On My Own Again

Tags

Aarchna, art, banlieue, Belleville, clouds, Danube, Eiffel Tower, flâneur, France, Il faut se méfier des mots, Ivy covered cottage, Jordain, Kristoffer, la Mouzaïa, Nausicaa Favart Amouroux, One must mistrust words, Opéra, Opéra Garnier, Parc des Buttes-Chaumont, Paris, Pré Saint-Gervais, quartier d’Amérique, Rosa Bonheur, rue de Belleville, rue de Crimée, rue du Télégraph, semaphore, Télégraph, Un Tapis de Poésie, villas, Water towers, weather

On Sunday morning I saw Kristoffer off on the Roissybus at Opéra. The ticket machine at the bus stop was broken but he was able to buy a ticket from the driver (since he had prudently saved 11 euros in cash).

Opéra Garnier looking lovely, in a rare moment of sunshine

Paradoxically, you have to stand at a traffic island in the middle of rue de l’Opéra, where the sides are blocked by other buildings, to see the full dome, and the pitched roof over the main theater.

In prior years I’ve just sent departing guests out the door with detailed instructions, but a Boston friend has taught me how nice it is to see someone off. This is especially true when I’ve been handling navigation issues for my guest while we’ve been together, so he may not have gotten particularly comfortable with the métro, etc. How I have remained oblivious to this all these years is a mystery, but it’s not too late to teach this old dog a new trick! (Though note that I didn’t go all the way to the airport and back; let’s not get carried away here!)

This year’s sojourn has been very sociable. A series of old and new friends have stayed with me for several days each: Jared R, Sherard, Omar and Kristoffer, and I’ve spent a lot of time with other visiting friends, including Jared W, Craig and Arturo. As in other years I’ve seen a lot of Zhizhong, and I’ve started catching up with other French friends as well. Earlier in the trip I stayed with Charlie and Markevin near Toulouse and spent a couple of afternoons with Grégory in Bordeaux, not to mention my new Korean friends. This has been great fun, but it has also left me with less alone time than in prior years, and has greatly changed the blogging dynamic. From a discipline that I followed (almost) every evening in 2010 it has become a binge project that gets a week or two behind, then takes me a day or two to catch up! All a long way of saying that it’s different, but quite OK, to now spend a few days alone.

Sunday afternoon I headed over to Rosa Bonheur for old time’s sake. The weather has continued to be a mix of sun and rain, but there was a pretty good crowd on the terrasse. I didn’t get into any deep conversations but I did exchange a few nice words with a young woman who was there with her young son and older mother.

Rosa Bonheur, finally open and busy

After finishing my beer I strolled over to the area of little “Villas” to the west of the Park des Buttes Chaumont, which I now see is called la Mouzaïa or the quartier d’Amérique. I added a few shots to my Picasa/Google photo set on la Mouzaïa then continued on to see some of the open studios in an area I had not previously visited, the city of Pré Saint-Gervais, a banlieue!

As usual there was a lot of so-so art, but I really liked several pieces by Nausicaa Favart-Amouroux.

Painting by Nausicaa Favart Amouroux

I also enjoyed a poetry reading accompanied by violin at Un Tapis de Poésie.

Pré Saint-Gervais itself seemed to have something of a Turkish tilt, but otherwise seemed quite Parisian and not scary, except for an abandoned building, covered with graffiti.

Scary abandoned building covered with grafitti in a banlieue!

Somewhat less scary in the context of its spanking new neighbors

I had actually encountered a scarier scene earlier within the city limits at Danube.

Bucolic scene at Danube. Oh, wait…

I had a nice Indian dinner at Aarchna, on rue du Télégraph back in Belleville. I was interested to learn that the « télégraph » was actually one of the earliest lines of visual semaphores, which in 1794 allowed a message to be transmitted from Paris to Lille in three hours that previously took three days on horseback. That’s why it was placed on the highest hill in Paris, also why there are now water towers on the same spot.

Water towers on rue du Télégraph

After dinner I walked down rue de Bellevile as the sun went down (around 10 pm!). Here are a few atmospheric pictures from my day as a lone flâneur.

Ivy-covered cottage on rue de Crimée, near sketchy Place des Fêtes

“Beware of words.”

Doorway at Jordain, rue de Belleville

The other Paris: the Eiffel tower from rue de Belleville

Lovely clouds behind a dome on rue Réumur

All day Monday and Tuesday morning I did literally nothing but catch up on my blog. Enjoy!

Mot du jour: banlieue, literally, “suburb,” but many of the inner ring of cities just outside Paris are ethnic, depressed and at times dangerous so in France the term has a sketchy resonance.

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A Flâneur is Born

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4ème arrondissement, Alésia, art, Belleville, Boulangerie, Café de l'Industrie, Carrousel du Louvre, flâneur, FNAC, France, Haussmann building, Le Verre Siffleur, Louvre, Marais, meals, Musee d'Orsay, Paris, Sherard, Uniqlo

Wednesday was Sherard’s last day in Paris so we were thrilled the night before to see that the Louvre would reopen! We got up early — for us — and arrived shortly after it opened. Unfortunately, there was already a huge, raucous line. I searched online for a way to jump the queue, and was pleased to discover that the same strategy I had used other years for the Musée D’Orsay also works for the Louvre. In both cases the bottleneck is the security line, but both museums have a much shorter security line for people who already have tickets. You can buy tickets ahead of time on line or at FNAC or many tabacs, but if you wait until the last minute there’s a tabac that sells Louvre tickets right in the underground Carrousel du Louvre where we were waiting. The express security line for people with tickets is up at the glass pyramid so once you have your tickets you go there and sail past the normal security line. I was proud of having worked this dodge but I could see that Sherard was still repelled by the mob scene. I asked which galleries interested him most and when he left it to me I led him to the Mona Lisa, which I assumed he would want to see, even though it attracts the worst sort of paparazzi crowd. After that I spied a few paintings I liked but I could see that Sherard was still not into the experience.

Portrait of a Man Holding a Statuette by Bronzino, Florence, 1503 – id. 1572

Over morning coffee Sherard and I had a heart to heart talk. The upshot was that all he really wanted that day was to buy two items he had seen on earlier walks: (1) a rug he had admired during our walk through the Belleville and Couronnes neighborhoods and (2) a small painting he had liked at a gallery in the Marais. I was proud of Sherard for asserting what he really wanted in the face of the conventional expectation that one has to see the Louvre!

We got the hell out of there and headed east. The problem was that neither of us remembered exactly where he had seen the rug, so we retraced our steps: up rue de Belleville, then over to the Parc de Belleville and back down from there. Along the way we saw several pieces of street art that Sherard liked way more than anything he had seen at the musty old Louvre.

Street art in Belleville

Street art in Belleville

[Click here to download an enormous pano of the piece above.]

