Akislander, loving your report already. I'll look forward to the next installments. I'm so jealous, I'm desperate for a few weeks in Paris, but it won't happen for at least 18 months!

Following with interest.

I to am living vicariously through your report. How do you end up on an AF out of Boston with empty seats??? I am always packed it like a sardine.

Do you have a link to your apartment?

We arrive on Sunday. It looks like we will be getting some good weather. Yeah!!

I agree with you as far as taking the RER goes. After doing it a few years ago I have decided I won't do it again with luggage. It is not worth the effort or the worry at our age.

Hope to hear more from you.

Suzanne

Ackislander: I will follow this with glee and anticipation. I love your reports and we are going to Paris in late September for the first time in about 12 years!!

Looking forward especially to " tipsfor the elderly" cuz we are even older than you!

Of course, I meant "tips for the elderly."

I'm on board, and looking forward to more.

Sounds good so far. Even without quite being "older" yet, I have been helped by African men who carried my heavy luggage up metro stairs more than once. They are amazing.

Looking forward to reading more of this trip report! I'll be going back to Paris in December and love getting hints and tips from trip reports!

We did that Chatalet shuffle too (in '06) -- so last Spring we went for the Taxi.

We take the RER but only have one carry on suitcase each so it isn't difficult. We are one retired and one near retirement and are still taking the train from CDG, but have gladly taken cabs from other international airports.

Your report is making me very nostalgic. My husband and I stayed at an apartment in the Marais in September. Are you on Rue de Turenne? We became very familiar with the Metro @ St Paul. Isn't the Place de Voges beautiful? I look forward to reading more. Enjoy!

t

I think the RER with luggage is fine as long as you don't have to change at Chatelet. We figured once that we walked as far underground in Chatelet as it would have been to walk from our destination to our apartment!

Day II Friday April 1

Our nice ten hour sleep was interrupted by a phone call from our friend D’s wife. His plane was delayed 6 hours, and we should not expect him for breakfast. In fact, he did not arrive until after lunch, a good lesson for all of us who plan on touring madly as soon as we arrive at our destination.

He came on the same flight as we did, a day later and on a different aircraft. I did not mention that we had experienced what pilots call a “hard landing” on our own arrival, and it apparently caused enough damage to the aircraft that they had to find and substitute a different plane for subsequent flights, leading to the delays.

So we potted about the apartment and had a leisurely and very light breakfast until about ten, when we caught the 39 bus to Opera. It was a gray day with a cooler breeze than we had expected from the weather forecasts. Still, it was nice enough to be out and about, and we explored the small area between Opera and the Madeleine. There isn’t much to see in the Madeleine, but it has an active religious life, and the view of the steps out over the Seine to the General Assembly and the Invalides is pretty spectacular.

We wandered over to the Place Vendome and looked at all the security preparations jewelers have taken to prevent further robberies by Croatian gangs. We also saw a plaque noting that the main Resistance radio station during WWII was operated from one of the buildings, right under eyes of Germans shopping for luxuries.

We went on to lunch at Le Rubis in the rue de la Marche St Honore. It is a modest wine bar with 26 seats upstairs serving the French equivalent of soul or comfort food. Walk to the end of the bar away from the street, open the door and go up the very narrow stairs. Menus are on chalkboards on the wall, and no English is spoken. On Fridays, they have brandade de morue (salt cod mashed with potatoes, cream, olive oil and garlic), which we had, preceded by an order of rillettes, and followed with a pear clafoutis for my wife. With wine and a fat tip because I love this place, it was 44 euros. We went at 12:05 and were the second couple. By 12:30, all the seats were taken. My other recommendations are the jarrette avec lentilles and the boudin noir. Again, lots of thin women eating this stuff along with house painters, businessmen in suits, and a general cross section of people.

After lunch we caught Metro line 1 from the convenient Tuileries stop and were back at the apartment greeting the exhausted D by 1:30. We took naps.

Around 5, we got up to think about the important topic of where we would eat before the opera. Neither my wife nor I could face a bite, so the topic turned to where we could eat AFTER the opera.. We wandered around the neighborhood looking at menus (and architecture, and into galleries, and at people) until we found ourselves in front of Bofinger, where we made a late reservation.

We had a 7:30 curtain at the Opera Bastille to hear Verdi’s Luisa Miller, not prime Verdi, but good songs, well sung. One amazing features was that just before curtain time, the ushers invited those of us in the relatively cheaper seats to move into the better seats in the middle. Amazing! It was of course a scene. Microskirts on girls whose legs are the size of my arm are all over Paris this year, and the opera was no exception. A wonderful evening.

