Paris Journal, Part 6
6/19 Thursday
Nicholas took the postponed "Hemingway walking tour" with Suzanne and her students, and also went with them to the Picasso museum ("really good," he told me), and then I met up with everyone--that is, Suzanne and Nicholas and Suzanne's class and Scott and Sue--at Le Colimacon for dinner. We were up on the second floor, just a few paces away from the door to the kitchen (the chef wished us a hearty "Bon Appetit!"), the food and wine was good, and the atmosphere was comfortable. Then, too, the place has special meaning for Suzanne and me, since it was our favorite haunt on our previous trip. It was pleasing to make use of it for this large rendezvous and to have the evening work out so well. We said our farewells to Scott and Sue (who seem to have enjoyed Paris very much), since they are leaving Saturday morning, and Suzanne is off to Giverny tomorrow. Nicholas and I left before the rest of the group and wended our way across the Seine and through the little park by Notre Dame we have come to like so much and across the Seine again to the St. Michel metro stop, then from there to Denfert Rochereau and the walk home. It was still 10 by the time Nicholas was in bed, even though we had started dinner at 6:30--so, rather late again, but we had a lovely evening walk.
6/20 Friday
Suzanne and her class had their big day-long expedition to Giverny (leaving early in the morning and not returning until 8pm) to wander around Monet's old stamping ground, taking in the house with its large collection of Japanese prints and the extensive gardens (including, of course, water lilies). That meant a big day for Nicholas and me. We hung out in the morning watching some of Toy Story 2 (which is even better than the first one) and doing some drawing, then we went up to Zen Sushi for lunch, took a meander through the neighborhood, and wound up at Parc Montsouris, which I had not been to before, though Nicholas had checked it out with Suzanne and Julia. It's a really wonderful and rather large park, quite near Cite Universitaire, where Suzanne is teaching. It has a duck pond, a public bathroom (not as common as one would like), excellent climbing structures, great "tree forts," a waterfall and stream, and a small cafe serving glace, crepes, and the like. We played on just about everything, and I even got Nicholas to entertain himself for a brief stint so I could sit on a bench with my electronic Larousse attempting to read a couple of pages of Simenon. Things got really exciting by about 5 o'clock, when we had our second go at the climbing structures, because the playground was suddenly flooded with kids accompanied by parents who must have just gotten off work. Even without knowing anyone or speaking any French Nicholas was able to participate joyfully in the general hubbub of kids running around doing the stuff kids do.
The battery went dead on the camera while we were at the park, and I didn't have the spare with me, so I suggested to Nicholas that we take "mental pictures." He really got into it, developing a technique where he would look at the scene, snap his picture, then turn his head to the side, in order, he told me, to make sure he still had the image in his mind. After a while, he told me that he was also "pasting" things into his pictures. When I asked how this worked, he said, "Oh, like, if I take a picture of a scene that doesn't have Daddy in it and I want you in it I can just paste you in." He also liked the idea that your mental pictures are your own private secret that no one else could see. When I said, "But what if you want to show your picture to someone else?" he decided that you could draw a copy of it if you wanted to. By the time we walked home we were taking mental movies.
6/21 Saturday
Suzanne and I had hoped for a couple of nights out on our own while we're here, but it looks like it may come to down to just this one, since Julia is leaving next week and has told us that she'll be too busy to do any more sitting. For tonight's dinner, we chose Millesime 62, singled out by Pudlo for special praise among the restaurants of the 14th.
It's on the Place De Catalogne, which is a large square with monumental Romanesque buildings and a central fountain (a sort of incline plane topped with a thin sheet of flowing water), all designed by a fellow named Boffil. It was interesting to check out a new part of town, and the square certainly had a different look than what we have become used to it--but we weren't all that taken with the design as we made our way to the restaurant through the heat and humidity that had been making us droop for much of the day. It looked better, though, once we had eaten and the evening had cooled down a little, especially since the Eiffel Tower popped into the view down one of the long avenues radiating from the square--we somehow hadn't had the right angle to see it during our approach to the restaurant earlier.
