September Updates

James is back into the swing of things with homeschool, which we're sort-of unofficially calling 2nd grade. I've thought about writing an extensive blog about his homeschool program for this year, but he's getting to an age where he might very soon be reading the sorts of things I write about him, and I'm a little conflicted about publicizing exactly how he "measures up" according to the universal standard 2nd grader. On the one hand, he's doing great work with reading--and he doesn't even realize it's great work. He just loves reading, and he's really good at it. And on the other hand, he has abysmal penmanship and spelling. As far as I can tell he's doing fine with everything else--math, science, history, and whatnot. He knows (I think) his last name and his address, which is also an improvement from a few years ago, though he probably wouldn't have the faintest idea what to do in a fire drill.

Owen is doing a much better job in James' school this year. Despite school taking almost an hour longer each day (we're really buckling down on those handwriting exercises) almost-four-year-old Owen is a lot easier to deal with than almost-three-year-old Owen. He's more than happy to play LEGOs alone in his room for at least some chunk of the morning, and when he comes downstairs to listen to James' read-aloud book or to do his history and science projects alongside him he's actually a constructive participating instead of a force of destruction.

Felix is the force of destruction. Felix is curious about everything, but mostly about the sorts of things that we put in trash cans. If it's in a garbage can, Felix wants to pull it out and examine, and then to move it somewhere else. And Felix likes to give non-garbage can items (like important documents, dishtowels, and his brother's toys) a chance to experience the garbage for themselves. He also pulls napkins out of the pantry by the handful and sweeps armloads of books off of the shelves. He is, frankly, an armful.

Some nuggets from the past few days:

Owen: Don't tell me anything, because I already know everything. I know about the Titanic, and the Bismarck, and dinosaurs, and Mount Vesuvius.

Owen: Jesus told me I don't need to clean my room.

Me: I think maybe the Bills are playing the Chiefs next week.
James: Are the Chiefs a good team?
Me: I don't know. I think they were pretty good last year, but maybe they didn't make the playoffs?
James: Oh, yes they did. They did make the playoffs, and they played the Titans.
Me: Oh, okay. If you say so.
James: It seems to me that kids are actually smarter than grown-ups.

Paris Vacation 2018, Part 6

Paris Vacation 2018, Part 6

Our last few days in Paris were deliberately slower paced. On Tuesday morning we chose to take the Metro (a 20 minute trip) to the Eiffel Tower rather than walking over an hour each way just to get there. It was simple enough to catch a train about two blocks up from our apartment that went directly over to the Ecole Militaire, and then to head up and find our bearings.

We decided to explore the Rue Cler, a very old open-air market, before making our way to the Champ du Mars. We either came on an off morning, however, or most of the vendors weren’t set up yet. We did find a patisserie that was open and doing business and bought a tarte aux pommes to split. There was a mother with two little boys ahead of us, and as they gathered their purchases to walk away the younger one scooped up our tart as well, apparently thinking it was part of their purchase. The mother was very apologetic. We told her that we understood.

We didn’t go into the main promenade under the Tower, since there was already a huge security line to cross into that section of the park. Instead, we found a shady bench and read for a few hours with a lovely view of the Eiffel Tower right in front of us. We were ready to walk again after a bit, and picked up some coffees on our way to the Place des L’Invalides. There was more reading and coffee sipping there, and then we ended up back in the Champ du Mars for a picnic that we assembled for ourselves—some baguette, sandwiches, and a little salad from an epicerie.

We took long naps that afternoon, and then had our “fancy” dinner out at the Café de Musees. It was just a few minutes from our apartment, so we finally justified bringing our dress clothes and nice shoes. We took our time with that meal, stretching it out all evening and eventually walking home in the dark, filled up with cocktails, poultry terrine, beef bourgingon, croquettes with hollandaise, duck, and desserts.

In retrospect, it shouldn’t have taken us almost a week to eat our first really nice meal out. If and when we go back, we’ll come better prepared to have several reliable reservations out and to eat more like that throughout the trip. With that said, we had wonderful meals that we prepared for ourselves, and came in way under budget in the process—but that isn’t exactly why you go on vacation.

We took the train again the following day up to the Opera and back towards the Galeries Lafayette. One of our guidebooks had advised us that Printemps was a department store similar to the Galeries that ordinary people might find a bit more accessibly priced. It was, in fact, compared to J.C. Penny. (This was not an accurate price point reference.)

We did, in Printemps, find the two things that we had specifically come to France to acquire—a genuine grown-up salt and pepper shaker set. I don’t know how we got fixated on the salt and pepper mills, but they were up in conversation long before we ever thought about going to France. We had some diner-esque glass ones that were perpetually clogged up that might have been a wedding present, but mostly just poured salt directly out of the bulk Wegman’s container and just cycled through the disposable plastic Aldi peppermills. How nice would it be, we reasoned, to find a salt and pepper mill set in France? Something lovely that we would use and be reminded of every day?