Afterward, we joined the throngs at Bofinger, where I pushed through to learn that they had lost our reservation. But, pas probleme, we were seated immediately and had the very unusual experience (for me) of eating dinner at 11 PM, and not just dinner but a Choucroute! The place was packed, upstairs and down, it was an amazing scene with everyone from tatooed rock musicians to French couples, bourgeois to BoBo couples to young Americans who work for US companies to us. Home through the Place des Vosges and to bed at 1, only a few hours before I usually get up!

Enjoying your report!

A question re RER ticket machines. Being Canadian I have chip and pin cards but out of curiosity, when you say "some of the RER ticket machines take US cards" how is one to know?

Love reading your report. We will be back in Paris and June and will sure keep an eye out for the "lovely Africans" to help with all the steps at the Chatelet. And I would also like to know how to identify the the RER machines that take the US cards. Thanks

Oh, fun, following along.

I am jealous of your empty flight from Boston. My flights to and from Paris from Boston last month were packed.

A few quick answers, then another report on yesterday's magic day.

Opaldog, this may be dog-in-the-mangerish but I can't tell you where we are staying. The reason we are here this week is that this is the only time from now to September when it is not fully booked.

Isabelnana, this is almost surely the same apartment where you stayed in September. We have stayed here from time to time over the last ten years. It has grown shabbier but the equipment is better, the beds are comfortable, it is very quiet, and it could not be in a better location.

I do not know how to identify which ticket machines take American credit cards, but the first one on your left after exiting Customs/Douane (long before you get to the railway station) worked for another group of Americans, and D had no trouble using one selected at random in the station. THE SECRET: you leave the card IN THE MACHINE until you are ready to complete the transaction, then the machine reads your information as you remove it, counsels patience, and gives you your ticket. The card never goes entirely into the machine.

I had trouble buying a carnet at the St Germaine Metro yesterday. My credit card would not go in the slot at all, but I was able to use a bill with the kind assistance of the information attendant. There was no window, malheureusement, where I could purchase a ticket from a live person.

Day III Saturday, April 2

The most perfect possible Spring day, the April in Paris day of your dreams.

Sunny, 73 degrees F and the whole city out to enjoy it.

Our friend G came over from London on Eurostar for the weekend to see us, and we made our way to Odeon by bus to meet him at his hotel. D, in the meantime, took off with his camera to photograph historic buildings in the Marais.

We made our way through familiar lanes to a café on the rue du Seine where we drank citron presse and coffee while we caught up on old times as cherry blossom petals showered down around us, Does it get better than this?

We wandered around the 6th as far as Sevres Babylone. I wanted to buy new Mephistos, but DesHayes on Stes Peres didn’t have anything in my size that I didn’t already have. But G bought a pair. Then we went around a corner, where G found a shirt shop. Naturally, it was a branch of one of his favorites, so he bought shirts. This was becoming an expensive visit!

My wife wanted to go to Luxembourg Gardens, so we walked up Blvd Raspail, stopping for lunch at a corner cafe with simple omelets and salad for them, salade des gesiers for me. Sorry I can’t do accent marks, but I am pretty tired. For those who don’t know, gesiers are duck gizzards. I like them a lot. They are every menu in Perigord. I like Perigord.

The crowds at the Jardin de Luxembourg were astonishing, more people than I have ever seen there, soaking up the sun and enjoying the breeze and being polite and gentil to each other since good weather is still a novelty. But despite taking my Claritin religiously for the last month, I was overwhelmed with tree pollen. G, who depends on homeopathic remedies, was even worse -- not just sneezing but runny eyes and the lot! So we went back to the apartment on the wonderful 96 bus. On the Ile de la Cite, vans full of CRS were parked along the street, but we never saw a disturbance.

We met D at the apartment and figured out where to go for dinner, a major accomplishment. Amazingly, after reviewing a guide to bistros, the gentlemen agreed on a place we had wanted to take them to anyway. It is a very modest neighborhood bistro called Temps de Cerises near Ave Henry IV. I have written about it before, but it has gotten into a few guides and has started serving dinner, without losing any of its neighborhood character.

