Paris Journal 2007

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Statue in the Square d’Ajaccio, next to the Invalides. Window in our stairwell of our ancient apartment building. Asian tombstone in the Montparnasse cemetery. The small oval contains a photo of the deceased. Outdoor café and ice cream parlor in the Champ de Mars. Inscription on a gravestone in the Montparnasse cemetery.

Sunday, September 23 Aarrghh! Here I am writing at 4:30AM because the deaf neighbor down below insists on having his TV blaring all night while he sleeps. But it gives me a chance to catch up on this journal. On Friday evening, we went to the Louvre with our landlord friends, Ron and Elisabeth. They have Friends of the Louvre passes that allow them to take two guests on Friday evenings, when the museum is open until 10PM (although they really start asking people to leave at 9:30PM). We saw the Napoleon III apartments which I remembered from years ago because they are so, as I say, “over the top.” I think Ron and Elisabeth had not seen them before. After marvelling at all that bombastic ostentation, we went down one level to examine pious pieces of medieval churches. There we marvelled at the creativity and skill of the stone and wood carvers of that long-ago time. We slowly wandered back, across the Seine, to our quarter through gorgeous Paris, all lit up at night. We’d told Ron and Elisabeth about Au Brin de Zinc, so we decided to stop there for a drink. It was after 11PM when we were back on the street, making our way toward the apartments on the rue du Canivet. The streets were alive with celebration. The French rugby team had just defeated the Irish, ensuring that France could stay in the World Cup competition for now. We ran across some charming, if drunk, teenage boys on the rue Échaudée. After a brief and friendly exchange in which I explained that we were American, not Irish or English, they indicated that they approved more of the Americans than those other anglophones. Then when I said we were Democrats and not Republicans like George Bush, our level of approval went up even more. One of them said “we don’t like the war,” I said I agree. We bade them a friendly farewell, and went on to the Place Furstemberg, a lovely, peaceful, and elegant square on even the wildest night in Paris. That reminds me, the most recent incident of our being stopped and asked for directions was the other day on the bustling boulevard St. Germain, when a tall, dark, exotic North African young man and his much shorter father picked us out of the teaming, moving crowd to ask where the rue de l’Abbaye might be. (It is the street next to the St. Germain des Prés church, the street that leads to the peaceful Place Furstemberg.) I had no trouble telling them how to find it. On Saturday afternoon, Tom finished working on the current chapter of his book in mid- to late-afternoon. We walked for a couple hours, just wandering through the Luxembourg Gardens, stopping to watch a flower arranging demonstration, proceeding onward up the boulevard Mountparnasse where we saw a wedding party in front of the church Notre Dame des Champs (built on the site of an ancient temple to the god Mercury). Lovely dress on the bride. We went on, zig zagging through the 7^th arrondissement, past a synagogue that we didn’t know existed where some important event had just been celebrated, and stopping finally to rest in the Champ de Mars, where we watched sporting events for the handicapped, including an interesting game of basketball being played by young men in wheelchairs. Then it was time to meet Barbara, one of our other summer landlords, for dinner. We went to Marie Edith, a charming and friendly restaurant at 34 rue de Laos (telephone 01-45-66-44-60, open 7 days per week). For first courses, Tom and I each had wild mushrooms (in season right now). He had a different kind from mine. Mine were cêpes, which are wonderful because they are soft and taste like fine, moist red meat. We each ordered lamb for the main course. Tom’s was carre d’agneau, but it was served as a small standing rib roast, not cut into chops. Mine was a souris d’agneau, which turned out to be larger than any of us had seen it before; it was extremely tender. I was curious about why it is called souris, the French word for mouse. According to my Dictionnaire Gastronomique, a souris is a “small round muscle at the knuckle end of a leg of lamb, considered a delicate morsel. The allusion to a mouse is not as curious as it may seem, as the word ‘muscle’ (the same in French and English) comes from the Latin word ‘musculus’ (small rat).” I’m not sure what Rémy of Ratatouille would think of this nomenclature. (By the way, Ratatouille is still the top movie in the Paris region, and rats are selling swiftly at the pet stores.) The server, trying to be helpful, offered us the dessert menus in English. I smiled and asked if we could please have them in French. He was mildly surprised and delighted, and he quickly produced the authentic French versions. Barbara agreed with me that the food tastes better if ordered from a menu written in French, and that the menu is far less confusing in French (due to poor English translations, usually). For dessert, Tom had tarte tatin again, just as he did two nights before. He pronounced it just as good as the perfect one at Au Brin de Zinc, maybe even a scintilla better. I ordered the feuillantine de poire with chocolate sauce since pears are still in season. It was very good, although I confess that I only ate the pear, some sauce, and the small bit of ice cream that came with it; I did not consume the flaky pastry, but it looked good. We bade a warm farewell to Barbara at the Champ de Mars, and then walked all the way home in order to walk off some of that copious dinner. Today promises to be a lovely, sunny warm Indian summer day. There are special events in parks all over Paris. We’ll try to witness some of those. ←Previous Next→

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