Paris Journal 2012 – Barbara Joy Cooley Home: barbarajoycooley.com
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A thick band of rain clouds stretched across the north of France when I checked the weather radar for western Europe yesterday evening. The rain was drizzling in the courtyard, and the radar promised that the weather would worsen, not improve, all evening. We decided that this would be a good evening to visit the cute, quaint, little restaurant on the corner of our block, Au Bon Saint Pourçain. I read the phone number off to Tom as he dialed, and he then reserved. We like the Bon Saint Pourçain. It does have two peculiarities: the lighting is too bright and harsh, I think, and the resto does not accept credit cards. The latter peculiarity doesn’t really matter to us; we always have enough cash on us to cover a meal in a restaurant anyway. Any diner in a restaurant in Europe who doesn’t is a fool. Even if a resto claims to accept credit cards, if the bank is unhappy with the resto owners for any reason, the credit card machine there may not function. The lighting issue is never mentioned by any other customers who submit reviews of the Bon Saint Pourçain as far as I can tell. Maybe I’m the only one who cares about lighting. The restaurant is named for the Saint Pourçain wine, which comes from the Auvergne. Mostly the area is known for its red wine, which is made with gamay and pinot noir grapes. There is a white wine made there, with chardonnay and sacy grapes, but there is also a sauvignon blanc. The owner, François Bonduel, and his daughter operate the resto. The daughter brought us each a complimentary glass of the sauvignon blanc as an aperitif. The fare is very traditional French at the Bon Saint Pourçain. So I ordered a dozen escargots for us to share. They arrived piping hot, in the traditional ceramic escargot dish, each snail resting in its concave spot in a pool of melted, hot butter, garlic and herbs. Delicious. Tom ordered the cassoulet, which came with duck and sausage. He said it was excellent. And I had the poulet forestier, which was a perfectly cooked chicken breast and wing, with mushrooms and a mushroom sauce, and roasted fingerling potatoes. Very, very nice. We shared a homemade chocolate cake/tart for dessert. In came in a pool of crème Anglaise. Excellent. Soon after we were seated, another couple arrived and were seated at the table next to us. They, too, were Americans, but did not speak French. Something about them we liked. They were graceful, polite, and interesting. As it turns out, they were from Manhattan. We ended up having much to talk about, so at the end of the dinner, Tom suggested that we invite them over to the apartment for a glass of wine. I agreed, and we did. So Jacquie and Bill are now friends, we are happy to say. Every year, Jacquie and Bill spend six weeks in Europe, mostly in Rome. But their time in Rome was over, and so they were in Paris. They’ve dined at the Bon Saint Pourçain a number of times over the years. I’d spent too much of the day yesterday hassling with uploading the journal page to my web site on Comcast. I rely on FTP (file transfer protocol) to do this, and the FTP servers at Comcast were not working. So I had to use their file management web page to upload the files, one by one, and then, one by one, designate each and every one of them as “public.” Each page is a file, and each photograph on it is a file. Then for each page, there are a few other files that make it work. Each day, I update the “go to the latest entry” link on the starter page for this year’s journal, and I update the links on the prior day’s page to point to the new page. So those two pages must also be uploaded, and each designated as “public.” With FTP, all the uploading is whizz-bang fast, and there is no tedious dealing with files one by one. But all day yesterday, FTP was a no-go. I didn’t know if it was just my problem, or if others were experiencing it. Sadly, when I reached a Comcast customer service representative on a “chat” session online, he didn’t know anything about the problem, and so I thought it was mine alone. I fiddled with my computer, but nothing helped. Finally, I googled “Comcast ftp” and found an online support forum on Comcast where customers help each other figure things out. There I could clearly read that others were experiencing the same problem yesterday. For some reason, that made me feel so much better. Misery loves company. After Jacquie and Bill left last night, I checked the FTP server again. It worked! So here we go. Wish me luck. I’m going to try to upload now. See you here tomorrow! |
Saturday, September 22, 2012
Sign
on a corner near the Credit Lyonnais headquarters.
The
Four Corners of the Earth Fountain, my favorite fountain in Paris.
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