Speed dating and snow: Nikki's trip to Paris
Apr 6th, 2013, 09:52 AM
#64
Original Poster
Thursday night we have tickets to see Benabar at the Olympia music hall near the Opera. I bought my ticket before I knew Alan was coming to Paris, so our seats are not together, but they are near each other at the front of the theater. The opening act, Emilie Gassin, is a young Australian woman who is the antithesis of the young woman who opened the Sanseverino concert. She is a folkie singer-songwriter in a bright pink sundress with a big bow in the back, singing songs such as "You are my little ray of sunshine." She has a beautiful voice and a big smile. She tells the audience they have to sing one song without her because she is going to record us. I assume she is joking, but no, at the end of the song she cuts out, has the audience sing alone, and pulls out her phone to record the audience singing.
Nobody kicks the phone out of her hand.
At the intermission Alan and I move to two seats together. The crowd here seems to be drawn from a wider area than Paris. People are dressed in more prints, brighter colors, less tragic black than the people I have been watching all week in Paris. There are people of more shapes and sizes, and I feel less conspicuous.
Last year I attended a Benabar concert in a huge venue, the Zenith, out in the Parc de la Villette. This year the musician has said that he wants to play in more intimate surroundings. While I wouldn't exactly call the Olympia intimate, it is indeed smaller than the previous show, and Benabar is playing the piano himself, with members of the band singing backup. The piano is a very odd instrument set at an angle, designed so that it appears a pile of books is holding up the end away from the keyboard. At one point, Benabar knocks something off the piano, stands up to get it, and the music keeps playing. I am not sure whether the piano is itself electronic or he had that song duplicated on the electronic keyboard resting on top of the piano for that moment. On the music stand, he is reading chords on an ipad. I am looking at the future. When we are all reading music off ipads, I guess I can throw out all those clothespins I keep in my bag.
The concert is wonderful. The crowd is singing along. I am shouting translations of the lyrics into Alan's ear. And Alan is enjoying it, for which I am relieved. My French singer/songwriter fetish is a personal thing, I don't expect everybody to share it.
Nobody kicks the phone out of her hand.
At the intermission Alan and I move to two seats together. The crowd here seems to be drawn from a wider area than Paris. People are dressed in more prints, brighter colors, less tragic black than the people I have been watching all week in Paris. There are people of more shapes and sizes, and I feel less conspicuous.
Last year I attended a Benabar concert in a huge venue, the Zenith, out in the Parc de la Villette. This year the musician has said that he wants to play in more intimate surroundings. While I wouldn't exactly call the Olympia intimate, it is indeed smaller than the previous show, and Benabar is playing the piano himself, with members of the band singing backup. The piano is a very odd instrument set at an angle, designed so that it appears a pile of books is holding up the end away from the keyboard. At one point, Benabar knocks something off the piano, stands up to get it, and the music keeps playing. I am not sure whether the piano is itself electronic or he had that song duplicated on the electronic keyboard resting on top of the piano for that moment. On the music stand, he is reading chords on an ipad. I am looking at the future. When we are all reading music off ipads, I guess I can throw out all those clothespins I keep in my bag.
The concert is wonderful. The crowd is singing along. I am shouting translations of the lyrics into Alan's ear. And Alan is enjoying it, for which I am relieved. My French singer/songwriter fetish is a personal thing, I don't expect everybody to share it.
Apr 6th, 2013, 10:24 AM
#65
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Lovely so far - and I shall enjoy your further installments.
I don't have a trip to Paris planned for this year, but after reading this I think I shall have to try to factor in a few days! I love the area around le Marais, St Paul and la Bastille. Thank you for reminding me how wonderful this city is.
I don't have a trip to Paris planned for this year, but after reading this I think I shall have to try to factor in a few days! I love the area around le Marais, St Paul and la Bastille. Thank you for reminding me how wonderful this city is.