Just as we were about to give up on the rug, back at the Boulevard de Belleville, I noticed some Muslim stores on rue Jean-Pierre Timbaud, and sure enough, there was the rug! Sherard bought it for a song, and the first of our missions was accomplished.

After lunch at the Café de l’Industrie — a sentimental favorite from my first year — we headed over to the Marais.

Sherard’s lunch at Café de l’Industrie

There was a moment of anxiety at the gallery when the painting Sherard liked was no longer on display! But after he asked at the counter the clerk brought out many similar pieces and Sherard left as the happy owner of a colorful semi-abstract portrait. Both missions accomplished, we happily strolled home through the Marais.

Uniqlo store in the Marais, in a former foundry

Sherard suggested that we eat dinner in a completely non-touristy neighborhood we had not yet visited. I took a deep breath and proposed Alésia, a typical if unexciting neighborhood in the 14ème arrondissement. I had no specific place in mind so we simply explored. Needless to say, this warmed the cockles of my flâneur heart!

Lovely Haussmann building in the 14ème arrondissement, near métro Alésia

Boulangerie in the 14ème arrondissement, near métro Alésia

The restaurant we settled on, Le Verre Siffleur, turned out to be friendly and rather stylish as well as offering a good meal at a reasonable price.

Bob’s dinner at Le Verre Siffleur, in the 14ème arrondissement

Among our pleasant conversations there was one with a young man from Dijon who gave me his number and invited me to visit his city for a few days. Sherard noted that something similar had happened with an artist earlier in his visit, and asked me whether this sort of thing occurs to me often. I responded, “Only in Paris!”

We ended the evening, comme d’habitude, with cocktails at Experimental Cocktail Club. The bartender was charmed when we mentioned our afternoon in Belleville, which she “adores.” But when we mentioned our excursion to Alésia she said, with a visible shudder, that she “never crosses the river.” Just like crossing the Charles River between Boston and Cambridge!

Mot du jour: « comme d’habitude », “as usual”.

High, But Not Dry

Tags

art, Bastille, Belleville, Canal Saint-Martin, Comptoir General, flâneur, France, Ghetto Museum, La Bocca, Marais, meals, parc de Belleville, Parc des Buttes-Chaumont, Paris, Place des Vosges, Point Ephémère, Rosa Bonheur, rue de Mouzaïa, Sherard, villas

Thwarted by the closings of the the Louvre and the Musée D’Orsay, I promised to take Sherard on Sunday to one of the highest points in Paris, which I guaranteed wouldn’t be affected by the floods. I was right, but … read on.

We walked across the Marais — where Sherard saw a small painting he liked — via the Place des Vosges (mentioned in my French Linen post) to the trendy area east of the Place de la Bastille, then over to the Canal Saint-Martin, which was interesting as ever.

Street art along the Canal Saint-Martin

I showed Sherard Comptoir General but realized, seeing it through his eyes, that it was no longer the astonishing art-intensive Ghetto Museum that Alexis had introduced me to several years back, but had become just a big hipster bar with a few bits of African decor.

We walked the length of the canal up to Point Ephémère, a hipster bar in part of an old fire station that I had been reading about. We stopped in but it looked too sketchy for our bourgeois tastes. Sad for me since I like to think that a flâneur can appreciate all aspects of the city. There was a leftist political rally of some sort on the plaza between the canal and the Basin de la Villette. We stuck our heads in but it wasn’t our scene either.

Not having had much luck thus far I directed our steps to my ace-in-the-hole, the Parc des Buttes-Chaumont, which never fails to charm. Imagine my chagrin when it too was closed! Not of course due to flooding — it’s one of the highest places in Paris! But it seems that the rains that preceded and caused the flood had soaked the soil and rendered certain trees unstable. There was a sign at the main entrance, however, saying that one of the ginguettes in the park was still open, accessible presumably by a safe route. There was no mention of my primary destination, Rosa Bonheur (which usually has a terrific gay scene on Sunday afternoons) but since it was close to an entrance at the top of the park I hoped it might be open as well. I checked its website and phone message and there was no mention of it being closed so we walked up along the outside of the park to the highest point, where a sign informed us that Rosa was closed. We got a quick bite at a restaurant across the street, where our only cold comfort was schadenfreude as we watched families and gay guys come up to the locked gate to discover — as we had — that both the park and Rosa were closed.

Not-terribly-good lunch on rue Botzaris

Our luck turned at this point, however, as Sherard enjoyed the little pedestrian “Villas” off rue de Mouzaïa, which led us up to the completely non-touristy Parc de la Butte du Chapeau Rouge, with a commanding view of the northern suburbs.

Flowers on Villa d’Alsace, off rue de Mouzaïa in the 19th

We walked back via the Parc de Belleville, and Sherard really enjoyed that area, especially appreciating a rug in a Muslim shop we passed by at some point in our meanderings.

Crowd at an impromptu concert at the Parc de Belleville

That evening we had a late dinner at an old favorite, La Bocca on rue Montmartre.

Seafood pasta dinner at La Bocca. The long thin shells are clams, although I’m not sure they are the same species as we get in the U.S. since I’ve never seen a shell like that at home

 

Afterword – 2015

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Antoine, apartment, art, Chris, Elliot, flâneur, Gerry, Gordon, Lisa, Mariage Frères, Matt, meals, Montorgueil, Mustafa, Paris, rue Montorgueil, weather, Zhizhong

My sixth petit séjour in Paris was terrific in several respects, quite good overall, and  disappointing in just a few ways.

My apartment was simply wonderful. It lived up to the site’s description with only a few tiny glitches, and in several respects was even a bit better than I expected. Ironically, its only real deficiency was the fact that it was so comfortable that I sometimes stayed home — reading, blogging or resting — instead of going out into the world! It was wonderfully quiet for sleeping, yet steps from all the animation and food of rue Montorgueil.

I had realized when I reserved the apartment that it was located on a street of fabric shops, but there was one odd detail I hadn’t fully anticipated: during the day several porters waited across the street, ready to transport bolts of fabric. They weren’t unpleasant or threatening, but I couldn’t help being aware that every daytime departure or arrival from my apartment was closely observed by guys with little to do but watch and gossip within the tight-knit fabric community (pun intended). I long ago gave up most ideas of privacy, but I couldn’t help noticing that this particular location so thoroughly lacked the anonymity that is a general feature of urban life.

I had a tiny anxiety that I would end up taking the elevator too much, since this was the first apartment I have rented that had one. But in fact I used it only to transport my big suitcase on arrival and departure, and a couple of times for big loads of groceries, etc. The rest of the time I scampered up and down the three flights of stairs as I have in prior years — with the exception of my first year when I found the five flights of stairs in both apartments psychologically distancing.

