Bois de Boulogne

OK, so I have to come down on the side of not choosing this again, not at least with kids in tow. Evidently I didn't figure out which metro stop puts you closest in without a walking over highways, watching the ladies load into vans after the evening shift (which apparently ends around 1 pm), seeing one too many guys taking a leak, and a little too much cruising, and walking through a few too many wooded paths that you can't see around. Other than that we got our rowing in, and the lakes are actually quite lovely, but too much algae - the oars kept getting covered.

We will be ready for Lake Cheston and our own little deserted woods in a couple of weeks.

Bon soir.

Les Mis and les animaux

So yesterday we went to see Les Mis at the theater in ENGLISH at Chatelet. It's OK to like musicals - they are so huge and wonderful! What better story to tell, what better song to sing than the song of angry men? And if you don't think that freedom chaffing up against the law and tradition is part of a daily message in Paris you don't have your eyes open. In the USA, we are told we have so many freedoms, and in a way, to assume that you have them makes you a little lazy. Here you are told every day that you have to fight to keep from being trod underfoot. It may be part of Paris' museum-like atmosphere but really you hear some version of it from everyone here.

Today at the Louvre we saw among other thing Gericault's Raft of the Medusa and Delacroix's Liberty Leads the People. If my children are not little revolutionaries by the time we leave, it's not my fault.

Finally I took them to France's attic - not a museum, but the collection of taxidermied specimens and natural world collectibles at Deyrolle. Although a fire nearly destroyed the place a few years ago, we can attest to its back from death's door, living large existence today. Cabinets of butterflies, beetles, shells, and cases of birds, surrounded by giant polar bears and baby giraffes and a...phoenix...but I couldn't really bring myself to purchase anything except a couple of notebooks, but then again couldn't really look away having been brought up in house stuffed with preserved snakes, bats in formaldehyde, and real koala skin made into a teddy bear. Just another Parisian indulgence. Like the ice cream and cookies we had after. (They had to have something while I fed my caffeine habit.) (The one I had given up for 4 years.)

Shakespeare and Company 2 Following a Maritime Tour

I have to work backwards again, and in a twisted circle will start with yesterday's visit to the Museum de la Marine and a return to Shakespeare and Company.

I have a thing for boat models, so this was a lot of fun. Apparently the founder of the museum, François-Edmond Pâris, did as well, and his worldwide travels resulted in a collection of boat models and lovely watercolors that appear in the current exhibit Tous Les Bateaux du Monde. Having learned a lot about Pacific Sailing vessels when we went to Tahiti, it was fun to be able to recognize some different types and also to see the star charts made from reeds and shells. The english language audio tour was a little wordy, with a character pretending to be the admiral. But at least the audioguide worked!!

After a long tour of all the boats of the world, we headed to the city center and had ice cream (don't tell anyone) and spent an enormous amount of time at Shakespeare and CO. There is a children's room upstairs, just as tiny and well-loved as the other nooks and crannies there. Joshua bought The Underneath and Rachel bought A Fool's Girl (which is a children's book that takes place in Shakespeare's time). (Rachel also reminds me to tell everyone she is working on a story called Once Upon a Fairytale. Marketing lessons have not been lost.) I bought a beautifully produced book about Beirut called White Masks also available at Amazon.

So why am I telling you that you can buy this at Amazon. Because for several weeks I had been wondering about the idea of loud Americans. Really I thought that scenario only happened at the Eiffel Tower or Versailles, the part with loud Americans. Oh we are quite obvious regardless if we are being silent - I've decided it would take 3 years to learn to dress with the aplomb of a Parisian. But I really thought the loud part was unfair until yesterday when a woman was talking to her 20 something daughter who was recommending a book and, I will add, hinting that she wanted it for herself and the woman, who had been speaking loudly about whether or not to buy a signed James Frey book (really?) said in her really really loud voice forget it, she could order that, or any of these, from Amazon "for half the price. Really, for half the price." Which isn't even true because the books at Shakespeare and Co. are not overpriced. I couldn't even look, her daughter appeared to want to melt into one of the crevasses in the floorboards. I was thrilled to buy my kids a book at Shakespeare and CO. Or the Red Wheelbarrow. Or any Paris bookstore. Am I just delusional? I don't want to make fun of her - it just made me really sad. Maybe she had buy-me-mommy fatigue. Maybe she lived alone and had lost her job and used her savings to visit her daughter and things in Paris were a lot more expensive than she had thought they would be.
The killer was that the daughter was holding a copy of The Unbearable Lightness of Being. Irony: discuss. What would it have meant to give all that bound between two covers, plus a happy memory of tooling around St. Michel on a perfect day and looking at books? I hope I get to come back to Shakespeare and Company in 10 years and buy my kids another book. But who knows, I might have shopping fatigue and try to weasel my way out of making a purchase...
OK, I'll save the rest of the catching up for later.

Doubledecker Shakespeare and Company

No clue how it got to be Thursday. Do I work backwards or forwards? Sunday, the flea market, Monday, the Champs Elysees planted like farmer's fields, Tuesday another view of the Eiffel Tower and a double decker bus ride, yesterday, a stroll through Mesopotamia at the Louvre.

Les Puces, the Sunday flea market at Clignancourt. Where are Linda Heck and Keri Moser to help work through racks of vintage clothes and chotskies? There are acres of things, plus the stores with "real" antiques. Plus the hawkers of clothes and shoes lining the streets before you get there. I would like to tell you that I left with some small thing, but indecision meant I took only inspiration. And the possibility of returning.

Monday the Champs Elysees was closed to traffic as the farmers of France turned it into fields with crops and trees. There was something vaguely hilarious about walking on top of one of the busiest streets in the world, posing in front of stoplights. Again I was taken with the ability of Parisians to stop and enjoy each little section, each set of plants, and pose for pictures in front of say a row of pineapple plants or sunflowers. Then pop into the Disney Store or Zara for a quick shopping sidebar.

