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.