Anyway, we really liked the restaurant, which also had a more contemporary feel than most of the places we've gone so far. Having done a little advance research on the web, we were able to find our way through the French menu with no problems (event though the waitress did offer to answer in English any questions we might have). We had two appetizers; one was a tasty little cold crab and avocado number, but the clear winner was the "croustillant," which was flaky pastry formed into a kind of little pouch, closed with a twist. When you broke it open, it was filled with warm goat cheese. For the main course, I had very good sea bass and Suzanne had the lamb (not something we usually eat, but it was certainly tender and delicious). For dessert, we split the creme brulee epice, that is "creme brulee with spices," the spices--and the fact that it was served cold--giving a new twist to a traditional dessert. We both agreed that we preferred the old style, but it was interesting to try the new.
One of the things that we have missed the most, as compared to our previous trip (when we were a duo rather than a trio) is the leisurely, late, after-dinner stroll along the Seine, with the evening just fading to twilight around 10--so we decided that this was something we would try to do this evening. Already on the way to the restaurant, though, we had begun to realize that this might not work out because this Saturday turned out to be the day of the Fete de la Musique, a street festival taking place in locations all over the city. As it turned out, most of the music was heavily amplified and not particularly great rock and roll, and by night-time the crowds were tremendous. We packed into the sweltering Metro along with the rest of the masses, and emerged into a slowly drifting throng of people lining the quais all long the Seine and also the bridges crossing the river. The quiet, romantic stroll was not to be. But we ended up agreeing that the sheer size and energy of the festival--the spectacle of all these people rocking out in the shadow of Paris's huge, ancient, and classically styled public buildings--made it something to see. And something to hear too, of course, though we stayed as far away from the amplifiers as we could, and would have preferred to come across a small jazz or classical ensemble tucked into some less densely populated nook somewhere. That didn't happen, and, in fact, the bruit was at one point following us, since some student types were making their way through the crowd with large speakers (emitting some very loud and strange noises) strapped to their backs.
Nicholas took the postponed "Hemingway walking tour" with Suzanne and her students, and also went with them to the Picasso museum ("really good," he told me), and then I met up with everyone--that is, Suzanne and Nicholas and Suzanne's class and Scott and Sue--at Le Colimacon for dinner. We were up on the second floor, just a few paces away from the door to the kitchen (the chef wished us a hearty "Bon Appetit!"), the food and wine was good, and the atmosphere was comfortable. Then, too, the place has special meaning for Suzanne and me, since it was our favorite haunt on our previous trip. It was pleasing to make use of it for this large rendezvous and to have the evening work out so well. We said our farewells to Scott and Sue (who seem to have enjoyed Paris very much), since they are leaving Saturday morning, and Suzanne is off to Giverny tomorrow. Nicholas and I left before the rest of the group and wended our way across the Seine and through the little park by Notre Dame we have come to like so much and across the Seine again to the St. Michel metro stop, then from there to Denfert Rochereau and the walk home. It was still 10 by the time Nicholas was in bed, even though we had started dinner at 6:30--so, rather late again, but we had a lovely evening walk.
6/20 Friday
Suzanne and her class had their big day-long expedition to Giverny (leaving early in the morning and not returning until 8pm) to wander around Monet's old stamping ground, taking in the house with its large collection of Japanese prints and the extensive gardens (including, of course, water lilies). That meant a big day for Nicholas and me. We hung out in the morning watching some of Toy Story 2 (which is even better than the first one) and doing some drawing, then we went up to Zen Sushi for lunch, took a meander through the neighborhood, and wound up at Parc Montsouris, which I had not been to before, though Nicholas had checked it out with Suzanne and Julia. It's a really wonderful and rather large park, quite near Cite Universitaire, where Suzanne is teaching. It has a duck pond, a public bathroom (not as common as one would like), excellent climbing structures, great "tree forts," a waterfall and stream, and a small cafe serving glace, crepes, and the like. We played on just about everything, and I even got Nicholas to entertain himself for a brief stint so I could sit on a bench with my electronic Larousse attempting to read a couple of pages of Simenon. Things got really exciting by about 5 o'clock, when we had our second go at the climbing structures, because the playground was suddenly flooded with kids accompanied by parents who must have just gotten off work. Even without knowing anyone or speaking any French Nicholas was able to participate joyfully in the general hubbub of kids running around doing the stuff kids do.