On Tuesday we had planned to visit the aquarium and it was closed, only I think we were at the Museum of the Marine and I simply didn't know where the aquarium entrance was located (Dear Paris, more signs please, or a map at Trocodero) so I thought it was closed. Rachel suggested we take a bus tour. She practically ran across 4 lanes of traffic and hopped on a Tour Rouge bus. For something I had vowed to never do, it was a load of fun. The vantage is unbeatable even if the tinny static-filled earphones are tiresome. And you get little gems, like that the Seine bridge at Place de la Concorde was built with stone from the Bastille so that the people of Paris could continue to trample them underfoot...Parisians and their freedom of Man thing again...we walked most of the way home through St. Germain then returned home and stopped at Cafe des Industries for dinner. No sign of the cat who is usually perched on the benches in the back. CDI is a great place to play ISpi, It looks like someone's idea of an explorer uncle's run down study, with snakeskins and animal heads, old radios and car models, contemporary and old paintings, and ... the gallery of breasts, or what looks like every cliched picture of topless native women ever published in the magazine of the yellow border. The crowd is fun, the food is never bad, and they have a nice Quincy and even nicer tiramisu.

After catching our breath in the morning yesterday we visited the Mesopotamia rooms (actually the Near Eastern Antiquities) at the Louvre. Joshua was a fabulous tour guide, explaining kingdoms and kings, the significance of the potter's wheel, and the establishment of law with Hammurabi's code (for every expression of freedom in Paris, there is an equal expression of le loi!) The little prehistoric female deities are my favorite, along with the giant room of griffins tiled in blues and greens...hello new paint colors for the house. Rachel plans to make a cylinder seal, I think she started with one of the many wine corks in the apartment...we ended the day at our neighborhood bistro where the guys met us and sang, you guessed it: I ain't no student...of ancient culture...before I talk...I should read a book..


AND, I was able to slip out and hear the incomparable Marilynne Robinson read at Shakespeare and Company...and she did when asked what in Idaho could have inspired her to create Pulitzer Prize winning work, reply that it was 4 years of Latin in high school, followed by another in college. Is there a better teacher than Cicero? she asked...

Villette

So yesterday was a big outside day - off to Villette!! First we took the metro to buy a soccer ball at Les Halles, and I realized how absolutely integral it is to our lives now. I will really miss the train, and how you pop up out of the metro into another world, whether it is only 3 blocks or 3 miles away. Anyway we traveled with our newly acquired soccer ball to Park Villette which is in the northwest part of the city. The park is flat, with 35 hectares of green space, and there are some museums there, but a lot of separate fields and playgrounds, all along a section of canal. I forced the children to writhe out into the sun like snakes emerging from a crevasse while I lounged about and read. Many many families were there, it was nice to see hordes of children. On the way out we stopped at one of the vendors and had churros - the funnel cake of France I call them. I tricked the children into walking home along the canal - probably about 2 miles - from Villette to Bastille. It was a beautiful day, and we wandered from one neighborhood into the next. Swarms of people were outside, either sitting next to the canal, or at a cafe, but not the tight tourist crowds of midtown, thankfully. We passed a flea market, and men playing boules, and playgrounds over the covered part of the canal. And of course we end by looking at the July Column at the Bastille monument through the trees, which has now become our familiar homing beacon.

Perfection

Sometimes the day seem to fall into a perfect pace. Thursday broke and the weather was promising, so we headed to rue de Cler and spent a huge amount of time picking things for a picnic at the Champs des Mars. We found white peaches, cherries, wonderful sausage and goat cheese in ash, pistaches and of course eclairs! The day was clear and we even have sunburns to show for it. We read and looked at the Eiffel Tower all day. My morbid fear of heights keeps us from attempting a climb to the top, but it was lovely just to look at. And my favorite part was opening my eyes to see a black poodle, perfectly coiffed, looming over my face with a tennis ball. He just played and played and fetched the ball then moved to another set of picnickers.

Yesterday revolved around getting to the lab, but in the morning, conveniently on the way, we stopped at Chatelet and walked on the side toward the Louvre, and for several blocks there are pet stores and gardening shops. Rachel in her quest to keep a count of dogs each day counted 88 in less than an hour. The animals were chubby and clean and so many people work in the stores that each animal gets taken out and fussed over quite a bit. The only truly odd thing were the cardinals for sale in one store - 68 euros each. Oh, and dogs are really pricey - some fancy chihuahuas were 1950 e.

There was a great little place for a hamburger close by, then we continued on the metro to the photo lab, which Stephen will blog about soon. It was amazing. We had a tour not only of the digital lab, but also the old black and white lab where they still make prints in the darkroom. Wow.

And then the babysitter came and Stephen and I went to L'Area, a very popular place on rue de Tourennes. It has to be one of my favorite dinners ever. Eduardo the owner suggested ceviche, and it was sublime. Not too sharp or over the edge, a ceviche for lingering. Beautiful presentation with lemons and tomatoes and cilantro. Eduardo chose a wine, and to our great admiration brought a simple white rioja, perfect! The menu is brazilian and libyan: Stephen had melt away chicken with coconut and ginger called Franco a Salvador, and I had some kind of poached salty fish with a sauce and mashers. You know how fish reminds you of where it's from, like when you have a bite of the ocean? This was like a bite of the seafloor. I think a great dinner takes you other places while you are eating: through oceans and tributaries, vast meadows or high trees. It should give you a memory that you've never experienced. The ending was a chocolate mousse with candied ginger so thick it was like a ganache. If you know me you know how much I like to cook with ginger, so I loved this place. 4 blocks from our apartment.

Again

with the haircut, because it took...four...hours. yes the kids were with me. I could not get them to go the the park around the corner or to the bakery to get something to eat... and no, I did not expect this to take four hours. Pourquoi? First, there is a consultation, then one with the English speaking colorist, then cut and dry before we color. Because they are not about my garish American highlights, let me tell you. The colorist says, "I am going to fix it." Whatever. She explains the steps and then says she is going to put on some "clear." OK. So, three hours into this process, I am worried about my children. They are being angels, as the guy who actually cut my hair said later. But I am a little worried. Each step is taken with great care, and this whole process involves not one but three head massages. But as I am waiting in the chair, well into hour four, I am looking in the color book and noticing that the page about "clear" has models, beautiful of course, but all BLONDE. The squirrels in my head come to a complete standstill. Okay Dokey. This is an adult situation. We are going to act like an adult. In fact, we will love our brown roots and bright in appropriate blonde hair. It will be okay.

