Monday, August 9, 2010
We got off to a slow start, which was fine. When the trip is so long (almost six weeks), there has to be downtime; some you build in, some you just take because you feel like it.
We cooked breakfast (again) in the apartment. We’re finding it a huge advantage to not be in a hotel. We discovered the “Grande Epicerie” of the Bon Marché, just two blocks from here, which is about as large a gourmet food store anyone could hope for. There is an artisanal chocolates section, an artisanal bread section, a deli section with jewel-like containers of prepared sides and salads, a fromagerie, a boucherie, beautiful stands of fresh fruit and vegeatables, and aisles and aisles of wines and waters, crackers and condiments. It is as much fun shopping there as it is to eat out. Eating at home, a couple of meals a day, will be quite welcome.
Months ago I had discovered a bar/café in the Belleville neighbourhood of Paris that hosts slam poetry, in English, Monday nights, so we had planned to go, excited to find an English literary scene here. We planned this day around that. It seemed logical to do some Right Bank exploring, shopping and dining, since that would be on the way to the slam.
We walked, again, happy to keep up our routine of hours of walking each day. Along the way, we came across Saint Sulpice, and dropped in. The church is famous for a number of things: it has a magnificent organ and a reknowned organist (last time I was here, I happened to hear him practicing when I came in—what a treat!); it has two major paintings by Delacroix; and it figures in “The DaVinci Code” in an imaginitive connection with the rose line in the church (a brass inlay across the trancept that indicates the Greenwich Meridian). It is a great grey block of a Romanesque church, simple, even dingy, on the inside. The Delacroix pieces were enormous. The organ was silent, but I hope to return on Sunday to hear it.
We made our way to the right bank, right up to Les Halles, which was once the central covered market of the city (hence the name), but is now a monster of a shopping mall that feels not unlike the metro, dark, dirty, labyrinthine. John needed (needed!) to check out FNAC, the French answer to Virgin or HMV. I looked in clothing stores but they were mostly chains I could shop at in Vancouver.
We emerged (had to actually jump a fence to get out, as the door we’d found that said exit was locked) from that dungeon and walked up to Rue Montorgueil, one of Paris’s many pedestrian-only market streets. We stopped in a café for a drink and to rest before heading to a restaurant I had pre-selected for dinner. Along the way, we happened upon the Pompidou Center, the site of a major modern art gallery, the building itself a modern work of art. It’s workings are all on the outside, so that it is a scaffolding of pipes and escalators to look at. The square at the building’s side is sloped cobbles, and there were hundreds of people sitting there as if it were a beach, just chatting and looking at the building. We joined them, waiting for the magic hour of 7:00, when most restaurants open.
The restaurant was closed. For the month of August. Many, many shops in Paris are closed in August. I didn’t notice it the last time I was here in August, probably because we pretty much stuck to the tourist zones, where it pays to stay open. In the neighbourhood of our apartment, though, what should be a bustling Rue Cherche-Midi feels abandonned. Some shops are open, but not most. Poilane, with it’s famous bread, is open, but the notable local chocolatier is not. The boucheries are closed, and even some restaurants sport hand-printed signs welcoming customers back on August 28th.
They are all in the Dordogne, I swear.
Anyhow, we went to plan B, which was to eat at Le Loup Blanc in Rue Tiquetonne. Susan and her family had stayed in an apartment above it a couple of years ago, and they had enjoyed it. It has an unusual menu in which you choose a main course and up to four accompaniments. I had chicken (desperate not to eat any more lamb just now, or duck, or veal, or any other rich thing I seldom eat at home), a carrot purée and a little salad with a scoop of mustard ice cream on the top. Mustard ice cream! It worked really well with the cabbage of the salad. It ranked up there with the tomato and chili sorbet I’d had in Domme. Also on the menu was a small notice saying the restaurant was a member of the Gay Business Association. When John visited the bathroom, he was intrigued to find innumerable post-it notes covering the mirror, inviting men for encounters. There were posters of naked men and pamphlets advertising gay-related events. If John ever switches teams, he’ll know where to go. We ended up glad for August and annual holidays, glad plan A had fallen through.
We’d made it three days without riding the metro, but now it was time to give our legs a break. We rode out to Belleville and set about finding the bar for our poetry. I had anticipated it might be confusing coming up from the metro (it’s hard to tell what direction you’re facing when you exit, and the maps don’t help as there are often several exits on various corners of a major intersection, but only one marked on the map), so I had brought along the GPS. I switched her to pedestrian mode, but she balked. We headed off on Boulevard de Belleville, not realizing we actually needed RUE de Belleville. I knew within a couple of blocks that something wasn’t right. It was getting dark. We were sweaty and nervous. We asked at a newsstand, but the clerk pointed us in what seemed to be the wrong direction. We walked back to the Metro and re-tried, this time heading up the hill (I was sure it would be down), on Rue de Belleville, GPS encouraging us. Finally we found the place. Lots of people out on the concrete, no one inside. We asked the waiter about the poesie, and he told us . . . not for the month of August. Never mind that I had looked up the program TODAY, and there appeared to be a scheduled slam for TODAY. Discouraged, disappointed, we slunk back down the hill, by lively cafés and crowds that had had better luck with their evenings.
Getting on the metro, a family—grandparents, mother, two kids—arrived just in front of us. We were stunned to see the adults encouraging the kids to slip through and then jumping the gates themselves, avoiding paying. There were officials in the ticket booth in plain sight, ignoring the scene. The family got on the same car as us and started up some loud arguing with each other and with other riders, while the little girl, maybe 7 or 8 years old, came around and begged money with puppy-dog eyes and prayer hands. No one gave her anything. My mantra in these situations: watch your stuff. I have seen pickpockets in action in Paris, and this was the perfect ploy, so much distraction.
The metro stops half a block from our apartment, a relief at the end of a long day. We hauled ourselves up the hundred stairs and collapsed.
Some days are just what you envision. Others turn out differently. They are all good.
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