Monday, May 21

Chunneling on the Eurostar

We will travel from London to Paris by train via the English Channel tunnel, or Chunnel, as everyone calls it. The Eurostar terminal in Waterloo Station looks more like an airport than a train station. Check-in procedures are as cumbersome as any airport, and security, just as tight. We hurry down a long platform looking for Coach 14 and we board our train with hundreds of other travelers.

We sink into the comfort of our seats, but a crying baby behind us informs us it won't be a peaceful ride. An announcement comes over the loudspeaker in heavily-accented English. Bags must be tagged with seat numbers, the announcer says. We ask the noisy baby's dad behind us if he understood what we were supposed to do. The dad, an American with a redneck attitude, defiantly replies by asking why. Why would we know why? Gene finds the mandated bagtags and at least our bags are cool.

Gene: I am somehow comforted by the fact that EVERYBODY on this train hates these people (as I turn up The Kinks on my iPod). They were too dumb/arrogant to secure three seats, apparently. Just saw my first trainspotter with goggles and everything.

An Evening in Saint Germain des Pres

Our Paris hotel, near the Gare de L'Est and on top of the Chateau Landon Metro stop, is cleaner and more modern than the London flophouse we just left. Tiny room still, but sunny and quiet at least.

Brian and his daughter, Rita, come by with a bottle of Vueve Cliquot. We ask for glasses at the desk and the clerk gives us four clear plastic cups, tiny as shot glasses. The four of us sit on the double bed in our room and loosen up with tiny cups of champagne.

After the bubbly, we walk to the Metro Station to go to Saint Germain des Pres and the Latin Quarter. Brian and Rita bring us to Le Petite Zinc, a restaurant they scouted out earlier for dinner. One of our New York friends used to edit a poetry magazine called Le Petite Zine. The title finally clicks.

Charming Rue St Benoit is bustling with people. Jazz wafts from the café next door, Le Bilboquet.The food at Le Petite Zinc does not disappoint. Rita, Brian and I each suck down a half-dozen escargot. Gene orders steak and Brian gets duck. Rita has tuna tartare and I have fish. We drink a bottle of red wine and a bottle of white.

After dinner, we drink beer at an outdoor café down the street. Past midnight, the people are thinning out and the cafes are starting to close up. We ride the Metro to our hotel; our stop is two stops past where Brian and Rita transfer. We exit the huge Gare de L’Est station at different place than we entered, so we are disoriented. I ask directions several times before we find a familiar street. Feels a little scary when you're not sure if you're walking in the right direction on dark and deserted streets.

We ask for an extra pillow at the front desk. The night clerk sends us off with a maintenance guy. We follow the bald man to the second floor but he cannot unlock the service room. We follow him to another room, but he can’t get into that one either. Giving up, we look up the word for “tomorrow” (demain) in our French book. He agrees "demain," happy to be off the hook.

Ten minutes later he knocks at our door with an extra pillow.

Tuesday, May 22

How do You Say Lactose-Intolerant in French?

Without a clock in the room, we sleep past our meet-up time with Brian and Rita. We try to call them at their hotel, but we struggle with the room phone. The front desk cuts in on our call. I tell the operator the number I want to dial. “You are in Frahnce. You do not dial zero-one,” he said. I obey his instructions and dial again.

The speaker answering the phone rattles off the standard hotel greeting so fast I can't understand him. I ask for Room 325 and I hear a phone ring, but nothing happens. I try again a few minutes later, same thing. Light bulb! I am calling our own hotel. We go down to the front desk and ask the clerk to make the call for us. We're sure he recognizes us as the losers who don't know how to make a phone call.

We eat breakfast at the café across the street, though it is early afternoon. I order an Omelette Fromage with an oversized serving of French Fries. Upset that Gene did not order cheese in his omelet, the waiter tries to get him to change his order from Omelette Jambon to one with cheese. Like Eskimos having fifty words for each subtlety of snow, I bet the French don't even have a word for lactose-intolerant.

Open or Closed, The Louvre Impresses

Navigating on our own, we take The Metro to the Louvre stop on the 7 train.

We sit by a fountain in the Jardin du Palais Royal. The relaxed arboral setting proves a destination is not necessary in Paris. We stroll toward the Louvre. Entering the first courtyard, I gasp out loud at the enormity of museum grounds. Entering the second courtyard with the glass pyramids, uncharacteristically, I gasp again. Here the sculptured friezes, free from the façade, seem like ancient beings watching over the courtyard. We wander around for awhile before we realize the museum is closed. But the time spent in the courtyard feels far from time wasted.