Needless to say it had nothing to do with blonde hair. It was some kind of shine. But after four hours they could have given me My Little Pony hair and I would have said, hey, cool, thanks! The kids were dazed zombies. My hair is awesome. Again, everyone there seemed so interested in their part of the job. And let's be clear, I paid no more than I pay at home and this was not a high dollar left bank shop. I may go back just for the head massage - when I have a sitter!

We spent the afternoon (it is gorgeous again! Thank you Paris!) at Luxembourg Gardens with a new friend and one of her delightful children (do you know how hard it is to find a hip brunette with a bun, jeans and converse and child on a sunny afternoon at the jardin?) The kids pushed the boats around for quite a while. Apparently while I was blabbing instead of watching attentively a little boy who thought Rachel was pushing HIS boat whacked her on the wrist with the pushing stick and starting yelling at her in French. Thankfully she just ignored him and we didn't have to deal with a body retrieval...we wandered over to the playground, which has a nice climbing feature and also a zip line - not as big as the one Stephen made in Monteagle yard that covered half an acre, but nice enough. Also, we watched our friend's daughter meet a little French girl and hit the tragic language barrier. This sweet girl offered her a place on a little toy and twirled her around, and then stood dejected as her overture in french was met with a stare. So sad.

An orangina at a cafe on St. Germain on the way home...a polite waiter, one who smiled...I could get used to this.

Haircuts and stuff

I explained to Rachel today that we are having an unusual visit to Paris. We are seeing how a neighborhood works, like getting to know our bakery and ice cream shop and little bistros, but also dropping in on the tourist things. Rachel was commenting that when you see pictures of a city you see the big things but you don't normally see all the buildings and none of the ugly things. And we've stepped over some pretty ugly things. The human miasma of a city. I've also tried to express my great love for the thrum - I turned to Joshua on the metro and told him that sometimes I have to pretend I'm just one cell in the bloodstream of a giant human circulatory system. Perhaps that's one reason our transactions take so long here - people make an effort to humanize them whether it's buying bread or getting a haircut. The kids came with me to the photo lab yesterday - 11 stops on the metro but no line change...and boring as hell to them but perhaps a little insight into the day life of the adult world. They also were able to go swimming!

So yeah the kids got haircuts yesterday, and mine is in a hour. And the tourist part? Besides eating at MacDonald's on the Champs Elysee yesterday (a very different experience than the drive through in Monteagle!!) we went inside Notre Dame, left a candle for Jeanne d'Arc, ate a citron crepe and then climbed the steps up to the belltower. I hate, btw, heights of any sort. Our 4th floor apartment view makes me dizzy. I got through the whole claustrophobic thing with the mantra, "I love my children, I love my children..." of course the reward is that stunning view of Paris with the gargoyles standing guard...

Time Warp

I swear I am in a time warp. I don't seem to be able to leave the apartment until 10 am at the earliest and having dinner at 10 pm is not the least bit unusual. Of course it isn't here. Look, it's 9:39 and not nearly dark. My children are now in a perpetual state of exhaustion. Last night, we went to Night of the Museums, and visited the Grand Palais where giant bubble machines were hooked up, dispensing bubbles from above. It was all very sweet. There were about a dozen machines, and each one presented a different scent, not all of which I could identify. For crying out loud, I said that something presented. I am going to end up like David Sedaris, simply speaking poorly understood english with a accent. BTW a copy of that book is here in the apt. Clearly I should reread it, perhaps as more of a cautionary tale. Anyway you waited for a bubble to pop on your nose so you could try to guess what it was. Then, in an especially cruel twist, people would be murmuring around us the name of whatever it was, but of course in french - some vocabulary word we never got ot in Mrs. Scott's 12th grade class. "Ah - c'est [blah blah blah french words here]. So as not to embarrass oneself you would just say, "Oui! Oui!"

We walked out from Grand Palais to the Pont Alexander 3 where there is a lovely view of the Eiffel Tower. It really never fails to mesmerize, especially on the hour when the dazzling lights go off. Everyone seemed very happy, lots of picture posing, and then we continued to the Louvre, which was the 400-mile-Bataan-March should you ever mention this night to my children. I love the pyramid at night, and there were a blue million people there. We were home well after midnight with two very tired children. Oh, and I have to add that the Metro is different place at night. Totally packed with teens and clubbers, and on this night, more than a few middle agers with kids.

Earlier in the day we went to Buttes Chaumont again, with a picnic, but it was not as warm as the last visit. But I was better organized so we actually bought bread at the bakery before arriving in the neighborhood of no open bakeries.

OK, this is a good place to mention that of the many things that will make me (even more) intolerable when I return home, getting fresh bread every day, in fact sometimes twice a day. It means more in Paris than running water.

Today, again with the market. This time I felt triumphant - a no fear day. Melt in your mouth spinach, shrimp, and those amazing oranges with the gold and red centers...two blocks away. Plus I found a paella guy, so maybe we do that next Sunday for lunch. Also I found a bread with macadamia nuts, apricots, raisins and FIGS. In the afternoon the babysitter took the kids out to see Robin Hood - verdict: most excellent. I was given a detailed account tonight at dinner. I felt like I had seen the movie AND read the movie's book written by our talented friend David Coe: BUY IT HERE. Stephen and I slipped out for brunch, and I stopped in at the Aubade boutique... End of post...

Melange

So again the days have just mixed up themselves and gone too quickly. It is still chilly - cold that you just can't seem to shake. The sky now is a periwinkle blue, and I'm looking out of our bedroom window. The Pantheon glows in the distance, strange that a place for the dead seems so warm. The twinkling Tour Montparnasse looms, always out of place. It seems to never really be dark.

