What Might Have Been

Tags

Ali, apartments, Aya, Brian, Brian Boyle, Covid-19, Jackie, Les Gobelins, Lisa, Montorgueil, Sheila, Sheila Boyle, Sherard, Zhizhong

Spring in Paris was a mirage this year. I had all my reservations, but Covid-19 had other ideas. Not only would it have been unsafe to travel, but France had locked down by the time I planned to travel, and my flight was cancelled.

Instead of another fabulous petit séjour I spent the spring mostly cooped up in my apartment, relieved by occasional Zooms with the folks I would have been spending time with in Paris. My self-pity was contemptible, in the context of a pandemic in which thousands were dying. The only aspect personal to me was the vulnerability of age; in other respects most everyone was having an experience at least as bad as my own. And even if I could have traveled there, the Paris I had enjoyed so many other springs had ceased to exist this year.

I’ve finally worked through the stages of grief, so here is a bittersweet post about what might have been.

Intersection of rue Montorgueil and rue Tiquetonne, Paris (2011)

From April 27 to May 10 I had planned to stay once again with my three cousins, Jackie, Lisa and Aya, in the same comfortable 15ème apartment, a few block from our great friend Ali, exactly like the two prior years.

Jackie, Aya and Lisa (2018)

Dinner Party with Jackie, two friends, Ali, Aya and Lisa (2019)

I’m sure we would have gone on some terrific outings, like the day trip Jackie and I took last year to Provins.

Jackie in Provins (2019)

Or our visit to the Atelier des Lumières.

Aya and Lisa dancing at the Van Gogh show at the Atelier des Lumières (2019)

One of our first guests would have been my great friend Zhizhong.

Zhizhong and Bob at Le Camondo (2019)

Farewell dinner with Zhizhong at Café des Anges (2019)

On May 1 my cousin Brian and his wife Sheila were scheduled to arrive in Paris, and we expected outings similar to those in prior years.

Champagne Day Trip with Brian, Sheila and their friend Sheryl (2018)

Brian, Jackie, Sheila, Rick and Sheryl after dinner at La Régalade Conservatoire (2018)

From May 10 to June 1 I had booked the same apartment on rue Montorgueil in the 1er arrondissement where I had stayed last year.

Steve at the dinner party hosted by Sherard and Bob on rue Montorgueil (2019)

The owner had radically renovated in the intervening year, turning the kitchen into a third bedroom, and adding an en-suite bathroom to my preferred front bedroom. A minimal kitchen and the clothes washer had been moved to one end of the living/dining room. These changes were great for packing in a crowd but made it even more absurd for me to live there mostly alone, and I would also have missed the kitchen. But the location was unbeatable, it was very comfortable, and I liked the owner.

Just like last year, Sherard was scheduled to join me for a week at this apartment. I’m sure we would have once again walked ten miles a day, taken in a tsunami of art, had wonderful meals, and spotted untold numbers of Space Invaders! Helas!!

Sherard on rue Montorgueil (2019)

Sherard with the small piece by Clem Letrusko (lower left) that he purchased on opening day of the Belleville Open Studios (2019)

Sherard, Zhizhong and I on Tuesday at Champeaux (2019)

For the month of June I planned to return to Les Gobelins at the southern edge of the 5éme, which I enjoyed so much last year. The apartment Jared and I rented last year had many good features but it was a bit cramped and didn’t really lend itself to the dinner parties we had hoped to host. I was delighted, however, to find another two-bedroom place in the same block that was much more spacious, with a great kitchen and fabulous views, all for a lot less money!

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I snapped up this place even though I hadn’t confirmed any June guests, on the well-tested theory that, “if you rent it, they will come.” But Covid-19 began rearing its ugly head just a few weeks later, and the rest is history.

AirBnb courteously and efficiently refunded every cent for the first apartment. The second apartment had been rented on a handshake with the terrific owner, who accepted my cancellation with good grace. The third apartment had been rented through a brokerage site, ParisAttitude.com. The owner graciously agreed to cancel and refund my deposit, but, true to its name, Paris Attitude only gave me a one-year voucher to recover its brokerage fee against another booking. I was pleased, however, to be out of pocket only a few hundred dollars after cancelling several thousand dollars of rentals.

