In the past two days we’ve taken in two fine museums within walking distance from our flat, the Picasso Museum yesterday and the Henri Cartier-Bresson Museum today. The Picasso Museum is housed in what used to be a hotel. It had been closed for five years for a major renovation project, reopening in 2014. The first time we tried to visit the museum in 2009, the line was all the way down the street and it was raining, so we opted out. In 2011 we couldn’t visit due to the renovation. The third time was a charm. The crowds were light and the weather beautiful. The exhibits at the Picasso Museum are incredibly extensive. In total there are 38 rooms with work displayed. The first two floors house a joint Calder/Picasso exhibit, Calder was an American artist (primarily sculptor) who also worked in an abstract style. The upper floors of the museum are dedicated to Picasso’s works. The curation and display of the work were top notch. Priscilla and I agree that this is one of the most impressive museums we have ever visited. While I doubt Picasso needs any introduction, Cartier-Bresson might. Henri Cartier-Bresson was one of the great photographers in the reportage style. He was a founding member of the famous Magnum photography agency. Before his death, Cartier-Bresson and his wife and photographer, Martine Franck, set up a foundation with the mission to preserve and share his work. Today we saw the photographs of Guy Tillim, in a body of work entitled “Museum of the Revolution,” and the work of Cartier-Bresson from France during 1926 - 1938. All of the work was fabulous. I could look at Cartier-Bresson’s beautiful black and white prints all day. Tillim’s huge panoramic street scenes from several post-independence African countries were amazing. I picked up a copy of Cartier-Bresson’s seminal book, “The Decisive Moment.” I’ve not been able to find this book in the States. On our way back to our flat we stopped at a French burger joint—yes they do exist—in the Marché Enfant Rouge. That burger and beer tasted mighty darned good. As we continued on our way home, I split off to get some groceries while Priscilla lugged my Cartier-Bresson book back to the flat. I’ve gotten pretty good with my grocery-store French. I’ve also gotten to a pretty good place with the guy that runs the boutique coffee shop near us where we get our ground coffee. He professes to not having much English, but between my awful French and his slightly less awful English, we get it worked out. The ground coffee you get in the grocery stores is ground super fine for making espresso. It doesn’t work well if you’re making pour-over coffee as we are. By acting it out, I was able to communicate to our coffee guy that I wanted a coarser grind of coffee. He breaks out in a big smile now every time he sees me. At this point I probably owe you all an explanation for why I’m shooting film on this trip. Those of you of a certain age may remember the introduction to the animated series “The Jetsons” in which George Jetson is stuck on an out-of-control treadmill, screaming “Help Jane! How do you stop this thing?” Well, that’s a bit how I was feeling with the social media treadmill. I was feeling pressure to get images shared out quickly and I was finding myself craving those likes and follows. Shooting film on this trip is my way of opting out. This ties in a bit to our decision to not post about our trip on Facebook. We didn’t want Facebook owning these memories. The night of the Notre Dame fire, I had two cameras with me, one digital (iPhone X) and one film (Olympus OM-2s, loaded with black and white film). As I was photographing and filming the fire on my iPhone X, the thought occurred to me that I should share something about this, as it was terribly important news. So I shared one photo to Facebook just after seven o’clock local time. Then I went back to photographing and filming. I decided that it was more important that I be in the moment. The thought occurred to me that it would have been better if I’d have had my big Nikon digital camera with me that night, but it was too late for that. I was there and the fire was raging, so I shot with what I had. Seeing the man in the photo below taking a selfie with Notre Dame burning in the background is a sign to me that things have gotten out of whack. Certainly lots of us were making photographs, but why that one man felt the need to place himself in the scene is beyond me. Just to be clear, his reaction was way outside the norm for how the French reacted that night to the tragic Notre Dame Fire. The overwhelming reaction was shock, disbelief, and deep sadness. Don’t get me wrong, this is not a diatribe against all things digital. I’m as digitally connected as the next person, and probably more so. What we are trying to do, though, is to find a happy medium, where the digital world enhances our lives rather than consuming them. Pulling away from that instant feedback loop is one key way of jumping the treadmill. Believe it or not, we’re finally caught up with the goings on here at 24 rue Saint-Paul. I’ll try not to get so far backed up in the future. The next post will be covering Easter Sunday. We have ambitious plans to attend the sunrise service at the American Church in Paris. Priscilla doesn’t quite know how we’re going to pull that off, since we can’t seem to manage to get out of the flat before 11:30 a.m. most days.