The food is good but not brilliant as the kitchen tries to do more than it can in the space. For example, the people next to me had the same dish as I but with a different garnish. Not a big problem but some people are driven nuts by stuff like that. I had terrine (allegedly with wild boar) for a starter, the others had various fouillettes with escargot or seafood. I then had a duo of hake and trout with the most delicious ratatouille of mushrooms, tomato and zucchini. Others had daurade, duck on skewers, and marinated beef with various purees. We drank two bottles of a St Joseph while the rock and roll of my childhood played in the background, and babies, dogs, and a drunk guy at the bar provided the accompaniment. D and I had St Marcellin cheese with black cherry jam for dessert, while G had molten chocolate cake. My wife was fading fast, but the house bought us a round of liquers and she was livened up by some calvados.

We walked home through the Place des Vosges again, still lively, but of course it was only midnight. We sent G off to the Metro and tucked ourselves in for the night.

Good info on credit cards in machines... this has been reported before so maybe they ALL work with a magnetic card if one is patient! ;^)

I have walked right past Temps de Cerises... your description makes me sad I did not stop.

Bofinger was one of our first dinners in Paris----thanks for taking me back.

DH and I will be in Paris in two weeks--I can hardly wait! We decided to book Super Shuttle from CDG after reading other trip reports, and not wanting to deal with the RER after a red-eye flight.
We've booked a studio flat in the 6th through www.vacationinparis.com. They mailed us the keys, directions, and information for the apartment.
I'm enjoying your trip report.

I had lunch at Temps des Cerises on my trip about a year and a half ago. My main memory is that the cushion on the booth where I was sitting had probably worn out about thirty years ago. I'm guessing it hasn't been replaced in the meantime.

bookmarking

Nikki, I am quite sure you are right about the cushion. Nothing else has changed inside in the five years or so since we have been there except that the menus have gotten more ambitious and the prices have gone up.

ParisAmsterdam, I understand why you walked by. I described the place to friends in a trip report years ago as looking "like a pizza parlor in Jersey City." Inside, it is an untouched Paris neighborhood bistro. Lots of people kissing babies, dogs on the floor, friends buying friends drinks, BUT, happily, no more smoking!

Day IV Sunday, April 3

All good things come to an end. The day dawned cool and rainy, but the rain blessedly washed away a good bit of the pollen.

D and I set out by the 96 bus for the Lucas Cranach exhibition at the Musee Luxembourg, foolishly ignoring the fact that we needed coffee and juice for the apartment and that Franprix and G20 in St Paul were open. We knew we were foolish, we went on, and it would come back to haunt us.

We took the bus to rue Vaugirard and walked around the hill rather than up from Odeon. We had to wait a bit in the light drizzle since they were admitting people without reservations in small groups, but the wait was brief and the drizzle was light, We were visitors 194 and 195. They had reached almost 1000 when we left.

Meanwhile, my wife stayed in to rest and do some laundry. She was joined later by G, and they went to the Musee Cognac-Jay to see the 18th Century furniture and paintings. They got slightly soaked in the process but enjoyed the visit. She returned for a nap, while G went on to explore and then to a Chopin recital at the Church of St Julien le Pauvre back in the Fifth.

D and I found the Cranach interesting but we remained unconvinced of his greatness as an artist. Many of the prints were hung next to Durers, who won the comparison handily. There were interesting portraits, particularly of Luther and Melancthon and a bunch of pictures of old men -- painted when Cranach was an old man -- being fooled by young women. Biography?

Afterwards, we walked in the drizzle past St Sulpice to St Germain and took the Metro to Parc Monceau to visit the Cernuschi Museum. This was the gift to Paris of a banker who began as an Italian radical revolutionary in 1848 and ended a wealthy banker. Appalled by the Commune, he toured the world while things settled down and bought Asian art, building a museum to house it. The collection is incredible, both the original items and later gifts, though much of the interest in historic rather than aesthetic. That is, the objects are important but not necessarily beautiful. My favorites were a perfectly preserved set of tomb figures, musicians on horseback, still with polychrome. You would smile every time you see them. There was also a monumental bronze Buddha.

It had been very hot in the museum, so I was ready to go home. D, tireless, went on to the Nissim de Camondo museum next door.

The four of us met again about 6:30 at the flat and went on to the Café des Musees. We didn’t have a reservation -- who needed one in the old day? -- and we were relegated to the basement, which also didn’t exist in the old days. But the food was just as good as ever (ever being earlier in the week when my wife and had lunch there), D got his fill of garlic, and G stayed for a drink before going off to the 9:30 Eurostar home to London, amongst lots of hugs and kisses.