We settled on a mill set, and then did some other browsing at shoes, overcoats, some fancy raincoats that you can’t find in the States, and a set of lunchboxes that we ended up ordering once we got home. The highlight of the day for Julie, though, was going upstairs to the kitchen floor. There were rows of cookbooks, kitchen utensils, exotic chocolates and spices, and six or seven full-service eateries. After taking many photographs and skimming through some of the English-language reading material we had some lunch at the seafood eatery—white wine, octopus carpaccio, and a dory filet. 

(Don’t anthropomorphize that, for Owen’s sake.)

I picked out a new black tie from a men’s shop—something I could wear every weekend and be reminded of the trip. We walked all the way back to our apartment and took our usual siesta, and then capped off the evening with a walk down to the ice cream shop (Amorino) in lieu of a proper dinner. That night we sat on the balcony and worked through a bottle of wine reflecting on how different the pace of the week had been and how odd it was to move through the days so slowly and casually. We talked about all of the things we try to keep up with (exercise, homeschooling, keeping the house clean, seeing our families) in addition to all of the jobs we work. Vacation was ending too fast.

On Thursday, the last full day, the market was outside again, and we went out to do all of our souveniring in one go. It turned out to be easier than either of us had expected. We found crepes for ourselves again, and then talked through what we thought each family member would like and which colors would be better for one person than for another. We didn’t have room to bring back much, and we did bring was pretty modest, but it was fun thinking of everyone as we browsed.

We did one more falafel on Thursday afternoon, and finished up the last of the remaining souvenirs (read: The Lego Store) at Les Halles that evening. We did dishes for the final time, cleaned up our apartment as far as we could, and finished our last battle of wine.

The trip back home on Friday felt more adventurous than it needed to be. We were out the door early and onto the train that came just outside our apartment, and then onto the RER B to get us to Charles de Gaulle. Then, another train to get us into the Terminal one. Then a line to check our bags, then a line to scan our boarding passes, a line to do a passport check, and a line to get through security, and then additional security for me because I must look threatening. Despite planning several hours of margin into the time we thought we’d have, they were already boarding that plane when we got to our gate. So we stood in that line, then took a bus out to the jetway, and then were finally on a big 747.

The trip back was long, and we dozed and watched movies together and had another airline meal. (Not nearly as good as a fresh falafel wrap.) We were practically aching for our kids by the time we landed in Dulles, but there was another long line to catch the bus to the terminal, then a line for the train to the main terminal, and then another LOONG line for passport control, a search for baggage, a half-hour wait for the airport shuttle, and then a rush hour drive back up to Hanover.

And then we were back with our kids! James was immediately sick (he couldn’t eat the dinner that they were waiting to share with us), Owen was bouncy and excited, and Felix looked thoroughly unimpressed. (Initially.)

And that was our vacation!

There are a few other post facto details that need to come out in the telling. First, even though we didn’t say much about them in the telling of the story, it was Mom and Dad Davis that made everything possible. Every morning that we slept in or stayed out late or took a random mid-afternoon nap they were with the kids, either giving tractor rides or trying to come up with a meal that all three of them could eat, or just trying to keep Felix from pulling dirt out of the houseplants. Without them, there would have been no Paris apartment, no Seine cruise, no wine on the balcony, and no falafel. We cannot thank them enough.

When we started planning this trip in 2017 we drew up a “high guess” and a “low guess” budget for what we thought everything might cost. We ended up coming in a couple hundred dollars below the “low guess” budget somehow, and that money turned into a proper vacuum cleaner once we got back home. That makes us sound really lame, but it’s actually been one of the most exciting “changes” that have happened since we’ve been back. Our downstairs feels properly clean almost all the time now. 

And, judging by how much junk we sucked out of the carpet in the library, maybe it is properly clean for the first time since we moved in.

That was the first trip we’d taken together since our honeymoon in Tampa in August of 2007.

We won’t wait eleven more years to do it again.

Paris Vacation 2018, Part 5

Sunday morning was downright indolent. We slept in, sipped on allongees, and put our sore feet up as we read on our kindles. By now our apartment was looking a little lived-in. There was spare change on the table and a little pile of receipts, a row of empty wine bottles along the wall, and laundered clothes hanging from every available chair, rod, and hook. (We had a washing machine in our apartment, but not a dryer.)

Having laundry was huge. We were able to pack five outfits instead of ten, and we ended up using it even more than we thought. Between sometimes going through two outfits a day (you got sweaty when you were hiking all over a major city in the middle of August) and J needing to wear socks more often than she had planned (once she bought the sneakers) we ended up washing some sort of laundry most days.

We eventually got hungry enough that we had to go out looking for some sort of brunch. The flying market was just outside our apartment again, and we took our time looking through every stall. Plans to find some salmon didn’t quite work out, but we did bring more fresh vegetables and some wonderful looking pastries back with us.