Apr 6th, 2013, 12:42 PM
#66
Original Poster
Friday we take bus 65 from the Bastille up toward the Canal Saint-Martin, where we are meeting Abby and her husband for lunch. Alan and I are talking about the signs on the bus, which essentially say to move to the back of the bus, something we grew up hearing bus drivers call out on buses in New York. A man on the bus asks whether we are from New Jersey. No, I say. New York, he guesses. Not now, but originally, yes. I ask where he is from. He says, "from here." Then he must have spent substantial time in the US, I say, judging by his perfect American English. Actually he grew up in the US, he says. One of his parents was French, and he has lived in Paris since graduating from college. At this point he must wonder why I am staring at him. I ask if I might know him on line. He says he hardly ever touches a computer. I tell him I am addicted to an internet travel message board with an active participant whose story is very much like his own (and who lives on the route of bus 65). He insists it isn't him. Too bad.
We get off the bus at République and meet Abby and her husband for lunch at Philou, 12 avenue Richerand in the tenth arrondissement. This might be the best meal in a trip filled with great meals. I start with foie gras with haricots verts, chutney and pain d'épices. Alan has ballotine of quail with truffled leeks. For a main course we share a feuilleté of scallops, foie gras, and salad, and sweetbreads with "old-fashioned" vegetables. It is all sublime. The menu here is 23 euros for two courses and 30 euros for three courses, but several of the dishes we choose incur supplements of 5 and 8 euros apiece. It is definitely worth it. The restaurant is so tiny that the rest room is located off a courtyard out back.
We walk off lunch by strolling along the Canal Saint-Martin. The weather is finally beautiful, and there are people picnicking and jogging along the canal. There are groups of school children on the bridges watching the locks of the canal fill with water for the tour boats. We say good-by to Abby and her husband and continue along the canal to a point where it becomes less picturesque, and then we find the nearest metro stop to head home.
We spend the evening with our friend Lance, meeting him and his wife at their apartment and then walking to a cafe on the rue de Bretagne before heading home for the night.
We get off the bus at République and meet Abby and her husband for lunch at Philou, 12 avenue Richerand in the tenth arrondissement. This might be the best meal in a trip filled with great meals. I start with foie gras with haricots verts, chutney and pain d'épices. Alan has ballotine of quail with truffled leeks. For a main course we share a feuilleté of scallops, foie gras, and salad, and sweetbreads with "old-fashioned" vegetables. It is all sublime. The menu here is 23 euros for two courses and 30 euros for three courses, but several of the dishes we choose incur supplements of 5 and 8 euros apiece. It is definitely worth it. The restaurant is so tiny that the rest room is located off a courtyard out back.
We walk off lunch by strolling along the Canal Saint-Martin. The weather is finally beautiful, and there are people picnicking and jogging along the canal. There are groups of school children on the bridges watching the locks of the canal fill with water for the tour boats. We say good-by to Abby and her husband and continue along the canal to a point where it becomes less picturesque, and then we find the nearest metro stop to head home.
We spend the evening with our friend Lance, meeting him and his wife at their apartment and then walking to a cafe on the rue de Bretagne before heading home for the night.
Apr 7th, 2013, 01:56 AM
#69
Bookmarking, and jealous you got to go back this year! I thought of you as March approached, and remembered our fun evening out a year ago.>>
me too, toucan2. as you say, it was great fun, and over far too quickly.
i love Paris, but don't see us getting back there this year, with our big trip in the offing at the end of the year. Shame we won't be meeting up in Oz, Toucan!
me too, toucan2. as you say, it was great fun, and over far too quickly.
i love Paris, but don't see us getting back there this year, with our big trip in the offing at the end of the year. Shame we won't be meeting up in Oz, Toucan!
Apr 7th, 2013, 03:20 AM
#70
Original Poster
Saturday morning we walk to the Gare de Lyon. We are planning to rent a car here tomorrow, and we want to check out where exactly we have to go. We walk into Le Train Bleu and admire the grand Belle Époque dining room, with paintings of locations served by trains from this station at the turn of the last century.
We buy a map and a guide book at the station for tomorrow's trip, which we are planning on the fly, "à l'improviste". Thus armed, we walk back out to the street and head over to the Promenade Plantée. This is a former railroad viaduct running from the old Bastille station which was destroyed to build the new opera house. It has been landscaped and turned into a park. Alan and I visited the High Line in New York earlier this year, which was inspired by this concept. There are access stairs leading up from the street. We pass an elevator but there is a sign saying that it has been broken by vandals. It is the nicest day we have encountered so far, and there are a fair number of joggers and people walking with their families.