You remember the coffee? Well, of course all the supermarkets close at noon on Sundays. After dinner, my wife and D went off to find coffee and juice while I hobbled back to the flat. They found it at a North African shop just below the Place des Vosges, still open at 10, bless them!

Lesson: don’t put off for later what you should do right now. Everyone knows supermarkets and bakeries are only open in the morning on Sundays. Ignore it to your peril!

Actually the supermarkets close at 13:30 on Sunday. And there has been a crackdown on places that stayed open all day Sunday -- one of my local ones that stayed open until 19:00 on Sunday now is forced to close at 13:30, as well as a whole bunch of Franprix places that had not-so-discreetly extended their Sunday hours. (They went too fast -- most of these places weren't open at all on Sundays a years ago, and once they got the authorization for the morning, they went too far.)

Oh, and bakeries are open all day Sunday if Sunday is one of their normal six days of authorized opening. (That's why Paul can be open every day -- because it's not a bakery and just sells stuff made in a factory.)

Thanks Ackislander. I so love reading these trip reports from Paris.

Bofinger was one of the restaurants where we ate on our first trip to Paris many years ago. It was packed then as well.

Very much enjoying following you along!

Thanks to Kerouac, as always, for additional information on hours for supermarkets and bakeries. For those who are reading along,

Day V Monday, April 4

A chilly morning, partly sunny all day but not much wind. Gorgeous light late in the afternoon, with puffy clouds turning pink and gold toward sunset. At least in the Marais.

Today was our day to add in a very minor way to the French economy.

We went to BHV to buy what are called naval coat hooks in the US, where they are very hard to find. Three hooks hinge flat against the wall and pull out to hang three coats.

We went to the fabulous decoration department, where two loutish young men, surrounded by gorgeous drawer pulls and cabinet hardware, were not a lot of help. Of course, my French is not good, and I had no idea what this device was called, only that I had bought it here before. After I acted it out for them with my fingers (“La mure, ca, des manteaux, ca, trois manteaux, ca. Qu’es ce que ce?” They were enlightened and sent me to the second floor where I had no luck at all.

So off to the famous hardware department in the basement where you find the blue house numbers and -- I am not joking -- everything you would need to make a pair of leather shoes. Off to the quincaillerie (serious hardware) section, where I found hooks galore, and they are called “crochets”, making “crochet hook” an English language redundancy that must seem very funny to the French. But not my crochets.

At the information counter, I explained what I wanted again, no need to act it out now that I had the word, to a very gentil Franco-African woman, who sent me back to the second floor, but this time with the name of the proper section, where they hung in all their solid brass glory! Voila! So I brought three, at the same price we paid five years ago.

So D went on for a day in the Louvre, my wife went to buy makeup, and I went back to the basement to thank Madame for her help. I had to tear myself away from looking at more hardware -- a dozen kinds, maybe two dozen kinds of shutter hardware, fifty kinds of furniture legs and feet and on and on. Home Depot, eat your heart out! You have quantity but don’t have variety.

Purchases in hand, my wife and I made our way to Notre Dame, always thrilling, whatever the crowds. They had set up for a concert tonight, so the traffic flow inside was even worse than usual, but they are making an effort to ask people to be more respectful of a place of worship, and the signs in Japanese asking people to remove their hats and speak quietly seem to be working.

From the Cite station, we went to the 14th, between Denfert Rochereau and Porte d’Orleans. I was looking for the Mephisto store on Avenue General LeClerc but had forgotten to bring the address so didn’t know which end of the street we wanted. We split the difference by getting off at Mouton Duvernet and walking out.

This is a very pleasant area. I had never been beyond Denfert Rochereau in this direction, and it is a place I might want to live if I could afford it. There seem to be very few hotels, but it would be a good place to look for an apartment. There are excellent bus and Metro connections to the center, there is good shopping, and the area lacks the traffic and crowds of the Marais or St Germain.

After good salads at an anonymous brasserie, we were graciously pointed to the Mephisto store by Madame at the comptoir. It was within steps of the Porte d’ Orleans. When I walked in, the charming young woman who came to assist me asked me if I would mind speaking English. Before I could be devastated, she said she was Australian and only on her third day on the job. Anyway, in the entire store, a good sized one, there were only four pairs of shoes that would fit my size 14 feet. I tried all of them on and bought one pair.

