Paris, Tuesday, November 20, 2007:

Tuesday was the only day it outright rained. It didn't rain all day and it wasn't as cold as the Sunday we were there, which was worse because of the wind. Here we are in front of a monument to Napoleon III but plaques have been added to it to serve as a war memorial for the two world wars as well.

We stopped here to see if the Metro was running -- there's one right under the monument -- and there were some trains running, but there was not full service. We were headed to the Orsay, an Impressionist museum that is housed in a magnificent former train station. When we got there, we were told that two of the three floors of the museum were closed due to the civil servants who work there being on strike. That was the first that I heard that it wasn't just the transit workers, but civil servants in general. It turns out that this Tuesday had been designated a national strike day. When we were at this memorial we heard a tiny parade and saw people carrying placards, although we could see what they said. We also saw an long parade of very fancily dressed men on horseback -- we think they were police.

We decided that it wasn't worth staying at the Orsay because it was almost all closed. So we decided we'd go to Le Bon Marche, the world's first department store, started in 1869.

We got lost on the way there and were looking at a map. A very nice woman stopped, in the rain, to ask if she could tell us how to get where we were going. The traffic was unbelievable -- absolutely stopped with the police blocking intersections for seemingly no reason, people getting mad, etc. We were walking, of course, but on a tiny, narrow street and so had to dodge the traffic a bit when there were other people on the sidewalk.

We saw this stove store on the way there. Amazing stoves, but a bit heavy to get home.

Jim really wants a Smart Car. They are due out here in 2008, but I think they are bug shaped because that's how they'd be squashed by a tractor trailer on an interstate. They look like the perfect city car, though, and they're incredibly cute.

When we got to Le Bon Marche, we strolled through the very expensive designer departments, of which there were many. Then we strolled over to the less expensive departments.

Paris, Monday, November 19, 2007: The Cluny

Zagat's was a huge help in finding places to eat. But they aren't too accurate with regard to what's open for breakfast. Monday morning we planned to eat at Brasserie Balzar, but when we got there, it wasn't open for breakfast at all. We headed down the street, past the Sorbonne, to a little cafe and each got a Croque Monsieur (broiled ham and cheese on toast), except that mine was made with smoked salmon instead of ham. Decent, OK service, and, like every place we went, they had freshly squeezed orange and grapefruit juice. Aside from the pleasure of ordering 'jus de pamplemousse', the grapefruit juice, as I have discovered on all three of my trips to Paris, is really delicious. Those who put it in cans should be sent to the guillotine!





Breakfast was right in the neighborhood of the Musee National du Moyen Age (National Museum of the Middle Ages), housed in L'Hotel de Cluny and known by almost everyone as the Cluny. L'Hotel de Cluny is a beautiful building and attached to it are Roman baths from the 1st to 3rd centuries. It is remarkable to be in a building so old and to still be able to see vestiges of decoration. They also had pictures of what the baths would have looked like intact and painted. They are quite amazing. You can see a description and pictures at http://www.musee-moyenage.fr/ang/homes/home_id20392_u1l2.htm.





L'Hotel de Cluny:






The well in the courtyard. Notice the sundial on the wall behind the well.











Inside, the collection is enormous. We took an audio tour, which was a bit of a mistake because we ended up spending much longer there than we intended. We realized we were getting ravenously hungry but hadn't seen the jewel in the crown of the collection, the Lady and the Unicorn tapestries.

Capitals from the baths:

The little guys attached to this statue are really freaky. As I remember, this is a saint and penitents. I guess they put on the KKK outfits so that others can't see that they have sinned badly enough to be a penitent.

The Lady and the Unicorn tapestries represent the five senses. This one is sight. You can see and read about all of them at http://www.musee-moyenage.fr/ang/homes/home_id20392_u1l2.htm. Walking into the room where the tapestries are is really an experience. The room is round and quite dark, with black walls between the red tapestries.

There is a chapel that was part of the Hotel, which has an amazing vaulted ceiling.

We couldn't find a place that appealed for lunch, so we went back to The Tea Caddy. Then we headed over to the tip of the Ile de la Cite, right behind Notre Dame, where they have a memorial to the French killed in camps. It was very modern and very striking. Afterward, we went into Le Marais. We went first to the Shoah Memorial Museum (holocaust museum) because Jim had read that there was a particular exhibit of photography there that he wanted to see. The exhibit was not there, but there was an exhibit about a priest who is going through areas in Ukraine and interviewing people who were kids or teens and witnessed mass shootings by the Germans. It was very affecting.


Afterwards we went around to some shops, although it was getting late by then. Isabel bought a carry bag that she is now using for her school bag -- very chic. And we bought a Christmas tree ornament in the shape of a Citroen with a Christmas tree on top. Both items from Sentou. We could have bought a lot more there, but the prices on most things were astronomical.

