Barbara Cooley's Paris Journal

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

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At the moment, Paris is ahead of New York. In the work of producing a new edition of a book, Tom “The Tome” Cooley is ahead of the publisher back in New York, so we went out to play in Paris yesterday for the entire day.

Go Paris!

We began by walking through that crazy open air market under the elevated metro tracks on the boulevard de Grenelle. Tom needed a long-sleeved shirt in a substantial fabric, like lightweight denim, but we never found it. Instead, we saw just about everything else you can imagine that would be sold in such a market.

When we were near the end of the market, I asked Tom, “Have you had enough of this?” “YES,” he answered, most emphatically. It is a busy, nutty place on a Sunday.

So we crossed the boulevard and took the calm little rue Leroi Gourhan into the middle of the Jardin Nicole de Hauteclocque.

This relatively new park opened in 1998, the first year that we summered in Paris. Named for a politician (a common practice in naming places in the 15th arrondissement), this park had some problems with gangs hanging out in it for a few years, but now those problems seem to be gone.

Nicole de Hauteclocque (1913-1993), like so many French politicians, said she had been a member of the Resistance, where she was part of the Colonel Rémy network. She was elected to a municipal post in the 15th arrondissement, and in 1972-73 she was the only female president of the Council of Paris.

The park is looking good; in particular, we were delighted to see public art panels – many of which were painted by kids – decorating the pillars of a building that borders the park on the southwest side. I wondered if some of these kids had been former gang members who used to graffiti the place.

We exited the park at the end where a gunpowder warehouse blew up once upon a time, and took the rue de Presles toward the Champ de Mars. We only saw one illegal vendor of Eiffel Tower trinkets the entire time we were in that area; when he approached me I told him, “C’est illégale,” and he walked on by.

We did see one of those gypsies who came up and started the “do you speak English” con routine. I just glared at her with intensive disapproval. She had just finished trying to con a family of American tourists; I was not pleased to see that.

We also saw a couple of gypsy women with small, drugged children, begging on the sidewalk. Using children to beg is strictly illegal in France. For a few years, we did not see this disturbing practice. But now the malefactors are at it again. They make it harder for those who are truly in need.

So there is still a little bit of work to do to rid this important area of its criminal elements. However, I must note that the situation is much improved this summer.

We paused to admire two houses on the avenue Charles Floquet just before we reached the Champ de Mars. Years ago, we saw these houses looking neglected and forelorn; a fire had damaged them badly. Then at last somebody bought them, and restored them to a “T.” Oh, they look so good now!

We enjoyed crossing the magnificent Champ de Mars – a park that never grows old for us.

After exiting the fine park and crossing the avenue de la Bourdonnais, we rested for only a minute or so in the garden at the Musée du Quai Branly, where birds sang mightily.

Then we crossed the Seine on the Passarelle Debilly, where we found the boat called the Julia. We looked around it for the Julia’s beautiful resident cat, whom we’ve visited many times over the years. But yesterday, we did not see her.

Near this right-bank end of the Passarelle Debilly is a smelly underground pedestrian passage for crossing the avenue de New York. Walking through that tunnel is about as disgusting a pedestrian experience as you can find in Paris.

Among the many pedestrian improvements underway is replacing this nasty tunnel with two street-level crosswalks and associated pedestrian and bicycle amenities. A sign at the end of the passarelle explains this project; here’s a translation:

1. Creation of two pedestrian crosswalks – Two crosswalks, 6 meters long, will replace the underground passage which will be permanently closed. These pedestrian refuges will permit crossing the street in two stages, in complete safety.

2. New street surface – Between the two crosswalks, the blacktop will be replaced by new pavers, signaling to the automobilists to slow down. [NOTE: Drivers in Paris are supposed to slow down and yield to pedestrians where the intersection or roadway changes from blacktop to decorative and vibration-inducing pavers.]

3. New bike path – Between the Alma bridge and the Iéna bridge, bicycles can circulate on a new bike path alongside the avenue de New York.

I was amused by people taking photographs as we crossed back over the passarelle; in particular, an interesting-looking young woman was trying to photograph her interesting-looking group of girlfriends. It was like herding cats. Fun to watch.

We strolled down the ramp to the highway along the left bank of the Seine, pausing first to look at the pedestrian improvements being made at what used to be a rock/gravel depot on the riverbank, not far from the Eiffel Tower. It must have been easy to move the enormous piles of granite pavers to this site; the facilities for unloading rock were already there.

