Bon Voyage! (10/01/04) We say our goodbyes and pose for photos, Jill with her pregnant belly and me with my new shirt and sunglasses. We're off for two weeks--our "last hurrah" trip before the baby is born. Jill's parents, Dale and Maxine, will be taking care of Henry. We're going to miss him, but we want to take this trip while we can. |
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Our flight leaves from L.A. at 3:15 pm. The lines are long, but we're able to jump some of them because we're flying business class. We see actor Martin Sheen passing by--he's flying first class so he's jumping our lines! |
| We feel like we're in France the moment we board the plane, greeted with "Bonjour Madame, Bonjour Monsieur." And the great French food begins immediately--the ham thinly-sliced, lean, and salted, the butter richy and creamy, the wine cart offering several whites and reds from various regions. We eat a big meal and get some sleep. |  |
62 Rue des Tournelles (10/02/04) We arrive in Paris, find a cab, and ride to our home for the next two weeks. Our neighborhood is the Marais, full of restaurants, art galleries, shops, and apartments. Our apartment is a studio. It's tiny, but has everything we need. Jill is showing off the kitchen, below, and next to that you can see the dining room, family room (i.e. the chair) and bedroom. It has high-speed internet access and satellite tv, and the owners have left us a bottle of wine, a chocolate bar, and their famous yellow notebook with maps, dining recommendations, and practical information, like how to use the phone. |
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| It's late afternoon, and so we set out to see the neighborhood. There's food (the epicerie) on every corner, a carousel for the kids, a skateboard show at the city hall, and a groom, in what must be a french custom, asking people to sign his cardboard sign. It feels good to stretch our legs for a couple of hours, and to finally feel the excitement of the city. | |
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| While we're out, we pick up some delicious chicken, roasted potatoes, and tomato salad for our first dinner at home. We buy these from the butcher, passing on the many choices of meats, sausages, sweetbreads, and rows of dressed rabbits, in favor of the chicken. He doesn't speak english, but pointing is the universal language and we have no problem. We do have a problem sleeping, though, with the time change, and we spend a mostly sleepless night, reading, snacking, and listening to the sounds of the street outside our bedroom window. There are crowds of noisy people out until 4:00AM. I was concerned that they would keep us awake every night but we learned later that this night was some sort of a global "night out" that's held every year. Nobody told us! | |
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Tourists at Last (10/03/04) Today Jill has scheduled a private tour for us, so that we can see the major sites and decide what we want to come back to in more detail in the next two weeks. Our driver, Jamel, arrives in a giant Volkswagen van and takes us on a speed tour of the city. Jamel, an ex-military school swimming-instructor/karate student, speaks some English and understands less, but has a gift for talking his way past the gendarmes guarding streets that are closed to vehicles on the weekend. As a result, we cover lots of ground in our three hours and see everything we want. We drive a big circle from our neighborhood, across the Seine, to Notre Dame, through the Latin Quarter, St. Germain, Invalides, Tuileries, up a series of crowded streets to Sacre Couer, up the Champs Elysees, back through the Left Bank, and back home to the Marais. We make four stops: a quick walk through Notre Dame, where thousands are attending mass in the giant cathedral while hundreds more, like us, walk the perimeter; a stop for pastries in the Rue Clar; another quick tour of Sacre Coeur, followed by a few moments admiring the autumn view from its steps; and, finally, a stop for what Jamel says is the "second best" bread in Paris at La Boulangerie A. Manouy. We passed Maison Keyser, which has the "best bread", but the line was long. |
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After the tour we lunched across the street at Chez Janou (Jill had a steak and I had lamb chops) before visiting the Picasso Museum, in an old mansion not far from our apartment. The museum is comprehensive, beautiful, and easy to follow because it is chronologically arranged to follow his career, and because there English translations of everything. It included not only Picasso's works, but his private collection of Matisses and Cezannes. Afterward, we roam the streets, stopping for coffee at a small cafe, L'Escurial. We sit on the street, side by side on tiny chairs, sipping coffee and watching the Parisian street life unfold. |
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Dinner is again in the neighborhood, on the recommendation of our little yellow notebook. Brasserie Bofinger's 150 year-old dining room is worth a visit, with its wood panelling, pearl inlays, painted details, brass railings, and vintage hand-blown glass light fixtures. The food is good and the service friendly. |
Eiffel Tower (10/04/04) We take our first Metro (subway) ride, buying a discount pack of 10 tickets and having no trouble navigating to our destination, the Eiffel Tower. We have a nice 20 minute walk from the station to the tower, and take the elevator to our destination, the Restaurant Jules Verne.
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Jules Verne is a tough table in Paris, sold out for dinner through 2004. It features very high end classic French cuisine, with an unbelievable setting one-third of the way up the Eiffel Tower. Jill got lunch reservations for us through a friend of a friend. Our seats, incredibly, are right by the window, and we can see all the big city landmarks on this clear day, and all the way out to the green, unpopulated areas beyond the city. The food was excellent. Jill started with a poppyseed roll stuffed with crab, in a delicious creme sauce. For her entree she had veal steaks, with vegetables, in a broth that we were both sopping up with our bread. I started with a duck liver turrine (think "duck liver jello"...what was I thinking?) and then had more duck, with a small plate of snail ravioli on the side. Dessert was rich and wonderful--little chocolates and pastries. After lunch we stroll through the massive gardens that lead from the tower to the French Military Academy. We spread out my coat and lay together in the grass, like the romantic pictures of Paris, enjoying the day and the fresh air. |
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We take the subway to St. Germain, where Jill shops for baby things, buying some little hand-smocked outfits for "Baby Sister", our nickname for the baby. I visit an English-language bookstore and read in the park. We meet up again and have coffee in a small cafe, near the old church, St. Germain dus Pris, which dates from the year 400. This is not the oldest part of Paris, but it's where the Romans built their headquarters, baths, and arena. |
| Dinner tonight is in the neighborhood, at a Thai restaurant called Mai Thai. It's very good. Jill has pad thai and I have chicken in a green curry sauce, washed down with some Thai beer. | |
| Back at home, Jill decides that we need a method, an organizational system, to make sure that we see everything we want on this trip. So she makes a list in her notebook of everything we want to see and do. Then she numbers each site, locates it on the map, and then numbers the map accordingly. The result--we have our own personal map of Paris, marked with the location of everything we want to see, with a notebook containing the address and description of each. You can't buy something like this! |  |