None of the rest of the staff spoke English, so we did the VAT refund in French, and we were on our way by Bus 38 and Bus 96 back to our own little nest in the Marais, stopping at Monoprix for the things we had not got the night before.

After much debate, we convinced the skeptical D, refreshed by his day in the Louvre, to go to dinner at Bistrot de l'Oulette, recommended on this forum. We Didn’t have a reservation but got the last table, next to the serving window, and settled in to yet another fabulous meal. He had escargot and artichokes in a dubious looking parsley soup that turned out to be fabulous, followed by confit de canard and potatoes au gratin that had as much cream as potato. My wife skipped the entrée and had a salmis de pintade (guinea fowl stew) in a pot, incredibly rich, and the same potatoes. I had goujonettes of mackerel with horseradish whipped cream for an entrée and cassoulet for a plat, all along with a delicious languedoc wine. The cassoulet was good, but I make really good cassoulet, If we go back, the pintade will be my choice. After a glace de pruneau for my wife, with a whacking great dollop of armagnac poured over it, we wandered around the neighborhood like Jules et Jim until the late hours.

Ackislander, thoroughly enjoying your report. I can picture some areas and have bookmarked your report on others for my trip in a few weeks. I've decided to take the RER into the St. Michel stop and walk the short distance to our apartment. On verra...

Looking forward to your next installment!

I once stopped counting the different varieties of cabinet knobs and handles in BHV - at over 1000!

Ah, PatrickLondon, what dedication!

Rereading these posts, I must apologive to those who speak French. My French is entirely self taught, no formal study, first for graduate school reading, then speaking after I began traveling here. Writing never. You will see that I am writing phonetically rather than from having actually studied the grammar. I make a lot of typos anyway, and some of the French errors are typos rather than ignorance.

For those who worry about coming here without command of the language, I will simply repeat the advice of others and say, "the more the better, but some is better than none." A phrase book will get you a long way.

I can now read and understand about 80-90 percent of what I read on museum labels, and I could follow the opera the other night through the French supertitles, though I did not figure out one critical word until I got home. I am seldom stumped on business signs and can make my way slowly through the newspaper, but people who are not used to dealing with tourists often have hard time understanding me -- and vice versa!

Ah, PatrickLondon, what dedication!

Rereading these posts, I must apologive to those who speak French. My French is entirely self taught, no formal study, first for graduate school reading, then speaking after I began traveling here. Writing never. You will see that I am writing phonetically rather than from having actually studied the grammar. I make a lot of typos anyway, and some of the French errors are typos rather than ignorance.

For those who worry about coming here without command of the language, I will simply repeat the advice of others and say, "the more the better, but some is better than none." A phrase book will get you a long way.

I can now read and understand about 80-90 percent of what I read on museum labels, and I could follow the opera the other night through the French supertitles, though I did not figure out one critical word until I got home. I am seldom stumped on business signs and can make my way slowly through the newspaper, but people who are not used to dealing with tourists often have hard time understanding me -- and vice versa!

This is so fun, and you are giving me courage for my fall trip to Paris and the Dordogne. DH is not particularly in love with the French, but now I know I can take him to BVH - where is it?

Also, you give me courage about my French which was pretty good about 50 years ago, but has only been used de temps en temps since.

WONDERFUL trip report. I love shopping in France even though I'm not a "shopper" and mostly I "lick windows"

The BHV (Bazar de l'Hôtel de Ville) is across from the Hôtel de Ville (city hall) at metro Hôtel de Ville -- making it one of the easiest places to find in the city.

What a great TR! We will be heading to Le Marais on 29 April and will surely make use of the excellent suggestions and recommendations made here.

I made particular note of the trip from CDG to Le Marais. That is how I've planned for us to get to our apartment. We will each have only 1 carry on bag and DH will carry a "camera bag" sized bag as well. We are bit younger, but I am still nervous about the logistics of taking the RER with this being our first trip to Paris, in a long long time. I do speak French [rusty, but understandable] so I am hoping that will help with the transit to apt.

Glad to know about the ticket kiosks, had heard that they won't accept US credit cards. We arrive from Stockholm on a Friday at 18:40, so thinking lines might be bad.

Can't wait to read more!

Your BHV experience is exactly as described in David Leibowitz' book "The Sweet Life in Paris". i thought he was exaggerating a bit for effect, but now I know he wasn't!

Thank you Ackislander. Desperately missing Paris, your wonderful trip report is easing the pain. Less than two months until I return. Jealous about the Opéra - I planned on seeing Cosi Fan Tutti in June but waited too long to buy tickets.