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With all the emotions surrounding the Notre Dame fire, it’s been hard to sit down to write another blog post. But, life does go on. I’m going to attempt in this blog post to bring you up to speed on the last several days, to in effect, clean the slate and start fresh. As I mentioned in an earlier post, Priscilla and I have been getting to know different neighborhoods in Paris. One that we visited late last week was the Canal Saint-Martin area. At one point, this part of Paris was a bit down and out, but slowly it has been getting gentrified, or as the French call it, embourgeoisement. We started with lunch at Mems, a wonderful bistro at 1, rue de Marseille. Then we stepped across the street and picked up a baguette and pain chocolat at the famous boulangerie, du Pain et des Idées. Next up was the fabulous art, design, and photography store, Artazart shown in the photograph above. This store has a fabulous selection of books and prints. I picked up a photography book of Saul Leider’s early color work. After leaving Artazart, we got to watch the swing bridge and locks in operation at Pont Louis Philippe. The first time I saw them put the gates down to start the swing bridge opening up the canal, some jaunty fellow decided that he didn’t need to heed the barrier, so he just strode his way across that bridge, with the operators cursing him up one side and down the other in French over the loudspeaker. He didn’t give a rip, he was going across that bridge. While an unwitting tourist got caught on the wrong side of the barrier the next time around, the drama was less charged. She managed to get herself on the right side of the barrier with a little coaching and encouragement from the crowd, and no cursing from the operators. Sunday we attended the Palm Sunday service at the beautiful Saint-Sulpice church. The one-hour and forty-five minute service, with over one hour of that standing, tested the calves of these died-in-the-wool Presbyterians. The service began outside, with congregants holding and waving boxwood tree boughs rather than palm branches. The service at Saint-Sulpice was a bit more high church than we prefer. I was surprised at the light crowd that Sunday. Contrasting with that, tonight we attended a wonderful Maundy Thursday service at the church of Saint-Gervais & Saint-Protais, which is right in our neighborhood. This church has the oldest organ in Paris, which was played by members of the famous Couperin family for generations. The church was packed. It was basically standing room only. I don’t know if that was because this service followed the Notre Dame fire, or if that’s just the way things are at this church. The service was more in the monastic tradition, more like a Taizé service. In fact, we actually got to sing the Ubi Caritas that we’ve learned in our Westminster Taizé services. That was comforting. This congregation knows how to sing. It was all hauntingly beautiful. Being Protestants, there is much of the ritual at Catholic masses that we do not understand, especially when conducted in a language foreign to us, but the washing of hands is universally understood and appreciated. We were surprised to run into a new friend there, Eileen, the American we met at Miss Lunch whom I wrote of a couple posts ago. Sunday night was the infamous weekly dinner at the atelier of the American expat, Jim Haynes. Priscilla had read of Jim’s dinners in a book on Paris, and once we learned of them, we knew we just had to go. Jim’s dinners have been going on for over forty years and they attract all manner of people. We met folks from Portland, San Francisco, Berlin, and London. While the quarters were cramped, we managed to find a corner in which to sit and eat our dinners and converse. Some of the guests are in Paris for a short time, and others are long-term expats. Sorry, but I don’t have any photos from this dinner. Monday afternoon had us getting in another neighborhood walk from the “Paris in Stride” book. This time is was Montmartre. I’m going to make this really short. The last time we tried to visit Montmartre and Sacre Coeur in 2011, Priscilla got pickpocketed, so we never made it, since we spent most of that day in a police station. This time no one got pickpocketed, so that’s the good news. The bad news is that Montmartre is a mess of tourists. We’ve done it. We don’t need to do it again. We did have a terrific lunch at Soul Kitchen though. If it were located anywhere but Montmartre, we’d go back in a heartbeat.