When I first arrived in Paris I didn’t feel as energized as in prior years. This was a principal subject of my post on May 28. I’ve had slow times for a day or two on all my visits, but never before when I first arrived. I’m not sure about the reason, but a few hypotheses seem plausible:

• This year I had just spent ten days as a vigorous tourist in Rome and Venice. By the time I got to Paris I was tired! It was lovely and relaxing to just spend time in my new home-away-from-home. I puttered around setting up housekeeping, but didn’t feel as motivated as in prior years to hit the Parisian pavement.
• In contrast to Rome and Venice — which were both new to me — Paris seemed awfully familiar at first. Paris was charming as ever, but it no longer seemed to offer the same thrill of discovery that I had experienced every day in Italy, and my first few years in Paris. When I thought of going somewhere I had usually already been there, and the idea of going again seemed uninspiring.
• Zhizhong and Elliot were great but Lisa and Alexis were away and my other Paris friends were pretty much no-shows in May. As in prior years I worked the social networks looking for new friends, but (in part perhaps because I had been spoiled by a happy experience in Boston this winter) the last two weeks in May I never found anyone quite interesting enough to meet.

Visitors helped me recover from my lethargic mood. Brian and Sheila and their friends were lively companions on two days, and when Chris and Matt arrived the first week of June I was back in business. From then on a stream of visitors — and a few new French friends — kept me almost continuously engaged. Showing friends around lets you see a city through fresh eyes, and regain some of the delight of discovery.

Several of my visitors were especially talented flâneurs: Yunpeng and Matt and Chris come first to mind, though Brian and Sheila and their friends were also keen explorers.

I had several wonderful meals. My favorite was Frenchie with Matt and Chris, followed closely by Hélène Darroze with Taka and Nick.  Métropolitan with Gerry, Bofinger with Gordon and Musatafa and Tintilou with Elliot didn’t disappoint either. Mariage Frères was more of a mixed bag, though, because of the lamentable service.

I saw some excellent art, as usual mixed in with less inspiring stuff.

I went on several fine excursions outside Paris, with Zhizhong, Brian and Sheila, and Matt and Chris, as well as a visit to Senlis by myself.

Two street festivals were fabulous: La Fête de la Musique with Sawyer and Seth was absolutely wonderful, because of the opportunity to meet and hang out with them as well as the giddy atmosphere of music and celebration. Paris Pride with Zhizhong and Guillaume started slowly but ended up being quite festive and sociable.

The weather was ok in May, but on the chilly side. It was quite good in June. It never got really hot until the week after I left, when it hit 103 degrees at one point. The cross-ventilation in my apartment worked great, and was pleasant on several occasions. But it wasn’t really necessary this year during my stay.

Blogging was an important part of my experience, as in prior years. In the first few years I would blog in the evening after getting home, even if it meant staying up quite late. But this year I would more typically spend a morning organizing photos and writing several days’ posts. It felt as though this took more time away from exploration than in prior years. But I continue to enjoy the process, and the result. My life in Paris is examined far more intimately than my life in Boston.

Parisian friends have been a big part of prior trips. This year I enjoyed several memorable outings with Zhizhong, including a posh evening at the home of the American Ambassador followed by crashing an even posher private party. It was great to reconnect with Antoine this year, starting with a delightful dinner party catered by Matt and Chris. Others were away or elusive, however, and until the very end of the trip I didn’t meet anyone new. Fortunately, in the last week I caught up with Martin and met Guillaume, so I felt somewhat reconnected with the Paris social scene.

I walked a bit less than in prior years: an average of 6 miles a day instead of 7. That’s still twice what I do in Boston, but it’s odd. I swam just twice during the stay, and relied mostly on walking and stairs to keep fit. My weight stayed the same and I was at the same level on my elliptical trainer when I restarted regular workouts, so all seems good. I just flossed since I had abandoned my Paris Waterpik, and that seemed to work fine as well.

The dollar was so strong! This made euro prices much cheaper in dollar terms than in prior years. While on the one hand I had never let the cost cramp my style, on the other hand affordability warmed the cockles of my Yankee heart.

There was a lot to like in this year’s stay, but another year I may change the program a bit. I might pick another city instead of or in addition to Paris, such as Barcelona or a city elsewhere in France.  I might finally rent a villa in the Italian or French countryside for a couple of weeks, or even do a bike trip or charter a canal boat! Stay tuned…

Three Flâneurs

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Belleville, Café Le Baron, cake decorations, Chris, cobblestone street, enormous whisk, flâneur, giant whisk, glasses, glassware, incinerated motor bikes, industrial cookware, King of Pop, Maille, Matt, Michael Jackson, model, mustard, Parc Monceau, Passage des Panoramas, photo shoot, pur, rue des Jeûneurs, tattoos, terrines, whisk

Matt and Chris are born flâneurs. Though this is their first time in Paris they feel absolutely no need to check off tourist sites. Instead they are atttracted by every little alley and stairway. “Where does that go?” They are insatiably curious! This, needless to say, suits me down to the ground. I enjoy nudging them towards interesting places, and pointing out features that they might have missed. But just as often they have suggested unfamiliar routes that have opened my eyes to something new. Walking with them has reawakened my love of Paris, which had dozed a bit this year before they arrived. This post is a collection of photos and stories from our first week of wandering together.

During my first two weeks I had always turned left on rue des Jeûneurs or gone straight ahead whenever I left my apartment door. Those directions lead to the Montorgueil shopping district and the Grands Boulevards, while the only thing I knew of in the other direction was a straight nightclub, Silencio. When Matt suggested that we turn right I realized that I had never been that way in daytime. We discovered three cute local lunch places, serving office workers and graduate-level students rather than the bobos of rue Montorgueil. We ate lunch in this place and I plan to try the other two after Matt and Chris go home.

Lunch hour rush at Pur, on rue des Jeûneurs.

Quirky cake decorations. I want to be invited to that party! Looks like I’d fit right in…

Cake decorations, we think.

This scene was in lower Belleville. It looked like something from a war zone. We couldn’t tell whether it was an accident or arson, but we found it astounding that there was no police tape or indeed any indication that anyone was even aware of what must have been quite a conflagration.

A bunch of incinerated motor bikes.

Passage des Panoramas.

Really remarkable terrines.

Glassware in Café Le Baron in the 9e.

Outside a tattoo shop.

Perfect if you’re into Michael Jackson memorabilia.

Chris with an enormous whisk in an industrial cookware shop on rue Montmartre.

Matt in mustard heaven, at the Maille shop at Place de la Madeleine.

The first time I’ve seen a cobblestone street being laid down, near Étoile. This replaces an earlier version that had been partly blacktopped.

We’ve encountered various model shoots and movie teams. This fellow gave us the best photo op.