So earlier this week we visited Musee D'Orsay, again on a cold bitter day. We were happy to make it in after a bit of a wait. People are not exactly flocking to the jardins in this weather, so lines are getting longer at museums and shops more crowded. But D'Orsay is always worth the wait. Even on a sunless day the light coming in through all that glass is just lovely. So much space for all the work. Rachel is the perfect age to admire the Renoirs, asking about the little girls sitting just so, and also to study the ballerinas. Joshua is playing his cards a little closer to his chest, perhaps some of the larger narrative pieces held his interest. As much as you want to feel you are a little too jaded for the Gaugins and van Goghs, well, it just isn't possible.

Part of the museum, surprise, is under renovation, so a lot of work isn't out. Paris itself seems is under renovation -

So yesterday we went back to the art store in my hunt for mats and envelopes. Of course, the store was opening an hour late for the bank holiday. Beaumarchais was absolutely deserted but we walked up to Republique and found a bakery open, crammed with people, and bought apple tarts and ate them on our walk. No luck at the art store but we picked up more pencils and Rachel bought one of those small wooden mannequins. Then we carried on with our day. We went up to Montmartre to see Sacre Couer and I taught my children the art of choosing a place to eat that is three blocks back from the major tourist attraction. We found a warm place with lovely food except according to my offspring there was too much cheese...did I mention it was warm? We headed back out and waited in line to visit the church. It was, as always to me, a place of realignment, even in a crowd that you can't stand still in. We went around once, sat for a while, then went through a second time with the smoke from incense lingering in the air. I am always humbled by the people holding onto the foot of the virgin and praying, or kneeling at some altar or another, quite oblivious to any number of onlookers, or lighting candles to someone whose altar area has had little attention. I try to figure out why they are seeking this particular saint for adoration. In all religion seems much more visceral in europe and latin america.

In the evening we had a lovely dinner at someone's house. We were treated to the most amazing veal dish and homemade pear cake with chocolate. the pears had been covered in chocolate, frozen, then slipped into the batter before they could melt and become too much mixed in. Someone spends as much time as I do thinking about cake. The wine was continuous - and the children were in close company with twin boys who are Rachel's age. if only they could have all gone out and played soccer...

Today the saga of mats continued. A series of unfortunate events (ie backorders) prevented me from ordering from the company I use in the US...so I finally found a company in Germany. (I was not able to find a supplier in Paris.) So I called one office who said I had to talk to berlin, and Berlin did no answer the phone so I called back Kassel who said, oh, Berlin is not in until 12, so then I waited to call Berlin and talked to someone who said, no you have to order from Kassel, so I just started laughing. She quickly understood my problem and helped me place an order, but between my lack of languages and her underutilized english it took almost an hour to figure out the order. But how nice that she was willing to help and hung in there until we had the whole thing worked out. This is why sometimes we don't leave the house until 4:00...

Hole

So, picking up where we left off. I've been in a daze reading The English Patient of all things. Finished last night. How you pack a whole book into the last two sentences. We found these oranges in the market, some come wrapped in blue and red paper with a picture of woman on them. They peel like velvet, split unevenly. The interior ranges from a lemony yellow to a deep stained red (pigeon's blood?) and you think, wow, this is going to be a pretty good orange. You slip it into your mouth and if you've been distracted by anything it falls away. Like Sappho you lose your senses, become speechless. You could eat this orange for eternity. That's how I felt about this book.

So what makes a book come alive inside of you like this? For me, having some underlying intellectual structure ratchets things up a lot. And two things happened in this book: the author lets us know two things, how the book is going to play out, and where he gets his structure. In the first three paragraphs you think the the young woman making her way through an empty villa is going to end up in bed with a lover, and you quickly learn that instead she is attending a burn patient. Things will go as they say, poorly. The rest of the structure becomes apparent as characters keep mentioning Miles Davis and jazz and how sometimes you have an intro that clearly the musician doesn't want to let go of to get to the song part, called a burden, and then you see, oh, the writer set up the first half of the book as a burden...and on and on. And then, because he is brilliant, we have the added aspect of this being not just a novel of lovers but a novel of ideas about race and nationality. I am loathe to return this to the owner until I have my own copy.

And I thought just because I saw Ralph Fiennes acting in a equally brilliant adaptation that I didn't have to read the book.

But out of my head and back to Paris. Saturday we had croissants and chocolate at a neighborhood place and then visited the Red Wheelbarrow again, the lovely English language bookstore, my island of english populated with Aussies. It's like finding a vein. Just need it, just a little. Then I can get back to long lines to buy loaves of french bread and metro attendants demanding that I speak only in French and not understanding things I order on the menu.

We also had a proper brunch on Sunday at the Bonnes Soeurs, yes those kind of sisters, the ones with habits, for Mother's Day a holiday which we all seemed happy to downplay. The children made lovely drawings and photographs for me as well.

Monday involved errands, Tuesday Rach was sick, and it just gets colder each day. I will get to today tomorrow. D'Orsay. It deserves its own space not tossed with The English Patient like a salade.

Art et Artichokes

So on Thursday we had again errands - this time to Fed Ex which is conveniently located by all the major department stores. I was grateful that it was actually a Fed Ex office, with live persons who wanted to help. But like all things French, confusion reigned. All I had to do was type a few things in - but of course the keypad was French, meaning the letters are not distributed the same way and some of the keys are different. I had forgotten this. Decades of using an American keyboard meant that a two-minute task took 20. The kids just laughed at me - spelling everything with a Q then not being able to find the Q when I needed it. But eventually we finished, and I snuck in a few minutes of shoe shopping and found some ankle boots. It is, in short, really chilly here and I did not pack any of my 3 pair of boots.

In the afternoon we visited the Pompidou Centre and it is still butt ugly on the outside, but oh how beautiful inside, although the escalator overlooking the outdoors makes me stomach sick. The museum houses an incredible collection of modern and contemporary work, and I forget that I miss DC's museums and stopping in to see the Dubuffets and Kandinskys and Miros and Picassos. Lovely thing is that they have the wisdom here to skip the Motherwells. Apparently they never made it past the gravitational pull of DC.

