Paris: Days V & VI

DAY V

Off M went, early in the morning, to his training. My only plan was to further examine some of the shops we'd seen on Sunday, and to go to a few that I'd put on the map before our trip. And lunch.

I retraced our steps down Rue du Bac to find:

Monoprix - a department store that also has food. I picked up a few things there and continued on...

to Curling, a lovely store with beautiful, simple clothing. The salesclerk was sweet and helped me pick out a few things. I left with a gorgeous navy wool jacket, with fuchsia lining, a couple of merino turtlenecks, and a piece of paper. The piece of paper was to pick up the skirt they were altering for me. Such nice service - a great store. I was excited to bring M there to show him all the things I didn't buy!

I crossed St. Germain and continued on Rue du Bac to Rue de Sèvres to La Grand Épicerie de Paris at Le Bon Marché Department Store. It didn't occur to me to take any photos while I was there, but it was incredible. Food from all over the world - beautifully, if overwhelmingly, displayed. I didn't buy anything because it just seemed that there was too, too much. It was easier just to look and not touch anything.

My plan was to take the Sèvres - Babylone‎ metro (#10) to Odéon‎, then switch to (#4) to Châtelet‎ - Les Halles. There were a few stores I wanted to visit in this area:

G. Detou - after having read David Lebovitz's piece, I knew I would have to go there. It's a small, extraordinarily well-stocked food store. Take a look at his photos - they're way better than mine would have been. I didn't buy anything there, either. I think I should have.

From there, I popped into A. Simon on Rue Montmartre - a cookware shop with lots of goodies. I didn't buy any because my real destination was E. Dehillerin - an even bigger cookware shop.

Closed Mondays. Oh well. I would return on Tuesday.

Then, lots more walking and getting hungry. I stumbled upon Le Pain Quotidien on Rue Petits Carreaux. I didn't really realize that it's a Belgian chain, or that they have U.S. bakeries. It just looked and smelled really good. I had a vegetarian pot-au-feu (which was basically vegetable soup with quinoa in it, which was wonderful and which I've already tried to replicate). While I was there, the waiters were spray painting winter scenes on the windows with "snow." They let me do one.

I also took a look at Alain Coumont's book.

Fortified, I walked and walked and browsed all the way back to our neighborhood. Cold and tired, I got a coffee and made notes about my day.

We had crepes and cidre for dinner. I was wrong about Day IV... we only had cidre at the creperie the night before, having stuffed ourselves a mere few hours earlier.


DAY VI

My plan for Tuesday was to go out to a famous second-hand store which is on the outskirts of Paris, and then clear across the city to some other shops I'd read about. It was the perfect solo excursion, as M really doesn't like the metro, and this was going to require quite a lot of the metro.

The route: from Odéon (#10), 11 stops to Michel-Ange – Auteuil (there was a saxophone player playing loudly right next to me on this entire route), switch to #9 to Rue de la Pompe (a guy selling flowers sat right next to me, incessantly trying to sell me flowers). I walked to Reciproque.

"Open in 1978 on 1 500 square feet by Nicole Morel, young press attaché at that time, RECIPROQUE has expended 30 years later to 7 500 square feet. This second-hand shop of luxury items, the biggest one in Paris, offers in its 6 boutiques, all next to each others on Rue de la Pompe, several tens of thousands of FASHION items of COUTURE and French, Italian, Japanese, Belgium, American,….and all over the world DESIGNERS, as well as home articles and modernes and antiques Jewelleries."

It was a great place to browse, filled with very fancy, fancy second-hand things. I was going to take a bunch of artfully-composed photos with our big camera, but I heard a clerk scolding someone who was taking pictures, so I took one surreptitiously with M's phone and gave up.

I did learn a valuable lesson, however. As I was leaving, a chicly-dressed woman came in with a big snazzy camera (like our big snazzy camera). She spoke, in French, to the clerk. I gathered from their conversation that the woman had called ahead and gotten permission to do a photo shoot FOR HER BLOG. She was given free reign to take photos and arrange things and otherwise breeze around the shop with her chic clothes and tall boots and big camera. I HAVE A BLOG. AN INTERNATIONAL BLOG (meaning that a handful of very kind people who happen to live in several countries read it). I have a big camera. I have tall boots. I could have called ahead. Next time, I will. A very good lesson!

I left the women's boutique empty-handed. Nope, no handbag, no jewels, no couture anything pour moi. It was fun, though, to find an Hermès bunny tie for M at the men's boutique.

