Paris Journal 2010 – Barbara Joy Cooley Home: barbarajoycooley.com
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Each day is better than the one before. Yesterday, we had one of our grand, long Paris walks in absolutely perfect weather. We started close to home, with a visit to the great, hulking, dark Saint Sulpice Church. But it wasn’t quite so dark this time. Outside, it was such a bright autumn day that the light just had to come in. I never saw so much light in that place. And the great organ was being played. The organist was just playing exercises, but they sounded ethereally magical. We wandered around in the church for longer than I would have predicted. At last we exited, walked down to the neighborhood of a French national theatre, the Odéon, and found the oriental rug store Tom wants to visit on the rue Racine. We admired a double-eagle Kazak through the window. However, the shop does not open until 3 or 4PM, so we went on down to the rue Vaugirard, backtracking a bit to number 22 to take a look at Aux 2 Oliviers, a restaurant that our friend Carol and a couple of others have recommended. It looks good. We’ll try it soon. Going back up the rue Vaugirard led us directly to La Sorbonne. We proceeded directly through the convivial and charming Place de la Sorbonne, and skirted around the old university building so that we walked by the Panthéon, right to the Saint Etienne du Mont church, which, as usual, was closed until 4PM. We went on, pausing to look into the courtyard of the Lycee Henri IV, an elite high school that Tom jokingly pretends was “his” school. People like Jacques Chirac went there. Behind the school on the rue Descartes, we turned right and went on until it became the rue Mouffetard, our destination for the day. The street was alive with all of its interesting shops open. We wandered slowly, becoming very hungry by the time we were nearing the bottom of the hill. After looking into several places and rejecting some of them as too dirty, we finally selected a clean looking bistro with attractively reasonable prices, Au Petit Bistrot at 89 rue Mouffetard (Tel. 01 47 07 35 39). We were the last customers they accepted for lunch. The fixed price menu was three courses for 14.50 euros – a real bargain! I ordered the unusual-for-Paris assorted Greek appetizer plate, and Tom had the Burgundy escargots. We each had delicious barbequed pork ribs that came with small servings of garlicky green beans and scalloped potatoes. For dessert, I ordered the Délice au poire – pear, ice cream, and chocolate sauce. Yumm. Tom had his usual apple pie, which was okay, or good, but not great. What the heck – nothing compares with Joel Valero’s apple tart at Oh! Duo. We’re spoiled. It turns out that there was a supplement of 2.50 on the pork ribs, but the lunch was still a bargain. The server could not get the portable phone/credit card machine to work for either the diners behind us, or for us. The chip in the phone did not want to communicate. He was very apologetic, making sure we knew that it was his phone’s problem, not our card’s problem. He even opened the phone in front of us, removed the chip, rubbed it on his shirt, reinserted the chip, and tried again, to no avail. By the time we left, the chef/boss was chowing down on his lunch, serviette tucked into his collar, before he had to start preparing for the dinner crowd. I’m sure that place will fill up for dinner every night. The décor is kitschy and definitely not chic, but the building is very interesting and very old, with all of its old beams exposed on the ceiling and some on the walls. We said goodbye, and went on our way. After reaching the end of rue Mouffetard, we briefly visited the church of Saint Médard, and then went back up rue Mouffetard to rue Jean Calvin. No exploration of the rue Mouffetard is complete without a visit to the Saint Médard church. There we wandered back toward the Luxembourg Gardens along streets with lots of trees planted about 10 years ago, and with several very important science colleges and laboratories. At Place Lucien Herr, we encountered an interesting looking little park with a fascinating looking restaurant, Chez Lena et Mimile, overlooking it – another restaurant we might try sometime. Finally, we reached the foot of the Luxembourg Gardens, and we sauntered through it, in the pleasantly warm sunshine with the refreshing autumn breezes, until we were home, where we collapsed, exhausted, and napped for a while. In the evening, we went out again. Unfortunately, we ended up wandering through that busy area north of the boulevard Saint Germain, and had an unremarkable little dinner (just a main course each, and a very small strawberry tart which we shared). Afterwards, we tried to find the Hotel Aubusson with its Café Laurent and live jazz by Christian Brenner and his guests. But I remembered it as being on the rue de Seine, and it is really on the rue Dauphine, just around the corner from the restaurant where we’d just dined. I asked at a hotel, finally, and the bored and very polite desk manager looked it up for me on his computer. By the time we arrived at Café Laurent, Christian and friends had only been playing for only a few minutes. Our regular seats at the bar were empty, as if they were waiting for us. We stayed to watch and listen for two full sets. The music was fabulous. Christian and his friends are very talented. Last night, they were a quartet: Christian on piano, a string bass player, a drummer, and a guitarist. No horns necessary, at least not in that cozy club. Shortly before the second set ended, a server came rushing into the café, looked around, and went up to a table of about six or seven men who’d arrived only minutes before. He handed a receipt and a MasterCard to one of the men. The man had evidently left his credit card at the restaurant. We know what restaurant. The server was the same one who served us at Chez Fernand, around the corner and a half block away! Sign
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Saturday, September 4, 2010
Inside
the Saint Sulpice church, we found more light than usual. Forgive the slight fuzziness of my church
photos; even if it is permitted, I never use a flash in a church, for reasons
that I think are obvious.
The
fountain in the square in front of the Saint Sulpice church. |