A photo shoot in posh Parc Monceau.

The Parisianer

Tags

Cartier-Bresson, Christian Marclay, flâneur, joie de vivre, l'art de vivre, La Perla, meals, Pompidou, The Clock, The Parisianer, weather

Wednesday was another museum day: chilly and rainy. No complaints, however, after the excellent stretch of good weather we had over the weekend.

As so often happens to a flâneur, my best experiences of the day were unexpected. The first was at the Hôtel de Ville (City Hall), which I visited to pick up some brochures. They had a free exhibit of 50 prints, drawn from a larger show last December that I had read about and regretted missing. The organizers asked 100 artists to draw covers for an imaginary magazine, The Parisianer, modeled on The New Yorker. Here are some I particularly liked, and there is more information at this link.

After stashing my loot I had a baguette thon crudités (tuna sandwich) at the local Boulangerie and headed over to the Pompidou Center for a show of the photography of Henri Cartier-Bresson. It was quite good, including a lot of early and rarely-seen works as well as his iconic images. The show was organized chronologically, so it also vividly presented the story of his life.

Once again, however, what really amazed me at the Pompidou was unexpected: The Clock (2010) by Christian Marclay. It’s a 24-hour collage of short clips from hundreds of films, mostly in English but several in French. Each clip includes an image of a clock or watch, or at least mention of the time, and the indicated time matches (with just a bit of artistic license) the actual time when the film is being shown. I had read about this but had imagined just a series of clock faces, which sounded vaguely interesting from a contemporary art perspective but not worth more than a few minutes of viewing. What I hadn’t appreciated was that the clips are long enough to offer tantalizing glimpses of character and dialogue and action, often at a crucial moment when time is of the essence. Each was itself a little nugget of cinematic history: trying to recognize the movies was fun, and it was a pleasure to be reminded of some wonderful or wonderfully awful films. But even richer was experiencing the way one’s mind tries to weave these disparate clips together into a coherent story, despite the manifest absurdity. This effect was enhanced by brilliant inter-cutting, and mixing sound from one clip under another. The experience was surreal and disorienting, but fascinating. Last, but not least, the synchronization of the film’s time with real-life time upends one’s usual experience of losing oneself in a film. At The Clock you always know exactly what time it is. I watched from 4:14 pm to 6:05, and I would be quite willing to go back for an additional hour or so if any of my June house guests are interested.

It was pouring at dinner time so I ate dinner at La Perla, in the next block. The food was reasonable and reasonably priced, but it didn’t remind me of Mexico, or even Texas. The welcome was warm, as it had been my first night, but I just read a book on my Kindle and didn’t partake in the convivial atmosphere. I stepped back into the rainy night without an au revoir and I’m not sure whether I’ll be as welcome another time.

Mot du jour: l’art de vivre. Zhizhong noted recently on Facebook that he never hears the French use the phrase joie de vivre, which is familiar in English. He speculates that it’s a romantic anglophone projection that has little to do with the reality of French life. The French do refer to l’art de vivre, which expresses the idea of finding a path through life which maximizes pleasure and minimizes stress and conflict, but the mildly tragic pose preferred by the French would never admit of anything so enthusiastic as “joy!”

Le Retour du Beau Temps

Tags

Arc de Triomphe, île Saint-Louis, Champs Elysée, chirashi, flâneur, Grande Arche de la Défense, Haut Marais, l'heure bleue, l'Ile Saint-Louis, Le Paradis du Fruits, Lisa, Marais, meals, Nanashi, Paris, Promenade plantée, Rue Crémieux, Sami, Tour Saint-Jacques, Village Saint-Paul, weather

It has finally turned sunny! Thursday and Friday were still on the cool side, but the weekend has been short sleeve weather both days.

After David left on Thursday I felt a desire for Japanese food and I went up to Nanashi – Le Bento Parisien – in the Haut Marais. It was my first chirashi — a vinegary rice bowl filled with scattered chunks of sushi-grade salmon. Really delicious! I see criticisms of the service on Yelp but my waiter was terrific.

After laundry and errands I took yet another walk on Friday. Here are a few snapshots:

Tour Saint-Jacques in the Marais

Fisherman on the quai of l’Ile Saint-Louis

Friday evening I had my second social-media date of the trip, again with an Algerian. He suggested that we meet at La Défense, at the west end of métro line 1. I readily agreed, even though it’s half an hour away, because it’s an interesting area — he called it the “Manhattan of Paris” — and I had never been out there in the evening. We had a nice conversation over smoothies. One interesting thing he explained is that May 7, the jour férié that celebrates the liberation of Paris at the end of World War II, has a different meaning for Algerians. As he tells it, all the colonies who helped with the war were promised freedom at its end. But when people in his city celebrated on May 7, 1945, French soldiers shot them down. The day is also celebrated in Algeria, but as the beginning of their long and bitter war of independence.

After my friend left for dinner with his wife (!?!) I had a good and cheap meal at the La Défense branch of Le Paradis du Fruits, a chain of organic (bio) restaurants. For less than 20 euros I got two small mains (salmon and shrimp/avocado) and a side, plus a glass of good house wine.

But wait, didn’t I order rice rather than fries? My extremely pleasant and efficient waitress noticed my look of consternation and fixed it in a flash. As usual, she complimented me on my French, even though my new Algerian friend found fault and switched us to English. After dinner I was charmed by the evening scene on the plaza in front of the enormous Grande Arche de la Défense.

At l’heure bleue the red and white lights of cars on the Champs-Elysée led the eye to the Arc de Triomphe at the horizon.

On Saturday, after catching up on blogging I set out for a walk through the lovely afternoon. My footsteps took me to the Promenade plantée that I have enjoyed on many visits, ending up at the jardin de Reuilly. I do worry about all the street people who apparently make the Promenade plantée their home, but you see them all over Paris so I suppose this is nothing special. As I returned via the rather grotty neighborhood around Gare de Lyon, I was surprised to run across this charming little street of colorful row houses.

Rue Crémieux in the 12ème, near Gare de Lyon.

There was an annual event on Saturday night when museums across Europe stay open overnight. It seems that this is an occasion for a street festival, akin to the remarkable Fête de la musique in June. I was for some reason very tired, though, so got a good night’s sleep instead. On vacation you force yourself to do and see everything, then recover when you get home. When you live somewhere, however, you have to keep your life in balance, and accept your limits.

On Sunday I met up with Lisa and Zhizhong for a trip to the local market, followed by a feast at Lisa’s.

Lisa and Aya at the Sunday market.

Zhizhong with his second-favorite egg lady.

The Feast!