We take a bus and have lunch yet again at La Tartine, where we are both craving their beautiful salads. I notice that the things other people are ordering look good too, and maybe we could both order something different if we came again. But we won't be coming again; this is our last lunch in Paris.
After lunch we separate. I have a ticket to see Phèdre at the Comédie Française. I am coming at this performance with a certain amount of literary baggage. The young narrator of Proust's novel attends this play as his first experience of theater. He comes with exalted expectations and is at first bitterly disappointed by the performance of a great actress in the title role. He imagines that she will enunciate the lines in ways he can not even foresee, adding new depth to his understanding of the play. But when she comes on stage, she speaks her lines much as the narrator had imagined them himself when reading silently in his room.
And then there is the play I saw last week, where a marriage ends because a woman forces her husband to sit through a three and a half hour performance of this very play at the Comédie Française and insists that he say "bravo". Just a little "bravo", or even just "vo". I have checked the website; the play lasts two hours and fifteen minutes. I am relieved.
I arrive at the theater and find the impromptu orchestra that always seems to be playing outside. As I approach, they are playing the Pachelbel Canon, a piece I have hated since adolescence due to its endless repetitive and almost hypnotic nature. The good news is that means it is not my funeral, as the members of my chamber group are under strict orders not to play that piece. I hope I don't hum it to myself throughout the play. I try to drive it out of my mind with something other than "hail, hail, the gang's all here," which would be just as bad.
The Comédie Française has recently been renovated. Last year I attended a production in a temporary wooden structure built in the adjacent gardens of the Palais Royal. That structure is still standing, but the theater has been reopened.
The production is distinctly odd. The stage setting and the costumes are all designed in a color range from khaki to beige. The actors are dressed in not quite contemporary style, but not as ancient Greeks, and the young actress playing Aricia is wearing slacks. There is an intermittent sound of music offstage coming from a cello and violin playing a repetitive strain (no, not Pachelbel anyway). A radio sounds occasionally at moments that seem random but probably are not. And there is a large microphone on stage. As the actors stand in front of it and speak into it they modulate their stage voices, projecting out into the audience again as they move away from the mike. Once again, this happens at seemingly random moments. Some of this staging is explained in the program, but I'm still not sure I get the concept.
During the performance, the audience is so quiet and perfectly still that I feel self-conscious shifting position in my seat. The woman sitting next to me is about four feet tall and about ninety years old, and is completely absorbed in the performance. I imagine that many of these people know these lines by heart, and they, like Proust's narrator, are listening intently for the inflections of the actors on the stage.
Alan is waiting for me outside the theater, where he reports that the orchestra has just finished another repetition of Pachelbel. We walk through the courtyard of the Louvre to the Seine. I have the idea of getting close enough to Notre Dame to hear the ringing of the new bells, which are supposed to be inaugurated in a ceremony at 5:00. All the bells except the largest, deepest one have been replaced and were paraded through the streets of Paris and then exhibited to the public for a few weeks before being installed in the bell towers, and they are going to ring this afternoon for the first time.
But my feet are shot. We get as far as the Pont des Arts and find a bench in the middle of this pedestrian bridge. We do not hear the bells, but we do enjoy the passing scene. From here, the Ile de la Cité looks like the prow of a ship beyond the Pont Neuf. People are kissing all around us. The railings alongside the bridge are almost completely covered with padlocks placed there by couples to symbolize their love. The people who place them there see them as beautiful, but many disagree and see it as a pernicious form of graffiti.
One young couple engages in a particularly long and passionate kiss, and a group passing by applauds them. The young woman is shaking, holding her hand up, looking at her ring finger, there is a glistening diamond on it. I missed the crucial moment, but I am designated to record it for posterity, as the couple comes up and asks me to take their picture. They are English. She says she didn't suspect a thing. He says he expected more applause.
We buy a map and a guide book at the station for tomorrow's trip, which we are planning on the fly, "à l'improviste". Thus armed, we walk back out to the street and head over to the Promenade Plantée. This is a former railroad viaduct running from the old Bastille station which was destroyed to build the new opera house. It has been landscaped and turned into a park. Alan and I visited the High Line in New York earlier this year, which was inspired by this concept. There are access stairs leading up from the street. We pass an elevator but there is a sign saying that it has been broken by vandals. It is the nicest day we have encountered so far, and there are a fair number of joggers and people walking with their families.