I’m going to close off this blog post now, even though I’m not completely caught up. I’ll pick up next time with our visits to the Picasso Museum today and the Henri Cartier-Bresson photography museum tomorrow. So far our visits to photography galleries have come up a cropper, so I’m counting on Henri Cartier-Bresson to pull through for us. Tonight I went out for a walk and saw Notre Dame burn. You don’t experience something like that and not be changed by it. When I first saw the smoke coming from a church, I had to get my bearings. Was it really Notre Dame? I checked my Maps app and determined that it was. Initially the fire seemed contained to the area of the single spire with the scaffolding surrounding it. Before long, though, the fire engulfed the entire church. You could see it crawling along the roofline. You just knew at some point that single spire was going to succumb. When it collapsed, there were gasps from the crowd. I saw it fall. I am still processing that.
I made my first photograph of the fire at 6:57 p.m. The fire alarm had gone off at 6:30 p.m. In the early moments, there were not many people at the Seine, but eventually the riverside was filled with Parisians, many with tears in their eyes and crying. I realized that this was an historic moment. I turned my attention from the fire to the people and their reactions. This is a tragedy, certainly for the French, but also for the world. I can’t imagine the scene of destruction inside the cathedral. You could see the flames erupting from inside the building. Clearly it was a caldron in there. I couldn’t imagine how the firefighters were tackling this inferno. From my vantage point you couldn’t see any streams of water from fire hoses. The thought that occurred to me was that water from fire hoses would be like spitting in the wind. It’s hard to explain the ferocity and size of that fire. As a photographer, I felt some responsibility to capture images of this historic event, not for likes or follows, but for posterity’s sake. I had my iPhone X with me and a film camera, the Olympus OM-2s, loaded with black and white film. I did my best. One thing is for sure, Parisians do love their art! That holds true for the random street art that is all over the place to the more formal presentations of art at the many museums and galleries. The street art is practically at every turn. If there is a blank wall somewhere, chances are it has art on it. Rather than feeling like vandalism, this street art enlivens the city and brings a sense of humor and joy to an otherwise blank wall on an otherwise nondescript building. In our walks about the city I've taken to capturing photos of the street art. Some of it is quite inventive, and often it is humorous. This past Wednesday was our day for art of a more structured variety. Since it was a rainy day, we figured this would be the perfect day to hit the museums. Wrong! Everyone else in Paris had the same idea. We started the day at the Jeu de Paume, checking out the more modern photography exhibits. Generally, I'd say they left us a bit underwhelmed. Then we walked on to l'Orangerie to take in Monet's Water Lillies and other impressionist works. This is where all of Paris decided to go on this rainy day. The first time we visited l'Orangerie in 2011, we went the day following the once-a-month free day, so we practically had the place to ourselves. This year our timing was not so good, we came two days following the free day and one day after a closed day. We didn't spend a lot of time there, since the crowds made enjoying the art a bit difficult. The last museum we planned to visit that day was the Rodin Museum. We'd heard from several sources that it was a wonderful museum, and we were not disappointed. The sculpture garden and interior spaces of this museum are absolutely gorgeous. The garden area is simply stunning. The main building had been a hotel that Rodin lived and worked in, eventually coming to pretty much take over the place. There were many groups of art students inside the museum sketching Rodin's sculptures. They made good, unwitting subjects for my photos.