From there, I went clear across Paris (#9 to Roosevelt; #1 to Bastille) to check out Le Bonheur des Dames, an embroidery shop I'd read about in Paris Made by Hand. It was a terrific place, full of project ideas that are completely unrealistic but inspiring. "Unrealistic" in the sense that when I see these things, like an enormous embroidered heirloom tablecloth pattern, I unrealistically think that

A) I know how to embroider;
B) That it wouldn't take that long to do; and
C) That I would ever use it if I'd spent as long as it really would take to make it.

I did find, however, a very small project:

It reminds me of the embroidery my Farmor used to do. I also got some fetching fabric for a project that has yet to reveal itself to me:

It was absolutely worth the travel to go there. Here's a nice piece about the place.

My next task was to check out the Church of Saint-Séverin, also in our neighborhood, to see if it might be a nice option for Christmas Eve. I made my way back... this time:

I took care to map my way to the church. It was beautiful and easy to find. I went inside. Beautiful. Great - another terrific option for Christmas. Except... it seemed familiar. That's because it was Saint Sulpice, not Saint-Séverin. Whoops. So, I went from there to the actual Saint-Séverin.

It was also beautiful outside:

But I wasn't crazy about the modern stained glass windows inside:

I was ready for a coffee, so I sat in a cafe right by our hotel and rested for a bit. Next to me was a scene that has probably played out as long as there have been French boys and foreign girls...

She (in German accent): "But I don't want to go home. I never want the semester to end."
He (in French accent): "You could stay at my flat for a few days..." (touching her legs under the table).
She: "I don't want to see my boyfriend. I've grown apart from him. My parents are fond of him, but he is not exciting like you."
He: "Yes. I have to see my girlfriend at Christmas, but she doesn't understand me the way you do."
She: "I hate this." (fighting tears).
He: "It is very difficult for so many reasons... I do not want to be without you."
She: "If you are meant to be with someone, you will know it..."
He: "I want to be with you now, that is all I know."
She (crying): "Tomorrow I will wake up in Germany and think this was all a dream."
He: "Maybe it was."

Sigh.

Dinner at Les Deux Magots was an unexpected surprise - no reservations - and was delightful.

All a dream.

Paris: Day III

We started the day knowing that we would have to be at a bistro near the Sorbonne by late afternoon because we were going to meet and interview a French scholar there (M would interview; I would listen intently). So, we thought we should make our way there early in the day so that we would know how to get there later.

We found the Sorbonne:

We asked a guard if we could have a look around. "Non," he said "no one is EVER allowed to look around." So we didn't.

We also knew that we needed buy post-its so that we could do our usual posting of locations onto our plastic map. Given that the Sorbonne is, well, the Sorbonne, we figured that we could probably find a stationary/paper goods/office supplies/post-its store nearby. We did. We then went to a little patisserie to have coffee and do our mapping. These maps were different from the Google Map we'd made:


View Our Paris in a larger map

We made the Google Map because we thought we could link it to our Very Very Very Smartphones and use it while we were in Paris. However, one of us is not quite as smart as her smartphone. When we got off the plane in Paris, having dutifully turned off our phones, we turned them back on. M turned his on first and realized, "Oh no! We have to enter the SIM PIN! Do you know yours?" "Yes." He'd forgotten his. He made one attempt. Wrong. YOU HAVE TWO ATTEMPTS REMAINING. He made another attempt. Wrong. YOU HAVE ONE ATTEMPT REMAINING. Smugly, I said, "Well, we can just use my phone, plus you have your old phone, so we'll be fine." He methodically wrote down what he'd tried. He wasn't ready for his last attempt because if you fail after that, you then have to enter an even longer code that he was sure he didn't know. I said, "I'll just turn mine on." I plugged in the code, which I'd committed to memory. I even thought about bringing the little card that has the code on it, but left it on my desk. WRONG. YOU HAVE TWO ATTEMPTS REMAINING. Come on! I knew it was right. Maybe I had the four digits transposed. WRONG. ONE ATTEMPT LEFT. Oh no! Now we both had one attempt remaining. This would not be a terrible problem, except that M had a training for several of the days. Without 2 phones, we would have a tough time coordinating things. We would have to do what they did in the Olden Days: plan ahead and not communicate throughout the day and have a meeting time and place. Oh no. I tried mine one more time. WRONG!!! YOU'RE A DUMMY. HAHAHAHAHAH! That's what the phone said. M tried his last attempt. RIGHT-O, MATE! SEE, YOU ARE SMARTER THAN YOUR WIFE! That's what M's phone said.

Anyway, who needs to smartphones when you have one smartphone and one regular phone, plus a map and a smartypants? Not us.

Here are our maps, with post-its:

After we were done with our mapping, we headed toward the Pantheon.

From there, we made our plan to meander toward the Seine, with the idea of crossing over and having lunch at one of the recommended classic bistros on our list.

