity impossible and any activity involving a significant walk far less desirable.  (2) Today is Bastille Day.  This means most things are closed or opened late (even relative to usual), although there is very little predictability here (and some of the closures may have been due to rain... this is the kind of place where restaurants close when it rains).  For example, most museums are closed, although the Louvre is open (with lines of tour buses waiting to get into the parking lot and empty their hordes of underexercised Americans, you can imagine how excited I am about gong myself right now).  I noticed that the nicer the restaurant, the more likely it was to be open - so, coffee shops where one (although perhaps not me) could sit with a coffee and sneer at passers-by are closed, while stylish, fancy restaurants where patrons are expected to consume a full meal are open.  Also, nearly all Parisians are off work today and many were off yesterday, which means more people vying to attend the fewer available diversions.  And, my final excuse: (3) Being a tourist is extremely tiring.

However, that is okay.  I needed a good rest to energize myself, because in the next couple weeks I am going to be day-tripping like mad.  Plus there are many other Parisian museums to see, and I have somehow neglected to eat any Parisian chocolate and have done a grossly insufficient amount of Parisian shopping.  So I will be quite busy starting tomorrow.  For now I will record what I have done in the last two days.

One of the things I did was get coffee for my apartment, finally.  I was on my way back from my post-rain walk to check the status of Paris (answer: mobbed with tourists emerging from their hotel rooms for the first time all day, and still drizzling) and noticed, to my pleased surprise, that the grocery store was open.  There was much coffee, but I could find no good way to distinguish the instant from the non-instant (in the states, I do not buy instant coffee, obviously, and I'm not one hundred percent sure what it looks like).  Finally I found some Nescafe single-serving envelopes which had instructions about stirring the powder into water.  So, I brought it home to try it.  Instant coffee... how easy!  Had I been missing out on some amazing new revelation all this time?

No.  It was gross.  Weak and bitter.  It did not even smell like coffee, but like instant coffee, which it turns out is a totally different smell.  I added some of the dreaded demi-ecreme (half-skimmed, i.e. 2%) milk and that improved it substantially; the noxiousness of the two substances seemed to cancel out.  But it is still not proper coffee, and I think I would need to use two envelopes (and therefore twice as much demi-ecreme) in order to create any kind of reasonable facsimile.

A slightly more exciting cultural-contact event was meeting two French women.  I was sitting on one of the benches on Pont Neuf (a bridge), writing.  They were sharing a bottle of red wine that they were storing with an equal-sized bottle of water in a gift bag.  One seemed very stereotypically Parisian (she wore off-white pant and an off-white floaty top that looked quite good on her, and had the almost-no-makeup-or-hair-fussing look (perhaps achieved by quiet a lot of makeup and fussing for all I know) that is favored here) while the other did  not (she wore clothes unsuited to her, that made her seem both gangly and chubby even though I think she was neither and her stringy, too-long hair looked bad even by American standards); it turned out that while they are both Paris natives, the non-Parisian-seeming one had lived several other places, apparently diluting her Frenchness.  As I was scribbling in my obligatory-for-this-type-of-trip moleskin, the one in white asked me, in French, whether I was writing about them.  While I was trying to work out what this question was and how to reply (both linguistically and given that I was, in fact, commenting on them) her friend said, in English, "You don't speak French, do you?".  A pleasant conversation than ensued.  They were very excited when they learned I was from New York; the girl in white, whose English was not all that great, kept saying "Sex and the City!  Sex and the City!" (clearly she had not see my shoes, which would send Carrie Bradshaw into paroxysms just to look at).  We discussed non-touristy things to do in the city (Musee d'Orsay, according to them, which is one of the most tourist-saturated sites I've been to) and why you can't get coffee before 9 a.m. (it would be "abusive to the workers" if there were more jobs available, apparently).  The girl in white got hit on by a man who asked her whether she spoke Arabic (not anymore) and asked the other girl to take a picture of them together; they seemed to consider this an entirely normal and inoffensive event.  They also, in the course of the twenty minutes I talked to them, isolated an attractive male specimen, got his phone number, and called him to get him to round up his friends to take them out... so apparently that's how things are done in Paris.  Interesting.

