Paris Journal 2011 – Barbara Joy Cooley Home: barbarajoycooley.com
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The afternoon jazz concerts in the Luxembourg Gardens were cancelled due to the rain. Because the rain stopped just before the time the second concert was to begin, Tom was incredulous. “There is no reason why the big band couldn’t have played!” he asserted, with a mild outrage. You see, with Island Jazz, Tom is a real “the show must go on!” kind of band leader (he calls himself the Island Jazz band’s “den mother”, and I tell him that the pronunciation is “den mutha.”) I patiently reminded him about all the equipment and the many instruments, chairs, music stands, etc., that would have to be carted beneath the trees to the gazebo/stage for a big band, and he began to stifle his disapproval of the cancellation. Rain does complicate logistics for outdoor events, no question. And so we walked instead. South we went all the way through the Luxembourg Gardens and the Jardin de la Cavelier de la Salle and the Jardin Marco Polo. West we turned on the boulevard du Montparnasse. Northeast we returned up the full length of the rue de Rennes. Then it was west along the boulevard Saint Germain, and about-face to walk east along same, until we reached the Cluny (medieval museum). After a brief southerly stretch along the boulevard Saint Michel, we turned back toward the west, toward home, along the rue Racine. That was a long walk! After resting for a short while at the apartment, we discussed dinner plans. Dinner on Sunday is a bit more of a challenge in the 6th than in the 15th, not because there are no restaurants open, but because here, in the 6th, the restaurants open on Sundays are, on the whole, not the best ones. This is more true in the 6th than in the 15th, and I think it has to do with a combination of the plethora of tourists and the high price of real estate (and therefore rent) in the 6th. But Tom remembered that last year, we had a really good dinner at Le Procope, which is a bit of a tourist trap, but a very historic one and one that actually does serve some decent French cuisine. (Click on the link in the previous sentence to see lots of gorgeous photos of Le Procope.) I phoned for a reservation, but the hostess said that the restaurant wasn’t taking reservations, and instead we’d have to show up and wait. That didn’t sound too good. But even as I sat and talked with her on the phone, I was looking at the restaurant’s web site which promised a way to make reservations immediately, online. After the call, I tried the online system, but shrewdly used Tom’s name so that the hostess wouldn’t necessarily match my phone call with our online reservation. The system seemingly worked, and an email arrived quickly, confirming our reservation for 8PM for the two of us. We dressed for dinner and left the apartment. As we walked up the rue Garancičre behind the hulking Saint Sulpice church, we spotted a man standing in front of the pretty Relais Saint Sulpice hotel. Tom recognized him first: Jim Hanlon of Sanibel Island! We knew that Jim and Maddy were staying there, and that they’d just arrived in Paris that day. We have plans to dine with them and the Kramers at Axuria tonight. Before we’d left the apartment, I sent Jim a quick email to ask if their arrival in Paris and to the hotel went smoothly, and to tell him that we’re dining at Le Procope tonight. I thought perhaps Jim had already seen my email, but no, he said he hadn’t. This was just a chance meeting. Maddy came out of the hotel and we had joyful greetings, and then decided we’d make the restaurant turn our reservation for two into a reservation for four. What reservation? The hostess explained that she doesn’t receive the reservations from the web site until a day or two later. Shoot! What a dysfunctional system. The four of us stood in front of her, trying to decide if we wanted to wait and stay, or leave to find someplace else. A manager came up to the hostess’s post. Jim said to him that it appears they have lots of space, but the manager still thought that fitting us in would be a problem. I explained to Jim that I thought it might be a staffing problem, not a space problem. I turned to the manager and explained to him, in French, that we’d received an email message from the restaurant confirming our reservation. Aha! I had him. He knew that was true. He could not allow this to be the restaurant’s fault. So he said he’d see what he could do. He briefly disappeared. Our Parisian-born friend Elisabeth Beckman would have been proud of my persistence, I thought. About 30 seconds later, he returned with four menus and took us upstairs to the Salon Benjamin Franklin, where he seated us at a nice round table for four in the middle of the beautiful room. The head server up there didn’t look too happy at first, but hey, I’d rather wait at a nice table than in the little foyer downstairs. So it was a staffing problem after all. We each ordered a fixed-price 3-course dinner. Three of us had the traditional Burgundy escargots, and they were good. Tom and I each had a trout meuničre with slivered almonds, and that was delicious! We also each had a croustillant aux deux chocolats and those were fine, too. Maddy had the supręme de poulet because, as she explained, it had been difficult to find chicken on a restaurant menu in the towns in southern France this year. It was duck, duck everywhere. She blames the economy, making it impossible for families who own these little restaurants to keep a variety of fresh meats/poultry/fish on the menu. Jim, who must have some French blood flowing in his veins, had the great, traditional French onion soup to start, followed by steak tartare, which was prepared by our server off to one side of the dining room. It came with steak fries. We talked and talked, and it was fun to hear Jim and Maddy describe what it was like now in the south of France, where they spent much of the summer travelling from town to town in their boat, which they co-own with other couples. It is sort of a boat time-share that they set up themselves. They both look tan and healthy. So nice to have an impromptu dinner with good friends from back home. And tonight, there will be yet another dinner with Sanibelians! Sign
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Monday, September 12, 2011
The French
news media included a large amount of coverage of the 9/11 commemoration
events back in the U.S. This is my
favorite photo from the coverage. It
was taken by David Handschuh of Agence France Presse, and I saw it on the web site and Facebook
page for Le Parisien.
The Four
Corners of the Earth fountain in the Jardin Marco
Polo. A detail below; her beautiful,
strong face reminds me of the kind of beautiful, strong face that Michelle
Obama has.
A bust of
Ben Franklin looks over the Salon Benjamin Franklin in Le Procope. Yes, Ben really did dine here, in this very
restaurant! Le Procope
was founded in 1686.
Le Closerie de Lilas, one of the cafés where
Hemingway would write. It was down the
street from the sawmill where he and Hadley, his
first wife, lived on the rue de Notre Dame des Champs. |