We walked down some narrow streets:

Saw some interesting things:

We passed a market:

And interesting, very small church:

We got to Shakespeare & Company and were going to pop in. It was extraordinarily crowded, so we decided against it. While we knew it was quite famous, we only learned after we returned to Vienna that:

GEORGE WHITMAN

On Wednesday 14th December, 2011, George Whitman died peacefully at home in the apartment above his bookshop, Shakespeare and Company, in Paris. George suffered a stroke two months ago, but showed incredible strength and determination up to the end, continuing to read every day in the company of his daughter, Sylvia, his friends and his cat and dog. He died two days after his 98th birthday.

Born on Dec. 12, 1913, in East Orange, New Jersey, George moved to Paris in 1948 and opened his bookshop Le Mistral, later renamed Shakespeare and Company, in 1951. Packed wall-to-wall with books and beds for roaming writers, the store quickly grew to be a haven for book lovers and authors while George became an unusual Paris literary institution. In 2006 he was awarded the Officier des Arts et Lettres by the French Minister of Culture for his lifelong contribution to the arts.

After a life entirely dedicated to books, authors and readers, George will be sorely missed by all his loved ones and by bibliophiles around the world who have read, written and stayed in his bookshop for over 60 years. Nicknamed the Don Quixote of the Latin Quarter, George will be remembered for his free spirit, his eccentricity and his generosity — all three summarised in the Yeats verses written on the walls of his open, much-visited library : "Be not inhospitable to strangers / Lest they be angels in disguise."

George was buried at the Père Lachaise cemetery in Paris, in the good company of other men and women of letters such as Guillaume Apollinaire, Colette, Oscar Wilde and Balzac. His bookstore continues, run by his daughter. (from http://www.shakespeareandcompany.com/)

It turns out that this fascinating man and hero to the French literary arts died three days earlier. I think if we'd known that, we would have endured the crowds.

We passed the Tour Saint-Jacques:

We crossed the Seine at Pont Neuf and found the two places we'd had in mind for lunch (both with funny names):

Au Chien Qui Fume. While it may be a classic, and recommended by many, there was something that turned us off, so we walked on to find Au Pied de Cochon. Although it looked nice inside and is famous, we also felt that there was something we didn't like. On we went. For a while. When I get too hungry, I am completely unable to make a decision. When M gets too hungry, he doesn't have patience for indecision. We were very hungry. Finally, we found ourselves on Rue Rivoli in front of a very simple-looking bistro called La Cooperative. It was fine. We ate lunch; we felt better.

We walked past the Louvre, which was pretty nearby, and discussed when we would go there. We crossed the Seine so that we could follow it all the way up toward Notre Dame, stopping at book stalls along the way.

Retracing the morning's steps, we returned to the Sorbonne and had a coffee with a interesting, gracious, and really remarkable French scholar. Although M had arranged the meeting and was familiar with her writing and thought, I think I enjoyed the meeting as much as he did.

Across from the cafe next to the Sorbonne was a bookstore specializing in philosophical texts of all kinds, called Librairie Philosophique J. Vrin. M was overjoyed and felt like a kid in a candy store. He kept checking on me, making sure I wasn't bored (I wasn't) and asking gently for a few more minutes ("Of course, darling."). It was quite an interesting place. M bought a few things, wrote down some new discoveries, and was generally delighted to have found it.

From there, we wandered toward our neighborhood (oh my, how we loved saying "let's go back to our neighborhood!"), stopping at open shops here and there along the way. Without a plan for dinner, we went back to our hotel, dropped off our things, and rested for a bit. After that, we set out to find dinner - again, reservationless. I am sometimes amazed at how our brains work so similarly, often thinking the same thing at the same time. When we saw the garish neon green sign for Leon de Bruxelles, without saying a word, we both knew this was our dinner spot.

A chain restaurant. In Paris. Serving Belgian food. Huh? Well, we love mussels. We like Brussels. It seemed crazy that there was a chain restaurant serving mussels right in the heart of the Quartier Latin.

We were a bit skeptical about our choice when we first went in. It seemed like mostly tourists. But - we loved the menu:

[Which, incidentally, we have learned - well, M just told me - is drawn in the ligne claire style, pioneered by Hergé - think The Adventures of Tintin.) We saw quite a lot of examples of this style in Paris - for signs, logos on trucks, and in the scores of bandes dessinées we saw in every bookstore, including Gibert Jeune, where we went after dinner.]

The food was very good. (I think we have a photo of our meal somewhere). As we were finishing up, the place started filling up with customers who were clearly Parisians and probably locals. They had their favorite tables; they shook hands with the waiters. Ha! See? Even Parisians need a break from French food. We know...

Here's a surprise - we stopped by that place to get those things. Again.