We stayed at home long enough to say good morning to the kids (who got up around 2 PM our time) and then started out for Notre Dame. We were planning to go to church and to start using our Museum Passes, and then to do our Seine Cruise at 9 PM that night.

The Museum Pass is a great idea, theoretically. Not only does it get you access to most of the major museums and monuments in Paris, but you’re supposed to be able to hop the line at most of the locations. (Apparently the equivalent of the fast pass at Disney, which I’ve never done.) It didn’t work out for us that way.

As soon as we arrived at Notre Dame to do the tour of the Towers we saw a big sign stating that all entries to the bell towers had to make an online queue through a special app, and that included the Museum Pass. And, of course, the queue was full through the rest of the day. We abandoned the Notre Dame tour, then, and headed for the crypt. The Crypt is a museum underneath Notre Dame which shows off some ancient ruins of the city, lots of coinage and inscriptions from various points in French history, and some information about the construction of the cathedral.

I am entering here for the record that when we first walked into the excavation area where some of the old building foundations were displayed we passed a sign that said something about a settlement from pre-Roman times. I remarked to Julie that the foundations we were looking at were definitely not pre-Roman, and that they looked like they were from much later in the imperial period, based on how the stones were cut and the passages were laid out. And then we walked past another sign at that said the remains in front of us were from the 4^th century A.D.

One of us was very impressed with myself. (It wasn’t Julie)

After we came out of the crypt we tried to get into Sainte-Chappelle, but there was another big sign denying Museum Pass holders any special expedited entry there. Since the chapel was closing in a half hour, we were just out of luck. The best thing we did in our first day of Museum Passing was the thing that required no special entry or admission at all—going into Notre Dame to see a service.

We went to the 5:45 Vespers service, a half-hour of continuous organ music led by two cantors with just a couple of breaks for some readings from the front. The cathedral itself is unbelievable. Any “chronological snobbery” you might think yourself entitled to just because we have decent dentistry and iPhones and take showers every day in the modern world gets flattened by the grandeur and symmetries and detail of this incredible space that was put up without the aid of a single power tool or motor vehicle, and yet somehow makes every other church you’ve been in seem like a straw hut.

It was packed in the church, and most of the crowd was passing through the various displays and tourist areas that surrounded the still massive but slightly smaller congregational area. Every few minutes an announcement came on asking people in French and English to please remain quiet and respectful. (There were lots of overcooked kids who’d seen one too many grown-up tourist attractions by this point in the day.) It didn’t feel like it mattered. There was actually something really powerful about seeing “the nations” pouring into this sacred space while we listened to the psalms being sung, and answered back in the same spots where Christians before us had stood and sung these words back for almost a thousand years. The final hymn was the Magnificat, and we sang in Latin about “just as he has spoken to our fathers, Abraham and his seed forever…glory to the Father and the Son and to the Holy Ghost, as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be forever, Amen.”

Dazed and a little overwhelmed, we crossed over to the Left Bank to pass a few hours before our cruise. Having both read Jurassic Park within the last month and knowing how incredibly impressive it would be to show a picture of it to our boys, we decided to see if we could get into the Jardin des Plantes, where there was a big T-Rex skeleton on display. We found out afterwards that it would have cost a fortune to get in, but it was closed by the time we arrived anyway. We found a bench to read in the Botanical Gardens for a bit, and then crossed back over towards the Bastille for wifi and bathrooms. (This was our most American stop, as we went to a Starbucks and got iced coffees.)

At 8:30 we went down to the Port de L’Arsenal for our cruise. Out of all the things we did in Paris, this was Julie’s favorite without contest. We recommend it heartily. (We took the Canauxrama tour.) We sat on the upper deck of the boat and exchanged cameras with some of the couples sitting around us so that we could get photographed together.

We had to pass through a fumy-smelling lock to get out of the initial canal, and then we were on the Seine. All around us people were sitting on riverbank with picnic blankets and bottles of wine. It was just starting to get dark, and we passed a couple of large crowds where DJs were playing music and people were dancing together. (The tour guide told us that there are free dancing lessons along the river every Sunday evening.) The guide gave information in French and English, and most of her commentary took place during the first hour of the tour, so that we could just watch and wonder for the second hour.

As we passed under one of the first bridges leading to the Ile-St.-Louis, everything suddenly started to light up. The streetlights came on, the bridges were illuminated, and the whole city began to twinkle as a cool summer night set in. We hadn’t yet seen the city at night, and it was worth the wait.

We passed under all the faces of the Pont Neuf and watched some landmarks go by that we hadn’t seen yet—the Palais Bourbon, the Musee d’Orsay, the Place de la Concorde, and the Grand Palais. 

Then, just around corner from us, was the Eiffel Tower.