Looking forward to the next installment!

fantastic read! bookmarking. taking notes of your restaurant finds for my upcoming trip to paris

It's nice traveling with you, Ackislander. Thanks for sharing. EJ

Day VI Tuesday, April 5

A tourist day. D started off for the Musee Guimet but got sidetracked to a day in the Orsay, where he had not been for some time.

I had reached the point that comes in every trip where I am ready to go home. By tomorrow, I will be wanting to stay a month or a year, but Tuesday morning was a bit of a low point -- too much food, sore feet, just want to sit still for a while but too much still to see.

So we played tourist in the neighborhood. And the Marais is a great place to do that.

The City of Paris has a number of free museums, and two of them are just around the corner. We started at Victor Hugo's apartment in the Place des Vosges. Nothing is as it was when he lived there but various rooms have been reconstructed from his various residences over the years. The views over the Place are fantastic and the Chinese room is beyond belief -- and good taste. Next door, fronting on the Place des Vosges, is an ecole maternelle, an elementary school, sharing the historic arcade with the rich and corporate. They have a tiny playground in a corner of the Place, and a basketball court and hopscotch layouts in the court behind Hugo's apartment. There is a lot of bad art in the apartment but lots of excellent political cartoons as well.

Our second free museum of the day was the Musee Cognac Jay, an art museum showing the collection of the founder of La Samaritaine in a restored and very early hotel particulier, which the city restored from colllapse.

There are furnished rooms with paneling and art, paneled rooms with art but no furnishings, and rooms with art but neither paneling nor furniture. There is a charming Lawrence painting of a young girl; a bizarre, strangely cleaned Rembrandt; a perhaps great Boucher had it not been damaged in the past; and a lot of charming soft porn of girls surprised by naughty men. We had a long and wonderful conversation with one of the guards, a young Italian, about Canaletto and the English and the way the French and the Italians feel about their art.

We had a late lunch at the apartment, and I added a new layer of moleskin to my blisters before going out to rue St Antoine. We were on the way to Monoprix but decided to pop into the Hotel Sully for the noted architectural bookstore. Well, all thoughts of commerce briefly ceased. The forecourt is heavily restored but very, very attractive.. The bookstore is in the area between the forecourt and the rear court, and it has an amazing ceiling of heavy wooden beams, all apparently with their original Renaissance paint. They are worth some time. The rear court contains a garden with rather silly modern sculputes, but the wall of the main building, behind you as you enter, is in good but relatively unrestored condition. The big and rather famous secret is that if you go through the door on the far right of the garde, what looks like a passage through a complex of buildings turns out to be a door directly into the Place des Vosges! The buildings have one architecture on the front facing the garden, a different architecture on the buildings facing the Place!

So to complete a day of neighborhood touring, I stopped in to the Church of St Louis-St Paul. It was a Jesuit church, modeled on Il Gesu in Rome, but of course on a smaller scale, There were no sculptures on the ceiling to represent Protestants going to Hell while Catholics were taken up to heaven, though there had been a similar painting in one of the house museums today, in which one insistent person was pointing out with great vigor to St Peter where his name was in fact in the Book!

In the evening we walked to Ste Chapelle for a concert, eating a decent jarret aux lentilles on the way. Ste Chapelle is a great place to go to a concert since there are no lines and you can look around and photograph with almost no people, but it is a lousy place to hear music. We heard Mozart and Weber clarinet quintets, and the poor clarinetist had to contend with about five levels of reverberation. Am I sorry I didn't go? Absolutely not!

We walked back to the apartment -- I now have multiple layers of moleskin -- stopping at Bistro l'Oulette to make a reservation for dinner on Wednesday (and scaring the hell out of them by making them think we wanted to eat at 11 PM). And so, home to bed!

A couple of notes.

ellen75005, taking the RER beyond Chatelet would be fine. We are thinking of taking the bus to the Ile de la Cite on the way back and getting the RER from Notre Dame. Or we may go to Invalides and take the Air France bus.

dlejhunt, our friend D bought the Opera tickets online, a truly strange but ultimately successful experience. It was an especially bad experience for him because he is a major, major computer guru, so he excpected things to work better. The file to print the tickets should have been a pdf but had a different file extension. He corresponded with the site administrators, who told hime just to change the file extension but with no apology or explanation. It worked.

I bought our concert tickets from Classictiks, a German web site, and it worked like a well-oiled machine.