Rachel cracked me up when she noted in her what's the big deal voice that the Ad Reinhardt black canvas and the Yves Klein blue canvas were both just rectangles with one color paint, one black, one blue - that they were just alike, practically. In one way you can't argue with that, but I had never put those two together in any part of my mind.

I also had to explain why on the other floor there were no normal paintings, and why the Guerilla Girrrls existed, and why having a neon flashing sign that alternatively spelled out HIP USA and ASS was in a museum.

Friday evening was date night, and Stephen and I stepped out to Mama Shelter which is way the heck out by Pere LaChaise. I think we were in need of something that looked like New York. I had some drink called the Brazilian Mule that involved lemon and ginger beer, then I had the most beautiful artichoke (and switched to wine, thank you) I have ever laid eyes on. Being the trendsetter, I noticed that people all over the room followed my lead and ordered one too. There is something deeply visceral and satisfying about eating an artichoke in public.

Oh Paris.

I know you're mad about me taking credit for all that warm weather, but do you really have to continue to take it out on all of us with this damp chill? Can't you get over it? For crying out loud I had to buy a jacket today. Pleather. We're cold here...

So yesterday (after two errands took over an hour) I thought we would explore Montorgueil but really it got to be too cold. We ended up eating bad pizza. We did check out St. Eustache however, and parts of Les Halles. We returned there today where I found the jacket. On sale. They are giving away winter clothes, on with the ankle cuff sandals, and as I said earlier - hold onto your hat - the blue jean shorts and black stockings. Mark my words you'll be seeing this on a college campus near you. In the evening we met friends for a drink at the CHilean bar where we want so badly for them to make better mohitos. Oh well. But we stopped at a bistro on rue des Tournelles where we felt quite welcome and cozy and had a lovely family dinner. When I feel less lazy I will find the receipt and post the name. For me, again with the duck. I can't help myself. And pears and ice cream. And Rachel discovered a charlotte. Yum. Stephen won with a seafood rissotto that was very light, almost like it was spun from the ocean air.

But today I did manage an educational moment, we returned to Jardin des Plantes and this time visited the Grand Gallery of Evolution and the special Dinosaur exhibit at the Natural History Museum. The Jardin itself grew from the King's Garden established in 1635 by Louis XIII, while the museum was established during the Revolution. The Grand Gallery of Evolution is in a beautiful setting, a space that binds the old with the new in both architecture and ways of displaying items from the natural world. For example the old idea of cases still exists, but they are pushed to the edges of the rooms and many are shown in modernized displays of texture and composition, rendering the subjects part of an aesthetic experience. Toward the middle of each floor the space for presentation is more open and the re-creations less pedagogic. There's just something very pleasing about the whole thing. I'm not sure if we took in all the ideas that corresponded with each level. I did come up with some fabulous ideas for windows and room dividers based on bottles with blue transparencies and jellyfish in them, and also those modernized cases with butterflies. I'll have to skip the locusts at my house.

So you can see how I was tired by the time we decided that winter jackets were now a must and how I might end up with a pleather jacket wanna-be.

Dreary Dreary Dreary

The dreary day matches our momentary expat mood. Our home state is experiencing the worst flooding in recorded history, and while there has only been a thunderstorm or two in our hometown, the major population centers of Nashville and Memphis are underwater. Normally this would not effect us so much, but we learned that Stephen's niece's fiancee's brother lost his life in the first hours of the flood, swept up in its wake. It is devastating: he leaves 2 children. Everyone hoped for a different outcome, a short circuited cellphone, something, the tragedy is very real and compounded with the difficulty if not impossibility of moving around Nashville. Our niece and her fiancee could not even fly into Nashville yesterday from their spring/summer working excursion to Connecticut. Our hearts are really broken for his family.

I can't begin to express how much you miss home when there is an emergency.

The weather turned here as well, dropping to 40 F and clouding over, so today was spent on expenses, email, phone calls and research. I did get out yesterday with the children, in the rain and rainbows, to shop at the street market (I am now calling it the market of ceaseless embarrassments as I stumble through not only my bad French but my increasingly prominent shyness) for cheese and sausage and beautiful beautiful fruit. (Foodies I made lovely porc chops with pears and mushrooms and a side of mango in the evening...not a normal combination but I made it seem perfectly normal.) During the afternoon we hit the Museum of Magic which is in our neighborhood. It was charming and homespun, with some interesting artifacts from the history of magic, things that people were cut in half within, boxes that made disembodied heads, optical illusions, magic lanterns, and it came complete with a "Spectacle" a magic performance which was alternatively delightful and creepy and involved, yes, sleight of hand. The kids bought some magic tricks and have been practicing...

Les Buttes

Skulls, Axe Cop, and Le Bon Marche

A reprise of Friday, the best day ever, but before please be informed that the only cultural imprint my children will have from their time in Pairs is Axe Cop, this from hanging out with the writer friend. SkeletonWitch exposure I didn't mind so much; Axe Cop however has become a obsession. Thanks Writer.

So yesterday we saw the coolest exhibit. It falls so effortlessly into my post post punkedness. It is called C'est La Vie - Vanaties de Carravage de Damien Hirst. Poor Damien, having to still be identified with a first name. It is at the lovely Maillol Musee in the 6th. In short, a history of death in art, with the focus on its representation by skulls. Among others it includes pieces by of course Caravagio and Hirst, Warhol, Basquait, Picasso, Sherri Levine, Felix Nadar, Braque, and Joel Peter Witkin. My favorite was a pirate skull by Piotr Uklanski.

Lunch was put together at Bon Marche. I know, I know, access to the delicacies of the world and we had ham sandwiches, again, and coconut cookies. But it is the experience of Bon Marche, n'est ce pa? Plus I was able to bring home olives and such for later.

