Paris Journal 2011 – Barbara Joy Cooley Home: barbarajoycooley.com
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Both Darla and Lennie sent me the New York Times article about the annual picnic in white that happens in Paris once every summer. The occasion for the article is that something like this is being done in New York now, but it isn’t news here. Le Parisien reports on the picnic in white after the fact every summer. Every summer, I pretend to be miffed because we weren’t invited. Truth is, I don’t really care. All my clothes are black or close to it. I’d have nothing to wear. But it certainly is fun to read about this annual event. One year, we even stumbled upon it just as the last partiers were packing up to leave. Considering the popularity of Le Parisien, I take issue with the NYT reporter’s claim that few Parisians know about this annual picnic in white. Of course they have heard of it, even if they aren’t all invited. You can’t believe everything you read in the newspaper, even the NYT. Tom went out on his own yesterday to buy picnic-like food at the bakery and fruit vendor. We are amazed at how popular and trendy the rue du Commerce has become. It hosts throngs of shoppers every day! This is a big change from a decade ago, when this was a sleepy, mom-and-pop shopping street. The infrastructure improvements to make the street more pedestrian friendly are holding up very well, and looking good now that the plants in the green spots are maturing. The only problem occurs around 10AM when some delivery truck must block traffic on the street because there is no place for it to pull over to the side. Then the blocked drivers begin honking their horns . . . . Yesterday, we watched most of the day’s stage of the Tour de France. So many bad falls are happening this year! But there are still top riders in the race, so it continues to interest us. And, of course, the scenery is still spectacular. Last night we decided to walk down the avenue Félix Faure to Le Granite on rue Duranton for dinner. We arrived early, thinking we’d reserve a table and then walk some more and come back a little later. But the young man who was to be the sole server working that evening was so welcoming to us that we entered and took a table as early as 7:20PM. By 8PM, the restaurant was filling up. The entire menu in this place is written by hand on chalkboards, in that kind of handwriting that is so foreign to English speakers. But we’re used to it now, and the only thing on the extensive menu that stumped me was “tarama.” I asked the server, and he said it was fish eggs, so I decided to wait until I know more. According to this web site, “Tarama (tah-RAH-mah) is a popular no-cook / no-bake Bulgarian appetizer made with fish roe, olive oil and lemon juice. This affordable appetizer (because it's made with carp or cod roe instead of the pricey sturgeon) is usually served with toasted bread and garnished with cured black olives, parsley or celery leaves and a drizzle of olive oil. It is similar to Greek taramosalata.” Poor man’s caviar. I’ll try it next time. Instead, we shared a home-made terrine, and I had the duck breast in a honey-based berry sauce with a side dish of buttery, puréed potatoes that I also shared with Tom, while Tom had rack of lamb with a side of ratatouille. The wine list was by the bottle only, but when I asked, our amicable server explained that any of the wines can be ordered by the glass, small pitcher (25 cl) or larger pitcher (50cl) as well, and the price would be structured accordingly. In other words, a 25 cl pitcher costs one third of what the 75 cl bottle costs. How nice! The food was very good. Everyone in the restaurant was French, except for us and a family of four. The father of the family, however, spoke excellent French. The family appeared to live in France, not to be visiting. The children were very calm and quiet in the restaurant, as French children tend to be, and American children tend not to be. The server never tried to speak English with us, and he was friendly and nice. He apologized for the long wait for our main courses. Maybe someone had to go out to catch the duck. The woman whom we remember as the proprietor was there, but she was having to work back in the kitchen last night whereas normally she is running the front of the house. I heard our server tell a regular customer that he was filling in at this restaurant, although he really works at another one, which happened to be closed that evening. Thankfully, the proprietor had him to call upon. Not many servers can handle an entire restaurant of tables the way he did. It rained a little bit on our walk back, but it was still fairly warm. But today the weather is downright cool and rainy. After being in that drought in Florida, this feels very good to us. The other day when we were visiting the cemetery at Passy, I was taken by the interesting tombstone for Dieudonné Costes. I was also taken by his first name, which means “God-given.” He was a famous, early aviator, known for breaking records and flying long distances. In World War I, he was famous for his fighter ace skills. Born in 1892 in the provinces, he served in the French air force in fighter squadrons on the Balkan front, where he had six confirmed victories. After the war, he started flying commercially, starting with mail routes. Then he began his daring attempts to break long-distance records in the 1920s, flying a plane called the Breguet 19. He broke the world distance record by flying from Paris to Iran in 1926. In the next two years, he flew around the world with another pilot, Joseph le Brix. Costes and a pilot named Bellonte tried to cross the North Atlantic in 1929, but they had to turn back because of bad weather. He and a pilot named Codos broke the world’s distance record in 1928, flying a circular route of 8,020 kilometers. Then at last, in September 1930, with Bellonte again, Costes flew the more difficult westbound direction across the Atlantic, from Paris to New York – the first airplane to do so. It was a long flight – 37 hours and 18 minutes. I’ll never complain about an 8-hour flight from Miami to Paris again. After a long and adventurous life full of risk-taking, Costes died in 1973. Sign
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Wednesday, July 13, 2011
The fence around the UNESCO headquarters near us is
featuring beautiful photographs of world UNESCO sites on its exterior fence.
The homemade terrine and the duck breast at Le Granite. .
Lonely, determined flower amidst the patched up
cobblestones on the riverbank of the Seine.
Benjamin Franklin sits in the the
Square Yorktown near the Trocadero.
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