I saw an airshow.  I was on the fence about the parade (military parade + mobs of French people + me with poor French = ?) and the rain made my decision for me; I would have watched it on TV but my TV appears not to work.  But then, around 11 a.m., during a brief pause in the Day of Downpour, a tricolor of cloud appeared in front of my window, jetted by six planes!  I watched for about twenty minutes as groups of planes flew across Paris from West to East, joined by several others on my street leaning out of their window, most in their pajamas and/or eating bowls of cereal.  (not early risers here)

Last night, for pre-Bastille Day, apparently the thing to do is party in the streets - this appears to be far more popular in Paris than in New York, perhaps even rivaling bars, probably because most of the bars seem to be also restaurants.  Partying in general seems to be more continuous here... in New York, it seems like most of the late-evening options are either very tame (go to a movie, sit in a coffee shop) or very party-y (go to a bar or club).  Here, perhaps because it is common to not start dinner until 9:30 or 10 and to linger for hours, and yet bars close between 12 and 2, there is much more of a continuum; there are more different things to do and, I think, less craziness.  I like it better.

Anyway, what I did was met up with my British friend and a German friend of hers, and we sat by the Seine on the Ile de la City and had wine and cheese and crisps (potato chips appear to be unchanged by crossing the Atlantic) and chatted and had cheese puffs thrown at us by idiot drunken boys (also unchanged by crossing the Atlantic).  I feel like this would have been much harder to do in New York.

I have also seen two small museums: the Carnavalet museum of the history of Paris, which was quite unusual: not a lot of commentary, and nothing whatsoever in English, just paintings and all sorts of artefacts - medallions, furniture, street signs - jumbled together.  Also the Crypte de Parvis, the archelogical dig revealing the well-preserved Roman city under Ile de la Cite.

Finally, I am going to have to learn to cook, because I bought some serious Parisian groceries.  In addition to massive amounts of cheese, these include (1) eggs (which I know how to deal with), (2) new potatoes (really not sure about these, but they are just potatoes, right?  I'm thinking I can cut them in pieces and plunk them in a frying pan with some Parisian butter), and (3) haricots vert, stringy green beans.  I got the ready-to-use kind without end bits, but I'm not sure they can be eaten raw... maybe the fry-with-butter trick will work on them too?  I was sort of seduced into these purchases by how good the produce looked in the Palais de Fruit, although as I quickly discovered by trying an apple, looks can be deceptive. Still, there's not much that can be wrong with a potato, right?

My picture-taking rate has slackened...

