Paris, The Early Days

The early days are always dominated by jet-lag.  The older you are the worse it gets.  I'm over the vaguely crummy feeling but still wake up very early, around 4am.  Susanne sleeps a bit longer but gets up dragged down with an ongoing cold she picked up along the way.

On to the real stuff.

Often Susanne & I hear from others how bad the French are & how they would not go back to France.  Yet we receive nothing but kindness from them.  Two examples one morning, happening back-to-back at the Monoprix.

As I was taking my pen out to make notes, the top popped off & rolled under a refrigerated display case.  I knelt down, looked under but couldn't see it.  I reached under with what was left of the pen, swept across...nothing.  An employee asked if I lost something.  When I explained what it was, he took a piece of cardboard & after several sweeps, voila! out came the top.   We 'merci beaucouped' him extensively.

All this time we were looking for the peanut butter; it wasn't with the jams & jellies.  After the required "bonjour"  & an explanation that my French was very bad, we asked a young lady for the peanut butter location in English.  With a blank stare, she asked an African co-worker nearby to help.  We asked our question & with fluent, unaccented English, he took us to an obscure corner where there were several jars of Skippy, smooth or chunky.  I then asked him the French word for peanut butter.  Out came a phrase, incomprehensible to us. He then explained the first two words were "buerre de" (butter of), makes sense.  That last multi-syllable word remained incomprehensible.  With a toothy grin he then said "Come, I'll show you" & took us to another place where he selected a small bag labelled 'cacahuètes', meaning "groundnuts". Makes perfect sense.  Most nuts grow on trees, peanuts grow underground.  More 'merci beaucoupes'.

C'est le Paris we know & love!!!

I also love the way French is so descriptive.  Pommes de terre (potatoes) is literally, apples of the earth.  Chemin de fer (railway) is literally, fire wagon.  Umbrella is parapluie literally, for rain.

OK, I'm boring you.

On to some pics.  We decided to continue our jet lag precautions by eating lightly the second night.  So we sauntered over to a little place we knew, just a bar really...but serves very good omelettes.  First we ordered the inevitable carafe d'eau, plain tap water.

The bottle is frosted, a clever way of implying the water is cold...it isn't.  The more expensive places do the chill.
















                                                                                                                                                            

Here's the table, nicely set considering it's mostly a bar.  Checkered table cloth for atmosphere.  My omelette is in a skillet, keeps it hot longer.  Susanne had the croque madam, the French version of a grilled cheese sandwich, usually served closed but eaten with a fork.  This one is open face on one large slice.  The egg on top makes it a "madam".  Sans egg, it is a croque monsieur.



We ate outside so we could watch the Parisian world go by.  Here is an example of what well-dressed Parisiennes avoid wearing but this lady never got the message.

 

There was a bus stop almost directly across the street.  I zoomed in because a bus stop is the great leveler of humanity...there is almost always a very mixed collection of people waiting, from maman & bebe to skate boarders.   

 






As we were gazing out to the street and the light was fading, this apparition floated across the scene.  It took me awhile to come up with a name for it...I settled on "Steam Punk Pedicab Operated by Fu Manchu".  (This blogging platform continues to give me the fits.  What I type & how it looks in the preview can be very different with no way to correct it sometimes.)

Our dinner plans tonite are for moules et frites & beer.  Diet restrictions are <OFF>!

Tomorrow is the first Sunday of the month = free museum day.  We'll go to the Musée des Arts et Métiers which serves as a repository of scientific instruments & inventions.  It has a Foucault pendulum.  When you understand what it does, it's kinda amazing...to me, anyway.

There is a student cafeteria associated with the university on the same campus.  We're hoping it's open on Sunday...students & faculty have to eat on weekends, too.  It falls into the same category as the Foyer de Madeleine, we did that last year & will again this trip.

     

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Caught Between Jet Lag & Few Photos

Here I am wide awake the first morning at 3:30am, tried to get back to sleep, finally got up at 4am.  Only 2 pics from last night, here they are.