We walk through the pink Arc du Carrousel and through the Jardins. We stop at an outdoor café, a sea of orange umbrellas. We have espresso and juice. Our waiter speaks no English, but he has a comical, entertaining tone. People back home told me everyone in Paris speaks English. That is simply not true. Sure, everyone knows a few words and we can speak a few French words. But no one is making sentences, or complete sense either.

Van Gogh at the Musee d'Orsay

We consider heading to the Eiffel Tower, but realize we are closer to our original destination, the Musee d’Orsay.

Impressionist paintings and marble sculptures are housed in the transformed shell of an old train station. Is Paris the city of old train stations? We especially like the Van Goghs, which, like all masterpiece originals, are more complex and impactful than reproductions in art books. A group of grade-school students, all wearing orange baseball caps, sit cross-legged in front of Vincent Van Gogh's self portrait. We think Van Gogh was the inspiration for the cartoon Dr Katz's “Squiggle Vision.”

The museum closes soon and we can’t find the Matisse room. I’m always searching for Matisse, but never finding him. In Nice, we couldn't find the Matisse Museum and now, we can't find him here in Paris.

To get back to our hotel, we are forced to figure out the nuances of the Metro system. We find an REF station, but walk to the M12 station because we are not sure that the REF connects to the Metro. We abandon that strategy and find a taxi line back at the Musee d’Orsay. The queue with seven people ahead of us never moves. So we return to the REF line. I try to confirm directions with the cashier at the ticket window but my pronunciation is so bad she asks, “Is that in Paris?” I hear some American girls behind us and ask them for directions. They try to help, but are unsure themselves. By this time, we've been over the maps enough to know we can figure it out.

Old School Chartier

We crash nap at the hotel until Brian calls. We meet him and Rita at La Porto Montmartre for a drink and people-watching. They take us down narrow streets to an old-school restaurant, La Chartier. Veteran waiters line ten plates up their arms and bustle up and down the restaurant aisles. The waiter writes our dinner order on the butcher paper that covers the table. He adds up the bill in crayon on the table as well. Our waiter jokes with us despite knowing few words in common.

Gene and I taxi back to the hotel. We buy some fruit and chocolate-covered animal crackers at a little store a block away. We watch “The Kid Stays in the Picture” in French. Gene knows this film by heart, so he loses nothing. I’ve solved the mystery of how French women stay thin. It's not some secret to their metabolism or eating habits, it’s the number of stairs in the Metro system.

Wednesday, May 23

Les Egouts, The Sewers of Paris

We plan to meet Brian and Rita at the ticket booth for the underground sewer tour at 11 am. We wake up early, but after pissing around getting ready and taking three trains, we end up on a train that terminates before the end of the line. A young Frenchman in a business suit tells us we must switch trains.

We arrive at Les Egouts, The Sewers, right at eleven. Groups of high school kids wait, eager to climb down under the street.

We see no sign of Brian or Rita. I need coffee but there is no quickie coffee kiosks in sight. There might not be quick coffee in Paris at all. We walk two blocks and find an almost-deserted café. We ask for coffee and a croissant. No croissants, the waiter says, just cake. He points toward a pound cake on the table behind us. We say okay, and he slams two slices of a buttery lemon cake on our table.

Gene reaches for a napkin and spills the rest of his espresso. We mop up the spill with our two tiny napkins. The waiter's iciness didn't bother us at first, but now we have committed an offense. Will he yell "out, out, you american morons!" I don't think he even looked at us again.

I am anxious about missing Brian and Rita. We return to the sewer entrance, but no sign of them. Now, at 25 past 11, we've probably missed them. We sit outside the sewer tour entrance, thinking we'll see them as they exit. We sit for a half hour before we realize the sewer visitors emerge elsewhere. How did people ever get by without cell phones?

The Eiffel Tower

We walk along the Seine toward the Eiffel Tower. We stop at an outdoor photography exhibit of large, colorful animal photos alternating with a panels of environmental facts. I love animal photos.

The Eiffel Tower is okay, but forgive me for saying this, overrated. We have no desire to climb to the top of the thing. I’m sure the view would be cool, but the queue looks like two hours at least. We sit under the tower for a few minutes, and we get approached several times by young gypsy women in long skirts who ask us if we speak English. Say yes and they hand you a note that asks for money with their sad, but fictional, life story.