Sunday evening I had another apéro (before-dinner drink) with Sami, the young Algerian guy I met during my first week here. I got a little shock when he approached me at our rendezvous, since he was even more handsome than I remembered! He led me to a open-air café in the heart of the peaceful Village Saint-Paul, which was so much nicer than sitting on the noisy street. He works in customer support so he speaks English all day, but fortunately he prefers to speak French with me. We had a lovely, warm conversation, in which we both expressed a desire to pursue friendship rather than a sexual relationship. The waiter “forgot” to return the change, and was désolé when I called him on it. Sami observed that the waiter was comme ci, comme ça. At best! We exchanged messages afterwards declaring that we were each enchantée to know one another.

My sense of humor is sometimes a bit off-center, as illustrated by my photo set of very inexpensive Paris hotels: Paris – Tout Confort. I’ve been working on this since my first visit, but I feel that it’s now approaching some sort of twisted apotheosis.

Mot du jour: l’heure bleue. The romantic hour or so after sunset, bathed in pale blue light from a clear sky. This is one of a relatively small number of phrases that are used both in English and French with the same meaning.

Six Months in Paris

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activity, Coffee, drink, family, fitness, flâneur, food, friends, hiking, Internet, L'Ejumeau, language barrier, meaning, Montorgueil, Paris, sleep, The Magic of Paris, weather, wifi, work

I’ve spent a total of six months living in Paris over the last four years. What has the experience been like, and what brings me back year after year? Will I keep coming to Paris, or should I go somewhere else for a change? Will I eventually move here??

Note: This post is an awful lot of musing! Scroll down to where the photos start if you just want to see what my life in Paris has been like.

Each year here has had different highlights, but each year has been terrific overall. Of the many pleasures I have found here, these come to mind:

• Friends and Family.
  • From my first visit I felt a special bond with my cousin Lisa — whom I previously knew only slightly, from family get-togethers when she was much younger. Different in many ways, we share a zest and perspective that is hard to characterize; it may even relate to our shared genes! Each prior year Lisa and I have found our way to her family’s estate south of Orleans, L’Ejumeau, on a weekend when it wasn’t rented out. The dates didn’t work out this year, and I don’t know for how long it will continue to be available, but it has also been a memorable feature of my visits. I also have sometimes met up with my first cousin Jackie — Lisa’s mom — and other family members as they pass through Paris. And now that Lisa is expecting a baby in September there will be yet another Paris cousin to visit.
  • I have made several friends here who it is also nice to see again when I visit. Now that Joël Zhizhong has moved here I have another close friend in Paris. Apart from him and Lisa, however, I’m afraid that my other Paris friends are quite happy seeing me once or twice a year. Catching up with them is an excellent part of a one or two month stay, but would not afford a year-round social context. Each year I meet a few French guys through social networking sites, but the odds of striking up an enduring friendship are low.
  • Inviting friends and family to stay with me in Paris has been a treat. As well as creating instant sociability for me it makes the trip more affordable and sociable for them; playing house together is fun for both of us. This does mean that I need to rent a larger apartment, although not necessarily quite so fabulous as the one I’ve rented for the past three years. That apartment, by the way, has just been rented out for a year, so it won’t be available next May or June. I’m friendly with the owners, however, so it may well be open to me in future years, even if they take it off the rental site where I first found it.
  • Each year I’ve managed to stir up an event for the Paris chapter of the Harvard Gender and Sexuality Caucus (formerly Harvard Gay & Lesbian Caucus). These have afforded an opportunity to catch up with old friends and to make new ones. This year several of the participants were graduate students who will be back in Boston next year. Getting to know them has been an unexpected fringe benefit of the Paris trip.
  • An additional feature of a tourist destination like Paris is people who just happen to be there at the same time. This year it was my elementary school friend Alan and my Cambridge friend Darko, who will also be at the house I will be sharing in Provincetown around the end of July. While each of these visitors is by definition a surprise there have been several each year; in Paris they are expected surprises.
• Food and Drink.
  • The food is really good — Parisians demand it. The fresh food is of very high quality; the restaurants are good and often quite reasonable value for money; even the frozen food is quite nice! Good food can be found anywhere, of course, but the standard in Paris is unusually high.
  • I’m not a big drinker in general; most days a single glass of wine with dinner. But in Paris it seems that a bottle of rosé is constantly at hand, as well as a friend to help drink it. And if the need arises another can be found…  This isn’t particularly healthy; I often exceeded the recommendation of one or two drinks a day. But I never (well hardly ever) got sloppy drunk, and I never have gotten a hangover. The free flow of alcohol has generated a “rosé glow” that has added charm to my visits.
• Activity.
  • For whatever reason — and it would be important to know whether this is a function of the limited length of my visits — I am much more physically active in Paris than in Boston. I noticed this in prior years because I always lose weight on these trips, despite eating up a storm. But this year I was able to quantify it using my trusty fitbit. The distance I walk in an average day in Boston is about 3 miles, but I walk more than twice as far in Paris. I climb less than 10 flights of steps in Boston, while in Paris more than 30.
    

    Average distance walked per day is about 3 miles in Boston but more like 7 in Paris.

    

    Average number of floors climbed is under 10 in Boston, over 30 in Paris.

  • There’s no great mystery about these difference. In Boston I work at a sedentary job two days a week (though I do stand at my desk now), and the rest of the time I’m pretty lazy. In Paris I am a full-time flâneur, which keeps me moving, as do various day and night social activities. As to stairs, I have been living for the past three years on the U.S. fourth floor, sans ascenseur (without elevator) , which means three flights up and down several times a day. Most of my other flights of steps come from the subway in both cities, but there are just a lot more steps in Paris, both because the correspondences are more complex and many of the lines are deeper. [One detail that some friends may notice: I also walked a lot in Japan, which would have affected the April and May averages but for the fact that I lost my fitbit the day I arrived. The little devils have to be carefully attached to keep them from working lose.]
  • There are two obvious questions:
    • Would I still be so active if I lived in Paris, rather than just visiting for a month or two? Or would my behavior “regress to the mean?” My activity level in Boston doesn’t show much dependence on the season, but it’s also possible that my activity in Paris is a factor of having been there at seasons which make outdoor activities especially attractive.
    • Can I come up with ways — in addition to my fitbit — to motivate me to be more active in Boston?
• The Magic of Paris.
  • Don’t tell my Parisian friends about this one! They see mostly problems: bureaucracy, unemployment, homelessness, crime … and tourists. They reserve their particular scorn for overenthusiastic foreigners. But, sorry, the place is still magical to me!
  • Of course I’ve seen all the main tourist attractions. There is no “must see” aspect to my visits to Paris, as there is for the first-time tourist. But even familiar buildings and places have their charm, especially when they catch you by surprise, or show a new aspect arising from light or weather.
  • The permanent collections of the Parisian art museums can support repeated visits, but that’s more of a rainy-day backstop than — for me — a major draw.  I didn’t go through any of the permanent collections this year, for example, though I did see two remarkable special exhibitions, both much larger than one gets in Boston. One was terrific and the other was worthwhile; the availability of such exhibitions is a draw.
  • There’s also a ton of other artistic and cultural stuff going on in Paris all the time. The violin recital that Lisa invited me to and the drum performance that Jared and I went to are just a few examples. The website of the city of Paris affords links to a vast range of events and exhibits. I followed up on a few of these in prior years, and I want to participate even more in any future stays.
  • In a really good movie there will be a few scenes where some aspect of human life is captured so beautifully that it takes your breath away: the actors and their performances are simply perfect. In the Parisian-dominated areas, such as rue Montorgueil, just walking down the street or people-watching from a café can give me that reaction several times a minute. Why is this? People just seem to have so much character, whether young and beautiful or old and wizened,  families, street urchins, whatever! I can’t really explain this, but I know it when I see it, and I know it when I don’t see it, back in Boston. I admit that it’s odd for this to be so important to me, but it is actually one of the chief attractions of Paris!
  • Boston is one of the most historic cities in the U.S., partly because not too much has happened since the Revolution. But our history pales into insignificance in contrast with the rich layers of history in Paris, much of which is reflected, to the practiced eye, in the buildings, streets and topography of the modern city. I enjoy this tangled story and the way in which facets of it can be teased out from the city itself, even though much Parisian history is bloody and brutal.