Dinner was at La Souk, just Stephen and I. La Souk is a little piece of Morocco in the Bastille, ochre walls and spices and a teeny place to sit on the outer porch. We skipped apps and went straight in for the kill: I had duck tangine with figs, almonds, and apricots, and Stephen had tangine of lamb with pears. Pistache creme brulee for dessert, with perfumed coffee. A perfect meal since my favorite thing in the world of dinners is duck with any fruit and what fruit is more special than figs? Check Stephen's twitter for a pic, I'll post one later.

Today we went to the Parc des Buttes Chaumont - and what can I say, Paris never ceases to amaze. The Parc must be well-beloved, so many people there, picnicking and walking and hanging with families and lovers. A terrific view from the top and on one side a grotto with a waterfall. Can you invent this? It is a little fairyland in a metropolis. More later off to dinner. Trying the trendy hamburger place again.

More peeps in stone

Another day at the Louvre yesterday, beating the summer crowds although by the end of the day I couldn't tell you how to shoehorn another person in there. Rachel was interested in sculpture and so we wandered through the lovely light of the Cour Marly and Cour Puget and strolled through the Grande Gallerie to prepare for another visit to view paintings. Rachel's favorite: Athena holding an Apple. Joshua gave us the rundown on the myths behind the sculptures although he refused to get involved with the story of Psyche and Cupid. He also noted that we have not toured the Mesopotamian galleries so that will be next on our list. My favorite? Diana of course. Lisa I will post a picture soon for you to share with your Diana...

And we ended our afternoon with a well-placed exit at the Metro across the street from a lovely Italian chain ice-cream shop that has become our favorite. Coconut and passionfruit go well together.

Louvre

First day at the Louvre and Rachel is learning about positioning herself for access to photograph. Today we ventured through the Egyptian, Greek and Roman galleries - Joshua's choices. And we made a jib to the Mona Lisa since we were close by. I have to say she's in better digs than the last time I saw her...1985...the children were surprised that the actual painting is not very large. We'll return another day for French Flemish and Italian paintings...etc etc...in the meantime I'm pleased that my singular lifetime skill of collecting unrelated facts has come in handy. I can answer questions about egyptian gods, mummification, the book of the dead, animals in the Nile, Greek religious thought and on and on. I did not know, and please chime in if you can help, how they got that lovely blue finish on the porcelain hippos, exactly what Horus did, and why the dog on the ceiling was breathing fire. There are only so many answers you can make up.

I love the Josef Kosuth installation on the medieval level. I will post a picture later.

In other news the trend of pantyhose or stockings under shorts is more widespread than I had hoped. Are we seeing this elsewhere? Besides in horrid flashbacks? But I have to say if it's going to work in any city, it's Paris.

Life

A quick visit to St. Sulpice on Sunday and a candle for the Virgin, while the organist played in the afternoon. We had just entered and were letting our eyes adjust when this organ chord came out of nowhere and we nearly jumped out of skins. I wanted to take a look at the crypt. A side door was open but I didn't feel like just stealing in there. Recall this is the da Vinci code church - I can't imagine how tired they are of all that, even years later. We came back to the hood and walked around the Marais later in the day and found chocolate and gemstones. There is also a wonderful store just up the street from us on Tournelles with strange objets including felt rolled into pillows and mats and carved cow skulls.

We put aside museums and churches for a couple of days...a few housekeeping and work things to attend to, and the fact that almost every museum is closed on Tuesdays.

Monday took us to Monceau - it is really quite lovely with all the trees. But it was cooler than we expected and even with a brisk walk we decided to pack up early. I think it will be a great choice as the spring heats up. It has the fakey ruins that are either really lovely or in the case of the brick pyramid - kind of broken and unkept.

Today Rachel and I had some time so we headed to the department stores. Printemps is really its own living museum - both in terms of clothes and those who shop. One woman, covered head to toe in sequins, I'm telling you in the middle of the day on Tuesday, was being followed around by an entourage. Who was she? Clueless. A few other serious dressers, more women in those ankle-buckled sandals, and a few Kiki de Montparnasse types back from the dead with the skin that has never seen the sun and the black cropped hair and red red lipstick. And one with her dog. Although I have no idea if the real Kiki ever had a dog. Rachel asked if dogs were allowed in stores; I ventured that that was the type of women who would not be told where she could take her dog...really it's something women here do not take to at all. The cashier told the woman who walked up behind me that he was closing his drawer. She responded, "Really?" and didn't move a muscle...I heard him say the same thing as he started checking her items and I was leaving and another woman walked up. Poor guy is probably still there.

Catching up

The bells are ringing all over the city...we have 2 windows facing rue de Tournelles, tall with those iron latches, that we open each morning. No screens to hold out the world, it's very pleasant to feel the breeze and sometimes smell the steaks that the neighbors seem to be forever grilling. I've planted some herbs in the windows so I can keep up my pretense of thrifty french housewife...and again, another sunny day. We plan to explore a little more into the Marais today since a lot of shops and restaurants remain open on Sunday.

Yesterday our educational visits brought us to St. Chapelle (under renovation!! one side is cleaned and bright, the other is the usual dingy stained smoky stained glass...and about 4 sections are blocked while they remove sections and clean them...very disappointing to not find yourself bathed in light.) The rose window was not covered. Robin maybe you can move here to practice conservation and preservation...it must be a tedious and heart stopping job.

The usual yesterday, crepes, a stop for ice cream...we found a Ms. Butler present in the Ms. Butler store. We must love our home very much since we find so many things that remind us of it.

A friend has asked about fashion, because, as she puts it, she finds herself in the world of sweater sets. So in short: options. Boots, heels, flats - it doesn't matter. A wry sense of combining colors - teal suede boots and a teal jacket sent me over the edge yesterday - gorgeous color, gorgeous texture - and skirts/dresses everywhere, especially with leggings (Kiki are you with me?) or skinny jeans. A few layers. Always a jacket of sorts, I am at a disadvantage here, poor packing. The younger guys are still in that semi-hip hop thing, with those ridiculous hats. The more dressy guys are wearing these very pointed shoes. Very independent. It is a matter of slowly collecting things that work together - hunting them down. Don't we all enjoy the chase? There is even a Museum of the Hunt here in the marais - maybe it involves searching for shoes...