We head back the way we came, following the Seine, undecided whether we will go to the Musee Rodin or Notre Dame. A young man walks closely beside us and makes a commotion about finding a gold ring. He pretends he thinks the ring is ours. Our guard was up too much to fall for his ruse and besides, we've lived in New York too long. But I can see how his scam might be successful if he plays on people's greed. Gene gives him a euro to get rid of him.

Notre Dame

We are tired from all the walking today so we hop in a cab and head to Notre Dame on the Ile de Cite. The outside is impressive. Another gypsy in a long skirt asks us if we speak English, card in hand. We say no. We file through the church and I feel guilty for being bored and unimpressed. I like St Patrick’s in New York and The Catedral in Barcelona better. This is really my last cathedral, church, shrine or religious edifice.

We need refreshment, but we are wary of the predatory, subpar cafes right along Notre Dame. But a block or two away, there’s a café that looks a little off the beaten path. We don’t realize until we exit that we simply entered the back entrance of one the touristy traps. Joke's on us.

We order beers and I get a tomato-mozzarella salad. Gene gets chicken with spaghetti-tomato. The mozzarella on my salad isn’t fresh and the lettuce is iceberg. Gene comments that his spaghetti sauce tastes like it’s from a can.
We hear a deep southern American voice behind us say, “It’s Chef Boy R Dee, son.”

The southerner tries to engage us in conversation. “You guys from the States?” he drawls. He is on his honeymoon and is an unhappy fish out of water in Paris. He talks too long and loud about the food, assuming no one understands him besides us and his poor wife. We are happy to end the conversation.

Our bill is $42.40 and we give our waiter a $100 euro note. The waiter comes back with a fifty and a five, doesn’t let go of the five and says, “tip?” I take the fiver from him. Though I think about leaving it for a tip, I am put off by his aggressiveness. Then I realize that he didn’t give us all our change, despite the service charge already added to the bill. So I leave two euros on top of his service charge plus what he already took. Now I really know why you shouldn’t eat at the cafes alongside Notre Dame, or any other tourist trap.

The two-euro coin we left was only apology for participating in the conversation with the ugly American.

Au 35 Restaurant

We walk across one of the bridges over the Seine and we see the Pompidou Centre, with a lot of a normal building's innards on the outside. I take photos, all which disappear when my computer crashes. Gene stops in a record store, but doesn’t find anything he wants. I realize we are at Les Halles and although we are tired, I suggest we walk on.

We sit by the Fontaine des Innocents (Fountain of Innocence), surrounded by creepy guys, but the fountain is beautiful. Les Halles reminds me of Fulton Mall in Brooklyn, a project that should have turned out so much better. We see an internet café guarded by a Rotweiler, so we decide not to go in.

We return to our room at 4 pm and succumb to what we intended to be a brief nap, but we sleep until 7:30.
I select a restaurant from my Rough Guide to Paris, Au 35 in Saint Germain. The waitress, a large red-headed woman, dotes on us. As we discuss appetizer options, an American couple across the tiny dining room suggests the tomato appetizer.

A group of eight is seated next to us in the tiny, intimate room. They are both French and American, mature sophisticats, speaking whichever language suits them at the moment. They could be characters in a movie staged just for us. The husky-voiced woman nearest us asks us if we mind her smoking. She says it with a sincere, yet exaggerated smile; she knows Americans don’t like smoke. She’s right, we don’t like smoke, but we like her, so we say of course we don’t mind. Besides this is France, and we would never say we minded.

Gene has steak with pepper sauce, the best he’s ever had, he says. I have spinach salmon lasagna with goat cheese, baked in its own single-serving container, dry in a good way.

Jazz at Chez Papa

After dinner, we wander down the street thinking about finding dessert. We walk only a few steps before we hear jazz piano coming from Chez Papa. A waiter persuades us in perfect English to enter. We like his enthusiasm; but we didn't need to be sold, we would have gone in anyway. He apologizes for sounding like a commercial and we like him already.

He seats us at the first table in front of a white grand piano. The walls, plastered with posters, are also covered with graffiti-like signatures. Classic jazz albums--Sonny Rollins, Charles Mingus and Fats Waller--are propped around the balcony, a loft level with a wooden railing around the center. The piano-bass combo is fantastic and we are part of a small, but appreciative audience. Only one group in the back talks inappropriately loud. (There’s always one.)

We have dessert--dark, ripe fruit with whipped cream for me and for Gene, a chocolate cake in a white-chocolate sauce. Twice in the same night, Gene says, the best he ever had.

Gene and I are thrilled we found Chez Papa, exactly the type of place we love. I wish more people would show up and fill the tables. A woman who must be a singer talks to the band when they break. The waiter tells us she sings down the street and she will probably sit in when her gig is finished.