So why not just move there and live out the rest of my life in this paradise?!! Not so fast. There are good things about Boston, some downsides to Paris, and several questions about how much living there would resemble my one or two-month visits.

• Friends and Family.  My brother’s household near Chicago is my closest family in the U.S. Apart from being a longer flight it would be perfectly feasible to see them as often as I do now. My brother doesn’t fly, but it would be possible for Andy and Noree to visit me in Paris (and Steve could come by cruise ship); in fact they might be more likely to visit me there than in Boston. The real issue is my friendship community in the Boston area. This includes several friends from school and college days as well as many gay friends I have made in recent decades. Several have visited me in Paris during my stays there, and I’m sure that some of my friendships would remain warm despite the distance. The fact is, however, that I would be uprooting myself from a fairly rich social environment and transplanting myself to a sparser one. While there are reasons to hope that I could eke out a reasonable social life in Paris it would never be as broad or deeply rooted as the one I would be giving up in Boston.
• Work and Sleep.
  • I have a robust biological clock, which typically wakes me up within a few minutes of the same time every day. This is often a convenience, but it also makes it hard for me to”sleep in.” The consequence is that I get sleep-deprived if I stay up much later than my usual bedtime. That makes me groggy and I suspect may contribute to catching colds.
  • In Boston I work two days a week at FreshAddress. The office starts at 8 am, and is a half-hour commute, so I get up at 6 am on work days. To get a good night’s sleep I go to bed on work nights between 10 and 11 pm. The wrinkle is that this sets my clock for the entire week. I can stay out later once or twice perhaps, but at the cost of running low on sleep.
  • My first year in Paris I replicated the 10 pm / 6 am schedule, after navigating jet lag. This got me started bright and early but it precluded just about any night life. In later years I shifted my schedule progressively later until this year (2013) I typically got to bed at 1 or 2 am and slept until 9 or 10 am. That still wasn’t late enough for the most fabulous clubs — Cud or Club 18 — but it enabled me to experience Paris at night in a way I had not in prior years.
  • Boston’s after-dark charms aren’t as compelling as those of Paris, but I think I would shift a couple of hours later if I weren’t anchored to my work schedule. And I expect to take the later shift as well in any future visits to Paris.
  • In Boston my work days — few as they are — provide a structure and discipline to my week that I would otherwise lack. I don’t seem to miss this in Paris for a month or two, but perhaps I would if I stayed there longer.
• The Charms of Boston. I like living in Boston. Cambridge in particular is a wonderfully liberal and civilized, and I love my apartment.  My particular neighborhood of Central Square is rather down-market, with a lot of drunks and homeless types on the street, but it’s very convenient, and living here is my choice; there are plenty of lovely neighborhoods elsewhere. To prove the point, here are some photos I’ve taken in the area:
  • Cambridge
  • Boston
  • New England
• Weather.  I like Boston weather — fall in particular — although winter can be gloomy and summer sultry. The weather in Paris is generally similar, except winter is milder — with little snow — and summer is less humid, and usually not so hot. I have the impression that the weather in Paris is at least as pleasant as in Boston. The trap for me, however, is that my stays have been in April, May, June and September — arguably the four nicest months. Some significant part of my enjoyment has been due to the relatively good weather. It’s an open question how much I would like being there over the winter, or in July or August.
• Hiking. While I am discernibly slowing down, hiking has been a chief form of outdoor recreation throughout my adult life. My walks in and around Paris haven’t really qualified as hikes, however, since Ile de France is basically flat. This is unfair, however, since I have to drive two or more hours from Boston to get to a proper mountain and I’m sure there’s good hiking to be had within that radius of Paris.
• Internet.  Like many of us, I’m something of an Internet addict, especially Facebook and the gay social networking sites. I try with some degree of success to prioritize personal interactions, but when I’m alone I often check my iPhone. One distinctive aspect of my Paris trips, however, has been the fact that data roaming is prohibitively expensive. Consequently, I almost always set data to wifi-only. There are lots of wifi hotspots in Paris, including nearly all parks, so this isn’t a big issue, but it does preclude checking my iPhone at any random moment. I found this rather relaxing, although I’m sure that I would spring for data if I moved to Paris. [Three location-aware apps that don’t require data to work have been a big help: TripAdvisor City Guides, CityMaps2Go and Time Out Paris.]
• Coffee.
  • I have never needed coffee to get going in the morning, but a few cups do help keep me alert. I can’t drink coffee after about 3 pm, though, because that would keep me awake at night.
  • In Boston I typically have a Starbucks Grande Nonfat Latte at some point every day, sometime after breakfast. (I usually do a crossword puzzle while I sip it.) Sometimes I’ll have an additional cup of coffee, at work or before volunteering. But I rarely make coffee at home in Boston and rarely have more than three shots a day.
  • In Paris, however, I never go to Starbucks (even though there’s one across the street from where I’ve been renting). I always brew a pot of coffee at home, and have several cups with breakfast. Then I will have several additional cups — typically noisettes (an expresso with a touch of steamed milk) during the day.
  • I enjoy both coffee-consumption patterns and I happily toggle between them like flipping a switch. Go figure!
• The “Language Barrier”. My French has not gotten better in a formal sense — I make as many errors as ever. But I have gotten more confident, and faster, and more playful. It’s awkward to use the wrong gender, or the mangle the subjonctif, but for social and practical purposes it rarely matters. Add to this the fact that so many French people now speak excellent English and there really isn’t much of a “barrier.” Language would be a more significant issue in Italy or a Spanish-speaking country, but it doesn’t worry me in France. On the positive side, the challenge of making oneself understood in a different language makes daily life more interesting.
• The Examined Life. One of the key features of my trips to Paris has been — believe it or not — this blog. In Boston I post occasionally to Facebook, and I have a little-used LiveJournal blog called Gently Row, but I make no attempt to systematically document my life. I write in a paper diary only a few times a year, usually when I’m leaving on a trip or really depressed. My first year in Paris, however, I blogged almost every day, and on subsequent visits every couple of days. This discipline motivates me to get out and do bloggable stuff as well as requiring me to account for how I have spent my precious time. The blog also calls for photographs, which inspires me to use my camera much more consistently than I do in Boston. The consequence is that my life in Paris is more mindful than my life in Boston. My guess is that this difference would evaporate sooner rather than later if I lived in Paris, since the novelty would inevitably wear off. This factor, while an important inducement to future visits, could be illusory as a reason to move.
• Immigration, Tax and Bureaucracy. There are a lot of issues with changing my legal residence to France, not least of which is a confiscatory wealth tax. The bureaucracy there is by all accounts Kafkaesque, though as a tourist I never encounter it. As a practical matter, it would make a lot more sense to shoehorn my trips into the 90 days allowed for a tourist visa rather than applying for residency or a long stay visa.