The boring weather

Paris, fall on your knees and thank me later. Build an altar, a church, a cathedral of thanks. Throw a thousand rose petals in my wake. Bring me a meringue dusted with gold leaf every hour on the hour, an oyster with a pearl of great value. I know how much you appreciate the stunning weather I packed up in the USA and brought to you in my Jack White/Dalai Lama bespoke shoulder bag – the only remotely cool thing I seem to be wearing. I can hear it in the uncorking of lunchtime champagne by picnickers in Place des Vosges, listen to you casually drop a word or two about it in boulangerie conversations, see your texting to each other about – how boring - but really everyone has had to comment about it - the sunshine day after day after day following my arrival. I know it was heartless to suck all it up and take it away from Tennessee, but Paris, after a winter of snow, I thought you deserved no less. Enjoy! C’est superb!

Spring Rituals

only one note today: at the menagerie de Jardin du Plants: flamingos in flagrante. C'est la vie de Paris...

Going Medieval

So yesterday's stab at culture was to Cluny - the Museum of the Middle Ages. I think the children expected to see dungeon racks and more knight stuff. Joshua pointed out that it should be called the Museum of the Art of the Middle Ages...Rachel pointed out that all the statues were of saints. At least she can now recognize St. James with his scallop shells.
The Museum itself is incredibly lovely, an oft-missed stop for visitors. The pieces have a lot of room to breathe in this former abbey/roman bathhouse. The light is sublime. The big draw are the chicks with unicorns, as I call them. I was really surprised at how lovely they are. They are stretched across a round room with plenty of space for adoration. I did not know (having not paid attention in unicorn studies 101) that they are a contemplation of the 5 senses + compassion/love.
My great interest is from a little earlier time: the pillar of Nautes with the image of Cernunnos, a guardian of the underworld. This was discovered in 1710 in the foundations of Notre Dame. Those crazy Celts.

We had a picnic in the garden where a lot people seem to pop in for lunch - it rather reminded me of finding a secret alcove garden in DC, a little oasis. Our afternoon included, as the children will never let me forget, getting coffee and hot chocolate (I thought I had ordered ice cream, it seemed VERY clear to me) and ended up with a walk around our neighborhood. Some guys were actually playing boules in the court on Richard Lenoir. It seemed like something out of my french 101 book. What a surprise.

le Jardin

A quick note to say that watching your children push the boats around the fountain at Jardin du Luxembuorg is a real joy, a letting go of time and of expectations. As Rachel said, the boat goes where it wants to...
To set the scene, if you are not here, Paris weather has been stunning and it is all strangely accompanied by the empty skies. The tuplips are in full riot. By the way, who let that Tour Montparnasse be constructed? It really ruins the backdrop...oh btw that Sewanee things happened. Some college girls asked me directions at the Jardin, and turns out one of them is the daughter of a Sewanee graduate. She was with a group who had chartered a bus back from Madrid where they had been for a weekend trip. She was waiting to go take a train to Nantes. In all the conversation we forgot to introduce ourselves. Well, good luck college girls in Nantes!

The Importance of Humiliation

I turned to my children in the metro today and announced: I need to tell you something. Everyday while we are in Paris you are going to be embarrassed by something we do. I may not know where to go, how to ask for something, how to find what we are looking for. It will be embarrassing and we will be humiliated at least once a day. Now get over it and let's have fun.

What a relief for them. We had just spent way, I mean way too long, finding out about getting a long-term metro card today. It involved having a passport picture made at a photo booth in the metro. It cost 5E, the picture. I wasn't sure I had enough change. We were digging around in bags. It took an ungodly amount of time. But finally like little butterflies we emerged with our pictures and bought cards and made our way to Tuileries for a short lunch and to L'Orangerie so we could be tourists of all tourists and see Monet's still-engaging water lilies. We also saw these paintings by Marie Laurencin of ballerina-mermaids morphing into deers. The strange thing is that they all had long gray hair - and Just the day before I had seen one of the talked-of young ladies of Paris who dye their hair gray - while we were picnicking in Place des Vosges.

Yesterday's humiliations involved visiting the ginormous food market on Richard Lenoir to buy said picnic packings. You have to ask the grocer for each thing. You should, if you are not rude, ask pertinent questions about legumes and fruits. I just noted that the young man in front of me asked a lot of questions then bought pears and the strawberries on the left, so, I bought pears and berries. What a delight when Ms. Scott's 12th grade French came rolling back with that list of grocery items. Thank you Ms. Scott, because you were right, you never know when you might need to know the word for raspberries. I forced Stephen and Joshua to split up from us and buy a few things - mostly because I didn't want them to see me absolutely fail if I mispronounced fraises, and also because everyone should know how to ask for something when they don't have any words.

What ash?

OK we are beginning to realize just how lucky we were to land in Paris and not be sitting at Newark for days on end. We are hoping Stephen's writer will be able to make it here - when? Monday? the end of the week? What if this volcano erupts again and we're trapped in Paris? As Stephen says, what a pity...
OK today was in no way anything except relaxing after getting some work out of the way. We went all tourist and had crepes for lunch and took the boat taxi Batobus from Notre Dame all the way to the Eiffel Tower to lounge in the sun all afternoon. Wispy girls were having long talks about boys, kids were kicking soccer balls, the police were asking women to pull their shirts down over their stomachs. Propriete! We had no urge to walk up the steps to the observation decks.
The view from the river reminds you that the city is really unified by this ribbon of water, and centered even from ancient times by the Ile de la Cite. It could not have been more beautiful, trees blossoming in yellow and pink. All the stone that was removed from the quarries was used to build this empire intertwined of rock and nature.
We bought groceries on the way home and I made chicken with leeks and tarragon. You have to watch those french ladies, they will try to cut in line... tomorrow we will look for the food market by Bastille, it should be interesting. Watch out ladies!
The sun streams into our apartment in the evening so it is a real pleasure to be here and watch the sun set and the lights flip on on the Tour Eiffel... bon nuit...

