In Paris There is a Fair for Everything

So says my friend, GH. And this week were two of the best.
First, the Salon du Chocolate.

Salon du Chocolat, a photo by portmanteaus on Flickr.

A perfect Sunday. The sun was shining. A light breeze. About 60 degrees. I only needed a sweater. I headed out. So did half of Paris, because when I arrived at the salon, I had to fight my way through the stampeded of people just to get into the official queue. And then once there, I was constantly amazed at the French talent for evading lines. I really thought I was holding my own, but then I would look ahead and see someone 30 people ahead that had just been next to me. How do they do it? Never mind though. All the pushing and shoving was worth it, because once I FINALLY had my ticket and was through the door, I entered a chcolate wonderland.

All of my favorite Parisian chocolate shops were there in one place. No reason to trapse all over the city (or the country for that matter). AND they were handing out samples like it was Christmas. I tried to pace myself so I didn't fall into a sugar coma right away.

And then today, the Salon du Livres et Papiers Ancienes. Rather than the sweet melange of sugar and cacao that is chocolate, I had to talk myself down from buying too much of the musty, dusty amazing ancient French posters and translations of Edward Gorey books and instead concentrate on old labels and postcards, which are considerably more transportable and infininently less taxing on the wallet (it's so easy to forget that the Euro is so much stronger than the dollar).

Later this week there is a Salon des Artistes Contemperain. My friends Flo and Jacky (http://www.facebook.com/pages/Amblard-Guyard-peinture-et-sculpture/193888397311917) will be showing their amazing painted sculptures. No doubt I will have stop myself from buying something there too.

Paris...October 2011...The end of one week...

...the beginning of another.

And what a week it has been. But first let's back up to January of this year. I was in Paris with the flu and pretty miserable. When we returned home, I had to dive straight into work at a level of insanity not often seen at HQ. This lasted 5 months. At the end of it I was a wreck—Exhausted from the work and still needing the vacation that I didn't really get over Christmas. That's when (with the incredibly wonderful Cody supporting a trip without him since he would be busy at Berkeley teaching) I decided to come back at the end of October. At first, I had planned on a solo vacation, but later in the summer I thought to invite Cody's mother since she has never been out of the states and has always wanted to visit Paris. And as I suspected she jumped at the chance.

Nancy and I flew together to Paris on the night of the 14th, arriving on the 15th, arriving at our rue Charlot apartment at about 1 in the afternoon. It was a very cute place, right on the edge of the upper Marais and near the Marché des Enfants Rouges. But our little nest was not meant to be ours because between the last tenant and our arrival the hot water tank decided to give up the ghost. The agency was very responsive and gave us the keys to another apartment, just overlooking the Louvre. So for 3 days, we got to shower in style, but still returned to our rue Charlot nest to sleep and relax. Then the bad news that the hot water tank would take at least a week to fix (permission from the owner, finding one, convincing the handy man to install it...) so were given the choice of 3 other places to move to. At first I was pretty upset as I had always wanted to stay on rue Charlot, but our move to Faubourg St. Martin in the 10th was ultimately a good one. For one there is hot water. Unlimited, on-demand, glorious hot water, but more importantly the move took me out of my comfort zone and has forced me to look at another part of Paris that I never would have before.

It took me a couple of days to come to this conclusion for we just wanted to be settled. And dragging suitcases up and down 3 floors of steep Parisian spiral staircases is the opposite of fun. But once I had calmed down and was able to look at the move with rested (and clean warm) eyes all was well. Besides I had to pull it together since I was partially a tour guide this week. I tired to find a nice balance (and think I achieved it) of sites and the Paris I love sprinkling little bits of time with my French friends over the top. It was amazing to see Nancy's reactions to the city, which I do think in many ways us the most beautiful city on the planet, and is certainly so very different than the very new cities of California where we are from. And to get to, just for moments, see Paris with new eyes again, was magical. To see someone stop in their tracks when coming upon the Louvre or Notre Dame reminded me of this city's stunning beauty.

When Nancy was here we were mostly in other parts of the city, but after she left, I have spent more time in my quarter. There are two stupidly good boulangeries here, one nestled on a street that has nothing else but colorful, loud and convivial French-African hair salons. But there in the middle of all the wonderful hair chaos sits refined Thonoliat, famous for its mille-feuilles, but their croissant won me over. It is SERIOUSLY the best one I have ever tasted. So much so that I ended up eating two that day. I couldn't stop myself. Maybe it is the touch of sugar they add or maybe it is fairy dust, but either way I've fallen hard (and don't even get me going on the bread and little chcolates they make).

A few streets the other way is Des Pains et Des Idees. Mother of all bread gods, this place is also amazing. They make bread unlinke any i have tasted. I giggled tonight as I was eating their Pain des Amies, slathered with butter (with sel de mer of course), biting through the perfect crust and having the crumb just melt in my mouth.

Last week and this week are two very different weeks for me since this week I am alone. Miss JH and I were briefly chatting about the differences between travelling alone and travelling with others. Both are great, but in very different ways and this trip I get to do both. How lucky I feel right now. And what a pleasure it is to be here—the rain splattering on the window ledge, Edith crooning in my ear, my legs and feet happily exhausted from all the walking.

Bon nuit.

In Between Days

Cody and I have returned to Oakland, but our bodies still think we are in Paris. Notorious creatures of the night, we find our eyes watering and a tidal wave of sleep descending at 11:00 at night which forces us to bed, only to wake up at 8:30 the next morning. It is almost a normal schedule. An odd thing for us.

