Misc. and a Daytrip to Montreuil

I'm usually a day or two behind when downloading Susanne's pix onto my PC.  Here are a few.

This is one of those zoom specials.  We were having tea at the BHV cafeteria.  This lady was enjoying a moment of coffee & solitude.

Seen from the BHV, silhouettes of statues on the Hotel de Ville.















A beautiful door & doorway.  Very common in older buildings.

And we know exactly how old of a building it is.  150 years ago when the U.S. was hard at it with the Civil War.























A gentle reminder of what we've got to get back into when we return.  We're both feeling the effects of our Club SAR yoga classes being cancelled on July 1.








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Today was "go to Montreuil" day.  Montreuil is an eastern Paris suburb just outside the Peripherique, what we call a beltway.  We were motivated to go based on a blog from Hip Paris.  Check it out here.  The text and images portray a sunny, bucolic place, easy to wander about.

The reality is a bit grittier.  First, the Metro stops are further apart out here and second, the ever present on the corners of the buildings blue street signs in Paris morphed into not so ever present smaller white street signs maybe on the corners. And our weather stayed cloudy (rain came a bit later, twice) so I struggled to get sufficient light to take shots of people moving about.

We already knew the breweries were open to the public only on Saturdays.  So we chose the market to see and one of the two restaurants recommended for lunch.

The market was wonderful, ethnically & racially much more diverse than in Paris.  It was outdoors, but covered.  The colors of the fruits & vegetables only really pop in the bright sunlight.  With that in mind, here are some shots.

This fruit vendor spotted my activity and gave a wave.







Having two seacoasts, fish is always plentifully available.


Susanne has a look.  Note the octopus, poulpe in French, pulpo in Spanish.  And the squid behind it.

In addition to food there is clothing & just about anything you can imagine. 

The color just pops in the photo below.

The knives in the apartment are very dull.  I bought what seems to be a German made butcher knife for €1.  We'll see if it holds an edge.

I call the above stall "Fredericks of Montreuil".

I tried to be discreet taking this shot, held the camera at my waist, faced away from the ladies & took the shot.  I think the lady in the middle was on to me.






By the time I got the camera organized, I missed the air kisses all around.


I kept coming upon this man all over the market until I got the message...take the photo!!

Lots & lots of wives with kids out shopping.

Lotsa stuff!!

Outside the market was a large butcher shop with lots going on.  Two ladies making a purchase while an employee was loading chicken onto the spit.

Here's a digital zoom of the above pic.  The ladies (and some of the men) wear really colorful garb.  Pattern conscious they're not.











On to Lunch!!!

This place is off the beaten path.  No tourist will ever wander by.  You're either local or you know about it in advance.

We walked into the restaurant at about 12:15pm.  All the tables were empty, lots of staff being or looking busy.  The maitre d' asked if we had reservations.  We did not.  He said we'd have to dine out in the patio.  At first I thought he was kidding.  He was not.

He led us out and seated us at the worst table possible, right at the doorway.  (That seems to be a worldwide practice.)  One of us would've had every server brushing by, in and out.  He left, we moved to a better table.

There was a set menu, very inexpensive.  Appetizer + main course is €15, add dessert, another €4.  BTW, food menu prices whether in US$ or € are roughly the same because tax and tip must be added to the US price (approx. 28-30% total) but is included in France.  And the exchange rate now is such that the € is about 33% higher.

As we were waiting for the appetizer, I looked inside through the window behind me; the place was jammed.  They all looked like business people and as usual in France, wine for lunch is the way to go.

Our first course was cooked lentils in a delicious sauce, poached egg and a few narrow strips of air-dried beef to top it off. Very French.

We ordered a half liter of the house Brouilly, it was very, very nice.  Oh yes, first off before ordering came a wonderful tapenade...black olives & capers were the dominant flavors but the server told us there was also garlic, anchovies, mustard & olive oil.  Susanne is going to try it at home.

 

The second course was navarin d'agneau.  The d'agneau I got...lamb.  The French along with the New Zealanders are masters at preparing lamb.  The server could not explain navarin in English, but in France, knowing it's lamb is good enough for us!!!  (Back at the apartment, wikipedia says navarin is like a ragout, a stew.)

Here it is.  The lamb was so tender, it fell apart.  The noodles had a gentle herb infused flavor.  The gravy with bread was terrific.  Again, top notch!

It was very filling.  Even between us, we could not finish it all.  And there are no doggie bags in France.

For dessert, all I heard was "framboise", raspberry, my favorite berry.  So we shared a framboise thingy...custard on the bottom with a raspberry infused crust on top, still slightly warm.  Reverting to a childhood vocabulary....yummy!!!!!

Pardon the bites...was so anxious to dig in almost forgot to take a pic.