It’s hard to put into words just how impressive the Eiffel Tower is in person. Paris isn’t a particularly tall city in most places, and the Tower completely dominates the entire surrounding area. It’s impressive by daylight, and in any light it wows you with its symmetry and power. But at night, glowing with lights throwing everything you can see into its visual orbit, it’s magical. The whole boat hushed as it came into view, and we all watched as we glided by. There were still people milling about at the base, and you could see the elevators moving up and down.

We passed into one of the more modern-looking areas of the city as we went beyond the Tower, past the Radio France building and some proper skyscrapers before turning around in front of the French Statue of Liberty. (Just like the American one, except a bit shorter.) Our boat timed the moment we passed the Eiffel Tower on the return for 10 PM perfectly, and without warning the Tower lit up like a sparkler.

Applause broke out and everyone gawked as twinkles and bursts and flashes of light raced up and down the structure. This went on for almost five minutes, and then we were drifting back under bridges again. I went below just long enough to bring back some champagne, and more revelers waved to us from bridges overhead and the banks on each side as they danced and drank.

That cruise was the most overtly touristy thing we did. It was maybe the best thing we did. The final adventure came after we had come into dock again in the Port de L’Arsenal, and found that the entrance back to the street had been gated and locked. We had to hop a fence to get back to the road!

Monday was our Louvre day, and the day for doing whatever else we might require our Museum Pass. We hiked up to the Louvre in the morning and went down into the bowels of the museum under the big glass pyramid. (This time we actually did get to jump a line.)

We were in the museum for close to three hours, and by the time we left we were both museum-ed out. It was crowded, hot, and smelly. I did get to see some wonderful antiquities—artifacts from the Parthenon and from the Temple of Jupiter, coins, all manner of vases and urns, and a wonderful (largely empty) room of inscriptions.

Any moderately “famous,” piece, however, was completely mobbed by crushes of people with cellphones out. We did get reasonably close to the Venus de Milo and Nike of Samothrace, but it was hard to appreciate either of them while you were getting jostled and worried about getting separated. We did brave the crowds long enough to get to the room with the Mona Lisa and could kind of see her from the very back as we edged our way along the mass. (Yes, her eyes followed you the entire time.)

It would have been an amazing experience if you had the museum to yourself. I’d attempt to Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler the place if I weren’t certain I’d be immediately shot by French military guards carrying automatic weapons. (You saw these strolling about in groups of four near all the major tourist destinations.)

We limped towards home and found coffee along the way, then got falafel again (this time with the hot harissa sauce) at L’As du Falaffel and ate it at a little park near the Place des Vosges.

Julie was done with adventuring for the rest of the day, but I left by myself in the evening to see what I could see and squeeze a little more utility out of the Museum Pass. I went to the Pompidou museum first (which was largely empty and comfortably air-conditioned) and looked through corridors of Picasso, Matisse, and Dali. It was just getting dark when I left the museum, and the view from the top floor of the Pompidou was one of the best in Paris. You could see Sacre-Coeur perched up on Montmartre to your right, you could see the Eiffel Tower in front of you, and Notre Dame to your left.

I wandered down the Seine as it got dark out and sat for a few minutes in front of Notre Dame, where a busker set up in the square with a guitar and played some Albeniz. He was a wonderful player, but was driven away by a noisy band that brought amplification and started playing about 20 minutes after he had begun down by the cathedral.

And just like that, there were only two full days left.

Paris Vacation 2018, Part 4

We overdid it again through the rest of Friday, but it wasn’t quite as bad as trying to hike up to Montmartre again. As we walked back from the Galeries Lafayette (with Julie already changed into her new sneakers) we found what was to be our go-to food for the trip—falafel.

I had read about the quality of the street food in Paris being quite high, and the excellence of the Middle Eastern dishes in particular. We watched a special on L’As du Falaffel that gave us a starting point, and, as it turned out, we never went any further.

The Rue de Rosiers is about fifteen minutes from our apartment, and we were hungry and footsore when we finally arrived. It’s in the Jewish quarter, and there are kosher bakeries and several temples, as well as much-newer looking fashion boutiques. L’As du Falaffel turns such a hot business for most of the year that it has two windows along the street about forty yards apart. Since we were there in the “dead season,” only one was open, but there was still a line stretching down the pavement with a man in a t-shirt and apron taking orders. There were probably four or five other falafel shops along this street, and I’m sure they were great too. The cooks were calling out to patrons, “Come to L’as du Falaffel, the best falafel in Paris!” and then being answered and argued at by the stands across the street, in what seemed to be a pretty good-humored bickering match.