We leave after one and a half sets, sadly, because it is time and we don’t want to wreck tomorrow. We walk only one block and we see Le Petite Zinc where we ate Monday, and the place next door where that singer must be working. We are so back tomorrow.

Thursday, May 25

Pere Lachaise, Cemetery City

Brian meets us at our hotel this morning. We head to Pere Lachaise cemetery where Brian had been earlier this week. He wants to return to take photos with black-and-white film. We see Chopin's, Edith Piaf's, and Jim Morrison’s graves. This massive cemetery looks like a little town with tree-lined cobblestone streets and tiny houses. Only the tiny houses are crypts.

We wander around without a map. We should have spent two euros outside and purchased one from the map hawker. Brian is unable to find Oscar Wilde’s grave again and is unwilling to give up. Tired, we say goodbye to Brian. We will see him in New York in ten days.

Musee Rodin

We take a couple of trains to 77 rue de Varenne, the Musee Rodin. I stash our camera in my front pocket without a case and now the lens is jammed. At the Musee Rodin, Rodin’s own body of work plus his art collection are on exhibit. We are impressed with the Japanese woodcut prints. We also like the many masks of Hanako, a Japanese dancer and actress, the object of Rodin’s obsession.

The museum, built as a private mansion in 1730, was known as the Hotel Biron in Rodin's time. Jean Cocteau, Henri Matisse and Auguste Rodin all occupied the chateau at various times. Rodin used the chateau as his Paris studio. Room after beautiful room is filled with Rodin's sculptures. An early summer breeze blows through the mansion’s open windows and I try to imagine the immensenhouse when Rodin lived there.
Stunning gardens are dotted with cone-shaped trees and awash with big pink and red flowers. Bronze versions of Rodin's most famous sculptures cover the massive grounds.

 

Yorkshire Pudding, Anyone?

We head back to our favorite area, St Germain, for dinner at the Brasserie Lipp. The host leads us upstairs, where all the Americans are seated. He doesn't ask if we prefer the non-smoking level; he just knows.

The chaotic typefaces and disorganization make the menu hard for me to decipher. Not because of the French words--I have a cheat sheet. The waiter heartily recommends the Sea Bass special over the Sole Meuniere. Gene and I both choose the bass. Never ignore a waiter's recommendation. For starters, Gene has salmon pate and I have creamy shrimp with slices of avocado.

The dining room is warm with yellow-tiled walls and tiled floral images within the regular wall tiles. The ceiling is painted mocha brown with chocolate brown trim. Couples are seated at the desirable tables up against the open bay windows.

We are sitting next to, or almost on top of really, an older American couple. They have been dating a short time, six months or nine months depending on which person has their timeline straight. She lives in Denver and he lives in Chicago. Gene and I each get a dessert and a port. After dinner, we head downstairs where all the cool French people are laughing, eating and smoking. One party's Yorkshire Terrier sits on the banquette with his own place setting. The first floor seems way more fun

Le Bilboquet with a View

We see a fire engine across the street. A firefighter climbs to the third floor, but there doesn’t appear to be a fire. Standing around and gawking, we notice a bookstore across the street. We go in and look at the childrens’ books. What else would we look at? We can't read the adult books. I buy Babar Does Yoga, Hello Kitty and a cardboard book about poop, all in French.

We go to Le Bilboquet, the jazz club across from Le Petit Zinc. We land a table with a good view of the band. The room is small and dark, but with large entrances to the outside tables. The walls are papered red with crooked milk bottles as light sconces. A small balcony level is lined with dark wood railings.

The band is a five-man group bursting out over the tiny stage. They play more pop than jazz, so we decide to move on after four or five songs. We return to Chez Papa; they’ve rearranged the room since yesterday. It is livelier. Tonight there is a vocalist with a piano and bassist. We enjoy the set, but we are tired, so we head back to the hotel.

Friday, May 26

Headache Pills with Chocolate Croissant Chaser

We try to find a café this morning that takes Visa, since we are down to less than 20 euros and don’t want to get more. We buy “headache pills” in a Pharmacia and chocolate croissants and coffee in a café on Rue St Martin. Both take credit cards but only if you spend 10 euros. We check out of the hotel to walk the few blocks to Gare de Nord, the train station, but the triangular intersections are confusing. We end up walking all the way around Gare de L’Est and back up around to Gare du Nord. Bags are getting heavy.

We are heading back to London on the Eurostar this morning.