True to our variable weather, it rained while we were out there.  Not to worry, they had umbrellas so all we received was an occasional drip.  This photo had an unusual exposure...it almost looks like snow but it isn't.

 

After lunch, we walked along the main drag a bit, it started to rain again so we took the Metro back to the apartment.

There's a South African restaurant out here that we'll try for lunch next week.  It's only about a 25 minutes Metro ride with a small change at Republique.

While in Montreuil, Cousin Mort called.  We hope to get together next week...hadn't seen him and his wife our last few trips here.

Tomorrow we get ready to move & Saturday we move up the street to the new place.  This is a long blog and it'll have to do for a couple of days.

Bye bye til next week.

A Little Bit of This and a Little Bit of That

First, a bit of AZ info.  Many of you have asked about my volunteer work.  Today an e-Letter from CASA of Arizona, one of my volunteer activities, dropped into my Inbox.  For the curious, click HERE to see the web version.  The Employee Spotlight happens to feature my supervisor, Kourtney.

Back to Paris.

There is a large, moderately priced but very nice department store known as BHV (Bazar de Hotel de Ville) & yes, it's across Rue de Rivoli from HdV.

On the 5th floor is a cafeteria, very reasonably priced.  Susanne & I stopped there for "thé au lait", €2.90 vs. €5 or so on the street.  The atmosphere is somewhat sterile. The view is nice, the upper part of HdV, also a beautiful church, and a little piece of the Seine in the distance.

Locals hang out there a long time...one man doing crosswords, another sleeping.  Two elderly Madames de Paris chatting away a storm.  The only photo of note was of an ingenious wine dispenser.  A chalkboard to tell us what's for sale, the price & labeling each spigot.

€2.90 for a 19cl glass is very cheap, assuming the wine is drinkable.

BTW, in the US we use the liquid measure in the metric system differently.  We use milliliters, a bottle of water might be half a liter, 500ml.  Here they use centiliters.  That same bottle of water would be 50cl.  A 12oz can of soda here is 33cl.  Wine-wise, 19cl is quite large.  The standard wine serving is 14cl.




It's another grey day today.  Started to lighten up, we went out, started to rain, we came back.  Here's a shot of the Bastille Column straight down our street, B&W, the mood of the day.

As you may have gathered, Susanne & I are not much into visiting or photographing monuments.  Anyone can Google them & see far better pics than what we could take.  So we tend to stick to street sights & people.

Since we're out of the tourist area, we see regular work-a-day Parisians; here are five in one shot.

Several more folks, unremarkable but not likely to be seen back home.

In the foreground, another Mademoselle Noire & behind her a safer motor scooter, two wheels in front.

Marcel Marceau re-incarnated?

She looked at me just as I snapped the pic.

Canoodling across the boulevard.

Now THERE'S a classic car, a la Française. I know it's a Citroen, maybe from the fifties.

As I passed it going for a rear shot, I wondered what the white bunting on the door handle & around the hood was all about until I looked inside...a bride & a groom!!

What the well dressed, totally outfitted Honda Goldwing couple looks like in Paris.  The bike has to cost $40,000-$50,000 here and has every conceivable convenience except protection from the weather.  Looking at the license plate, the little "75" with a blue background (middle right) says they're from Paris...it coincides with the first two digits of the postal code.  In France, the Federal govt. issues the plates while ours are done by the states, each state unique.

An oyster shucker at a restaurant just up the street from our place.  "Emporter" means "to go" in Yank English, "takeaway" in the Brit version, more common here.  To eat the food at the restaurant, you say "sur place".

At the same restaurant, Susanne loved the elegant table setting.  The olive oil looks like it was in a perfume bottle.  Ash tray for smoking outside.  Inside...Non!

Here is one of those rare electronic cigarette stores trying to look important & inviting.

And now to the Department of Weird Observations, Paris Office.  When it comes to toilet paper rolls (yeah, you read that right), the French & maybe the Europeans are ahead of us in recycling.  Their rolls are biodegradable, just flush 'em down.  BTW, TP in French is "papier hygenique".

I just can't end the post on that topic, so on a lighter note the Velib people have crews making the rounds of all the velib stands (and there are hundreds) keeping everything in good repair.  Here is a crew helping some newbies getting started.  Yes, it's raining, we were rushing back to the apartment.

Tomorrow we're looking at taking one of the Metro lines out to near the end to a suburb called Montreuil to the east just outside the Peripherique (Beltline).  We're motivated by a blogger post featuring the town & what to do there.  We're going to a street market, then lunch at a South African restaurant.  All this depends on the weather, of course.

We're moving on Saturday but discovered a lot of food in the 'fridge.  So we're eating in for lunch & dinner.  Actually it's a pretty inexpensive way to do Paris, especially for a family; breakfast & dinner in, lunch out...lunch is always a better bargain than dinner.

