Paris Journal 2013 – Barbara Joy Cooley Home: barbarajoycooley.com
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Now that we can walk along
the riverbank any day of the week, Sundays are no longer reserved for that
purpose. Yesterday, we decided to use our
Sunday to walk all the way across the 7th and back again, taking
advantage of the almost traffic-free streets.
Ah. Sundays in August in
Paris. Peace. We began with our usual
walk up to and through the Champ de Mars.
The Eiffel Tower was looking good.
Flowerbeds are in fine form. We turned on the odd little
rue du Gal Camou and realized that it leads directly to the Lavirotte
apartment building on the avenue Rapp, and it gave us an almost unobstructed
view of that glorious building’s entire façade. I was delighted to be able to photograph
it. Tom wanted to walk along
the rue de l’Université. We took the
quaint passage called the Cité de l’Alma to it. This is a private, gated street, but the
gates were open to pedestrians. A sign
on the fence indicated that it is really automobiles, and especially
motorcycles and motorscooters, that the residents want to forbid. The rue de l’Université was
very quiet, and the construction work that plagued it in recent years now
seems to be finished. The walking was
pleasant there. Shortly after we crossed
the Esplanade des Invalides, we reached the Place du Palais Bourbon, which is
one of our favorite places/squares in Paris.
We love the elegance of the square, which is accomplished by having
three sides of it lined with buildings that have almost identical
facades. We studied those facades
closely. The corner buildings at the
rue de l’Université seem to be normal buildings. All the rest appear, on close examination,
to be oddly built shallow buildings of only about 10 or 12 feet deep, which
mask other buildings or spaces. The culture.gouv.fr web
page for every building on this Place, the façade and the roof facing the
Place has the notation: inscription par
arreté du 5 juillet 1935. I wonder
if that decree is what made all the other buildings on the Place match the
facades of those two corner buildings?
We peeked into the a shop
(closed for Sunday) on the south side of the square. The shop is only 10 feet deep. On the east side of the square, we were
able to look into a couple ground floor windows and doors. In each case, about 10 or 12 feet back from
the window or door, there was a change in elevation, about three steps up and
a doorway or archway leading to another room, about 10 feet back from the
front of the building. Whenever this was done, it
was done to give uniformity and symmetry to every façade facing the square,
which is graced in the middle by a large statue called La Loi (The Law), by the sculptor Feuchère, 1855. We walked on to the end of
the rue de l’Université and followed the boulevard Saint-Germain a short
distance to the Place Jacques Bainville, named for a historian and journalist
who was a monarchist, very anti-German, anti-Alfred Dreyfus, anti-democracy,
anti-Semitic, and opposed to the legacy of the French Revolution. I’m surprised such a pretty
square is named for Bainville. It is
much lovelier than the miniscule, paved Place Alfred Dreyfus off the avenue
Emile Zola in the 15th arrondissement. Go figure. We followed the rue
Saint-Dominique back across the 7th arrondissement. The rue Saint-Dominique is to the 7th
arrondissement what the rue du Commerce is to the 15th: the trendy shopping street. Rue Saint-Dominique also
has a number of very interesting restaurants, including La Fontaine de Mars,
where Barack and Michelle Obama have dined. The one that looks
appealing to me now is the Thoumieux brasserie, which I’d like to try. It has been updated, and is very pretty
inside. We checked out the
Christian Constant restaurants (Violon de l’Ingres, Les Cocottes, and Café
Constant) but the first was too expensive for what we wanted last night, and
the other two were too crazy and uncomfortable-looking. We decided to to on to the
Auberge Bressanne. We’d been walking
for more than three hours. By the time
we finally were there, we found the auberge closed for a week and a half of
vacation. We then decided on La
Gauloise, a longtime favorite. When we
arrived there just before 8PM, we were warmly greeted even without a
reservation, and were given our favorite table, in the front window. Dinner was superb. Tom had the Chateaubriand steak, and I had
the chicken suprême in a light
sauce made with vin jaune. I love that kind of sauce! I used bits of bread on my fork to be sure
to mop up every last drop. Dessert, a grosse profiterole that is made in the
La Gauloise kitchen was heavenly. It
was crispy on the outside, and filled with delicous ice cream on the
inside. The server poured a warm, dark
chocolate sauce over it right before our eyes, then he left the pitcher with
the remaining sauce on our table because we might need more. When we ordered the
dessert, to be shared, the server had completely approved of that. I can see why. This profiterole was quite large. But our main courses were
right-sized, which is to say they were not big at all. In fact, I’d say mine was on the small
side, but I was very pleased with it.
It was just right for me. We did not have appetizers,
but a refreshing cucumber and crème
fraiche mis en bouche had been
given to us on arrival. The bread at
La Gauloise is good, and is served with butter on the side. We couldn’t ask for anything more. When we left La Gauloise, we
had that wonderful feeling of having dined very well. |
Monday, August 12, 2013
Flowers
on the Champ de Mars.
Building
designed by Lavirotte on the avenue Rapp.
“The
Law” statue in front in the Place du Palais Bourbon.
Statue
in the courtyard of the French Radiology Society on the rue de l’Université.
Chicken suprême
au jus vin jaune. |