 


One of our rules for coping with jet lag is to eat lightly & no alcohol for the first 24-36 hours.  This called for a dinner visit to our favorite creperie to share our favorite crepe...jambon, ouef, fromage.  It tasted so good!!!  

I mentioned last year that as you walk Paris, the monuments pop out at you unexpectedly.  Here is the Bastille column at dusk.  Wish I had caught it sooner, maybe for better colors.













Today we finish provisioning the apartment with food & supplies (probably at Marche d'Aligre & also check in with Susanne's friend Rachid from years past) and get our cell phones.  Then we'll do a bit of touring.  We usually go to the Eiffel Tower just to confirm we REALLY are in Paris.

Some housekeeping.

It is very easy to sign up for an email subscription as detailed earlier.  However, if you change email addresses or for any other reason you want to delete an email address from this blog, that you cannot do.  But I can...easily.  Just send me a comment or email & I will do it. 

It's a bit of a pain to type French words on an English keyboard while respecting the accent marks.  I'm going to pass on that & technically misspell words like "Marche" above.

I enjoy your comments/emails & encourage them but as mentioned I may not reply.  I'm thinking I might set aside some time on a non-blog day and respond.  We'll see.

I will occasionally post a pic or two on Facebook, but for the real skinny, it's in the blog.

Nous Sommes ici! We Finlly Made It (but not without more drama)

We went to Dulles Wednesday afternoon, showed up at the gate but just before the flight was to board, it was cancelled...bad weather in Newark, no way to make the flight Newark/Paris.

So we get in line at the United service desk but it's long.  There's a group of students from Denmark in line, more than a dozen.  We negotiated with a young lady currently at the head of the line to let us go ahead of her.  She happily consented.

LSS, we got back on the evening flight Dulles/Paris (the one we nixed the night b4, silly us), not very good seats but on the flight nevertheless.

The plane left the gate, taxied to the runway when the Captain announced that our flight path was to cross a now restricted airspace (my guess...Air Force One) & that we will be waiting up to an hour to proceed.   Engine shutdown.  Merde.

Another LSS, after 30 minutes they re-routed us around the space & off we went.

One small remaining insult so-to-speak, our luggage was among the very last to come off the plane.

The weather at CDG was foggy & gloomy, fitting the situation.  But our friend Gerard picked us up, saying it was just fine in Paris.  And it was, sunny & warm, temp to be in the mid 70's.  Philippe, our landlord was at the apartment, cheerful, smiling & as accommodating as ever.

And so dear blogees, our Paris trip finally starts.   That means this is the final no-photos post, I promise.

The Forgotten Blog Post

Last night as I was going back thru my previous posts for this trip, I discovered that the very first post written Aug. 27 & 28 was never published.  Somehow in all the mess that was the start of our trip, I didn't get around to hitting the "Publish" button.

So here it is, better late than not at all.

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 ORIGINAL TITLE: Blogging Sooner Than Expected & Not From Where I Expected

Still in the U.S.

Tuesday afternoon:

Here we are still @ Sky Harbor.  The plane was supposed to leave 8:30 this morning & it's 11am now with an often re-scheduled departure of noon (maybe).

Thank goodness for the United Visa card that gives us two one-day passes a year to their clubs & there's one here.

If we can get to Dulles today (that's not yet certain), then tomorrow we leave Dulles/Newark/Paris.   United will pay for meals & hotel, small consolation.

Tuesday evening update:

The 2/3 full passenger list dwindled down to seven people.  Normally they'd cancel the flight, but I think they need the aircraft at Dulles.  So...they upgraded all of us to First Class & off we went, 7 in 1st class, economy section dead empty.  Weird.  I tried to take a photo but was told it's illegal to take photos of interiors of aircraft.

Wednesday morning update:

By the time we got our vouchers for food & hotel, then got to the hotel, a resort actually, about 20mins from Dulles it was 1:30am today/ Wednesday, Eastern time.