A Series of Small Adventures

• Last night I met my new British friend in the Latin Quarter for a coffee.  Her French is better than mine, and of course her Europeaness is far superior, so she had no trouble finding us seats at a cafe and, even though it was an hour when most people were drinking wine, ordering a cafe creme.  Then we walked around the Louvre's gardens, which are even more beautiful at sunset than ordinarily.
• When I woke up this morning it was raining.  Not gentle rain, but serious, thunder-and-lightening, an-umbrella-will-do-you-no-good rain.  I decided that this fact, combined with it being Monday (when nearly all museums and many other things are closed), meant I should not wake up quite so early.  However, when it stopped raining, I ventured out to buy an umbrella.  After a couple detours into clothing stores too cool for umbrellas (but selling many scarves and fake-leather purses), I found one at H&M.  I realize this is inauthentic, but authentic French umbrellas tend to be quite large (uncollapsible) and wouldn't fit nicely into my bag.
• Because I am being eaten alive on a nightly basis (I am told that I am imagining these bites into existence because there are no mosquitos in Paris... but examining things more closely, I'm pretty sure it's spiders, which most people seem not to be bothered by) I wanted to get some Benadryl.  I went to a pharmacy and determined that the woman there had no idea what Benadryl was (my British friend doesn't either, so I guess it is US-specific).  I said something in French about mosquitos, and she showed me "mosquito kits" (suggesting they are not totally nonexistent here).  Then I clarified that I wanted something for after the mosquitos, and she went behind the counter for anti-itch cream.  Later I discovered that it is apparently quite strong stuff; there are many pages of warnings (in both French and English) about my skin falling off and unwanted hair growing out of my blood vessels if I use it more than twice a day.  But hopefully it will keep me from waking up in the middle of the night wanting to die of itching, so that will be worth it.
• Those adventures under my belt, I convinced someone at Starbucks to sell me a large amount of coffee, which I increasingly feel is not nearly as caffeinated as the American stuff (at home, I can't get through a grande without getting jitters; here it barely affects me) and stationed myself in a corner to observe and write.  There were times that I felt I could have been at a Starbucks in New York, and times when it was very obvious I was somewhere else.  In Paris, people eat more at coffee shops - in New York, it's more about beverages - and the standard person alone with a muffin or sandwich eats it, often with a knife and fork, without doing anything else, while in New York they will pick at it while reading or working on a laptop.  I have seen very few laptops here.
• After lunch, I went for a walk.  I passed Notre Dame and crossed the bridge to Ile St. Louis, where I walked past all the little stores and saw many people eating ice cream, some while biking or roller-blading.  I crossed to Rive Gauche east of the Latin Quarter and walked past the University of Paris.  I saw many bookstores, some with signs in both French and Arabic.  One bookstore sold only scientific books for university courses; the physics books were all in English (I recognized quite a few; in the US they'd be considered graduate level or higher... while normal books are expensive in France, these struck me as reasonable or even underpriced) and the biology books were in French.  I did a brief circuit of the Jardin des Plantes, where there is a formal gardin and a museum of zoology.  
• On the way back, I saw a church with a sign outside in multiple languages instructing visitors to dress modestly.  It wasn't Sunday and I saw a couple people exit the church who were clearly tourists, so I figured it was okay to peek in... inside, the chuch was simple a long arch-topped tube.  Hundreds of chairs were lined up in rows.  At the back, near the entry, was the sort of welcome desk that all churches here seem to have, and near the front a dozen people were scattered in chairs.  They were making uneven, semi-musical sounds and it took me a few minutes to realize I'd walked into a service.  
• I went for a run with my British friend.  I've gone for a few runs here; except on weekend mornings, it's quite tricky.  Running seems to be just not done here; even in the Tuileries, where we saw several other runners, several people gave us blank scowls, as if we were somehow violating the purpose of the park (which, I suppose, is idleness and decadence, so we were).
• I had cheese as part of both lunch (chevre left over from Rue Cler) and dinner (packaged Comte, a raw milk cheese).  I cannot get over how delicious and inexpensive it is here.

Napoleon's Arch and Tomb. Also, drinking of coffee and champagne.

The Pig's Foot

My friend J has been staying with me the last two days.  As I mentioned in my last post, my plan for this weekend was basically to follow her around and eat things, which is more or less what I did.  

J has one of those enviable jobs in which she is frequently required to jet off to places like Belgium and Shanghai to be wined and dined (and have ideas that lead to profits); on this occasion, she was staying in a castle in the French countryside being given multicourse French meals and swag.  On Friday evening she and her coworker arrived in Paris and we all met up for dinner. Before we could make a decision about a restaurant, however, we walked past a wine bar ansd decided that we should have a drink first.  The three of us shared a bottle of (real) Champagne which was quite a lot better than the sparkling wine I've had and resulted in none of us being entirely sober.  We then went to a bistro called "Epi d'Or" (something along the line of "Golden Wheat").  I had quite a good meal there, of escargots (they taste like the butter and garlic they sit in.  Amazingly, in France it is apparently considered acceptable to mop up your extra butter and garlic with your bread.), followed by roasted duck (yummy, rich) and green beans (crisp) and tarte tatin (like apple pie but better).  I also tried a bite of the foi gras that J and her coworker ordered, which is basically super-refined, super-fatty chopped liver (in a good way).  After this, J and I went back to my apartment and chatted for a long time to let our food digest.

