Paris Journal 2011 – Barbara Joy Cooley Home: barbarajoycooley.com

Photos and thoughts about Paris

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We are a little tired of the intensity of the Champ de Mars, so our walk yesterday was in the lower part of the 15^th, away from all the tourist-related buzz. Overall, it was an uneventful day – which can be a good thing. We went for dinner to Le Terminus Balard – a new place for us that we’d tried for lunch, with great success, earlier in the month. Near this brasserie are some big, important government/military office complexes, and so lunch is a very important time for their business. We learned that dinner is not so important there. The daily specials are gone by dinnertime, mostly by design. The better kitchen crew works at lunch, not in the evening. Most of the evening business is people drinking on the terrace outside. The same server we’d had at lunch, who’d been able to make our chip-less credit card work then, could not get the card to work at dinnertime. Later, I went online to check with the bank to be sure all is well, and it is. The problem is either with the server or with the brasserie’s bank. We each had the grilled lamb chops that came with green beans and green salad, and it was good, but not remarkable. We had dessert, too, because the menu proudly announced that all the desserts are homemade. But those, too, were unremarkable. C’est la vie. Now we know that this place is for lunch only. In many ways, one of the best brasseries we’ve been to lately is the Jean Baptiste, outside of Paris in Boulogne-Billancourt. One of you dear readers had written in the guestbook that friends had warned them not to go to Boulogne-Billancourt to see the Albert Kahn gardens because the area was a little too rough, and maybe dangerous. Well, the gardens and the brasserie we went to were certainly very nice. But on the walk home, through Boulogne-Billancourt, we knew we weren’t in Paris anymore. I’d describe it as a little rough and worn around the edges, and probably too densely developed. But dangerous? Not really. There are parts of Paris that are more dangerous – such as the upper reaches of the 18^th, 19^th, and 20^th arrondissements. And the worst, most dangerous places of all in this part of France are the communities just outside of Paris, just to the north of these arrondissements, in the banlieue. Riots happen there, cars are burned, and people are murdered. Reading the crime news in the local newspaper over the years has given us a very good idea of places to avoid. Boulogne-Billancourt may be a place where your apartment is subject to burglary (as happened more than once to the politician Segolene Royal), but it isn’t the most violent suburb of Paris – not by a long shot. That said, I must confess that we are city people who lived in the inner city for many years, and our tolerance for rough areas is greater than most Americans who are used to the cushy suburbs of the U.S. So if you aren’t sure, just take the number 10 metro out to see the Kahn gardens, dine at the Jean Baptiste brasserie, and take the number 10 metro back into Paris. Don’t walk back like we did. Sign my guestbook. View my guestbook. Note: For addresses & phone numbers of restaurants in this journal, click here.

Thursday, July 28, 2011 A shop with wonderful things to eat, on the rue Augereau in the 7^th arrondissement. This is the Paris outlet for the Maison Dubernet, famous for its foie gras, in the town of Saint-Sever in southwestern France. This Gatsby place on the avenue Bosquet advertises live jazz on Tuesday nights, but I think that does not include summertime. I adore the decorative architectural details on Haussmannian buildings such as this one on the avenue Bosquet. ← Previous Next →