Barbara Cooley's Paris Journal

Paris Journal 2012 – Barbara Joy Cooley Home: barbarajoycooley.com

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Our Sanibel friends, Karen and Gopal, left the island only a day or two after we did in early July. But while we’ve stayed put in Paris, they have been around.

They went to Rome, then to Torino for the Zonta International convention. From there, they traveled to Milan, where our friends Gail and Gianni picked them up and took them to their country home about an hour away from that city.

Gopal’s son is in graduate school in Stockholm, so he and Karen went there next, and had a good visit.

From Stockholm, they were supposed to fly into Paris, arriving late and leaving early the next day. So Karen had thought they’d just stay in an airport hotel. But their flight was changed, and they were to land at Charles de Gaulle earlier in the evening. So Karen said, “Let’s have dinner together!”

She booked a hotel very close to Notre Dame, on the left bank, and sent me the address (Hotel de Notre Dame, on the rue Maitre Albert, a 3-star establishment with air conditioning!).

The challenge for me was to find a restaurant in this touristy, ancient part of the city that was open on a Sunday night and that really served good food.

We don’t generally dine in this area much, and when we do, we have a favorite place, Le Caveau du Palais, on the Place Dauphine. But that was not open on Sunday.

So, I did some research on the internet and came up with Le Reminet, at 3 rue des Grands-Degres. My friend Sonja later let me know of another possibility, Le Tournebievre, but I only saw her suggestion on Facebook after the fact.

I knew from the reviews that Le Reminet would be crowded, and it was. Tables were too close together, but that is very common in this older part of Paris, where real estate is at a real premium.

I also knew that the restaurant would be a little expensive. But believe me, you don’t want to eat cheaply in this part of the city where there are plenty of mediocre tourist traps that will serve mediocre food at mediocre prices.

The food was, on the whole, very, very good. Karen and I each had fish – daurade (sea bream) for her, sea bass for me. Tom had a steak topped with foie gras. Unfortunately, the steak was not too great because it was overcooked.

I can’t remember what Gopal had, but I do remember that it looked good.

Karen and Gopal wanted a simple green salad as a starter, and that was not on the menu. But the restaurant was very accommodating, preparing a very pretty and generous salad of mixed greens that Karen and Gopal shared.

Service was sweet, kind and professional. The décor was utterly charming, even if it was crowded.

Tom ordered dessert – a sablé that was like a thick shortbread cookie, topped with a sorbet and some red fruit. It was very pretty and it was good, but that item was overpriced for what it was.

Back to my sea bass – it was wonderful. It came on a little pile of finely puréed potatoes that were very flavorful, and there was an excellent sauce laced with bacon bits – a perfect touch. The fish was cooked perfectly, and it was very fresh. No complaints from me about my food!

I’m sorry that Tom’s steak wasn’t great, but ordering steak in Europe is always a questionable venture, when one is used to top-notch American steak. Seeing that it was overcooked, the chef should not have allowed the steak to be served. It would have been better to start over, cook it properly to order, and not have some blogger writing about an overdone steak.

Over dinner, somehow we got Gopal started, talking about politics. That was pretty entertaining, because his views are so strong. After a while, Karen and I started talking about other things. It was so nice to see her; she is one of my very most favorite people on Sanibel, because she is so energetic, smart, generous with her time, fun, positive, and she has a wonderful, infectious, highly recognizable laugh.

We’d walked around just a little before dinner, and a little more after dinner, but they had a big day of travel ahead, and we needed to go home on the metro before it was too late.

We said our goodbyes on the chic boulevard Saint Germain, and then Tom and I walked down to the Cluny metro stop, just to have a bit more of a walk. The line 10 makes it so easy to go from our part of the city over to the 5^th or 6^th arrondissements.

Two things about the metro surprised me yesterday evening. First, when we went to purchase tickets, the machine in the Emile Zola station accepted our chip-less credit card this time. That’s a first for us at that station. I wonder if all the ticket machines in all the stations have been modified to accept chip-less cards now? As far as I could tell, as recently as last year, only some machines in some of the stations in more touristy areas would accept chip-less credit cards.

The second metro surprise was how very many people were on the subway at 11:30PM. I did not expect to see a crowded metro car at that time of night.

By far, most of the people riding the metro last night were young adults. There were only a couple others in our car who were in our age group.

It had been a special Sunday: the Tour de France rode into Paris for its final stage. The crowd was phenomenally large, according to the TV commentators. It was at least 10 rows deep all along the route around the Champs Élysées and near the Tuileries.

This was also the opening weekend for Paris Plage, the very popular Paris beach project that happens every summer along the Seine.

And then there was the weather – this was the first truly gorgeous weekend in quite a while.

So people were out, playing, until late.

I didn’t think the Tour de France would affect Karen and Gopal much, because they were taking the RER train from the airport to the Saint Michel station. But there was some kind of technical problem with the train, and they had to leave it a couple stops before that station. Most people just switched to the metro to continue on to their destination.

But that’s not so easy when you have luggage. So Karen and Gopal naturally elected to take a taxi instead.

While the fare was only 12 euros, because their hotel wasn’t all that far away as the bird flies, it was very difficult for the taxi driver to circumnavigate from that right bank location over to the left bank because of all the traffic restrictions due to the Tour de France and Paris Plage.

I think it was ambitious for the driver to even try, but he did it. Unfortunately, the trip from the airport into the city was a trial for Karen and Gopal. It’s always something, as Rosanna Rosannadanna used to say on Saturday Night Live.

If only the RER train had been able to deliver Karen and Gopal to the Saint Michel station, it would have been so easy . . . .

Back to the Tour de France – once again, I dearly loved watching it on TV to see all the aerial views of beautiful Paris. With the gorgeous weather, it was especially nice.

Because this was the first time that a Brit has won the Tour, lots of people came over from Britain to see the final stage in Paris. That accounted for much of the crowd; you could see British flags everywhere along the route.

The winner, Bradley Wiggins, spoke French beautifully in an interview after the Tour. He spoke about what a tough, crime-ridden neighborhood he grew up in, in central London.

So not only did a Brit win the tour, but his teammate and fellow Brit Christopher Froome came in second overall. And the winner of the stage yesterday was Mark Cavendish, another Brit. It was a great Tour de France for Britain, on the eve of the Olympics in London.

Our friend’s grand-nephew, Christian Vande Velde (American), came in 60^th. That’s not bad, in a field of 153 racers. This is the Tour de France, after all.

Christian almost won a stage on July 16, but a rider named Fedrigo was just a little faster. Oh well. Maybe next year . . . . or maybe not. Christian is now 36 years old.

Christian’s dad, John Vande Velde, is an inductee in the U.S. Cycling Hall of Fame. And his grand-uncle, Babe Vande Velde, says he used to race bicycles, too. But we know him as a very fine tenor saxophone player. He’s also a friendly, positive guy who’s fun to be around.

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Monday, July 23, 2012