I had booked my Air France flights, via Delta codeshare, using points from my Chase Sapphire Reserve credit card. Delta and Chase initially gave me a runaround, offering me only a voucher even though Air France had cancelled the flight. They caved eventually, however, and re-credited my points. I cashed out all my points and cancelled the Sapphire Reserve card, since who knows when I will be traveling again, or even going out to restaurants.

My trips to Paris have given me tremendous pleasure over the past decade. I hope it may be possible to resume them one of these days, but whether or not that comes to pass it’s a delight to be able to relive the trips through this blog. I hope it has (or will) enable you to enjoy my Springs in Paris as well.

Flashing Invaders

Tags

Art, Brian, contemporary art, Invader, Mr Djoul, Sheila, Space Invader, street art, Vetements

In 2016 Omar introduced me to the street art of Invader, and to the FlashInvaders app that lets you track (and confirm) your finds. Last year I found four of the 138 Space Invaders in Tokyo, and this year I have continued to spot more of the 1,285 in Paris.

While I’m now up to 42 Paris Space Invaders I still have a long way to go!

Scary!

The iconic form is the original pixellated space invader icon

Mario has a nice resonance with the colors of the Pompidou Center.

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  Most are small and relatively easy to miss.

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  2019 Update: Or steal!

These next two images were a red herring.

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  I was proud to notice this tiny guy…

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  … until he turned out to be a copycat, Mr Djoul.

Update: While I remain loyal to Invader I have to admit that Mr Djoul’s street art can be rather appealing, and sometimes makes a witty commentary on an adjacent Space Invader. He often uses the alien shown above, frequently puts his squares on the diagonal (unlike Invader), and always signs his work. He’s a copycat, but a classy one.

After I mentioned my Invader hunt to Brian and Sheila they proved to be alert spotters. In their last few days in Paris they send me snaps of half a dozen sightings, most of which I’ve since been able to confirm.

Space Invaders is just a game for me, but Invader has become a serious player in the art world.

Those are Invader prints behind this Vetements model

Update: Here’s a photo set that includes a few relevant images: Paris Street Art: Invaders, Etc. I also discuss some more recent developments in a 2019 post, More Invaders.

Champagne

Tags

apartments, Brian, caves, champagne, Cheryl, lees, Moët et Chandon, Moët et Chandon Champagne, Montorgueil, Rick, rue des petits carreaux, Saints de Glace, Sheila, weather, wine cellars

My cousin Brian, his wife Sheila, and their friends Rick and Cheryl had organized a wine tasting trip for early this week. It was a guided tour of the Champagne region, an hour and a half east of Paris.

I had never been to Champagne in all my visits to France. As you might expect, it’s lovely, even on a rainy day.

I jumped at the invitation to join them, which included a cooked breakfast at Rick and Cheryl’s lovely three-bedroom apartment on rue des Petits Carreaux, just a couple of blocks from my place.

The living room of Rick and Cheryl’s gorgeous apartment on rue des Petits Carreaux. Not that I’m jealous or anything…

The five of us had met in Paris three years before, when we had gone on a memorable Alfred Sisley Pilgrimage. Both couples were then staying in hotels, and they were impressed by my one-bedroom apartment on rue des Jeûneurs, and by the petits séjours in Paris I had been making for a month or so each spring. Rick and Cheryl kindly credited me with having inspired them to rent their really beautiful apartment, with enough space to invite friends — such as Brian and Sheila — to stay with them.

Our first stop was at a small family winery, making six varieties of champagne, most of which we tasted and several of which we bought.

Our host was Sebastian, the fifth generation of the family of champagne makers

When I complimented our host on this label he said he is replacing it with a metal one to project an even more luxe image.

After paying our respects to Dom Perignon‘s grave we visited the impressive winery and caves of Moët et Chandon (you pronounce the t, I learned, because Moët is Dutch). The wine-aging caves are truly labyrinthine. A plaque says that Napoleon I visited in 1807!

Dom Perignon’s grave (on the left). He didn’t invent champagne but he made many improvements in the process.

Moët et Chandon’s winery exudes luxury

Moët et Chandon’s aging caves.

Moët et Chandon’s aging caves.