We didn't know where to eat, so we wanted to get a cup of tea and think about it. The shopkeeper suggested Mariage Freres and told us how to get there. When we saw the waiters in white coats and the overall look of the place, we decided to put it on our list of things to do another day. It was a bit daunting for just a spot of tea. We ended up going to a really nice place down the street, Le Coude Fou, which is a wine bar. Really odd murals -- Adam and Eve on ccity streets and that sort of thing -- but the tea I ordered was Mariage Freres tea and Jim said his wine was excellent. The food is supposed to be very good there, but we never got back to try it.


Instead we had dinner at Allard, which is in the Latin Quarter. Almost everyone in there was American, which was a bit unnerving, the staff was supercillious, and our table was so much in the waiters' path that my head would get bumped every so often. The food was good but not spectacular. Jim and I shared a duck that had so many olives on it that they must have stripped a dozen trees for that one dish. Isabel had Coquille St. Jacques and loved it.



Allard is in a little neighborhood adjacent to St. Suplice, which is one street over from the Esmerelda. There are restaurants everywhere and sometimes it seems that every other one is a gyro place. Isabel hadn't seen one before -- perhaps because Jim's getting food poisoning from one decades ago makes him give them a wide berth -- and asked if the meat was a giant parsnip. After that every single one did look like a giant parsnip to us. Most of the places in that neighborhood seemed quite touristy -- the area has sort of a Disney feel to it, not quite real. But there were some nice shops on the side streets -- too expensive for anything but window shopping.

Paris, Sunday, November 18, 2007: The Tea Caddy, Notre Dame, and Ile St. Louis

Our first full day in Paris was a Sunday. We wandered around looking for a place for breakfast, not finding anything. However, we had seen a recommendation in one of our books for The Tea Caddy, an English tea shop, in our neighborhood. We were getting a little discouraged in our search for a really good breakfast and were headed down our street, just a few doors down from our hotel on the way to look for more cafes, when Isabel looked up and said, "Look, there's The Tea Caddy." It felt a bit odd going to a what we thought would be a quintessentially English place for breakfast, but based on the recommendation and our growing discouragement with what we had seen, we decided to try it. We ended up going back three times we loved it so much. It is not quintessentially English at all, except maybe for the decor and the tiny biscuits (called scones, but really like a very small, round, Southern biscuit) with Devon cream and strawberry jam. Isabel had these every time we went. (Which leads me to mention that her food reactions, which were particularly bad with milk products, were entirely cleared up by the time we went to Paris. Probiotics twice a day on an empty stomach and lots of water with the probiotics and with each and every meal did the trick of counteracting a month's worth of antibiotics when she knocked her tooth out last February.)

The Tea Caddy was started in 1928 by an English woman. See http://www.the-tea-caddy.com/.
We always sat at the table in the middle of the right hand side of this picture. (The pictures of the cafe are all from its web site -- we were a bit shy of taking picture in restaurants.)

After our yummy breakfast, we went to Notre Dame and walked around the outside. You can see that it was quite cold. The temperature was probably in the 40's, but there was a nasty wind and, while it didn't actually rain, it had that cold, wet feel. This was the worst day we had in terms of weather.

Jim built a wall similar to this one at our house in Connecticut. We liked the way the garden is raised and held in by the basket weave.



Paris is a very clean city. I remember seeing street sweepers, actually guys with brooms, in '76. I saw them this visit as well, with plastic brooms now, as well as little tiny street-sweeping machines. Plus they have these garbage receptacles everywhere. Ingenious design. Another thing I noticed all over town this trip, which I hadn't noticed in previous trips -- were they there and I didn't notice or have they gone up since '99? -- were plaques, everywhere, noting where people were gunned down by the Germans in the '40's. It was really sobering to think of people being shot right across the street from Notre Dame, right next to the Grand Palais, along the Seine near the Eiffel Tower, everywhere in this incredibly beautiful place.

This is the bathroom outside the back of Notre Dame. Even though the hotel is only a few steps away, this bathroom is accessible without going up four flights of stairs! I loved the fact that it was heated and we all loved the little building, roof and walls made from pressed concrete. Check out the little faux-twig structure on the roof.

After walking around for a while, we went into the church. We got audio tours, which were really great, for pointing out lots of details and giving the history. There isn't much point in photographing the rose windows, etc., since there are so many wonderful postcards and books, but Jim took lots of pictures of small details.

After Notre Dame, we wandered over the the Ile Saint Louis, which is the island behind Ile de la Cite, where Notre Dame is. There are little, windy streets with really nice, small shops. There is a Pylones there, a French store that Jim discovered in NYC and that is one of Isabel's favorites. She bought herself a Pylones-style Eiffel Tower souvenir, but since we can get things at Pylones in New York, it wasn't worth paying the Euro prices. She bought herself a really cute hat in one of the stores and we had a late lunch/early dinner in an OK crepe place. We didn't mean it to be dinner, but it turned out to be. We resolved to not eat more than a snack at 4 PM so that we could save ourselves for really good restaurants on other days.

This car is a Renault, called a deux-chevaux, literally two-horse, because it has a two-horse-power engine. They don't make them any more. This one was in the same spot every time we passed on the various days, always with its blanket.

An interesting architectural detail along the street on the Ile Saint Louis.