Only two more days of this as we are going tomorrow to visit friends and relatives in Scotland and England.

This is a wonderful report, Ackislander, and I'll be sorry to see it end. You have an easy style of writing that's a pleasure to read.

I'm only home two weeks, and now you have me wanting to go back.

I am really enjoying this report. We always choose to stay in the Marais and have done the majority of the things that you are writing about. I agree with everyone above; have just visited and want to go back again asap.

Day VII Wednesday, April 6

The last full day of Paris. Il fait tres, tres beau. 76F by midafternoon, never a hint of a shower, a pleasant breeze but no wind.

D headed off on a mission to find dried mushrooms in bulk. Naturally the place where his wife bought them in October, 2009, didn't have as many as she wanted, so he began a search that lead him -- and D does not have much French -- from well up toward Montmarte to Izrael, on Francois Miron near us. Still only got one big bag, though lots of little bags were available at high prices. Trader Joe's has stopped selling their bags. Is there a world-wide morel plague? He also went to a celebrated affineur on the I'le St Louis but decided that the prices for the cheeses he wanted were too expensive if the famous Logan airport beagle found them and they were confiscated. Tant pis! So he went to the same museums that we went to yesterday.

We had a most interesting day, mostly in the northeastern part of the city. We took the increasingly packed 96 bus out rue Oberkampf through Menilmontant and Belleville, finally climbing the great hill that I suppose is the origin of the "montant" part of the name..

This is a very diverse area, with our fellow passengers of many colors and shades of colors and many modes of dress. I think the most colorful and attractive were probably Tunisians, but that isn't based on anything in particular. The shops were also very diverse, and we were interested to see that "oriental" shops dealt mostly in Greek, Turkish, Lebanese, and Egyptian goods, while shops that had Chinese and Vietnamese items had "Asie" on their signs. But there were some shops that dealt in everything.

At Rue des Pyrenees, we abandoned the 96 and took the 26 to Stalingrad-Jaures. We just missed a bus, but another came along within minutes that was practically empty. This was useful because it had grown pretty warm. The bus skirts the bottom of the Parc des Buttes Chaumont, and it was full of young people "laying out", as Southerners say. I asked a stall holder for directions to the Canal St Martin, and he was able to understand me and I him.

We walked half the canal from the northern, unfashionable end to the place where it makes a turn to the left. There was a packed cafe just as we got on the path, not an American or guidebook in sight, and the banks were lined all the way with young people on their lunch breaks catching the amazing temperatures. Malheuresement, all the young women remained decently clad. Well, almost. The footpath is rough cobblestones and you have to detour onto the road to get around the locks, but this is a very, very rewarding walk, and I strongly recommend you take it before it is gentrified out of existence.

We went into the garden, Jardin Villemin on the right bank just before the turn. What was blooming? What was not is a better question. Everything from daffodils to things we won't have on Nantucket until the first week in June: daffodils, forget me nots, pansies and other bedding plants, poppies, anemonies, the remains of tulips, fritillaria imperalis, rosemary, lilac, oleander, mock orange, and ornamental cherries in great profusion. No roses, no lavender.

We had delicious Thai salads and a huge bottle of Badoit at Madame Shangs at the bend. My wife could watch the garder (one young woman rolled in her own wooden bench)
and I could watch the street and the cafe across the corner.

The picturesque footbridges across the canal were closed, so we crossed at the next road bridge. On our left was the Hotel du Nord, the famous location in the movie of the same name. We rounded the corner on our way to Hopital St Louis, a building by the same architect as the Place des Vosges. It was build 1607-10 as a plague hospital, and it is vast and confusing to get around since it is still in use as a hospital. But persistance is worth it because you eventually find yourself in and inner courtyard about the size of the green part of the Place des Vosges. This was, of course, full of families, friends, school groups, and medical staff enjoying the weather. We saw two women doctors in white coats, one with a beautiful scarf knotted jauntily around her throat.

In the meantime, our plans had changed. My wife was yearning on a day like this for the Tuileries, about as great a contrast as you could imagine, so we abandoned the second part of the canal, found our way with some difficulty out of the hospital, and caught a 75 toward Pont Neuf. On the way, the driver pulled up to a stop between Republique and Beaubourg and made us all get off the bus so he could go on break! Ten or twelve mostly elderly passengers stood at the shelter until the next bus arrived, ten minutes or so later.

