Paris Journal 2008
Sign
my guestbook. View
my guestbook. ←Previous Next
→ Barbara’s home page
|
France is famous for its strikes, but in all eleven summers of living here, we had not been directly affected by one until this morning. I went down to get our newspaper (the International Herald Tribune) from the mailbox and it was not there. I called to complain, and the nice man who answered told me about the strike “over there in France.” He must be in Britain. I’m all for organized labor, but these guys better be careful about this strike idea. It could backfire. As soon as I was off the phone, I found myself thinking, “No big deal. I can just read the news on the internet. Who needs the paper?” They could strike themselves right out of a job. Now I do seem to remember reading something about negotiations going on between the newspaper vendors and the government. We’ll see what happens. Yesterday was cool and gray when it was supposed to be mostly sunny. The “little bit” of work Tom had to do turned out to be a lot, so we had a late start. We only walked to La Petite Chaise and back. Dinner at La Petite Chaise was not good. Mine was okay – six escargots and a filet of daurade (fish) with mixed steamed vegetables. But it was not exciting and it was pretty easy to prepare. Tom’s dinner, however, was pathetic. He ordered the mignon de porc, which I’ve had several times in the past. It is supposed to be three nice pieces of juicy, tender pork served with a mustard cream sauce (including the mustard grains) and rich scalloped potatoes and carrots. Instead, he was served three thin, dry pieces of pork with pasta and a white cheese sauce that tasted like it came right out of a jar from the discount grocery. Blah. Then he had a chocolate tart for dessert that was equally bland. Lesson learned: don’t go to La Petite Chaise on a Monday night. The service and the ambiance were excellent, as always. It was just the food that was not up to par. Earlier in the evening, at about 6pm, I went out for a short walk to the market at Saint Germain. I bought two beautiful, big pashima scarves, both purple, for a total of €25. This broke my general rule about not buying much of anything in Paris. Here’s a little more information about the Parc Montsouris that we visited on Sunday. The park, opened in 1875, is so named because yes, that area was once infested with rodents. It was created by Baron Haussmann as part of a bigger plan to make more green space in Paris. It is 37 acres, all supposedly in the style of an English garden. Lots of water birds live around the little lake in the park, and the lake also has imported Florida turtles living in it. Before it was a park, it was a rock quarry, and a cemetery with six million bodies, according to the paris.fr web site. Across the boulevard Jourdan from the park, as I mentioned yesterday, is the Cité Internationale Universitaire de Paris. Tom and I thought it was part of the University of Paris because it contains student housing. But I learned that it is really a private park and foundation, started in 1925, mostly for the purpose of providing affordable student housing. The City of Paris considers the Cité to be a “foundation of public utility.” Architects of the stately buildings in the Cité include Le Corbusier, Willem Marinus Dudok and Claude Parent. Each building is designated by country. For example, there is a “House of Cuba,” and there are students from Cuba living there, but also students from elsewhere. In the summer of 2003, my peripatetic younger cousin Geoff Thurner, a sportswriter from Oregon, stayed in one of these residence halls when he was in Paris to cover sporting events at the Stade de France. I think he enjoyed it very much, being with all those young people. Geoff is also a cross country runner and a photographer. Here are some of his photos from his travels. You can see that he’s popular with young women. Speaking of popularity, the Pope’s visit on Saturday and Sunday was evidently a success. We didn’t happen to go anywhere near where he was, so we didn’t see any of the crowd or the giant screens that were set up so the masses could see and hear him say mass. The newspaper says there were 250,000 people at the Esplanade des Invalides for the occasion. Some Parisians, however, were not enthusiastic about the Pope’s visit. Here’s a translation of a “person on the street” interview in Le Parisien. Catherine Hahn, a 57-year-old consultant who lives in the 12th arrondissement had this to say: “Disastrous. That made me angry. The Pope was received like a chief of state, with our tax money. Friday, it was impossible to drive around the Montagne Sainte Genevieve [where the Panthéon is located]. In the name of what? We are a secular republic, and I don’t understand why we receive a religious chief of this sort. The religion has been used for political purposes.” |
Tuesday, September 16, 2008
Angel atop a column at the entrance to Parc
Montsouris. It is the "Column of
the Armed Peace" by Jules Coutan (1887).
Main entrance to the Cité Internationale Universitaire
de Paris.
Building on the rue Nansouty has apartments on top, and
studios or workshops on the lower level.
Tom makes his
way up the Square de Montsouris. |