I don’t have a definitive answer to the question of why I keep going to Paris instead of trying somewhere else. From one perspective the Paris trips simply “ain’t broke” so why try to fix them? The pluses and minuses of other cities remain much as I outlined in 2010. There would be in most cases be an advantage in novelty and the challenge of a more unfamiliar language, counterbalanced by fewer local and predictable-surprise friends. A conservative aspect of my personality is probably the main reason: I often find it hard to think of myself being happier in some new place or situation, while I find it easy to imagine problems that would make me less happy if I made a change.

All that said, there are actually even deeper issues at play here:

• Novelty and Absence. One of the motivations for my first Paris trip was to shake things up. I enjoyed my simple routines in Boston but found them lacking in drama. I wanted to take advantage of being a novelty in Paris, and conversely perhaps let “absence make the heart grow fonder” among my friends in Boston. This worked to some extent, but my extended absences have also had the effect of loosening my regular connections with Boston. In most cases I pick up the rhythm of my friendships after a bit, but I’m not as reliable a presence, so it’s not as natural for friends to look me up; they often assume that I might be away. While my trips to Paris are by now hardly novel, the very fact that they are so short has kept an element of novelty alive at that end. It’s been a net gain in the richness of my experience, but my ties to Boston have been weakened rather than strengthened.
• Age and Change.
  • At several points in my life I’ve felt the need to develop new strategies to keep life interesting in the next phase.
  • The first big change was discovering hiking when I was in law school. I had been almost totally sedentary before that time, and my first day trip — up Lafayette and along Franconia Ridge — was thrilling and transformative. The second change was being diagnosed with testicular cancer, in 1984, then — as a reward for having survived — going to New Zealand for the first time, which is a hiker’s paradise.
  • Coming out as a gay man, in 1989, was a third major change, precipitated to some extent by the fact that my straight friends had gotten married and started having kids, so weren’t interested in going hiking any more — Henry and my other New Zealand friends being notable exceptions. Chiltern Mountain Club, Boston’s gay outdoors club, gave me a new cadre of hiking friends, who were also potential lovers. Gay life had several phases, chiefly marked by my leadership of Chiltern, then of the Harvard Gay & Lesbian Caucus.
  • My zest for serious hiking is fading, however: my last trip to New Zealand was in 2007, and my last multi-day backpack was in 2010. I am still attracted to young men, but now mostly as social friends and travel buddies; I long ago gave up the idea of looking for a partner, and the appeal of one-night-stands — never strong — has also faded. With two central elements of my personal drama on the wane I need to turn the page!
  • Work has had its rewards, first in the practice of law, then as an I.T. administrator for the same law firm, and finally as co-founder and now part time “senior technical advisor” at FreshAddress.com. The mostly unpaid project of developing MemDir.org — a site that still hosts half a dozen non-profit membership groups — has also been rewarding. All of these have ended or are winding down, however. They are pleasant enough but really just something to do.
  • I have taken an interest in video production at several points, but never beyond advanced amateur. My biggest project with a gay-themed drama called Trail Mix (1995). Two other fairly polished projects are The Way to Hua Shan (1994) and In Their Own Words: The Islamic Society of Boston (2005). I might want to do more in this vein, but I haven’t for several years.
  • Recently I took a run at developing a Harvard Humanist Alumni group, but abandoned the project due to differences with Greg Epstein, the Humanist Chaplain at Harvard. I still run a Humanist Discussion Group every few weeks; fun, but of limited scope.
  • Travel continues to be a significant source of pleasure and interest. In addition to my 14 trips to New Zealand I’ve been to most of the safer countries in Europe, South America and East and Southeast Asia. Now also Morocco, though I still haven’t nerved myself to visit my cousin Jackie’s safari camp in Kenya. My first trips were with family and school friends, then the New Zealand hiking trips and Earthwatch scientific expeditions, and most recently either solo or with gay friends. I’ve found engaging with a different culture and language to be enlivening – the experience wakes me up and leaves much more vivid memories than my daily routine. Most of my travel has been as a tourist, staying in hostels or hotels, but the Paris stays have demonstrated that living in an apartment for an extended period can be an even more engaging way to relate to a different cultural milieu.  Apart from being health-dependent, travel can be enjoyed at any age.
• Meaning. The basic challenge we all face is how to make our lives meaningful. Although two common sources of meaning are inaccessible to me — religion and children — I’ve done a fairly good job of spinning up meaningful activities at various phases of my life. I am acutely aware, however, that it is up to me to create the meaning I need; I can’t rely on others to provide this. Being an occasional flâneur and bloggeur in Paris has become a meaningful part of my persona in this phase of my life, and I see no reason to stop at this point. This rôle is lacking as a full-fledged raison d’être, however, and it does little to enhance the greater proportion of time that I spend in Boston. Yes, I will probably come back to Paris next year … pourquoi pas? But my petits séjours don’t satisfy all of my need to make the next chapter of my life meaningful. How I will manage that remains to be seen.

A Look at London

Tags

British Museum, Buckingham Palace, Changing of the Guard, Chunnel, Eurostar, flâneur, Gordon's Wine Bar, London, Millennium Bridge, Pret à Manger, St. Paul's, Trafalgar Square, Victoria & Albert Museum

June in Paris has been so exhausting that I needed a break! Three days in London seemed like the perfect get-away.