The battery went dead on the camera while we were at the park, and I didn't have the spare with me, so I suggested to Nicholas that we take "mental pictures." He really got into it, developing a technique where he would look at the scene, snap his picture, then turn his head to the side, in order, he told me, to make sure he still had the image in his mind. After a while, he told me that he was also "pasting" things into his pictures. When I asked how this worked, he said, "Oh, like, if I take a picture of a scene that doesn't have Daddy in it and I want you in it I can just paste you in." He also liked the idea that your mental pictures are your own private secret that no one else could see. When I said, "But what if you want to show your picture to someone else?" he decided that you could draw a copy of it if you wanted to. By the time we walked home we were taking mental movies.
6/21 Saturday
Suzanne and I had hoped for a couple of nights out on our own while we're here, but it looks like it may come to down to just this one, since Julia is leaving next week and has told us that she'll be too busy to do any more sitting. For tonight's dinner, we chose Millesime 62, singled out by Pudlo for special praise among the restaurants of the 14th.
It's on the Place De Catalogne, which is a large square with monumental Romanesque buildings and a central fountain (a sort of incline plane topped with a thin sheet of flowing water), all designed by a fellow named Boffil. It was interesting to check out a new part of town, and the square certainly had a different look than what we have become used to it--but we weren't all that taken with the design as we made our way to the restaurant through the heat and humidity that had been making us droop for much of the day. It looked better, though, once we had eaten and the evening had cooled down a little, especially since the Eiffel Tower popped into the view down one of the long avenues radiating from the square--we somehow hadn't had the right angle to see it during our approach to the restaurant earlier.
Anyway, we really liked the restaurant, which also had a more contemporary feel than most of the places we've gone so far. Having done a little advance research on the web, we were able to find our way through the French menu with no problems (event though the waitress did offer to answer in English any questions we might have). We had two appetizers; one was a tasty little cold crab and avocado number, but the clear winner was the "croustillant," which was flaky pastry formed into a kind of little pouch, closed with a twist. When you broke it open, it was filled with warm goat cheese. For the main course, I had very good sea bass and Suzanne had the lamb (not something we usually eat, but it was certainly tender and delicious). For dessert, we split the creme brulee epice, that is "creme brulee with spices," the spices--and the fact that it was served cold--giving a new twist to a traditional dessert. We both agreed that we preferred the old style, but it was interesting to try the new.
One of the things that we have missed the most, as compared to our previous trip (when we were a duo rather than a trio) is the leisurely, late, after-dinner stroll along the Seine, with the evening just fading to twilight around 10--so we decided that this was something we would try to do this evening. Already on the way to the restaurant, though, we had begun to realize that this might not work out because this Saturday turned out to be the day of the Fete de la Musique, a street festival taking place in locations all over the city. As it turned out, most of the music was heavily amplified and not particularly great rock and roll, and by night-time the crowds were tremendous. We packed into the sweltering Metro along with the rest of the masses, and emerged into a slowly drifting throng of people lining the quais all long the Seine and also the bridges crossing the river. The quiet, romantic stroll was not to be. But we ended up agreeing that the sheer size and energy of the festival--the spectacle of all these people rocking out in the shadow of Paris's huge, ancient, and classically styled public buildings--made it something to see. And something to hear too, of course, though we stayed as far away from the amplifiers as we could, and would have preferred to come across a small jazz or classical ensemble tucked into some less densely populated nook somewhere. That didn't happen, and, in fact, the bruit was at one point following us, since some student types were making their way through the crowd with large speakers (emitting some very loud and strange noises) strapped to their backs.
posted by Steve Shoemaker at 1:37 AM
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