I’d just read recently that the pedestrianization project for the highway on the left bank would begin in Spring 2013. For now, it is only pedestrianized on Sundays. But after this summer, we will be able to walk there every day of the week!

We walked until we were famished; at the end of the pedestrianized highway we walked back up to the street level. There, at the corner of the rue du Bac and the Quai Voltaire, is a café called La Frégate.

During our initial summers in Paris, I rejected this café because its location, so near the Louvre and the Musée d’Orsay, seemed to say it must be a tourist rip-off. But that was not fair. It is not true.

We learned the truth about La Frégate a few years ago, when we’d taken a similar Sunday walk along the Seine. We were extremely thirsty, so in spite of my misperception, we stopped for a drink anyway on the “terrasse” which is really just the sidewalk at La Frégate. It was fine, and not overpriced for the location. Another time, we stopped there when it was raining. We had a drink and snack inside, over on the bar side. Again, it was fine.

This time, it was only about 1:30PM when we entered. After the maître d’hotel and I greeted each other, I answered “oui, s’il vous plait” when he asked “pour manger?”

Eat, indeed. That is what we wanted to do. We were led to a splendid table in the splendid dining room; a menu listing appropriate Sunday dinners for France was given to each of us.

Traditional French Sunday dinner is what we ordered: beef bourgignon for Tom, and blanquette de veau for me.

The food was nothing exciting, colorful, or creative, but it was tasty in a mild but very correct way. There was nothing to complain about at all. It was all comme il faut.

The rice that came with the veal was especially good; in fact, basmati rice does not get any better than that. We saw the chef at one point; he appeared to be Vietnamese- or Cambodian-French.

We were entertained by the colorful flow of humanity on the sidewalks and Pont Royal outside, as our table was directly in front of the window on the Quai Voltaire side of the resto.

We were also entertained by a couple of women, one older and one younger, who were seated behind me and who were talking rapidly and excitedly about something. It was one of those situations where I could understand just about everything they said in their very educated, correct French, but it was all cliché’s and standard phrases; for a long time, I could not figure out what they were talking about.

At last we surmised that the discussion was about a contract for purchase or for insurance for a property, almost certainly a restaurant. It seemed that the younger woman was about to buy a restaurant, or at least insurance for a restaurant. She reminded both of us of the French actress Isabelle Carré, but she was not Isabelle Carré.

We shared a good baba au rhum for dessert, and then Tom finished with a double espresso, which he found to be especially generous and good.

When it was time to go, the server saw Tom’s chipless credit card and apologized for the fact that “the credit card machine is not working.” I’d seen people with chip-and-pin cards using the machine, so I knew the problem was really our card, not so much the machine. I appreciated the fact that the server just allowed the machine to take the blame; she did not try to run our card through it and pretend then that the problem was our card not working properly.

Honesty is a good policy. (The same thing happened in the evening when we took the granddaughters out for pizza and spaghetti at the Della Piazza restaurant, which is under new ownership. So twice in one day, we paid with cash instead of a credit card. That was unusual. And it was refreshing not to have to witness any playacting about cards not working for some mysterious reason.)

We walked home through the streets of the 7th, and while it was a lovely day for walking, I think we overdid it.

But we encountered some lovely sights on the way home. On the rue de Bourgogne, we saw an incredibly beautiful shop for home décor that incorporated lots of shell art – the best shell art I’ve ever seen.

Also on that street we saw the entrance and courtyard for the utterly charming Hotel de Varenne. The hotel had the new type of hotel ratings sign on it. Gone are the old blue shields with the four-star only rating system. All were replaced this past week with the new red shields that incorporate the new five-star system. The Hotel de Varenne now has three stars in the new system. But it has some four-star features, like air conditioning.

The Hotel de Varenne may have a moderate star rating in the new system, but it is not inexpensive. A room for two is about 300 euros per night! Its location, in the middle of the 7th arrondissement and very close to the Musée Rodin, is superb.

The Saint Louis church at Les Invalides looks especially beautiful on a sunny day, with its gold-decorated dome glistening against a French blue sky. If we’d taken the metro home, we would not have seen these lovely sights.

But oh, were we ever tired and footsore when we arrived at home. When Dan called, we told him that he and the girls would have to come over to our neighborhood for dinner; we weren’t going much of anywhere.

And so they did.

Monday, July 30, 2012