Julie asked for a traditional falafel wrap and I asked for shawarma our first time there. It’s hard to say what exactly makes the falafel wrap so good. It starts with the pita, which is thick and chewy, and still warm. Then you have the vegetables, which are layered in at least twice—fresh tomatoes, diced cucumber, some lightly fried eggplant, and two kinds of pickled cabbage. And then the falafel itself is just perfect. It’s right out of the oil, perfectly spiced, and a magical texture. Every bite you take of it makes you think “this tastes like seventeen different things, and I can taste each one clearly, and they are all GREAT.” It’s all melded together with a creamy hummus-yogurt dressing.

I don’t want to undersell my shawarma, which was also delicious, but after tasting a bite of Julie’s falafel I went back to that for each return visit. There is a small eating area inside the restaurant that we went to, but since we (like most everyone else in line) got our food “a l’emporter” (which is cheaper than buying it to eat in the restaurant) we crouched on the curbside and took amazed bites with our plastic forks. As hungry as we both were, there was no impulse to wolf it down. This was too good to be rushed.

We made it back home to stretch out and retreat from the sun a bit, and then headed out again in the evening to check out Les Halles, an enormous (mostly) underground mall that used to be the city’s main market. We poked into this store and that (including a LEGO store, where we took some pictures for the boys of an enormous LEGO reconstruction of Notre Dame and the Hogwarts castle) and got some ideas for souvenirs, and then went home via Pierre Herme, the supposed champion of Parisian macarons.

These little cakes (cookies? What are macarons, anyway?) were each works of art on their own. Perfectly even, perfectly textured, and balanced with unbelievable flavors. We bought six of them and split each one on the balcony. Rose-litchi-raspberry, Passion fruit-rhubarb-strawberry, yoghurt-raspberry, dark Brazilian chocolate, hazelnut-praline, and pistachio. A little sweetness, then a lot of wine, and a movie were in order on Friday night. And you would think that we would have slept the sleep of the profoundly tired.

Friday night was probably the roughest night of sleep for the trip, and that was when we missed the air-conditioner we thought were going to have. Aside from this one hot night the weather was practically perfect while we were there. It may have sprinkled for ten minutes one of the mornings we were out, but that was the only time that it wasn’t perfectly sunny and upper seventies. If it had rained with any seriousness our walking-all-over-the-city plans would have been seriously compromised. (We did pack an umbrella, but still…)

Saturday morning was a pretty late start, and we decided to make an easier day for ourselves. We planned on getting breakfast out at Ble Sucre, which was going to be our “best croissant” destination. It was only a ten minute walk to get there, but the storefront was closed with a notice about how the staff was “en vacances” until the beginning of September. Phooey. We were going have to find the second-best croissant in Paris.

We wandered around until we stumbled onto the Marche D’Aligre, which turned out to be our favorite market experience of the trip. You have to have cash on hand to do anything at the Parisian markets, but it isn’t anything like negotiating a Middle Eastern market is supposed to be. There isn’t any bartering, every stall has a registered set of scales, and all the prices are clearly marked up front. (You do end up with a big pocketful of coins, since everything is priced so precisely.) We stopped at a boulangerie for some bread as well, and ended up going into a grocery for some wine, since the morning had turned into a grocery run.

We stayed inside for the rest of the morning, and then crossed over to the Left Bank for the first time. Our trip took us through the Latin Quarter (where the old Universities of Paris stood, hence everyone spoke Latin there in the Middle Ages) past the Pantheon to the Luxembourg gardens.

It’s hard to describe how one city “feels” different from another, but our afternoon in the gardens might have embodied most of what makes Paris feel like Paris. The gardens were busy, but in a quiet and slow-paced sort of way. It felt like everyone was out to enjoy the sunshine, and children were pushing wooden boats around in the enormous fountain below us. Couples laid in the grass reading books, women sunned themselves and carried on quiet conversations, and every once in awhile somebody pulled themselves up to go get an ice cream. The rowdiest thing we saw all afternoon was a friendly game of petanque as we walked out of the park.

It had been in our “while we’re in this neighborhood” plan to stop in at La Maison du Chocolat, a highly renowned chocolatier with multiple locations in the city. I did okay at speaking French while we were there. Usually whoever I was speaking with picked up on the fact that I was an English speaker even if I didn’t stumble over something, but I couldn’t make any sense of what the young man who initially greeted us was asking me. He smiled after repeating himself a second time and asked if I’d be more comfortable in English, and then asked again if we’d like to try a free sample.

Well, yes, of course we would.

This was good chocolate. This was EXPENSIVE, very tiny, very good chocolate. And we each had one sample, and then we had another. Just those two bites each probably cost ten euro. But boy, was it good chocolate. We ended up bringing a dozen home, and he offered us another sample each while we were picking them out, and then another sample after we’d paid up. He was a nice guy.

By now we were getting hungry. We had made plans to look inside Bon Marche (another big mall), but multiple hours on nothing except a few bites of chocolate was catching up, and we ended up picking a random restaurant that was our thumbs-down experience.