There are a good number of other photography galleries and museums that we plan to take in while we're here. The larger Maison Européenne de la Photographie is practically right in our backyard (that is if we had one here). France being pretty much the birthplace of photography, the French seem to have a real love for it. There are many more photography and camera stores here than I would have expected, including stores that still offer one-hour film development. The Artazart store along the Canal Saint-Martin has a display case of Polaroid cameras when you enter and a large selection of photography books prominently displayed in the center of the store. Sometimes as a photographer, you can feel a bit like a second-class citizen in arts circles, but not in Paris. Yet another reason to love this city. By the way, if you'd like to see photos as I post them to Instagram, you can follow me there at @tomnorth. One of the things Priscilla and I have enjoyed the most so far on our Parisian adventure is meeting the locals (who sometimes aren’t as local as you might think). Early on Priscilla met Rasmus and Elisa, the owners of the Zone Nordique store that is directly below our flat. Rasmus is a Dane from the Copenhagen area and Elisa is an Italian from Milan. They have a one-year old boy, so their lives are quite busy. The lingua Franca in their relationship is English. She doesn’t speak Danish and he doesn’t speak Italian, so English it is, although they certainly speak French as well. They’ve been helpful steering us to the right store to find a step stool for granddaughter Cora during their visit last week. Then there is Claudia, who goes by the moniker Miss Lunch. She is a Canadian from Ottawa who came to Paris for Art School twenty-some years ago and never left. She runs a lunch only restaurant near the Aligre market as well as a vegetarian stall in the market itself. Claudia gave us a private tasting of capers that she prepares as well as artisanal olive oils. We picked up the capers tapenade and a bag of the salted-cured capers. The tapenade is to die for by the way. We had it on hearty bread with wine yesterday for our late-afternoon repast. While at Claudia’s stall we also got to know her brother-in-law, Charles, who is an American from Indiana who spends most of his time now between Paris and Italy. We decided to have lunch yesterday at Miss Lunch. We had a marvelous time. The conversation flowed between all of the few tables in her dining area, so it was a bit like a big family lunch. We met a woman named Eileen who retired from NYC to Philly, and now lives half the year there and half in Paris where she owns a flat in the Marais. She was able to get an Irish passport because her Grandmother emigrated from there to the U.S. That is how she is able to stay for such a long time. Another activity Priscilla and I have been undertaking to get to know Paris better is to get out to visit neighborhoods we are unfamiliar with. Yesterday it was the Belleville and Buttes-Chaumont area. The Belleville/Buttes-Chaumont walk started with visiting the Butte Bergeyre hilltop neighborhood. This small neighborhood is deemed a micro-quartier, and is accessed via a stairway that seems to go to the heavens. Priscilla asked me to assure her that we weren’t going up that set of stairs. I could offer no such assurances. She counted 81 steps. This little enclave on top of a hill overlooking Paris was a wonderful find. If you lived here you’d certainly have no trouble getting your stair steps in each day, as you have to go down the steps to get to any shops. After walking the Butte Bergeyre neighborhood we walked to the Buttes-Chaumont park, which is built up among all the hills in the area. This area used to be a pretty shady spot where executions were held and those killed were left to hang. Nowadays, it is a beautiful park with aggressive hills and sweeping vistas. Leaving Buttes-Chaumont we walked the lovely shopping street of rue de la Villette. The quaint Villa l’Adour alleyway runs off rue de la Villette and is a picture postcard like street that apparently has a cat for a watchdog. At the end of all our walking, we caught the 11 Metro at Jourdain and switched to the 1 Metro at Hotel de Ville, which takes us to our primary Metro stop, Saint-Paul.
One of the key things we’ve been learning in our time in Paris is how to get around. The main modes of transportation for us have been the Metro, Paris’ fabulous subway system, and the regional trains, called RER. There are a myriad of passes a traveler can get for transportation in and around Paris, but I will let you in on a secret...just get the Navigo Decouverte pass. They sell them in weekly and monthly versions. The cost is 20 Euros for a week and 75 for a month. That gives you unlimited travel on all the Metro lines, busses and trains in all 5 zones, which covers Paris and the surrounding areas. You pay 5 Euros for the physical card, which is good for 10 years, so when we come back to Paris we can just reload our cards with a new weekly or monthly amount. As you will notice in the image below, you have to give them a photo of yourself when you purchase the pass. There are photo booths conveniently located near the ticket offices that will give you photos that meet the size requirement for the Navigo pass. The signs posted in the photo booth give explicit instructions about how to pose for your photo, hence the charming “forced not to smile” look I’m sporting in my Navigo photo. The Navigo also covers travel to Charles de Gaulle Airport, which would normally cost 21 Euros round trip. We’ve already made two round trips to Charles de Gaulle. It will also cover our travel to outlying communities that we plan to visit. So, the Navigo Decouverte pass will definitely pay for itself, plus, it’s mighty nice to just walk up to the turnstile, scan your pass and be on your way. When it comes to getting around on the Metro, once