I had been aware that champagne had to be “disgorged” after aging to remove the lees (fermentation remnants). I didn’t appreciate, however, how complex and delicate this process is: Daily tilting and rotating process over a period of weeks works the lees from the side of the bottle into the neck. The lees then must be blown out of the bottle without losing too much champagne, the bottle must be topped up with replacement champagne and sugar water (for sweetness, not fermentation), then given the final cork, all within a matter of seconds to avoid losing too much carbonation. The traditional method is for a skilled vintner to do this, but large producers like Moët now typically freeze the neck of the bottle so the lees pop out in an ice cube rather than a gush. Most champagnes are capped during aging with a simple metal cap but Dom Perignon, which is aged for ten years, is aged with a cork because a metal cap might not last.

Bottles of Dom Perignon being aged with corks. Moët et Chandon makes Dom Perignon as a separate brand. They purchased the vineyards he traditionally used but otherwise have nothing to do with him.

The high point of a wine tasting is of course the tasting. Just one glass of Moët & Chandon, but it was delicious.

Sheila, Cheryl and Bob enjoying their taste of Moët & Chandon

Available in all sizes!

Update: Here’s a Google photo set with full-sized versions of all my photos from our Champagne day trip: Champagne Day Trip

Mot du jour: Saints de Glace (literally, “Saints of Ice”).  When we commented on the cold and wet weather we had been having for several days our guide said that it is common for there to be a cold snap of a few days in mid-May. Traditionally three saints with holy days in the period are asked to protect farmers from freezing temperatures that would kill their crops. There had been snow at high elevations in France a couple of days before but Champagne was mercifully free of ice during our visit.

Parisian Food Porn

Tags

Amiens, Brian, Jackie, L'Envie du Jour, La Régalade Conservatoire, Le Quai, Le Quai Amiens, meals, Pratolina, restaurants, Sheila, Zhizhong

I have been remiss in not posting enough food pics, but I’ll make up for it now. Oh, and yes there are also a couple of pics of the friends I ate with.

First off is Pratolina, an Italian restaurant a couple blocks away in the 2ème. Starter was a salad with sliced pears and walnuts, followed by salmon ravioli. Warm greeting, good service, nice atmosphere and quite good food.

Next is L’Envie du Jour, a French restaurant in the 17ème. Starter was nicely presented bites of mackerel with veggies and fish over lentils with crispy onion topping. Food and atmosphere was quite good. Service neither problematic nor memorable. I’m not that familiar with Batignolles, although I did visit the area my first year here. I had the impression that the quarter was somewhat run down, but there were lots of attractive looking and busy restaurants in this area.

Both of those meals were with my new friend “Theseus,” of whom more later.

On Friday night I met up for dinner with cousin Jackie, cousin Brian, his wife Sheila, and their hosts and friends Rick and Sheryl. I may have my own place now but this is still a family year! Brian and Rick suggested La Coupole in the 14ème but that seemed to me like a project so I offered to look for something closer to home. I found La Régalade Conservatoire on The Fork. Although I had never been, it looked good and not crazy expensive, and was just a few blocks away in the 9ème. We all agreed that everything about our meal was superb: ambiance, welcome and service, and of course the food. Quite a find! 

Brian, Jackie, Sheila, Rick and Sheryl after dinner at La Régalade Conservatoire

Green bean and mozzarella appetizer at La Régalade Conservatoire

Cod over baby peas and tiny clams at La Régalade Conservatoire

Sheila enjoying her feathery light Grand Mariner souffle at La Régalade Conservatoire

On Saturday Zhizhong and I went for the day to Amiens. More later about the cathedral and town, but here was our meal at Le Quai. Perfectly nice food in a small city with a limited selection of restaurants.

Bob and Zhizhong at one of the many canals in Amiens.

Correct main course at Le Quai, Amiens

Correct dessert at Le Quai, Amiens

Last Tango in Paris?

Tags

Andy, apartments, Brian, France, Lisa, Montorgueil, Paris, rue Montorgueil, Zhizhong

I’m leaving for Paris in a few hours on another petit séjour! Six weeks this year, the first ten days with my cousin Lisa and her daughter Aya in the 15ème and the rest on rue Poissonnière — just a few blocks above my beloved rue Montorgueil — in the 2ème. I’ll be in Paris until June 11.