We had a did-not-translate moment about whether we were going to order food at all and sat there with just drinks for close to twenty minutes, and then when Julie’s croque madame arrived it was overdone and appeared to be made with offensively plain sliced sandwich bread. I had some pretty good potatoes dauphinoise and a pretty bad duck confit.

By a deliberate decision we cut the evening off on the early side to make sure we had our feet under us for the following day and to catch up on some lost sleep. We headed back along the Seine and decided to give some street food another shot, what with dinner being kind of a bust.

The French know a thing or two about making crepes. I got Nutella, Julie got cookie butter, and they were everything that dinner was not—hot, sweet, and memorable. You get them all folded up and wrapped up in a wax paper napkin, and as you get down to the last bite you get an extra big bite of all the filling that’s sunk down. So, as we walked back over the Seine towards our apartment, we had satisfied taste buds after all.  

Paris Vacation 2018, part 3

Paris Vacation 2018, part 3

We pushed too hard over the first few days, which was why we were in a department store buying a pair of sneakers by Friday morning. Here’s how we wrecked Julie’s feet in less than 36 hours. After our Thursday afternoon stop at Camille’s we decided to head up to Montmartre to see Sacre-Coeur instead of going back to our apartment. We probably should have gone back to our apartment.

Paris is a pretty flat city, but there is one midsized hill that looks very prominent in context. It’s up at the very northern end of what was walkable from our apartment, and atop this hill (Montmartre) is a gleaming white cathedral—Sacre Coeur. Some of the most stunning sights in the city were actually views of the white church upon the hilltop. You could see it from the top of the Pompidou, and there was a great “wow, there it is!” moment along the Boulevard Housmann as you rounded a corner directly south of it. So, Sacre Coeur is pretty great. But getting there was a drag. Even with some baguette and coffee in our systems it was a LONG walk (in the brunt of the afternoon heat) up to Montmartre…and then UP Montmartre.

We passed through the wedding district on the way up, where there were dozens of bridal shops showing off white gowns and tuxedos, and passed by the Republique statue. (Stopping briefly on a park bench outside the McDonald’s there to pirate some wifi) We also went into an indoor market, then clomped up the hill into the swarm of tourists in search of a patch of shade.

We ended up finding a stone bench that was partially shaded by the walls of the lower promenade just under the cathedral. The view of Paris stretching out beneath us was spectacular. But the shade and a few sips of water were even better.

Water is not a public commodity in Europe. I can’t remember seeing a single water fountain for our entire time there, and when you go to a restaurant there’s no complimentary glass of water brought out to your spot. If you want water, you have to pay for it. It’s delicious mineral water, but since it costs pretty much the same amount as a glass of wine, I always just ended up ordering the wine. We were definitely both dehydrated by the end of the week, despite our best efforts to pack sufficient supplies for each day of walking. (J-I was not dehydrated. I took my Nalgene with me and faithfully filled it from our apartment each day.)

We read and stretched out in the shade, both having kicked off our shoes, for over an hour. We watched the tourists flit by and the souvenir sellers calling out to the passerbys to look at their miniature Eiffel towers or to buy a painting. We never made it up into the cathedral. It was nearly 4:00 and we hadn’t ever really had a proper lunch. We decided to start walking home and find some place to eat along the way.

After bridging some considerable distance about how one ought to choose a restaurant in Paris, we ended up at a bistro by the Republique. We had some truly spectacular food over our time there, and one meal that was just flat out bad. This was neither here nor there. I had steak tartare (and did not get sick from it) and some camembert. Julie had a salmon sandwich. We had, by the time we made it back to the apartment, walked almost ten miles. It was time to be done.

But we weren’t. We put our heads together to make a more concrete itinerary for the next few days and listed out all of the places we knew that we wanted to eat: Le Maison du Chocolat for chocolates, Ble Sucre for croissants, Pierre Herme for macarons, Amarino for ice cream, and so on. We ended up watching some episodes of Netflix food shows about Paris, and wrote down all the restaurants and markets that we liked the look of from that. And then we mapped them all out and made plans by neighborhood to see where we might go in smaller, more manageable chunks.

As tired and footsore as we were that night, we did head out once more. We walked down to the Place de la Bastille and got some ice cream at Amorino’s—perfect little flowers of gelato shaped into individual petals in a “cornet” waffle cone. We strolled back through a little cobbled alley that twisted through some apartments and was filled with ferns and hanging green plants. It was cool out, and just starting to get dark.

The next day we were planning on centering our day around the Tuileries. <Cue immediate Mussorgsky melody from Pictures at an Exhibition any time either of us said “Tuileries.”> The French take their public gardens very seriously. They are multi-generational works of art with perfect balance and symmetry that take massive public investment. Our plan was to find a comfortable spot in the shade and to spend the morning off our feet once we had secured a reading spot in the garden.