We take a bus and have lunch yet again at La Tartine, where we are both craving their beautiful salads. I notice that the things other people are ordering look good too, and maybe we could both order something different if we came again. But we won't be coming again; this is our last lunch in Paris.
After lunch we separate. I have a ticket to see Phèdre at the Comédie Française. I am coming at this performance with a certain amount of literary baggage. The young narrator of Proust's novel attends this play as his first experience of theater. He comes with exalted expectations and is at first bitterly disappointed by the performance of a great actress in the title role. He imagines that she will enunciate the lines in ways he can not even foresee, adding new depth to his understanding of the play. But when she comes on stage, she speaks her lines much as the narrator had imagined them himself when reading silently in his room.
And then there is the play I saw last week, where a marriage ends because a woman forces her husband to sit through a three and a half hour performance of this very play at the Comédie Française and insists that he say "bravo". Just a little "bravo", or even just "vo". I have checked the website; the play lasts two hours and fifteen minutes. I am relieved.
I arrive at the theater and find the impromptu orchestra that always seems to be playing outside. As I approach, they are playing the Pachelbel Canon, a piece I have hated since adolescence due to its endless repetitive and almost hypnotic nature. The good news is that means it is not my funeral, as the members of my chamber group are under strict orders not to play that piece. I hope I don't hum it to myself throughout the play. I try to drive it out of my mind with something other than "hail, hail, the gang's all here," which would be just as bad.
The Comédie Française has recently been renovated. Last year I attended a production in a temporary wooden structure built in the adjacent gardens of the Palais Royal. That structure is still standing, but the theater has been reopened.
The production is distinctly odd. The stage setting and the costumes are all designed in a color range from khaki to beige. The actors are dressed in not quite contemporary style, but not as ancient Greeks, and the young actress playing Aricia is wearing slacks. There is an intermittent sound of music offstage coming from a cello and violin playing a repetitive strain (no, not Pachelbel anyway). A radio sounds occasionally at moments that seem random but probably are not. And there is a large microphone on stage. As the actors stand in front of it and speak into it they modulate their stage voices, projecting out into the audience again as they move away from the mike. Once again, this happens at seemingly random moments. Some of this staging is explained in the program, but I'm still not sure I get the concept.
During the performance, the audience is so quiet and perfectly still that I feel self-conscious shifting position in my seat. The woman sitting next to me is about four feet tall and about ninety years old, and is completely absorbed in the performance. I imagine that many of these people know these lines by heart, and they, like Proust's narrator, are listening intently for the inflections of the actors on the stage.
Alan is waiting for me outside the theater, where he reports that the orchestra has just finished another repetition of Pachelbel. We walk through the courtyard of the Louvre to the Seine. I have the idea of getting close enough to Notre Dame to hear the ringing of the new bells, which are supposed to be inaugurated in a ceremony at 5:00. All the bells except the largest, deepest one have been replaced and were paraded through the streets of Paris and then exhibited to the public for a few weeks before being installed in the bell towers, and they are going to ring this afternoon for the first time.
But my feet are shot. We get as far as the Pont des Arts and find a bench in the middle of this pedestrian bridge. We do not hear the bells, but we do enjoy the passing scene. From here, the Ile de la Cité looks like the prow of a ship beyond the Pont Neuf. People are kissing all around us. The railings alongside the bridge are almost completely covered with padlocks placed there by couples to symbolize their love. The people who place them there see them as beautiful, but many disagree and see it as a pernicious form of graffiti.
One young couple engages in a particularly long and passionate kiss, and a group passing by applauds them. The young woman is shaking, holding her hand up, looking at her ring finger, there is a glistening diamond on it. I missed the crucial moment, but I am designated to record it for posterity, as the couple comes up and asks me to take their picture. They are English. She says she didn't suspect a thing. He says he expected more applause.