Yesterday morning we went for a run, despite the weather gearing up to be very hot and unpleasant.  After all, when you are going to eat all day, it is important to start out hungry.  For breakfast we went to a little cafe and had coffees and croissants like real Parisians (it took us a while to find a cafe that was open, as either waking up at a reasonable hour, or eating shortly after waking, or both, are unParisian).  Then we headed to Rue Cler, a street known for its lovely food.  This was rather a long walk, particularly at tourist gawking-everywhere pace, and by the time we reached our destination it was time for lunch.  We found a cafe with sidewalk seating, where J had fish and I had a mushroom omelette (and we both had more coffee).  My omelette was  prepared quite differently from American omelettes - brown on the outside, runny on the inside, and somehow infused with butter.  I was impressed at coexistence of such a broad menu and such good quality, particularly in such a modest-sized restaurant at reasonable prices.  

After lunch, we shopped in the Rue Cler fromagerie and then walked over to Les Invalides.  There were attractive parks and jardins to see, as well as the tomb of Napoleon and a museum of arms and armaments.  This took up the midafternoon, followed by our return walk through Tuileries.  We returned to my apartment for afternoon tea (fresh bread and our Rue Cler cheese, which included two yummy goat cheeses and a truly amazing soft white cheese called Saint-Felicien) and a nap.  Then it was time to head out for dinner...  

We decided to stick close to home and went to a restaurant I'd seen near my apartment called "Au Pied de Cochon" (The Pig's Foot).  They had wine in many sizes (small and large glasses, small and large carafes, small and large bottles), which was particularly nice for two people with different tastes in wine.  I ordered French onion soup to start (you have to have it once in Paris, I figure, even if it is summer), which was basically a giant bowl half-full of cheese with some onion soup on the bottom.  For my main course (being, as I'd expected, largely satisfied by the soup) I decided to be adventurous and order the restaurant's namesake, the Trottoir, i.e. the pig's foot.  This turned out to be... alarming.  I had expected some sort of confit of pig foot but instead I received, well, a pig's foot.  And half its leg, I think.  On a plate, with french fries.  I did not bring a camera to the meal, so I cannot show you a picture, but i can assure you that the image is quite clearly imprinted in my mind.  

After consuming some wine and a few french fries, I became emboldened to encounter Wilbur (the name I gave him) at the point furthest away from his actual foot.  It turns out that he had a skin, and quite a lot of fat, and bones - I stopped here, took a few deep breaths, and told myself that I have no problem eating chicken legs, under which was a small amount of dark-pink meat.  The meat tasted good, a bit like duck meat but lighter and less sweet in flavor.  However, there was much  more fat, bone, and gristle than meat, and after a few bites I decided I had experienced the Trottoir and was satisfied.

J thought there was probably much more meat to be had and suggested that I turn Wilbur over to get to his possibly meatier aspect.  I started to do this (with my fork), but she quickly told me to stop - it turns out, Wilbur still had toes, and also a thumb-toe.  She then removed the bottom half of Wilbur to her plate and, using her fingers (according to her, this is how it is supposed to be done, as evidenced by the bone plate and finger bowl they gave me) quickly turned him from a part of somebody's body into a mess of gristle.  She gave me a few pieces of meat to eat, and - after I refused to try it - demonstrated the correct way to consume the Trottoir, which involves sucking meat and fat off its bones.

For dessert, I had "soft chocolate cake" - this is chocolate cake that is uncooked inside, and the uncooked cake becomes a pudding or sauce - with vanilla ice cream.  Rather a boring anticlimax, I suppose, but very good, and with no disconcerting features. 

 

Today we went to Ile de St. Louis.  Actually, first we spent some time looking for an open cafe at which to acquire coffee; this turns out to be somewhat problematic even at 10 a.m. on a Sunday.  On Ile de St. Louis, we checked out the church, the old houses, and the stores selling jewelry and offbeat souvenirs; we also checked out the Berthillion ice cream shop, supposedly the best in the city.  We tried the "salted butter caramel" (actually salty, and with caramel bits) and the "nougat au miel" (rich and honey flavored).  For lunch we went to a creperie we'd been eyeing, where we had savory crepes.  J headed home, and I bought produce from the market in preparation for a renewal of my simple, pigfootless eating habits.

Amazingly, I am actually starting to get hungry again, and I am probably going to at some point require dinner.

A friend of mine is coming to stay with me for the weekend (yes, in my teensy Parisian apartment).  She is familiar with Paris, so I don't think she'll want to do a lot of standard sightseeing stuff, which is just fine with me.  She is also a big foodie, so my plan for the next two days is to follow her around and eat things.