Our walk took us down the Rue de Rivoli, the main commercial thoroughfare beside the Right Bank. We passed the Louvre along the way, which was as enormous as advertised. There is a semi-permanent carnival at the entrance to the Tuileries that our boys, had they been there, would have loved. A huge Ferris wheel, spinning cups, carousels—and all of it was empty. We had started before the rest of the city again, and we had the park pretty much to ourselves for the first hour we were there.

It was a beautiful morning, but when we stood up J’s feet had reached the limit. She’d packed comfortable and sturdy Keen sandals, but whenever debris from the street kicked into the sandal part it was rubbing her soles raw. Fortunately there are more than a couple places where you can buy a pair of shoes in Paris.

We walked (or, in her case, limped) up towards the Opera and the famous Galeries Lafayette. We were passing through the High Fashion corridor—the place where Paris fashion week starts and ends. Julie says it was a bit like stepping into an issue of Vogue. The price tags alone were dizzying, let alone the handsome suited Frenchmen attempting to woo in deep-pocketed tourists.

Two things stuck out about all of the Paris “malls” that we went to—first, that they all took male fashion as seriously as female fashion. If there were four floors of women’s clothing, you could expect four floors of men’s offerings as well. Second, merchandise wasn’t broken up into storefronts, but grouped together by kind and sold by a representative in in front of his or her company’s shelf of offerings. For example, Julie bought Puma shoes from a Puma employee who had one wall in a massive floor of all of the mall’s women’s shoes.

J: I bought a pair of white tennis shoes. All of my people watching from the previous two days had informed me that would be a safe bet for blending in. And I needed a pair of shoes that I could wear socks with because of the condition my feet were in—I’ve never had blisters on the bottoms of my feet before.

Her countenance improved dramatically when we stepped out of the mall and she could walk normally again.

Paris Vacation 2018, part 2

Paris Vacation 2018, part 2

There was a lot to do once we were off the plane at Charles de Gaulle. We started off with the two most questionable financial moves of the trip—the museum pass, which we didn’t use enough to justify (more on that later), and the currency exchange, which had a huge fee and wasn’t particularly competitive with some of the other exchanges we saw outside the airport. Then we collected our luggage, bought train tickets, and wandered around looking for signs to the RER B. (The main railroad into Paris)

The train was full and not air-conditioned. We changed trains at the Gare du Nord and were excited to see the Richard Lenoir stop on the Metro Line 5. As we climbed the stairs out of the metro station we were fully in view of number 52, our home for the next week and a half. Richard Lenoir is one the grand boulevards…two one way streets separated by wide well-developed park area full of playgrounds and markets that took up far more space than the traffic lanes of the boulevard itself, or the bicycle lanes on the outer edge.

This moment was also when our adventure without cellular service began. Our cellphones were pretty much useless for most of the time we were in Paris except, critically, Google Maps. You can download a map for offline access ahead of time, and though it doesn’t retain many of the features of an online map, the GPS can tell even without wifi or cell service where you are and which direction you’re heading. It was wonderful to be without a phone (except in our apartment, which had wifi) all week. But it would have been a lot harder to do almost everything we did without Google Maps.

J: Can’t recommend it enough.

Number 52 Richard Lenoir is a complex of several apartment buildings with a courtyard in between which you enter via an enormous old wooden door and marble floored colonnade. You entered a code at the street (C.J. Spiller-Phil Hansen) to enter the courtyard, and then there was another code (Terrence McGee-LeSean McCoy) to get into Batiment B. Then we took an elevator so tiny you could barely fit two people in it even without luggage up to the sixth floor, a dark and windowless corridor, somewhere along which we’d paid almost a thousand dollars six months prior for a room that we’d only seen in pictures.

The pictures were accurate. It was tiny, but it was everything we needed…clean, elegant (in a modern way), and with a beautiful view of the courtyard and the surrounding buildings from the little balcony. It was just a studio, with a double bed at one end and a little table and chairs at the other. There was a kitchen and a bathroom, and the balcony had two wicker chairs and a wicker table, three window boxes, and several bees. (We never got stung, but there were bees everywhere in Paris. They were particularly curious about whatever patisseries we visited)

It was close to 6 PM in Paris by the time we were actually in the apartment, and we’d both been awake for at least 30 of the previous 36 hours. I stepped out in search of a grocery store and picked up some eggs, bread, wine, cheese, and the best pear I’ve ever had at a grocery store a few blocks down. Julie made her first cup of Nespresso.

The basic unit of European coffee is the espresso shot. If you want something more substantial than that, you can have your espresso “allongee.” This has as much umph as a standard cup of American coffee, but is about a quarter of the size and comes out of the espresso machine all frothy-looking. I was ready for an American cup of coffee by the time we came home—it’s nice to sit and work on something that will take 20 minutes when you’re reading the paper in the morning—but we got by just fine with our allongees and Nespresso machine (which basically takes something like K-Cups) while we were there. We didn’t have a bad cup of coffee while we were there, but we never really had a great cup of coffee either. The Nespresso machine was pretty universal.