This will be the most family-oriented of all my long stays. After Lisa and Aya leave my cousin Brian and his wife Sheila will be in Paris the following week, and my nephew Andy will be staying with me for the last week in May. Other friends will also be passing through, and possibly crashing with me, so it won’t be too solitary a visit. Not to mention Parisian friends such as Zhizhong, who has proposed a long weekend road trip in early May.

This year for the first time I’m using Airbnb instead of Paris brokers, such as Paris Attitude. I’ve had good luck with Airbnb elsewhere, including for six weeks in Tokyo last year. It’s a treat to avoid the punishing broker’s fee, and infinitely more convenient to pay by credit card rather than having to bring cash for both rent (converted to euros) and deposit. The real issue is the legal challenge that the City of Paris is making against illegal short-term rentals, whether through brokers or Airbnb. This has been a lurking issue since I started my long stays, but has now become focused in a lawsuit that could force Airbnb to remove 2/3 of its Paris listings. That reduction in supply could push short-term rents through the roof. Will this be my Last Tango in Paris?

I’ve written before about the Sweet Sorrow of leaving Paris at the end of one of my long stays, but in fact there’s a similar feeling as I prepare to leave home for such a long time. Tearing myself away from familiar routines has been a purpose of these trips since the beginning. Paris has increasingly become a home away from home, so the element of daring (always somewhat spurious) has largely evaporated. But the interruption in my Boston/Cambridge life is the same. I’ll be back in just a few weeks, inshallah, but winding things up and saying farewells is nevertheless slightly tinged with sadness. As I get older the resonance with a final departure — to a hospital or hospice from which I may or will not return — becomes stronger. This isn’t a problem, however. Rather it’s the flip side of my enjoyment of my regular Boston life, which it’s one of the goals of the trip to remind me of. And this little twinge takes nothing from the thrill of heading back for another long stay in the City of Light.

 

 

An Alfred Sisley Pilgrimage

Tags

Alfred Sisley, An Hour from Paris, Art, Brian, Brian Boyle, Cheryl, chip and pin, chip-and-signature, France, impressionism, Loing, meals, Moret-sur-Loing, RER, Rick, River Loing, Saint-Mammès, Sheila, Sheila Boyle, SNCF, train tickets, Trains

On Sunday I joined my cousin Brian Boyle, his wife Sheila, and their favorite travel couple — Rick and Cheryl — for a day trip to Moret-sur-Loing, where the impressionist painter Alfred Sisley lived and worked. We used the guide book I have so often appreciated, An Hour From Paris, by Annabel Simms.

Rick, Cheryl, Sheila and cousin Brian, setting out from the Gare de Lyon.

There’s an SNCF express train which takes just half an hour, but it wasn’t running this weekend so we took an RER D local that gets to Moret-sur-Loing in an hour.

You enter and leave Moret-sur-Loing through impressive gates in the medieval town wall.

You enter and leave Moret-sur-Loing through gates in the medieval wall.

After finding Sisley’s house we looked back at the town from the bridge over the Loing.

The cathedral and a mill building, from the bridge over the Loing.

We weren’t quite ready for lunch so we had coffees in Moret-sur-Loing and walked along the river to the adjacent town of Saint-Mammès. The banks of the Loing were quite lovely.

Sheila and Cheryl. Our walk continued across the river and over to the adjacent village of Saint-Mammès.

Sisley painted this scene, which looks much the same today.

Restaurants often close at 2 pm, especially in the provinces, so around 1:30 we followed a bunch of promising signs toward what we supposed was the center of town. After about a mile with no indications of commerce we stopped a kid on a bicycle and asked where the restaurants were. He was initially stumped, then waved vaguely back towards the river and said, « là-bas » (“down there”). After a more careful Google maps check I realized that we had been walking away from the restaurant area, and a fast walk would just get us there by 2 o’clock. We made it with moments to spare … but everything was already closed! Except a Turkish place that was waiting for another diner to finish … which served us a welcome if not exactly gourmet meal. Disaster narrowly avoided, we strolled back along the river bank and returned to Paris from the Saint-Mammès railroad station.