While still back in PHX, we set up flights from Dulles to Newark, then to Paris.  The folks ahead of us in line for re-booking took the last available seats in tonite's flight Dulles/Paris.  A very nice French family, husband/wife/20-ish year old son.  They had worse luck than we did.  Vacationing 3 weeks on Maui, made it to SFO, then their SFO/CDG flight cancelled.  Somehow got to PHX & you know the rest.  They've been in transit 3 days & still not home.  They're not traveling for vacation, but going back to work.

They weren't on our flight last night, having opted to leave PHX a bit earlier to go PHX/DEN/IAD.  We know this cuz we saw them at b'fast in the dining room this morning. We're all on the 1pm resort shuttle back to the airport.

Actually we could've been on their flight directly to CDG, two seats opened up but they were middle seats in two different rows.  NFW!

 Gots to run.

 

  

Next Practice Blog

Here's a shot of Susanne on the bus.  In the background you can see the sign for Pont Sully, the bridge where I took the night shot of the rear of Notre Dame.  We are heading to the left bank, don't remember what for.

Over the years we have seen major improvements in the bus riding experience.  Thanks to
GPS, the bus stop posts how soon the next bus will arrive.  And an electronic sign in the bus give you a visual on the prochaine arret, the next stop in case the audio announcement goes too fast.


Last year I posted a blog about our evening at the Illegal Milonga in front of Musee d'Orsay.  It's illegal in that it's held on government property without a permit. If the authorities show up, everyone just leaves.  Sort of a "small harm, no foul" situation.

The time/place info is spread at the last minute via email & TM.  BTW, they've now gone legit in the sense that they're now on the Paris tango website.

Anyhow, while we were there we were there, a lady videographer did a vid of the milonga & interviewed us.  The vid was uploaded to YouTube weeks after we returned to Scottsdale.  It wasn't until recently that I realized I never posted it.  
 
It's somewhat dark because it was dusk, around 8PM.  We appear starting at 0:40.  If it's not clickable, just copy/paste it into your browser.



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VgQF0LwmXbM










 

Practice Blog #2

First of all, thank you for your comments.  I appreciate & enjoy them BUT, if I take time to respond that takes time away from blogging.  So...know that you are not being ignored!

I learned from the last blog (I subscribe both by RSS & by email) that email subscribers don't see the video.  I don't post that many, but when I do I will post a link to the blog so you can go there on the web to see it.

Last year, I did get blog fatigue.  There was one more blog for the last few days of pics, but when we got home, life @ home got in the way.  So I'm looking at those last pics, will use them in these practice blogs & try to remember what we took & why.

Also...Susanne takes pics often of objects & some of people.  I have yet to succeed in having her write a guest blog, so I'll show some of her photos.  Since I'm left-handed & she is right, I can always tell who took the portrait photos.

OK, enuf jabbering.  Here are a few Susanne pics, they speak for themselves.

I guess it takes the passage of time to appreciate a simple photo of an ordinary thing.

Wrought iron grill work is common in Paris.

Shorts & platform heels were popular last year.  It will be interesting to see what's "in" this year.

More ironwork.  

And lastly, one of Susanne's truly grate photos.

Night pics with a point & shoot camera are problematic.  The aperture goes wide open, the shutter speed slows down & Mr. Blur makes an unwelcome visit.

This shot of the back of Notre Dame was taken from Pont de Sully, the Seine bridge nearest our apartment.  As I recall, we were walking back from tango-on-the-Seine.

I now have a miniature tripod so hopefully we can banish Mr. B.

Lots of symphony & opera are available in Paris, but it is just getting started about the time we leave.

There was a time when one of the small museums had THE piano on which Chopin & Liszt would informally perform both individually & with four hands for their friends.  But apparently, it became too valuable of a piece of history & is no longer there.  Quelle domage!!




OK, that's it for now.