Apr 7th, 2013, 07:19 AM
#72
And then there is the play I saw last week, where a marriage ends because a woman forces her husband to sit through a three and a half hour performance of this very play at the Comédie Française and insists that he say "bravo". Just a little "bravo", or even just "vo". I have checked the website; the play lasts two hours and fifteen minutes. I am relieved. >>
lol - do you think that it was autobiographical?
you have reminded me not only of our GTG last year, which I too would love to repeat, but the fact that we too went to the Comedie Francaise [encouraged by you i recall!] last year but thank goodness it wasn't Phedre so we remain married.
looking forward to seeing where you go next, improvised or otherwise.
lol - do you think that it was autobiographical?
you have reminded me not only of our GTG last year, which I too would love to repeat, but the fact that we too went to the Comedie Francaise [encouraged by you i recall!] last year but thank goodness it wasn't Phedre so we remain married.
looking forward to seeing where you go next, improvised or otherwise.
Apr 7th, 2013, 08:54 AM
#77
Original Poster
Upon reviewing what I have posted, I see that the link I gave for same day events at Billetreduc is limited to classical music. You can click on the x next to musique classique and all the other options will pop up. Or you can just start here:
http://www.billetreduc.com/s.htm?day=t&gp=1#
http://www.billetreduc.com/s.htm?day=t&gp=1#
Apr 7th, 2013, 09:05 AM
#78
Original Poster
We have dinner Saturday night at the Bistrot du Peintre, 116 avenue Ledru-Rollin, in the eleventh arrondissement. It is filled and lively on this Saturday night. I order os a moelle, marrow bones, a guilty pleasure. Also duck confit and potatoes sarladaises. Wonderful, rich comfort food.
Sunday morning we pick up our rental car at the Gare de Lyon. I have a meltdown in the garage because I can not find the card we were given in order to exit the parking lot. It has evaporated somehow, and eventually we return to the rental counter and get another one. Then we are on our way.
Alan's father had a cousin who was the navigator on a British Royal Air Force plane that was shot down near Vittel, France during the second world war. Six of the seven people on the plane died, including Alan's cousin. They are buried in a churchyard in a small village, They-sous-Montfort. The one crew member who survived moved to France and used to visit the village regularly. Alan has heard that the German pilot of the plane that shot them down also came to the village some time after the war in order to meet and shake hands with the surviving crew member.
Alan has wanted to visit this site for some time, and our trip to Paris seemed to provide the opportunity. But we had not prepared for it as we did not have the information about the town. One of Alan's cousins who lives in London had gone to visit the site some years ago, and just in the past week we have been getting the details. It appears to be too far from Paris for a comfortable day trip, so we have planned to drive and spend a night in Vittel.
Several years ago, we bought a GPS unit with world maps, hoping to use it for road trips in Europe. But since that time we have not traveled to Europe together. Now was the perfect opportunity to use it. We had not yet planned this excursion when I came to Paris, so I have asked Alan to bring it with him from home. The good news is that he brought it. The bad news is that he forgot to bring the adapter to plug it into the car. The unit is now old enough that the battery runs down very quickly when it is not plugged in. So we can not use it, and I have written down the directions I got from Google maps. And I am glad we bought that map yesterday at the station.
We get turned around trying to get onto the highway, but after a few minutes we find ourselves driving along the Quai de Bercy headed in the right direction toward the Autoroute de l'Est. After driving for a while, we stop at a rest stop and find an adaptor that we can use with the GPS, so all is well. When it is time to leave the autoroute, however, we are confronted with a toll plaza with no manned booths, just one lane open, and a machine that will not take our US credit card. There appears to be a slot to insert coins, but Alan can not see any place to insert bills.
I start digging through my purse. All week I have been paying for things with bills and throwing the change into my wallet, mostly because, I am ashamed to confess, I have not mastered the system of coins and it takes me an embarrassingly long time to count out the ones I need. The silver (or in this case copper) lining is that I have plenty of change weighing down my wallet. The toll comes to over twenty euros, but I have enough coins to cover it, and Alan inserts them into the machine one at a time while cars line up behind us at the toll booth.
On the way into Vittel we pass a sign for an "embouteillage". I'm thinking, traffic jam? But no, in this case instead of bottleneck the term means bottling plant. And we pass a giant factory operated by Nestlé, presumably churning out the bottles of Vittel water we see on supermarket shelves. Our GPS directs us into the center of town, where there are several large and somewhat faded hotels, one of which is the Hotel Providence, where we have a reservation. The rambling structure across the street is in ruins. It is clearly the off season here.