Paris: Day II

On Friday morning, at 9:30, we had a reservation at Musée Jacquemart-André to see the Fra Angelico and the Masters of Light exhibit. This was very exciting because it was the first time that so many of his pieces along with those of some of his teachers and contemporaries (most of which are held in Italian collections), would be shown in one place. Because so much of his work was done on wood, most curators object to moving or lending the delicate pieces.

We absolutely had to get to the museum by 9:30, otherwise we would lose the reservation. They limit the number of visitors who can enter at one time so that it doesn't become too crowded. Although we generally prefer to walk as much as possible when we're discovering a new place, we decided to take the Métro - easy: St. Michel to Strasbourg-St. Denis on the 4 line, switch to the 1 line and get off at Miromesnil. The museum is on Boulevard Haussmann. Even though it was just a short walk (mad dash), it was drizzling and chilly, so it was a relief to get there. 

Visitors are not allowed to take photographs, so here are some Fra Angelico images from the museum's site:

And here's what the inside of this lovely museum looks like:

The exhibit was really spectacular. Here's a nice review. We were so glad we'd made an early reservation because by the time we were leaving, it was starting to get pretty crowded, both inside the museum and outside in the rainy line to get in.

From there, we walked down Haussmann toward L'Arc de Triomphe, stopping at several high-end used book stores... the kind where you walk in and make it very clear that you aren't going to touch anything (you demonstrate this by either putting your hands in your coat pockets and never removing them or by clasping your hands behind your back so the clerks can see that you know to look and not touch!). Oh, but how we wanted to touch and have so many of these printed treasures!

We stopped for lunch at Le Balzac Café - a little place where we had a delicious lunch and some respite from the raw weather.
 
And then we got to L'Arc de Triomphe.

It's big. There were lots and lots of tourists. We took a few photos and kept walking down the Champs-Élysées until we got to the Place de la Concorde. It was windy and cold,

but the light was spectacular:

From there, we went up Rue Royale toward Place de la Madeleine to see L'église de la Madeleine- yet another gorgeous church. I never get tired of seeing these ornate, extraordinary places.

From the steps of La Madeleine

After we left La Madeleine, we had a quick coffee and made our way to a shop/atelier I'd read about in Paris Made by Hand (see this post) run by Alexia Hollinger. She makes bags. Lovely handmade bags. I'd emailed her before arriving just to make sure she wouldn't be closed during our trip. I was so excited to get there that I think I might have startled her a bit - like a Golden Retriever bounding in, blond fur flying, and jumping up on this poor stranger. Well, not exactly, but I was VERY. PLEASED. and told her so. She was gracious. We looked at all of the bags and other objects in her shop. I left with one.

A totally unsatisfactory photo of a great bag - grey tweed, patent leather handles, and pewter button. Lovely.

From this charming atelier, we wandered around outside the Palais Royale, taking pictures

and walking slowly until 5:00 - we had reservations for a wine tasting at Ô Chateau, a wine bar that promised to give a relaxed, fun, informative introduction to French wines. We'd booked the Tour de France of Wine: a two-hour tasting, with 6 wines, including one champagne. Others at the tasting included two Swedish guys and a mother-and-daughter from California. We liked the Swedes quite a lot - in fact, we had a drink afterwards with them - but the American women were... well... loud, and we didn't really want to talk to them. 

A few minutes into the very charming sommelier's presentation, we heard more loud voices entering the room. An American family of 2 daughters, a son, and a father. They were also from California. Or, put more accurately, "OH. MY. GOD! YOU'RE ALSO FROM CALIFORNIA? THAT'S SO AWESOME! WHAT PART? DO YOU KNOW blah blah blah blah...." It was terrible and embarrassing. The only consolation was that now M and I were completely free to ignore the Americans and just chat with the Swedes. But it really did feel awful to cringe each time one of them spoke. I love many Americans. I am an American. But the reason why Americans think French people are mean and hate them is because they are obnoxious. There. I said it.  

It was quite a fun tasting, and it gave us exactly what it promised. We are better at reading French wine labels. We have a better clue about what varieties are grown in what regions. We know to ask for the region, rather than the grape, when ordering. We know how to look at the color of the wine and how to smell it. We know what that sucking thing is when you're tasting the wine. It was fun.

The bar's owner, Olivier Magny, wrote a book called Stuff Parisians Like: Discovering the Quoi in the Je Ne Sais Quoi. We now have that book. It's a fun read. After a glass of wine in the upstairs wine bar with the Swedes, we began walking toward our hotel, planning to find dinner along with way. We ate at a nice bistro: La Taverne de l'Arbre sec. 

It was a busy, but rewarding, second day in Paris.