Paris Journal 2013 – Barbara Joy Cooley Home: barbarajoycooley.com
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We’d just left the costume
jewelry shop and continued our walk up the busy, trendy rue du Commerce,
headed toward the avenue de Suffren. I
heard a pretty French voice behind me saying “Barbara, Barbara.” I turned around. There was Patricia! I was so happy to see her. The three of us exchanged greetings. We had a long chat, out
there in the middle of the sidewalk.
We did a home exchange with François and Patricia one summer years
ago. Patricia and I are friends
on Facebook, so I’d seen her posts and photos of her adorable children as
they grow. She has been reading this
Paris Journal. So we are in touch, and I
knew from one of her Facebook posts that something sad had recently happened
in her life. She told us – her mother
died recently. She was only in her
60s. We are so sad for Patricia. We talked, and talked. She, François, and the kids
are going on vacation, starting today.
They’re going to Florida again, but this time, the other coast (Fort
Lauderdale), and then the Bahamas after that. Florida, please treat these
dear people very well. We love
them. They need some R&R. I assured Patricia that any
summer they would like to do another home exchange in Sanibel, I could almost
certainly find someone who would love to exchange with them. They have an apartment in the uppermost 15th,
very near the Eiffel Tower. It is a great
location. But they are considering moving
out to the suburbs, for the space and for peace and quiet. Paris is a bustling place, after all. They are renters in Paris,
but homeowners in Burgundy, where they go every weekend. It is a busy life, working in the city and
commuting out to the country each week, kids in tow. I’ll think of them often
this month, picturing them relaxing on the beach in Fort Lauderdale or the
Bahamas. One reason we went out
walking earlier yesterday is that we knew that later in the day, after the
New World had a chance to wake up and drink coffee, we’d be busy. We have a real estate transaction going on,
back in Florida. So we did an avenue walk,
up the avenue de la Motte-Picquet, down the avenue de Suffren, over to the
avenue de Saxe where we walked up through the open air market, which was
beginning to wind down for the day, and back down to the avenue de
Breteuil. Then we sauntered up this
avenue+park to the swishy Place Vauban, admiring the gorgeous St. Louis
church dome in the midst of the Invalides. Tom said he needed some
lunch. The elegant restaurant, Le
Vauban, was too much of an experience at that moment. We wanted something a little more casual. So we went over to the avenue de Tourville
and the boulevard de la Tour-Maubourg, where we settled in at Romantica, a nice Italian
restaurant. I knew that dinner plans
would be impractical, because by then the New World would be showering us
with real estate paperwork. My lunch at Romantica was
particularly good – colorful rigatoni Norma, with an exceptionally good
tomato, eggplant, and pinenut sauce, and some smoked cheese strips which were
especially tasty, and a drizzle of pesto. Tom ordered a linguini with
sautéed beef and onion, which was very good, but much blander than my
dish. I gave him plenty of my
rigatoni, because the portions at Romantica are generous. When we left the restaurant
and began walking up the avenue de Tourville, we saw a small antique shop,
half of which was dedicated to antique lead toy soldiers. I must remember to tell my friend John
Wolf, a collector, I told myself. Later, back at the
apartment, in the late afternoon, we received the real estate paperwork in
our email. We set about the task of
reading it all thoroughly, jotting down our questions, Skyping the attorney,
getting answers to our questions, and then doing all the things we needed to
do regarding the paperwork. There’s more to do today,
as we will make a trip up to a familiar old haunt, the Federal Express
outpost on the grand boulevard Haussmann.
I think that this will be our first trip over to the right bank this
summer. (The Île Saint Louis does not
count as right bank, correct?)
Amazing. |
Friday, July 26, 2013
Antique
toy soldiers, made from lead, in a shop window on the avenue de Tourville (near Les Invalides
and L’École Militaire).
Rigatoni
Norma at Romantica Caffe. |