We walk into the lobby of the hotel and find it empty. There is a sign on the office that the hotel is open but reception is closed, call this number and somebody will come in five minutes. So I call the number and get voice mail. I leave a message, say I am at the hotel and have a reservation and hope I have the right number, then I hang up and we stare at each other.
It is feeling a little bit like the Twilight Zone.
Sunday morning we pick up our rental car at the Gare de Lyon. I have a meltdown in the garage because I can not find the card we were given in order to exit the parking lot. It has evaporated somehow, and eventually we return to the rental counter and get another one. Then we are on our way.
Alan's father had a cousin who was the navigator on a British Royal Air Force plane that was shot down near Vittel, France during the second world war. Six of the seven people on the plane died, including Alan's cousin. They are buried in a churchyard in a small village, They-sous-Montfort. The one crew member who survived moved to France and used to visit the village regularly. Alan has heard that the German pilot of the plane that shot them down also came to the village some time after the war in order to meet and shake hands with the surviving crew member.
Alan has wanted to visit this site for some time, and our trip to Paris seemed to provide the opportunity. But we had not prepared for it as we did not have the information about the town. One of Alan's cousins who lives in London had gone to visit the site some years ago, and just in the past week we have been getting the details. It appears to be too far from Paris for a comfortable day trip, so we have planned to drive and spend a night in Vittel.
Several years ago, we bought a GPS unit with world maps, hoping to use it for road trips in Europe. But since that time we have not traveled to Europe together. Now was the perfect opportunity to use it. We had not yet planned this excursion when I came to Paris, so I have asked Alan to bring it with him from home. The good news is that he brought it. The bad news is that he forgot to bring the adapter to plug it into the car. The unit is now old enough that the battery runs down very quickly when it is not plugged in. So we can not use it, and I have written down the directions I got from Google maps. And I am glad we bought that map yesterday at the station.
We get turned around trying to get onto the highway, but after a few minutes we find ourselves driving along the Quai de Bercy headed in the right direction toward the Autoroute de l'Est. After driving for a while, we stop at a rest stop and find an adaptor that we can use with the GPS, so all is well. When it is time to leave the autoroute, however, we are confronted with a toll plaza with no manned booths, just one lane open, and a machine that will not take our US credit card. There appears to be a slot to insert coins, but Alan can not see any place to insert bills.
I start digging through my purse. All week I have been paying for things with bills and throwing the change into my wallet, mostly because, I am ashamed to confess, I have not mastered the system of coins and it takes me an embarrassingly long time to count out the ones I need. The silver (or in this case copper) lining is that I have plenty of change weighing down my wallet. The toll comes to over twenty euros, but I have enough coins to cover it, and Alan inserts them into the machine one at a time while cars line up behind us at the toll booth.
On the way into Vittel we pass a sign for an "embouteillage". I'm thinking, traffic jam? But no, in this case instead of bottleneck the term means bottling plant. And we pass a giant factory operated by Nestlé, presumably churning out the bottles of Vittel water we see on supermarket shelves. Our GPS directs us into the center of town, where there are several large and somewhat faded hotels, one of which is the Hotel Providence, where we have a reservation. The rambling structure across the street is in ruins. It is clearly the off season here.
We walk into the lobby of the hotel and find it empty. There is a sign on the office that the hotel is open but reception is closed, call this number and somebody will come in five minutes. So I call the number and get voice mail. I leave a message, say I am at the hotel and have a reservation and hope I have the right number, then I hang up and we stare at each other.
It is feeling a little bit like the Twilight Zone.
Apr 7th, 2013, 11:44 AM
#79
We walk into the lobby of the hotel and find it empty. There is a sign on the office that the hotel is open but reception is closed, call this number and somebody will come in five minutes. So I call the number and get voice mail. I leave a message, say I am at the hotel and have a reservation and hope I have the right number, then I hang up and we stare at each other. >>
ooh, i love a cliff-hanger.
>
this isn't like it sounds, it's not deliberate.
ooh, i love a cliff-hanger.
>
this isn't like it sounds, it's not deliberate.