From this little shopping street we passed into Le Marais. We looked into a few shops, but almost everything was closed. We resolved to go back, which we did on another day.

Paris, November 16-24, 2007 -- Arrival and The Hotel Esmerelda

Jim, Isabel, and I left Northampton around 3PM on Friday, November 16th. We drove to Andrew's new place, took a really quick look around, decided we would stay there the night we returned, and went to the airport with Andrew driving our car (full of suitcases). Our plane left around 8PM, which was 2 in the morning for Isabel and me since we had been going to bed earlier and earlier (from about 6PM to 8PM) and getting up earlier and earlier (that day at 2:45 AM) for about a week to get ourselves on Paris time. We flew all night on Iceland Air, which had the tiniest seats I've ever experienced. Stale air, terrible food, frosty flight attendants -- but the cheapest flights we could get. People on the flight never stopped talking at the tops of their voices, in spite of almost everyone else trying to sleep. I slept a little, as did Isabel, but I don't think Jim slept a wink.

We arrived, bleary-eyed, in Iceland at 7:00 AM GMT, which is what Iceland uses in spite of being much further west than the actual GMT area. We perused the countryside via the gift shop's postcards, were made to throw out our water (in case it was some dangerous chemical) by the most nonchalant security people on the face of the planet, and then buy it again seconds later, and got on the flight for Paris.

We arrived at Charles de Gaulle Airport around noon (Paris time, an hour earlier than GMT) on Saturday, the 17th. We were all pretty punchy when we got there, but managed to ask me if it was "weird" being in a different country. After we went to the ladies' room, in which a man emerged from one of the stalls, I asked if her question had been answered.

There was a strike by the civil servants in Paris because Sarkovsky wants to take away their right to retire at age 50 because it is too expensive for the state. The workers were on strike, mainly the mass transit workers, along with museum personnel, stage hands and costumers at the Paris Opera, etc. Therefore, the normally 45-minute drive from the airport took us two hours. Isabel slept most of the way, but I managed to wake her as we drove by the Conciergeried and Notre Dame. We arrived at the hotel around 3.

This picture was taken later in the week, but Isabel and I are standing in front of the Hotel Esmerelda, 4 Rue St. Julien-le-Pauvre, in the Latin Quarter right across the Seined from Notre Dame, and literally right around the corner from Shakespeare and Company. I got the following picture from the Internet. You can see the little black sign for the hotel.

Jim took this shot from right outside the door to the hotel.

In the picture below, from Google Earth, the yellow push-pin is where the hotel is. I'm sure I don't have to point out Notre Dame (cross-shaped building surrounded by flying buttresses and with plaza in front). Notice the boat in the Seine. That is the Batobus, which is a boat/bus, which we used as a sort of taxi to get to the Eiffel Tower later in the week. Since it is privately run, it was not affected by the strike. We took it a couple of times and got some really great views of the city while standing on the platform at the back of the boat.

This is Shakespeare & Co., around the corner from the hotel. It is an English-language bookstore that has been in Paris since 1951, http://www.shakespeareco.org/index.htm.

The green fountains, which are all around the city, were given to the people of Paris by an Englishman in the early 1800s, I think. I assume, after touring the Paris sewers and finding out just how disgusting the city was before Napolean I put in the sewer system and how polluted the drinking water was, that this was a gesture of extreme kindness.

Our rooom had not been cleaned when we arrived, and we were all very hungry, so we walked around the neighborhood to get something to eat. There was a cozy looking place about a block away, Le Fourmi Ailee (The Winged Ant). It was cozy, and the tea and the quiche that Isabel ordered was good; but the pork that I ordered was 95% gristle and Jim's chicken was very dry. Not an auspicious start to our culinary exploits, but, luckily, our worst meal in Paris. We returned to our room, which was ready for us.

The Hotel Esmerelda is featured in the children's book, "Linnea in Monet's Garden". The illustrations, they very accurately portray the hotel.

The lobby has stone walls and red velvet furniture.

To the left of the staircase are two large etchings of Esmerelda herself, with her little goat. The stairs are quite windy and narrow, and we were on the fourth floor -- that's the fifth by American counting. The proprietor helped us carry our bags up, which was very nice given that I think it would have taken me three days to carry my bag up that far! We always reached the top floor panting, but the charm and the price (110 Euros a night for a triple!) plus the view, all made it well worth it.

Once you rise above the lobby, with its stone walls, the entire hotel, ceilings and all, is wallpapered. Some of it, particularly in the stairway and halls, seems to have been lacquered. This detail of the stairway shows the early 17-th century origins of the hotel.

There are two WCs right off the stairway and even one room door off the stairs.

The hallway at the very top of the stairs, leading to our door.

In the room during the evening of the day we arrived. You can just make out the gorgeous appartment building across the park from the hotel. I want to live there!










I took more pictures of the room and the bathroom the day we were leaving and Jim took some out the window.

















The view!






























The tiny, wallpapered, swinging doors and steps lead up to the bathroom.






























Isabel having one last look at the view.












Jim is about to lug the giant suitcase down the tiny stairs.




















































The ceiling in the bathroom.