Hopefully before she arrives there is time for a quick update.

Last night I went to the Jardin du Luxembourg to run with a British girl I met through a meetup.  We didn't do a lot of running because of the heat, but we had a nice conversation.  So, yay, I have someone to hang out with in Paris!  And, I took a bit of a running detour on the way home and still got a half-decent workout in.

Today I covered a lot of ground very cursorily.  I went to the Musee de la Vie Romantique, in George Sand's house, which was not terribly interesting.  However, the neighborhood was nice - lots of shopping but neither super-trendy nor touristy.  I went into the Lafayette department store; clearly all American department stores are a pale imitation of places like this.  Seriously, it was like a Palais du Mode.  Amazingly, normal Parisian people (and some tourists) were shopping there.  Also amazing were the prices - ridiculously high even to my NYC-trained eye.  Seriously, the standard price for a top (delicate, feminine, and clearly not machine-washable) - and this was including a discount of 30-50% for the summer sale season - was 100 euros or more.  There were a few cheaper things; of course they were much less nice.

Then I went and looked at the Palais Garnier, the older of the two opera houses.  I tried to muster some desire to spend 9 euros to see the interior but could not.  Then I walked to the Champs-Elysees, which was frankly not that impressive - like Madison Avenue but with wider sidewalks.  I walked to the Arc de Triomphe and looked at it.  Very big.  I walked back to my apartment by a different route, which took me by many big palaces.  Apparently building palaces is what they did for fun for a few hundred years before television was invented.

So this sounds like I did not have any fun, but I did.  I walked around some interesting areas.  The department stores has an amazing view at its top.  I saw many Parisian people and things.

However, I am just about burnt out on sightseeing, which is not so bad since I have seen most of the red-letter sites.  Next week I think I will start being a little more serious about my writing and a little less serious about sights.  Maybe I will try the Paris Walks book again.

Exhausted from my busy day yesterday, I decided I would be Parisian this morning, by which I meant sleeping late and eating fresh baguette with butter and jelly for breakfast while working on my novel.  This meant, of course, tromping to the boulangerie first thing in the morning chill (possibly people here would complain about the heat less if they would take advantage of the hours before noon).  But it was well worth the six flights of stairs, because the baguette I bought was much fresher than the baguettes I've been buying in the afternoon and evening at the same boulangerie have been (I have been able to preserve the freshness so far, more or less, by wrapping the bread in paper and plastic... I wonder if they are left out all day at the boulangerie?).

I headed out shortly after ten, by which time it was starting to heat up.  Also, after two cups of coffee yesterday, my body had decided to ignore the stories I had been telling it about caffeine being a rare commodity in Europe, and I felt groggy and out of sorts.  So I went into one of the less-intimidating cafes I was passing and ordered a "noisette".  I'm not sure entirely what this translates to, but it resulted in a small cup of espresso with a modest amount of milk or cream; between the cup's to-go lid and the giant tube of sugar they gave me (which I saved for some future exigency since I don't take sugar in my coffee) it was really quite cute.

The museum I was planning to go to was not scheduled to open for a few minutes (which meant it would not actually open for half an hour), so I went to an American bookstore.  I got lucky and found the exact book I had been wishing I'd brought along on my trip, Almost French.  Books are quite expensive here; basically they are the dollar cover price in Euros, which means they are about 30% more than the cover price (I, like most Americans, am used to paying around 30% less than the cover price by buying through Amazon or getting other discounts).  I've been craving memoirs about American women in Paris, which I suppose is sensible considering that's what I am.