you’ve got it figured out, it’s a snap. First there are the apps you will want to use, the free RATP app which is put out by the organization that runs the transportation system around here, and then there is Apple Maps, which includes decent public transport directions in Paris. Frankly, I wouldn’t bother with the fold out maps we all used to carry around. The RATP app is great because it includes up-to-the-minute information on line closures and maintenance. I have my sister Karen to thank for the great tip about the RATP app. Whichever application you use, it will tell you which line to take and which direction to take it and which station to get off at. It will also tell you which exit number to take when leaving the station. The last stop in each direction is listed along with the line. In the photo above, you’ll see that the number 1 Metro line has terminuses in La Defense (to the west) and Chateau de Vincennes (to the east). So when you get into the Metro station you’re looking for your line and direction. You have to be careful to watch for the signs all the way. The stations that transfers within them are a warren of tunnels. A wrong turn isn’t catastrophic, but you will have to double back, which we’ve had to do a few times. We’re getting much better about paying attention to signage when tunnels split off. Once you’ve selected the direction you want to go, a final check is to ensure that the station you desire, in our case Saint-Paul, is listed in the upcoming stops. When you arrive at your destination, you’ll want to pay attention to the exit (sortie) number recommended by the app you’re using. Some of the stations are quite large, and coming out the wrong exit will throw you off the trail for wherever you are trying to get.
While we’ve been making extensive use of the Metro system, we’ve still been racking up the miles walking, averaging around 6-1/2 miles a day. The way we look at it, using the Metro allows us to cover an awful lot more ground in a shorter period of time, and certainly for a lot less money. Priscilla has an equation in her mind that only she knows, which equates miles walked with pain chocolats eaten. The math fails me. While I can imagine that this might seem confusing, it truly is easy to navigate once you’ve got it down. Each line runs every three minutes, so if you miss one, it’s no big deal, another will be along shortly. As far as cleanliness, there are no issues on the Metro. The stations are clean and the trains are clean, plain and simple. They do warn you to be aware of your belongings and to be careful about pickpockets. This is a big city after all. Yesterday morning we accompanied Kirstin, Derek, and Cora out to the Charles De Gaulle Airport on the train. This time around the RER B was running all the way to the airport, so there was no getting herded onto busses for the last portion of the trip. They all got off with no troubles and made it home to Indianapolis at a time of day to our bodies that I choose to not think about. We hope Kirstin and Derek are able to get some rest today before heading back to their teaching positions tomorrow. After two weeks of having our children and their families giving us a send off in Paris, Priscilla and I are now on our own. I think it will help with communication back home having them know a bit about where we are staying. It has been wonderful having Anna and Kirstin et al with us these first two weeks. We sure enjoyed our time with Cora, who for most of the time thought Paris was a person, and was wondering when we were going to see Paris. I think by the end of their week with us she had it figured out. On our way back from the airport we stopped at our favorite coffee shop, The Beans On Fire, for brunch and a hot beverage...hot chocolate for Priscilla and a latte for me. While walking there from the Richard Lenoir Metro Station, we came upon this wonderful community garden out in front of the Saint-Ambroise Church. This garden is a memorial to seven Trappist monks kidnapped from their monastery in Algeria and murdered in 1996. Most of the rest of the day was spent around the flat, catching up on washing and straightening up a bit. We did get out for a walk on the Seine in the early evening. Coming back up from the Seine, we walked a pedestrian only street called rue des Barres, which is filled with outdoor dining and galleries. We stopped in at a photography gallery which was closing in five minutes. The photographer told us if we bought one print, we could stay an extra fifteen minutes...two prints would get us thirty minutes...and four prints would get us the whole night. Unfortunately for him, we didn't buy any. It's not easy selling photographs to a photographer. Today was spent exploring more of the Marais. The big park in our area is Place des Vosges. On our way through there we bumped into the woman who runs the shop where Priscilla had a hat made and where we bought a hat for Anna back in 2009. She was there with her husband, granddaughter, and the other grandma. We had a nice chat with them. Place des Vosges is one of the few parks in the city that allows people to walk and lay on the grass. Clearly, the locals take full advantage of that, even the unicorns among them (see below). In the late afternoon, Priscilla and I walked to the Coulée Verte, which is a greenway on top of what used to be a railway line on a viaduct that runs through the city, similar to The Highline in NYC. We had a wonderful time on the Coulée Verte. Below is a slideshow of photos from that walk. You get a fascinating perspective on a city when you are looking on from an elevated position. One thing that has become clear to us after 15 days is that we will be doing a boatload of walking here in Paris. In our first two weeks we've been averaging 6-1/2 miles a day. Today came in right at 7. Priscilla is hoping she'll earn some brownie points with her personal trainer, Brenda!
