Barbara Cooley's Paris Journal

Paris Journal 2010 – Barbara Joy Cooley Home: barbarajoycooley.com

Photos and thoughts about Paris

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Our adventures yesterday began with a métro ride on the line 8 to Concorde, where we switched to the line 12. On our way through the Concorde station to find the 12, we stopped to listen to a couple musicians playing in the acoustically fun tile-lined corridor.

They were an accordion player, and a tuba player. Tom immediately recognized how good the tuba player was. The first piece we heard them play was a polka, and the next was a Latin rumba.

A young couple carrying another accordion stopped to listen. The olive-skinned young woman seized the accordion from her boyfriend’s grip, set it down on the floor, and sat on it while she grooved to the Latin beat.

We gave the musicians two euros and went on our way.

The line 12 ride up to the Lamarck-Caulaincourt station was long, because we were standing, and the métro car was hot and stuffy. In the elevator going up through the middle of the hill I imagined all the rock that we were passing through, and how much of a task it must have been to build that station in the middle of the big rock outcropping. It was hot and stuffy in the elevator, too.

But as soon as we exited the station on the back side of this hill called Montmartre, we were met by cool, damp air. The sky was darkening.

I was surprised. When we had left the apartment down in the former swamp on the Left Bank, the sky was clearing, and the Weather Channel prediction on Yahoo.com was pretty good for yesterday.

But up on the top of the mount with the rest of the martyrs, we were being threatened with possible rain.

We climbed up through the utterly charming streets to the top of the hill. Montmartre is lovely because it still looks like a quaint village.

Except for the throngs of tourists. And with the tourists come the predators hoping to get money or whatever from their prey.

There are so many crowds filling the little streets at the top of the hill that I have a surreal sense there, as if I were in Disneyland. The contrast between what would be quiet village-y lanes and the reality of the teaming crowds is jarring to me.

When we were approaching the rear of the Sacre Cœur church, Tom and I became separated in the crowd. I looked around. He wasn’t there. So I stepped to the curb to wait until I could see him. There he was, on the opposite curb.

But the crowd was so thick I couldn’t move at first. A man standing next to me began to try to hit on me – that is to say, he was flirting with me, trying to pick me up.

On the very few occasions that I’m by myself in a touristy area, this has happened to me. Some predator spots me and tries to pick me up. I must look like an easy mark. Funny, I don’t feel like an easy mark. Do I look stupid, I wonder?

When I got the chance, I gave the man a stern look and said, “Merci, non,” as I made my way through the throng to the other curb where Tom stood.

I said to him, “What’s wrong with you? Couldn’t you see that man was hitting on me?”

But Tom explained that he didn’t see because he had been watching a clown who was working the crowd. I looked for the clown, and couldn’t see her at first. Then I did see her. At that moment, she was sitting in the lap of a startled tourist at a sidewalk café.

Being in a crowd of tourists and predators with Tom is like being with a child who is easily distracted and easily entertained. Disneyland. Ah, innocence.

We made our way around to the front of the church, saw the view, briefly watched a few more entertainers, and then we were hungry. So we went down the steps on the side of the hill to one of our favorite Montmartre spots, the Place at the bottom of the rue Maurice Utrillo.

This charming intersection sports three outdoor cafés where we’ve often had drinks or snacks in the past. But the cafés have changed, and we didn’t see anything we wanted on their menus, so we went on.

At least we were done with the throngs of tourists and predators at the top of the hill.

We went around to a spot where there is a plaque on the rock face explaining that the rock quarry workers there had found fossils that were then studied by Georges Cuvier, the founder of paleontology, in 1798. The door into the rocky cliffside where the carrières worked is still there.

We went on to the neighborhood where there are lots of sizeable stores selling great volumes of fabric and sewing notions, the rue Pierre Picard and environs. It is an amazing sight, all of those hundreds of long bolts of cloth of every kind. The rent is still low enough in this part of Paris that such shops can still exist.

We both like textiles, so we enjoyed this. I think we usually have been on Montmartre on Sundays, when most of these places are closed. It was fun to see them open, and to see so many long bolts of cloth lined up on tables on the sidewalks in front of the stores. We vowed to come to Montmartre on a weekday the next time – maybe there won’t be so many tourists and predators on the top of the hill, and maybe even more of these textile stores would be open.

As we went on, intending still to find a snack or lunch and then the famous drum store, La Baguetterie, we found ourselves on the boulevard de Rochechouart in the rain.