We had intentionally purchased one-way tickets in Paris because we weren’t sure which station we’d return from. There was nobody at the station, but I was able to buy tickets from the machine using one of my trusty chip-and-pin credit cards (not to be confused with the chip-and-signature cards that are becoming standard in the U.S.) I was bemused, however, to find that the provincial machine, unlike the one at Gare de Lyon, would only issue one ticket at a time, so I had to repeat the process five times. If none of us had had a chip-and-pin card we would have had to get 46 euros in coins from somewhere, which might have been quite a daunting task!

We wrapped up our excursion with drinks at the gorgeous restaurant in the Gare de Lyon, Le Train Bleu.

My full photo set is at: An Alfred Sisley Pilgrimage – Moret-sur-Loing

Family, Fratres and a Record-Breaking Flâne

Tags

apéro, Arvo Pärt, Bastille, Brian, Canal Saint-Martin, flâneur, Fratres, kir, language, Lisa, Marais, meals, Metro, Montorgueil, Place des Vosges, weather

I got a late start on Sunday, after an excellent night’s sleep; 2:30 to 9:30 is just as good as 12 to 7 if you’re tired enough. The weather was again cloudy, with occasional showers. After blogging and a few household chores I met Lisa near Bastille for a violin recital at the studio of her friends Eve and Patrice, whom I had met at a dinner party two years earlier. The music was contemporary and unfamiliar, but fascinating. Two of the pieces messed with your head by creating melodic expectations, then smashing them. The last was a simply gorgeous set of ten variations on Fratres by Arvo Pärt. The violinist was a student preparing for her thesis performance, in a few weeks. I loved every minute of the recital; at one point I reflected that life ends, but nothing can take away moments like these when one truly lives. My seat was poor for photography, but here is a glimpse; to complete the scene imagine a dozen appreciative Parisians filling the rest of the cozy studio.

At six months, Lisa’s secret is pretty definitively out. It’s hard to imagine how much bigger she will be getting!

Curvy Lisa!

Colorful Lisa!

Our cousin Brian (the son of my first cousin David) arrived on schedule later that evening, to stay with me for the last few nights of his European Grand Tour. After a couple of welcome beers we got to bed at a reasonable hour.

On Monday we set out after breakfast on what turned out to be a (half) marathon walk. I took us on a rather boring route across the Haut Marais, relieved only by the ever-lovely Place des Vosges.  At Bastille I invited Brian to take the lead, with help from me only on our “strategic direction.”  Brian proved to be a perceptive and independent-minded flâneur, sometimes taking us exactly opposite to our strategic direction when an interesting block caught his eye.

We stopped for lunch at a café on rue Daval. I was at first concerned that we were the only diners, at 1:30, but the service and food were just fine. A friendly fellow at a nearby table took our picture for posterity.

Brian has an incandescent smile, but it takes some social engineering — and a lot of shots! — to capture it with a camera. The Canal Saint-Martin helped bring it out.

After exploring the Parc des Buttes-Chaumont — more than 12 miles all told! — we took the métro back home, then went over to Lisa’s on rue Tolbiac for an apéro (her mom’s special recipe for kir) and a delicious Thai meal with Lisa’s partner Ali. Brian and I then schlepped his big suitcases (which he had used during eight months teaching English in Russia) from Lisa’s and Ali’s back to my place. The time had gotten away from us and the métro was nearly closed! We made it home, though, despite my moment of navigational confusion on the way from Châtelet back to rue Montorgueil. We had no trouble getting to sleep that night!

I’m posting photos again this year on Picasa.  Three sets (in addition to any An Hour From Paris trips) are new for my 2013 petit séjour:

• Paris 2013 – People
• Paris 2013 – Streetscapes
• Paris 2013 – Interiors and Food

I’m also adding to two sets started in prior years:

• Paris – Street Art and Mysterious Texts
• Paris – Tout Confort (sketchy hotels)

In each case I’ll be adding photos during the trip, so feel free to check back. One advantage of Picasa is that it allows you to download full-size digital images; WordPress doesn’t even let me upload the full sized images, though you can see 1/4 sized versions by clicking on the thumbnails in my blog posts.

Mot du jour: merde. Literally, “shit,” usable on all the occasions when we would say that, or even “f*#k.” But it’s also what you say — instead of « bonne chance » ! — to someone who is about to go on stage; the equivalent of our “break a leg.” Needless to say, I learned this by yet again stepping in some French merde.  Update: Perhaps even better would be mille fois merde (a thousand times shit).