It's hard to believe we are coming to the close of our second week in Paris and the departure of Kirstin, Derek, and Cora. We've had excellent luck with the weather these first two weeks. It has been cooler this week than the first, but the rain has had the good manners to fall mainly during the evening, leaving our daytime wanderings dry. Kirstin and Derek have been exploring parts of Paris they remember from their visit here three years ago. Cora has been a real trooper, going pretty much everywhere with them. Two days ago we had an early supper at another favorite restaurant of Kirstin and Derek's, Frenchie To Go. Priscilla and I took care of Cora that afternoon, taking the Metro (subway) with Cora to meet Kirstin and Derek at the restaurant. This is a good time to write about the hospitality of the French people. You've probably all heard the old saw that Parisians are rude. We've found the opposite to be true. When we took Cora on the Metro, we had to tackle three flights of stairs with her in a stroller. A nice man assisted us down each flight by holding the front of the stroller while I held the back. Another time Priscilla and I were trying to locate a walking trail when a woman called out to us from the third floor wondering if she could help us. She then came all the way outside to help us. A final example took place on our trip with Anna back to the airport when she was leaving. The RER B train line normally runs all the way out to Charles de Gaulle airport, but last Sunday it stopped short for some reason. A nice man explained to us that at the last stop that day we would get on a bus to finish the trip. The French are justly proud of their language, and do so appreciate it when you make an attempt to speak French. They will often change to English, but you can tell they appreciate the effort to speak French. If people see me mumbling to myself walking down the street, it's because I'm practicing what I'm going to say in French at my next stop, not because I've come unhinged. Well, back to what we've been up to around here. Yesterday we checked out the Bastille Market, which is only a few blocks from our flat. The selection of all manner of foods is quite extensive there. With some planning ahead, I'm sure we will be able to make good use of this market. In the afternoon, Priscilla and Kirstin had a shopping outing while Derek and I stayed back at the flat while Cora napped. Last night, Grandma and Grandpa had babysitting duty so that Kirstin and Derek could go out to a favorite avant-garde restaurant named Dilia. They had a wonderful night, and we had a great time with Cora.
Today we had lunch at what is becoming our favorite neighborhood bistro, Chez Mademoiselle. We had a wonderful meal and they were so good with Cora. Felix and his wife, Alexia, are the owners. Felix and René run the front of the house, and I mean run. They are constantly moving. Neither of them will put on any weight as long as they keep this up. They do a brisk business at this "off-the-beaten-track" location on rue Charlemagne. Tomorrow we will be off earlier to take Kirstin, Derek, and Cora back to Charles de Gaulle airport for their return to the States. I'm hopeful that this time, the RER B will be going all the way to the airport. No sooner had we bade farewell to Anna than we were saying hello to Kirstin, Derek, and Cora. We've loved having our kids visit us these first two weeks in Paris. I was saying tonight to Kirstin that it will be strange having both our kids on the other side of the pond from us. Already, it's feeling strange to have Anna seven time zones away from us. The Indy crew has been busy visiting neighborhoods in Paris they recall from previous visits. This is Cora's first time in Paris. I suspect she'll be back many more times. With her funky fashion sense, she fits right in over here. Today we all made our way to the Marche d'Aligre, which is a food market that is housed in a covered pavilion. We picked up scallops, and fresh pasta to go along with the white asparagus we picked up earlier. Derek made a Hollandaise sauce, Priscilla cooked up the asparagus and pasta, and I sautéed the scallops. It all made for a marvelous meal. You will notice on the photo below that there is an orange appendage on the scallops. Believe it or not, that's the stomach. Over here it comes with the scallops and they eat it. We did as well. It was all delicious. If you've read posts made prior to our departure, you'll recall that I'm shooting film on this trip in addition to my digital cameras (i.e. Nikon D850 and iPhone X). I was fortunate to find a photo shop on our street that offers one-day development of film, including making scans to