Haze of ash and Jetlag

Wow. So were we super lucky not to get caught in the shut down of every major airport in Europe? Thank you universe for being kind. I feel for everyone waiting...and waiting.

We are settling into our urban life...but first we had to deal with housekeeping so to speak. Wireless seems unworkable so Stephen's assistant was on the phone with the internet company for quite a while. We are now truly wired - cords everywhere. How 1997. Plus trading down to a cheaper phone. Friends you recall I've been jaded about my iPhone? I am now texting on a number pad again...o.m.g. Hilarious. That banking? The nice man at reception explained that the person I needed to see would be available...on Thursday, at 10 am. How...quaint? I shall move my ducats from one account to another until she is disposed to speak with me. I forget that although we are in one of the world's foremost metropolitan areas, bureaucracy is king. I had to smile. But my franglais is coming along - I managed to buy wine, groceries, and those meringues as big as our heads today with no problem.

The kids are learning to sit patiently while we have a quick coffee. We struck out on own and ended up at Musee Carnavalet, which is right in our neighborhood. I meant to just sit in the little garden but we ended up fascinated by the permanent collection - it's the attic of Paris, a museum of the City's history. Strange paintings of grand vistas or Emperors or Kings, many many models of the Bastille, and even some of the Templar complex, which comes in handy to explain the history of our neighborhood. What I didn't expect was an emotional note - the haunting portrait of seven year old Louis XVII - the lost dauphin. The painting is not artistic nor even skillful, and the helmet head haircut doesn't help matters. Oh but those eyes. The fear follows you. It's as if that child's spirit came to rest in those painted eyes. I expected to see ghosts in the catacombs and crypts of Paris, not in a history museum. The boy died after nearly four years of imprisonment, and his heart is saved somewhere in the crypt of St. Denis. Paris has such a visceral history...I was glad we walked home through Place de Vosges, every square inch of grass covered by a living, breathing person delighted to soak in the sunlight.

Arrival

yes we are here! Friends in Paris, beware, if you have not heard from us yet you will soon! Fortified by a quick nap after our flight, today we soldiered on to a work lunch at the lovely Merci, a little piece of California in a seemingless endless building offering clothing and kitchen goods (after first making our way through a bookstore type entrance reminiscient of a Carlos Ruiz Zafron novel) Yummy green soup, fresh fresh salads including a quinoa herb mix...and the children indulged in kiwi/ginger/apple juice fizzy things (Keri are you with me?). Tooled around the neighborhood which has no less than 5 bakeries within spitting distance. Once has ENORMOUS meringues which I've promised to buy on Friday. We spent the late afternoon in our 5th floor walkup (I will have a great ass in 2 months) swilling wine and picking out the Eiffel tower top, Notre Dame and Sacre Couer in the horizon. Quick jaunt in that killer light between sun and rain to the Seine to look around Notre Dame before a good old French cheezburger. Stephen has more work in the morning, and I'll be banking. Except for the little lump that sticks in my throat about leaving home all is perfect. I would like all friends to show up NOW, thank you, I miss everyone at home. bon soir.

Paris Parks

With the daffodils at peak here in Sewanee, my mind keeps thinking of the outdoors in Paris in Spring. What parks to visit?

I love Jardin des Tuileries. You can find a chair, take off your shoes, and pull out a book, one with paper pages. (I’ll be taking Chris Bachelder’s Bear V. Shark and Thomas Lakeman’s Chillwater Cove.) I hope the kids can occupy themselves with a rereading of the Percy Jackson series. The great thing about Tuileries is that you can even study a map without feeling too foolish – it doesn’t matter, so many tourists are pouring out of the Louvre. Of course the more I study a map, the more lost I become.

I found a lovely park mentioned at saffronandblueberry.blogspot: the Albert Kahn Garden. Kahn was a banker/philanthropist in the early 1900s. After the invention of color photography, he sent photographers around the world from Paris to document cultures and monuments, and the Kahn Collection of color glass plate autochromes numbers over 75,000 plates.

What parks would you visit? And you Parisians, what parks do you intend to visit more often but never have the time?

Regarding Paris

Welcome – not an original idea, I know, to start a blog, but I wanted to have an open notebook of sorts to chronicle my two-month stay in Paris with my family. We’ll be joining Stephen as he covers Paris for a magazine assignment.

I’ve traveled to Europe a lot. I’ve traveled with the children a lot. I’ve not traveled with the children to Europe. The plethora of offerings presented by the City of Light seem endless at this point, while the hazards of spending a lot of time in close quarters seem far away. I have in mind salted caramels in paper bags while walking along St. Germain, long, sun-drenched afternoons in tulip-laden parks, actually lingering over paintings in the Louvre, sketching in our Moleskins as the sun sets across the Seine, rolling our eyes in ecstasy while biting into pain au chocolat from the neighborhood boulangerie…and did I mention salted caramels? Or pain au chocolat, maybe this time at that café in Place des Vosges? (We all have our weaknesses – Joshua has already indicated that his might concern crepes covered with what has been described to him as chocolate pudding. Rachel is not so specific yet but keeps remarking on pictures of confectionary delights in guidebooks so I think we’re all on the same page. She is however concerned that the green grocer may not understand her and hence she might not get the right number of apples or be able to purchase a pineapple. I am not sure what we are going to do with said pineapple, I’ve not asked.)

My fears have less to do with pineapples and more involve shivering in an unexpected cold rain while trying to find the street with a metro stop, having skipped lunch and forgotten a map…

So we leave 14 April. We’ll be at the edge of the Marias, not far from the Bastille metro stop. Wedged between the street of motorcycle stores and the street of camera stores. I do love my husband as you can see by my choice of apartments. Ours will overlook the rue des Tournelles. We’ll try to avoid any jousting incidents. (See I will impart some history as well.)

- April