This happens every time we return from Europe. It never lasts. All it takes is one or two late nights and we slip back into our inherently nocturnal ways. But for now it is kind of fun to get up in the morning since it is not in the least bit painful. Winter days seem so much longer. The chickens expect me by 9, the cats are actually eating breakfast and not brunch and I have plenty of time to talk to my East coast clients. It's strange.

Reality has been a little hard to return to, especially since my body still thinks it is residing at 7, rue Bailly, Paris, 75003 and not in Oakland. Work fires turned into conflagrations that needed containment and extinguishing. I had no choice but to jump right in. Not an easy re-entry at all and certainly not anything resembling transition at all.

That said, I am going to aim for more balance this year. I am going to do my level best to take time out to do the little things I always put off (baking those muffins, writing that letter, mailing that package, cooking dinner) in place of work. This may be difficult as the coming months are forecast to be insane work-wise, but it is an important goal for me to aim for.

I talked with both Cody and our French friends about this many times in Paris. It was a theme of the trip. I intend to take it to heart.

The Tattoo Progresses

A Matter of Degrees

Paris is cold. According to the weather reports it has been hovering around 0 degrees Celsius most days. That's 32 degrees in Fahrenheit. In either measurement, it translates as cold. The funny thing to me is that, unlike most other forms of metric measurement used in the rest of the world, Celsius seems less precise than Farenheit. Easier to calculate maybe, but more general in terms of the subtle difference in how we feel and sense temperature and weather. It is the one form of measurement where I think that metric doesn't win the horse race and where the small incremental differences in Fahrenheit actually mean something and are lost in Celsius.

In either measurement, I have learned the importance of layers and scarves. Layers are easy, but scarves are not. The French seem to be born with an innate ability to wrap their scarves effectively and fashionably, whereas my scarf is barely effective from keeping the cold out. And I have totally given up on fashioning the complex looks being sported on so many necks. I walk down the cobblestoned streets of Paris and experience great scarf-wrapping envy. Everyone's necks look so warm and toasty and fashionable.I guess being from California means that I am born with other innate senses, none of them having to do with scarf skills.

According the meteo reports, tomorrow through the end of our trip will be almost balmy. We are expecting rain with temperatures around 8 degrees. It will feel like San Francisco in the summer if the weather reports are correct. I will still need a scarf, but it won't be quite as essential to my survival for our last few days here.

Madame Malade

Sometimes you get sick on vacation. It makes sense that it happens. It is always a huge push to even get packed and on the plane. Working until the last minute and getting the business, cats, and hens squared away. Combine that wiith disrupted sleep patterns, long flights, and the cold of Winter, and the body becomes an target for germs. I've had this happen to me about every other vacation. It's usually just a little cold, that is annoying, but not enoiugh to ruin the vacation. Not this time. The attack on my body was a strong, coordinated viral effort that knocked me out for 4 days straight.

Thankfully the French have a wonderful health care system. I didn't have to call for a doctor (I almost did on the second day of body-shaking coughing), though I could have and it would have cost me all of 20 bucks, even though I am not a taxpayer here. Cody was able to procure all the medicine I needed from our local pharmacy just by describing my symptoms. It may not be a cure for a bad chest cold, but it gives great comfort to those passed out on the couch, feeling too sick to even feel sorry for oneself.

It makes me angry to think of the crazy, corporate health care system we have at home and how much it could have cost me if I was a visitor there instead. I don't understand, how even the pathetic health care bill we just passed, can be so vilified. When people are ill, people should be cared for. No questions asked (especially about your income or insurance card).

I spent most of my bed-ridden infirmity watching movies on French TV. I owe a debt of gratitude to the cinephile nature of the French, since there was ALWAYS something good on the television. Sometimes the films were in English with French Subtitles and sometimes in just French, I think I will learn the most new words this trip from those films. I watched all of the following (and probably more that I am forgetting):

The English Patient
Johnny Guitar
The Bells are Ringing
Victor Victoria
My Life without Me
Broken Flowers
Une Epoppée
Island in the Sky
Hard Eight
A cool French Gangster movie whose name is escaping me.

Then on the fifth day, the fog lifted. I woke up, still very congested and cough-filled, but feeling a million times bettter. Enough to head back out into Paris for a steaming bowl of soupe a l'oignon gratinée at our favorite Parisian vegetarian restaurant, Le Potager de Marais. We walked in and all the tables were full. I asked when we could get seated and our very friendly host apologized profusely as he said an hour. I looked sad, but put our name in and said we would come back. We walked outside, trying to decide what to do for an hour, especially in my barely-functioning state, when he ran back out and told us we could have a table in just 2 minutes, and this ahead of the many people waiting for tables ahead of us. It was a magical moment and one that only can happen here in Paris when you are a regular. We have been coming to this place for years, and had been once already this trip. He saw that I was sick and in need of soup right away and just made it happen. It was a wonderful, delicious, life-vest just when I needed one.

I have been venturing out a bit more each day with Cody. We visited Pere Lachaise and Marcel Proust, walked through Les Halles and across the flooded Seine to see the new Mike Leigh film "Another Year'" and braved the lines today at Pain de Sucre, the Italian deli, the wine store and the cheese store to stock up for our tiny fete tonight.

I am less Madame Malade every day, and more human. Maybe by the time I get back on the plane I will have finally stopped coughing. Until then, lots of vin chaud and Cody's love and company will keep me warm and well.

Happy New Year!

Tattoo In Progress