a CD. I've been enjoying the slower experience of making photographs on film this trip. It has been good to wean myself off the instant feedback on the LCD screen on the back of the camera. I find with film that I see a scene and make one photo, that's it, not the multiples I'd make with digital trying to get that just right exposure. Today I got back the first two rolls of film I had developed, one color and one black and white. I was quite pleased with the images. Here are several from those two rolls presented in a slideshow. The other big news today is Priscilla's first Parisian haircut. On the spur of the moment she made an appointment at the hair stylist right on our block, Charlene Ramon. I can't possibly do the experience justice, so I'm going to have Priscilla write about it. Bon Jour, Madame! I debated making a haircut appointment before leaving on our trip as my hair was just starting to look really good and I thought I'd just let it grow a bit. Well, we all know what happens when we use that logic....the hair needs cutting the very next week! Every time we walked down our street and saw the salon, Charlene Ramon open, Anna would try to convince me to make an appointment. So, today, I finally walked in there to make an appointment. The owner, Charlene, had time open immediately and after returning home to retrieve my wallet, I was in her chair. What a popular and international environment inside this lovely salon. A wedding party from Columbia was just leaving when I arrived. The bride, her fiancé, her mother and aunt all getting gussied up for a wedding tomorrow. Customers from Argentina, New York and Minneapolis. The gal from New York (Susan) married, as she said, a Frenchy and has lived here for 20 years. Between Susan, my stylist and her assistant, we were able to communicate what I wanted and why. The hardest thing to convey to Charlene was my desire to "live" with my silver hair. She so desperately wanted me to add color. In between the espresso served with a small cup of whipped cream and the glass of champagne, and a complimentary application of makeup, I told her I would "think" about it these next 2 months! Stay tuned.
Today is our last full day with Anna. It feels strange knowing that tomorrow she will be jetting her way back to Minnesota and college and we will be staying here in Paris. We have had a marvelous first week with Anna here in Paris. I do think she's had a great time too. I know for a fact she's enjoyed the shopping. Tomorrow morning, after seeing Anna off at terminal 2 of Charles de Gaulle airport, we will shuttle our way over to terminal 1 and wait for Kirstin, Derek, and Cora's arrival on Lufthansa. Hence the "Goodbye, Hello" title for this post. We've been busying ourselves today with "Cora-proofing" the flat. I think we're in pretty good shape for the arrival of an active nearly three-year old. Yesterday, our major outings were the Paris Catacombes and the D'Orsay Museum. We all found the catacombs to be fascinating...not nearly as creepy as we would have thought. The bones were actually arranged in an orderly fashion, with Christian burials provided to those whose original burials could be determined to have been Christian. The original remains entombed in the catacombs were from the Cemetery of the Innocents, which needed to be razed in the late 1700s due to sanitary concerns. I'll let your imaginations run with that one. Later, as other cemeteries were reclaimed for urban expansion, the remains were moved to the catacombs in groups. Each group has its own sign, signifying where the remains came from and when. After the catacombs we made our way to Musee D'Orsay, one of our favorite museums in Paris. We first lunched in the fifth floor restaurant (Le Restaurant on the second floor was closed), then we made our way through the museum from top to bottom. We had thought about also taking in Monet's Water Lillies at l'Orangerie, but tiredness overruled. We listened to a great jazz trio, in the style of Sidney Bechet, out in front of d'Orsay for a bit and then caught the metro back to the Marais, our neighborhood.
Dinner last night was at Capitaine, a newish farm-to-table restaurant which is just a few blocks from our flat. We had a marvelous dinner. Today has been spent in our neighborhood, relaxing, shopping, and taking strolls on the Seine, which apparently is what all of Paris does on a beautiful spring Saturday. Tomorrow will be an early start for us all. |
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December 2022
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Tom Northenscold Photography
tomnorthenscold@icloud.com |
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