The coffee didn’t keep either of us awake. We had little dinner on the balcony of bread and goat cheese, hummus, and a pear.

J: That was one of the most romantic moments for me—sitting down on that balcony, which I’d dreamed of for half a year, and knowing all there was yet to come. Compare that to our honeymoon, when we were exhausted, jobless, and poor.

I don’t remember anything about that night beyond falling asleep very early, and waking up again very early—close to 5.

Julie, who had a gift for sleep in the face of all obstacles even before she was Owen’s mother, slept in later. We had the first of many omelette breakfasts a little after 7, and then went out for our first day of exploring.

We discovered that Paris also has a gift for drowsing through the morning. Most shops don’t open until 10 at the earliest, and 11 is the norm. Since August is a nearly universal vacation time in France we couldn’t tell how many of these closed up shop fronts were going to be shut down the entire time we were there, and how many just weren’t going to open at 8 AM.

Richard Lenoir has a marche volante, a “flying market.” Every Thursday and Sunday morning the whole “park” in the median is filled with vendors, produce stands, souvenir shops, fishmongers, baked goods, cheeses, and street food from our intersection all the way down to the Bastille. This was up and running by the time we left our apartment, and we gawked at the produce as we walked south. Every vendor was meticulous about a beautiful presentation of their goods. We made a note to come back and explore much more thoroughly later.

The Place de la Bastille was the big landmark closest to us. The Bastille was the (no longer standing) fortress that was stormed at the beginning of the French Revolution, and the site where it stood is now an enormous cobbled traffic circle with an opera house on one side and the Canal de l’Arsenal on the other, which is an entry onto the Seine.

J: I always knew the Bastille from the huge golden statue in the middle of the circle.

We followed the canal down to the Seine and walked along the river bank (and you can go RIGHT up to the river bank) up towards the islands past morning joggers. I was taking care of directions and was reading signs and trying to translate the snatches of conversation I heard on the fly. Julie was much more tuned into picking up the customs and the flavors of the city—how people dressed, protocol with traffic signs and lights, exchanges of pleasantries. We were trying not to look too obviously out of place, and I don’t know that we were entirely successful. There was a lot to take in.

We crossed from the right bank onto the Ile de St. Louis and scouted out some potential ice cream shops that we never ended up visiting, then crossed another bridge onto the Ile de la Cite and saw Notre Dame. Notre Dame was breathtaking. It’s the historical center of Paris, you understand why when you see it. It felt busy there at 9 AM, but that was easily the emptiest visit out of the three times we went by. We went back to front and looked for the “bored” gargoyle once we were in the main court, then admired the Kings of Judah and headless St. Denis.

Every time we face timed with Owen he asked what animals we’d seen. I don’t know where he thought we were—maybe on a safari or visiting a place with lots of zoos, but it was always a little disappointing when we could only say “dogs and pigeons.” We did have a good answer on the first day, though, because we saw a lobster carved into the stone façade of Notre Dame.

From Notre Dame we crossed back over to the Right Bank and past the Hotel de Ville in search of espresso.

J: This is where things got martially testy.

I had a theory about how to buy espresso in Paris. Or rather, how to choose a place to buy espresso in Paris. Because if you stand at any point in the city and look around, you can see five places to get something to eat and/or drink. At least. So, my guidelines were—

J: Unvoiced guidelines. I didn’t know about these the first day.

Number one, avoid places in immediate vicinity of the tourist traps. Number two, avoid places with big English language signs out front. Number three, listen to the music that they’re playing. Gentle jazz is better than American pop music. Number four (this was the most important one), a cup of espresso should probably cost about 2 euro. Look for the espresso on the menu to gauge whether the rest of the menu is affordable.

J: I just needed a cup of coffee. We’d been walking for a long time. There were plenty of places that served coffee, best as my eye could see. We kept walking by them, and I’d see another, and I’d think “this is the place,” and then we’d walk by it. And I couldn’t tell what Roy was thinking because he hadn’t shared his list of arbitrary rules yet. I also spoke no French, whereas he’d been studying for over a year, so I was waiting for him to initiate any verbal exchanges made at a restaurant. So we walked, and walked, and walked…

I stand by guidelines. They were entirely correct, as far as our dining experiences went, except that I eventually needed to account for some inflation regarding the espresso. Apparently my 2 euro guideline was a little outdated. 2,50 is right on the banana, if you happen to be going to Europe in the immediate future. (Before the banana inflates again)

Eventually we found a place—Camille’s. We had some perfectly lovely 2,50 euro espresso out on the street with some croissant and baguette. (And a bee who was terribly interested in the strawberry jam for the baguette.) And Julie had her coffee, and was not nearly so hangry as she had been earlier.