Paris Journal 2009 – Barbara Joy Cooley Home: barbarajoycooley.com
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Tom went out to get a baguette
at the bakery this morning and he ran into my friend Caroline from
Australia. He hadn’t shaved, and he
was wearing a dirty t-shirt. He knows
that’s not nice for the baker*, but I guess he just was too lazy to clean up
before going out. I’m glad he didn’t
frighten Caroline too much. He brought Caroline back to the
apartment. What a wonderful, pleasant
surprise it was to see her! And I was
surprised. I was still in my nightgown
and robe because I have bronchitis (from a sinus infection, not
contagious). The apartment was in
disarray because I’ve been feeling too tired to clean it, and Tom almost
never cleans. Ever notice how it is
hard to sleep when you’re coughing? I have no idea what Caroline
thought. But she was nice to call back
a little later and make plans for the four of us (she’s with her hubby John)
to get together for brunch tomorrow.
She’s bringing it to the apartment. So now that I’m taking powerful
antibiotics, I mustered the energy to clean the apartment, do laundry, water
the many plants on the long balcony, and think about grocery shopping. Tom brought the antibiotics
back from the other apartment last night.
I stayed home, and he went over there to get Dan and Mary and to take
them out to dinner yet again. They went
to the Corsican place, L’Abri Cotier, one of my very favorites. I had hot and sour soup (potage pekinois) from the Chinese
carryout around the corner. It is
pretty good stuff for bronchitis. Tom got home so late that I was
worried. Then I worried through part
of the night that maybe Dan and Mary had left him to walk by himself through
the dark streets of Paris to the metro station. I’m so relieved to learn that
was not the case. All three of them
figured out that it was better to have Dan and Mary walk with Tom to the
metro station before Dan and Mary walked themselves home. I cannot tell you how happy I am that this
came to be. Earlier in the evening, I
discovered that my favorite TV show, La
Carte aux Tresors, was on. Every
summer, this show is moved to a different night of the week. So it is Monday now. The show is on only in July and
August, I believe. It is a game show,
with competing couples of real French people.
The couples don’t have to be husband-wife or even boyfriend-girlfriend. Last night, for example, there was a brother-sister
team from Savoy. I thought they were going to
win but they didn’t. They couldn’t
identify basic herbs in the garden! I
was shocked. You see, to win, a team has to
get the most points by solving puzzles that take them through a particular part
of France. The puzzles involve
learning something about the culture or products of that region. After one team is eliminated,
the other two teams each get a helicopter and pilot to use for their hopping
around, solving puzzles. The people in the region have
all been informed that La Carte aux
Tresors will be there, so when the helicopters land and the teams need
local transportation, all they need to do is stop a car on the road. Almost always, the driver is willing to
take them wherever they need to go. The teams in the helicopters on
last night’s show were a couple of brothers, and a gay couple. One of my great joys in life is
seeing France from the point of view of a helicopter. This is one of the best aspects of watching
the Tour de France on TV. And it’s
what I love about La Carte aux Tresors. It is a long TV show – about 2
and a half hours – with no commercials. Watch it and you get to see countless
gorgeous chateaux, woodlands, charming villages, beautiful farms, mountains,
lakes, rivers, Roman aqueducts, vineyards, you name it. Last night’s show took place in
the Loire Valley. We viewers learned
about Sancerre wines (an appellation that started as recently as 1936!), the
various sizes of wine bottles, how to put a lid on a barrel, how to identify
various herbs in a garden (for that one I already knew all five answers), how
to make a clay pot, how to milk a goat, what kind of goat cheese local
winemakers learned to make when the vines all failed due to disease, etc. And we got to see, from the
air, many lovely chateaux. Ah. Long live French national TV. Earlier, on the news, I learned
once again that the tourism business is down all over France, and companies
like Club Med are having to lay workers off.
But certain tourism businesses are actually benefitting. People are camping instead of taking Club
Med vacations, to save money. So
campground owners and people who rent mobile homes to vacationers are
thriving. Some French people are
camping for the first time in their lives this summer! And they actually use the English term
“mobile home”! It sounds so funny they
way they say it. Other good news is that
President Sarkozy is going to be just fine.
I may not always agree with him, but I don’t want him to be sick. He felt faint while jogging at Versailles
on the morning of the day that the Tour de France came into Paris. So we missed seeing him on the podium on
the Champs Elysées that day. He had to
spend the day and night at the Val de Grace military hospital. Good news from back home in the
U.S. is that my friend Ellen wrote to say nice things about this journal, and
to say that Skip Gates is really a good guy.
She knows him from his days at Cornell. Tom and I took a wonderful long
walk along the Seine on Sunday afternoon, before coming home to watch the end
of the Tour de France and the beginning of the World Swimming Championships
on TV. At the end of our walk, we ran
into the throngs gathering to watch the cyclists. So we scooted down to the rue de Lille,
then discovered for the first time the tiny rue Allent and the rue de
Verneuil in the 7th arrondissement. On the latter, we found a piano shop – a
quaint place that most certainly must be The
Piano Shop on the Left Bank.
Author Thad Carhart deliberately kept the location secret, but I’m
pretty sure this is it. The cat’s out
of the bag now. When we reached the corner of
rue Bonaparte and the boulevard St. Germain, we found a version of our
favorite street-entertaining jazz combo playing for spare change. They were also selling CDs. A young couple of superb dancers were
nearby. We thoroughly enjoyed the
music and dance, and bought a CD which we are still enjoying. The group is called La Planche a Dixie. While the musicians are French, the music
is American, bien sur. Tom wants to buy a washboard
like the one that Christian Giovanardi plays in this group. By the way, washboards for use as musical
instruments (and for laundry) are made by the Columbus Washboard Company in
Logan, Ohio. Earlier, we’d started our walk
by going through the bustling Sunday morning market under the tracks on the
boulevard de Grenelle. That way, we
had the chance to walk through the charming Place Dupleix and the St. Leon
church before crossing the Champ de Mars and skipping through that lovely
garden at the Musée Branly again.
Thank you, so much Gilles Clement! The walk along the Seine was
very much the same as on other Sundays, except that there were fewer
people. That’s because they were all
positioning themselves along the Tour route to see the cyclists later in the
day. In the evening, after the
Swimming Championships and dinner at Le Tipaza, we sat on the balcony and
enjoyed the perfect weather and dying light and lovely view and dixieland
music. Just another gorgeous day full
of music and life. Sign
my guestbook. View
my guestbook. *An allusion to a funny book by Sarah Turnbull called Almost French. |
Tuesday, July 28, 2009
A piano shop on the rue de Verneuil in the 7th
arrondissement.
The shop windows feature little costumed dolls making
pianos the old fashioned way.
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