We stood under an awning in front of a Tati discount clothing store and thought about what to do.

Finally, when the rain temporarily lightened only somewhat, I said, “let’s go to that café!” We had to cross two streets at that complicated intersection to get there, but within moments, we were in the hard-working classic non-chic brasserie/café called Le Panorama, situated in a flatiron building at the corner of the rue Gérando and the rue Rochechouart.

Somehow, even though it was peek Saturday lunchtime (2PM), we were given a very good table by the window where we could watch as the rain continued and continued. No, we had not brought an umbrella with us.

The servers, all male, wear the black vests, black slacks, black shoes, and crisp white shirts that we think are so appropriate for French brasseries, at least in Paris. While it is clear that this brasserie has been maintained, it is not slick or chic, and it gets a lot of hard use. The prices are low, for Paris.

Tom ate a delicious ham-and-cheese omelette and hand-cut fries, and I had the duck leg and very fine, savory sautéed pommes salardaise. These kind of potatoes are supposed to be cooked in duck fat, and I suppose these were, but instead of pieces of duck interspersed in the sautéed potato slices, there were tasty lardons – something that is somewhere between pieces of ham and bacon.

These potatoes were excellent, but I didn’t eat anywhere near all of them because I do not wish to turn into a lardon myself. I’m actually doing quite the opposite – losing weight, but thankfully, I’m now losing it at a slower rate than I was in June/July. So, hopefully, the loss will be permanent.

We lingered over lunch, drawing it out with a café allongé for Tom and a glass of red Bordeaux wine for me.

After two hours or more, the weather was finally clearing and the rain was beginning to stop. We asked the boss for the check. When he saw Tom’s credit card, he instructed us to pay at the cash register at the end of the bar. Now this is a true brasserie, I thought – you pay at the bar.

Another true brasserie feature is the bar itself – where there are no bar stools, comme il faut.

Instead, men come in, have a drink while standing at the bar, pay up, and leave. They chat with whoever else is standing at the bar. Rarely, a woman will come in and have a drink at the bar. Nobody stays at the bar for long.

When we left, we exited the rue Gérando side of the flatiron building because it led us directly down to the quintessential Paris street, the avenue Trudaine, which took us directly to the rue Victor Masse, home of La Baguetterie and a number of other musical instrument stores.

We wandered around in the two-level drum store. The lower level, in the first basement, was where most of the merchandise was located. I’ve never seen so many cymbals and snare drums in one place! I waited patiently while Tom examined many things. At one point, he started to go down the steps to the second basement, but the young man at the counter explained nicely that that level was only a place for him and his colleagues to work.

We wandered home from there, visiting the Sainte Trinité church where the organ was being played, and passing through the busy rue de Caumartin, which was jammed with tourists and shoppers. This is the vicinity of the fabled grands magasins, the big department stores like Printemps and Galeries Lafayette.

Then we had a peaceful moment inside the Sainte-Madeleine church, which is now adorned with beautiful flowers on its majestic front steps.

Everything just became more and more chic as we went downhill, in the direction of the Seine.

We passed the elegant Hotel Crillon on our left, while the tightly secured U.S. Embassy was on our right. Then we were in the beautiful park-like part of the Champs Elysées, not the commercial part.

We walked through the area that is home to Le Doyen, a famous restaurant that always seems to be closed when we are in the area. This restaurant began in 1779 but was moved to its current lovely location in 1848.

By the time we finally arrived back at the apartment, we had barely enough time to rest and soak my feet before it was time to go out for dinner. Having had lunch, we didn’t need much, so we went to our “neighborhood pub,” Le Commerce Café, where the server who knows us greeted us warmly and gave us a nice table.

He highly recommended the foie de veau (calf’s liver), so I ordered it. Tom had his usual bland carpaccio de boeuf, which, at least, comes with a bunch of slices of really good cantal cheese.

The server was right. The thin slice of calf’s liver was expertly prepared with a persillade, garlic, and sea salt. It was delicious.

I only ate four bites of the puréed potatoes because I had just reached my fill of potatoes for the day. But they were good.

And so we wandered back up the street to the apartment, where we collapsed, absolutely exhausted, and listened to jazz CDs - especially Art Blakey and Wynton Marsalis.

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Note: For addresses & phone numbers of restaurants in this journal, click here.

Sunday, August 15, 2010

The Feast of the Assumption