Out & About

When we were with the gang we took a boat tour of the sights of Paris from the Seine.  It was a grey day...shooting in color but getting monochrome.  Here's an example:

Black is a popular color, even in the summer (which the current weather isn't).  So I look for ladies whom I call "Mademoiselle Noire".  Here's my first nominee.

At the opposite end of the spectrum, here's a colorful lady I'd call "Madame Mess".

Yes, both ladies happen to be smoking; still see a lot of it here.  But thankfully the laws are much the same as in the U.S., smoking outdoors only.

BTW, all those tattoo parlors & electronic cigarette stores we saw last year...mostly gone now.














And now for our first "C'est Paris" moment, when something happens that doesn't make much sense so we just chalk it up to that's the way things are.

Susanne & I decided to stop for a bite.  Our way of snacking is to order an item then share, "partager" in French. So we ordered a cold seafood plate (salmon/lox, small shrimps, octopus, pickled herring) & told the patrone "partager, s'il vous plait".

"Well, by golly, if you crazy Americans are going to partager my food, then you damn well are going to partager the place mat & the napkin/serviette!  I'll concede separate tableware, though."

The plate arrived & we dug in, forgetting to take a photo, sorry!  We did politely ask the lady then had to resort to nagging until she brought another serviette.  The lox was not smoked but still good.  The shrimp had a white sauce, good.  The herring tasted like smoked whitefish from a deli but alot stronger, good but needed bread to moderate the flavor.

I saved comment on the octopus for last.  They were small, about 3-4 inches, head & arms.  They were soft, not chewy & had a delicate flavor.  IOW, if you can ignore what they are, they're quite good.  I dove right in...Susanne was hesitant at first but agreed they were just fine.

Fortunately, Susanne & I will eat darn near anything.

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On the Pont des Arts a pedestrian bridge, the love locks have taken over.  It's a fad that is causing great mechanical stress to the bridge & that stresses the Paris city fathers. They are working on a solution to eliminate them.  Cutting them off doesn't work...more appear in their place.  So they have to figure out a redesign of the railings.

Pesky things, aren't they?  Very much akin to an infestation.
































There always seems to be a sexy lingerie poster on the back of the buses.  Susanne shot this year's edition.

 

And some ladies boots that interested her.


















OK, we now moved into the larger apartment that the kids used when they were here.  But because of a glitch that we knew of in advance, we must move from this apartment to another one this coming Saturday. (Long story, won't bore you.)

After much searching from Scottsdale, we found one just up the street.  We are now at # 19, Blvd. Beaumarchais & will move to # 71.  Yesterday we strolled up there to have a look from the outside.  Susanne is peering in; she says it's a much newer building, we'll be on the ground floor in the back.

Just up the street, the sign to the right of the door of #99 means either this is a law office of several lawyers or a couple of avocados live here.   Same word, two meanings.




Artistic graffiti & taggers who just vandalize walls & signs compete for space.

This young lady is using a terminal to rent a bicycle (known as a "velib").  Racks of bikes are placed all over Paris and is a great way of getting around (for the very brave) since the first 30 minutes of each rental is free.

Take a look at the stand. You sign up for a specific bike number (The wise check each one out, not all of them are in good repair at the time) & upon payment with your membership card, the bike is released.  Just take & go.  To turn it in at any velib stand in Paris, find an empty space, put it back into the holder & voila! the transaction is complete.

Other cities all over the world have copied this program.

BTW, here ladies in skirts & dresses have no problem riding two-wheeled vehicles.  They're just extra careful & don't sweat occasionally showing a bit more leg than expected.

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Today Monday dawned cloudy threatening rain.  By mid morning the threat was made good...a steady drizzle all day long.   We didn't feel much like battling the weather all day so I went out to the ATM, got some euros to pay the new landlord on Saturday, then hit the Monoprix to buy dinner for eating in tonight.  Below are the "before" & "after" pics of the dinner prep.



 The object is to turn this:

 Into dinner for two:

Lighting for these pics was a problem.  Using flash (these two) bleaches out the colors & the effect is sort of blue-white.  Because there was no natural light coming into the room (cloudy, late afternoon), the indoor lighting pic was very yellowish.  And in my rush, I forgot to take one with flash & Susanne at the table.

Tomorrow's forecast shows improving weather...some chance of rain, periods of cloud & sun.  High temp 71 deg F.  If you use Windows 8.1, get the weather app & choose Paris as one of your places & you'll be working off the same forecaster as me.

Update:  Tuesday morning it was dark & cloudy.  We set out for Place d'Aligre where Susanne's friend Rachid works.  Silly us, we didn't take umbrellas.  Long story short (LSS) it started to pour; we had to turn back.  It rained until early afternoon.  Then the sun came out (and so did we).  There was about 4 hours of sunny, warm weather until it turned to rain again as we headed back.

BBFN