Let me sidetrack here for a minute and say that, for possibly the first time ever, I decidedly underpacked.  I think part of this was due to the diversion of packing for Iceland and concern about my bag being above the European weight limit (which it turns, out, it is 16 pounds shy of, although I am guessing it will have somehow gotten heavier on the way home).  The only things I've brought and not used so far - still in the first half of my trip - are the dress, the skirt, and the nice sandals - all of which I think I am likely to use at some point, and which weren't really optional - and the bathing suit, which I brought in case I went to a hot spring in Iceland and will probably not use.  I did not bring an umbrella (on the grounds that all my umbrellas suck and I could buy an equally bad one in any city I was in) or my extremely versatile black windbreaker (basically out of stupidity) or sufficient reading material (again on the grounds that I could find English-language books in Paris) or all the shampoo and etc. that I knew I would need (yet again, on the grounds of such things being available in Paris).  What I was not counting on was that these things might not be available, or might not be to my taste, or might be extremely expensive.  My memory of picking up inexpensive, used English-language books in several countries as I traveled Europe a decade ago is either outdated or doesn't translate to Paris; here, English-language bookstores are few, expensive, and generally seem to have the attitude that foreigners are beneath them (even the ones staffed by foreigners); the selection is poor (mostly British books that have been out in the States for at least a decade); and the atmosphere is frequently unbookish.  Umbrellas are available for the usual gougey prices at tourist shops, but these places tend to (bizarrely) close when it rains, so I have not bought one yet due to a lack of desire to carry one around (and the same sort of irrational belief in persistence of the current state that leads me to always head out for the day, here or in New York, with every belief that at no point before evening will I become hungry).  As for toiletries, I have bought outrageously expensive French products; I was hoping they would be very good, in keeping with their prices and the general French penchant for quality, but in fact they are awful.  I have just found some not-too-expensive hair goop that seems not entirely inappropriate for my hair, so hopefully that will work out better.

In one area (besides food ), shopping has gone well for me.  I came on this trip with roughly five times as many bags as a normal person might need... i.e. backpack, large shoulder daybag, string backpack, large purse, and small purse, and found all of them lacking in some way and the combination not quite sufficient for all my needs.  However, for 10 Euros I have purchased a shoulder bag that is somewhat larger than a purse in size (although smaller than the purses many New Yorkers carry) and holds everything I need for a day without making me look like a tourist.  Although I haven't used it for this, it will even it my netbook (without the case).  The downside is that I tend to pack it full - a guidebook, a novel, a bottle of water, camera, wallet, various other things - and then my back and shoulders get sore.  Sadly, I do not think they sell stronger muscles in Paris.

The museum I went to today was the Musee des Arts Decoratifs.  This is housed in a wing of the Louvre but is separate, and it is quite huge (the Louvre, somehow, is much bigger, although I haven't been yet this trip.  It houses a truly monumental collection of artifacts - a few paintings, but mostly furniture, vases, and the like - arranged chronologically starting with the Middle Ages.  The amazing audioguide (included with admission, which was especially nice since the placards were in French only) really illuminated the significance of the various works, both sociologically and artistically.  And some of the pieces were really incredible - 20-foot masonry freizes from the 15th century, dozens of examples of marquetry and parquetry.  This continues over two very large floors through the Art Deco movement, and then there are smaller areas covering the following 80 years.  I thought these last bits were nowhere near as good: they were less thorough and, in the most modern sections, kind of silly.  In the "80's and 90's" exhibit, I had assumed I would see styles that looked familiar, but instead it was all avant-garde stuff that I'm pretty sure nobody (or almost nobody) ever owned.  This made me question the earlier exhibits... I had assumed that the 18th-century furniture, for example, was representative of what 18th-century people (at least, rich people in Europe) kept in their houses, and the rooms recreated from individuals' homes suggested this as well.  But that didn't seem consistent with the modern visits being portrayed... so, while the museum on the whole was great, it ended on a down note, and I wish I hadn't seen the more modern exhibits.

Because of its enormous size and later opening, the Musee took basically all day, and afterward I returned home to take refuge from the heat and have tea (that is what I am calling the meal one has at 5 p.m.).  Tonight, I am supposed to be meeting someone to go running in the Jardin du Luxembourg, with which there are two problems: (1) this Jardin appears to be 1.5 miles away from my home, which means I could get lost on the way, and also I will have a substantial pre-run (or walk, because at 7:30 p.m. the streets are likely to be much too crowded to run on) and (2) it doesn't even start getting cool here until 10 p.m., so it will be a cumbersomely hot run.  But!  I am brave and I will survive.  And probably I will carry water.