Not really, of course. My London vacation-within-a-vacation was more about friends and sightseeing than relaxing. I had met Michael Åhs several years ago, when he was a grad student, through the Harvard Humanist Discussion Group. He visited me in Paris for long weekends each of my first two years here, when he proved to be a curious and intrepid flâneur. On his first Paris trip Michael introduced me to Dan and Rick, a gay couple with a place in London, with whom I have also became friends. This year, Michael already had plans to stay with them for a few days towards the end of June, so we arranged for me to visit also for the first two nights of his stay. I don’t think Michael has many other gay friends, but he’s so secure in his own heterosexual identity that the orientation of friends is a non-issue.

I had been excited by the idea of a tunnel under the English Channel since I was a little kid, when it seemed like a distant dream, so it was a thrill to take my first trip through the Chunnel, on the Eurostar high-speed train. I have to admit, however, that apart from speed this was really just a reasonably comfortable train trip. As a French acquaintance pointed out, you can’t see anything while you go under the Channel. What did she expect:  Sharks? Nuclear subs?

Apart from changing planes I had not spent time in London since a family trip in the ’70s, so I could make no pretense of being anything other than a slack-jawed tourist. Michael didn’t arrive until Monday evening so Dan took the day off to show me around town.

Dan in Trafalgar Square.

St. Paul’s and Millennium Bridge.

The squares and buildings were of course impressive, but the single most memorable experience of the day was a glass of wine at Gordon’s Wine Bar, in a cellar lit only by candles.

Dan at Gordon’s Wine Bar.

That evening Dan made a home-cooked meal for Rick, Michael and me. It looked as good as it tasted but you’ll have to take my word since I was too much in the moment to remember my camera.

Michael and I got an early start the next morning and set out to explore London on our own, while Dan and Rick worked.

A fanciful building I liked near the Houses of Parliament.

We just happened to arrive at Buckingham Palace for the Changing of the Guard. Honest!

One excellent feature of London is that nearly all of the museums are free. This not only saves money but it eliminates the psychological effect of the “sunk costs fallacy” — i.e. “I paid $15 to get into this place so I have to see everything.” Dan and I saw one exhibition at the Tate Modern and a few choice rooms at the National Portrait Gallery, then in each case continued on our walk when we were ready to move on. Michael and I did the same thing the next two days, at both the Victoria & Albert Museum and the British Museum. Our only miscalculation was arriving at Tate Britain well before it opened.

That evening the four of us set off for dinner at a nearby Indian restaurant. We happened to run into two gay friends of Rick and Dan — Simon and David — so naturally we invited them to join us.

Michael, Dan, Dave, Simon and Bob. With Rick taking the photo.

Fluffy was unable to join us for dinner, but she was a full participant in a mini birthday celebration afterwards.

Fluffy preparing to pounce.

My train back to Paris wasn’t until 7 pm on Wednesday, so Michael and I had time for another city walk. We started in Bloomsbury at Russell Square, which I remembered fondly from our family trip decades before. We spent most of the day, however, at the British Museum. I had seen photos of the Great Court by Norman Foster, but I was blown away by it in person.

The Great Court of the British Museum, with the Reading Room (and Michael) on the right.

Michael and Pericles compare beards.

That afternoon we just had time for a beer with Dan before I headed out to catch the train back to Paris. At each end the station was just a few stops on the subway — a huge convenience over air travel.

I’ve posted two photo sets on Google+ for those who want to see more:  2013 London People and 2013 London Places and Things.

Mot du Jour: « Pret à Manger ». The most common fast food chain in London (though only five locations in Paris): “Ready to Eat.”

Wading, Walking, Waiting and a Wonderful Soirée

Tags

flâneur, Harvard, Parc de la Butte du Chapeau Rouge, Parc des Buttes-Chaumont, Place de la Républic, Rosa Bonheur, Vélib

On Sunday morning I grabbed a Vélib bike and had a look at the opening of the Place de la Républic, after a year and a half of renovations.

Great “place” for a massive demonstration! The most innovative feature of the renovation was circling the grandiose monument with a wading fountain.

2016 Update: Place de la République is very, very different after the Charlie Hebdo murders and the Nuit Debout demonstrations. This proved to be a brief moment of beauty and tranquility in a troubled world.

I decided then to explore the brand-new 3b tram line that runs from Porte de la Chappelle to Porte de Vincennes. Any line with stops for both Rosa Parks and Ella Fitzgerald is worth a look!  I finally got to see the Canal Saint-Denis, a wide canal branching off the Canal d’Ourcq, with quais similar to those along the Seine. It seems like an under-developed resource, but not something you have to rush over to see. More interesting was the Parc de la Butte du Chapeau Rouge (“Park of the Hill of the Red Hat”) near Porte de Pantin, which I have noticed on the map for years but never quite gotten up to. I entered with some trepidation: Would it be run-down, even dangerous? Would I be menaced by homeless people and/or desperate drug addicts? Um, no and no.

Sunday afternoon with a magazine in the Parc de la Butte du Chapeau Rouge.

It was a lovely neighborhood place, filled with picnicking families.

I then strolled along rue de Mouzaïa towards Parc des Buttes Chaumont. I couldn’t help noticing a steep little alleyway running up to the left called Villa Félix Faure. As a true flâneur I strolled up it and was delighted by the cute single-family houses, trees and especially flowers. Continuing towards Buttes Chaumont along rue de Bellevue I encountered another Villa running down that was even prettier. A nice guy at the bottom, chatting with a neighbor, smiled and told me to keep going left and right — there were seven Villas in a row, and I now see on the map that there are even more down the hill.

Here’s a photo set of La Mouzaïa – Villas of the 19th Arrondissement. Whenever I get back there I’ll add a few more since I saw less than half of the villas in the area.

My plan had been to get to Rosa Bonheur before 4:30, which by past experience gets you in before they put up the barriers and force you to wait in line. I hadn’t figured, however, on the fact that this was the first really nice Sunday, so the barriers had already gone up by 4. I was bemused to see that friends kept joining the people ahead of me in line, so one guy quickly became four! I texted Colin to offer him the same courtesy in case he hadn’t gotten there yet, but he and his entourage had arrived at 3 and were happily ensconced inside. Paradoxically, people in line have the power to add as many friends as they wish, but once you’re in all you can do is commiserate. (Colin didn’t actually say this, but I’m sure he was désolé that I was stuck in the line.)

The line to get into Rosa Bonheur, at 4:30 on the first truly lovely Sunday afternoon. Get there early!

After waiting 45 minutes and seeing the line move only a few feet I abandoned ship and headed home to get ready for the Harvard LGBT alumni dinner that evening, on David Johnson’s fabulous terrace.

It was a gorgeous evening and it was a great bunch of guys — plus, for the first time ever at a Paris chapter event, a woman!