The new bus rejected our tickets because you can't use a tranfer on the same bus, but I spoke to the driver, "Normalement . . . ." Fortunately he spoke pretty good English because this was beyond my French, and we continued on to the Louvre. We walked thtrough the courtyards from the east end, then out past Pei's pyramid and on into the Tuileries. It was of course packed with more people, young and old, enjoying the sun, and the beds were bedded with bedding plants. We sat under the trees having cold drinks and watching the crowds until 6ish. We had a lovely conversation with a couple from Newfoundland on their first visit to Paris. They appreciated the weather even more than we did.

The Metro was packed after some problem at La Defense, and we let a couple of trains go by before packing ourselves into the last car, experiencing minor intimacy with our fellow passengers, though lots of people got out at Chatelet and the Hotel de Ville. WE stopped at the G20 supermarket in St Paul (more wine than food) for coffee and were soon home with our feet up.

That night we ate a good meal but proved to me that you shouldn't eat twice at the same place on the same trip. Our wonderful waiter (he looked like the bald villain in Diva") was not there, the kitchen helper had not shown up, and it just wasn't fun.

On todsy to Scotland and England to visit family and friends, all boring to others.

Next year, more of the 19th, 20th, and outer 10th!

I will be home in a week and will answer questions and make a few summary points in another post. Thanks to all of you who have been so very kind.

Au revoir! Bonne journee a tous!

The problem on the metro at La Défense was a "suspicious package" -- I got out and walked to the other metro line that I needed. Many annoyed people, but we are used to it...

Great stuff, brother dear! I stumbled on you by accident--what you can't email this great stuff to your sister? Sounds like you had almost as much fun as I did in Phila! )

Hope you had/will have a nice trip home.

Bravo et merci! This entire TR is now safely lodged in my tripit notes.

What a rich report. Man do I miss Paris right now. Thank you letting us take this trip with you.

Bookmarking

We leave for Paris tomorrow hoping we'll have the great weather you did and that the flowers and flowering trees will last through our entire trip. Thanks for a wonderful report.

Thank you Ackislander, I've really enjoyed this report. And thanks for the tip on the ticket website. I was unable to find the Opéra tickets that I wanted but did find tickets for the same night to a Vivaldi concert at St. Chapelle. Though I love Vivaldi I passed because my daughter had little interest and I was hesitant after your less-than-glowing review of the acoustics. In any case, I'll hopefully catch some classical the next evening at one of the venues of the Fête de la musique.

Looking forward to your NEXT review! I have always stayed in the 7th but am going to visit the Marais next year (although I will have one night this trip near Gare Bercy, I'm not expecting much!).

BOOKMARKING

"We had a lovely conversation with a couple from Newfoundland on their first visit to Paris. They appreciated the weather even more than we did."

This just made me smile. Every time I want to grumble about our weather in Nova Scotia, I think about the four years I lived in Newfoundland.

Hi AA,
It's all relative, isn't it?
Welcome home from your most recent trip.
EJ

Bookmarking. Great report!

Ackislander, really enjoyed your trip report as usual. A few observations:

“D and I found the Cranach interesting but we remained unconvinced of his greatness as an artist.”

Obviously your judgment is spot on. If I recall, Cranach was one of Hitler’s favorite artists – he had dreams of collecting as many as possible for his “dream” museums in Linz. This pipe dream is carefully chronicled in THE RAPE OF EUROPA: The Fate of Europe’s Treasures in the Third Reich and the Second World War by Lynn H. Nicholas. Incredible how many art treasures were being whisked hither and yon across the continent in the mid of madness and chaos during WWII.


“It had been very hot in the museum, so I was ready to go home. D, tireless, went on to the Nissim de Camondo museum next door.”

Did D enjoy the Camondo? That will be a must when I go to Paris in early June. Interested in the tragic story of that family.

“I can now read and understand about 80-90 percent of what I read on museum labels, and I could follow the opera the other night through the French supertitles, though I did not figure out one critical word until I got home. I am seldom stumped on business signs and can make my way slowly through the newspaper, but people who are not used to dealing with tourists often have hard time understanding me -- and vice versa!”

I too have been preparing for this trip by re-visiting my French which I took decades ago. I bought a basic grammar and a French-English dictionary which I installed on my computer. I try to read articles from LE MONDE and LA FIGARO most days. I just click on the word (s) I don’t know and go from there. I doubt that I will have the courage to speak it but my reading has improved.

Again, Ack, really enjoyed your trip report. Where to next?