France is pretty cool — cold, actually, until last week. I went to see the huge Egyptian collection at the Louvre, the Impressionists at Musée d'Orsay, and a nice Cézanne exhibit at the Musée Luxembourg.
I went out to Chartres to stare at the windows, and I spent a day in Notre Dame de Paris. Half the windows in Ste. Chapelle are under repair, and there is always a big long line of Chinese tourists waiting to get through the much-enhanced security, so I am going to skip it this time. Anyway, I got to see the Crown of Thorns, which they now have out in an apsidal chapel in Notre Dame.
I have also been to my favorite restaurant several time's (the one where they serve the whole shoulder of lamb, cooked confit style and served on a cutting board, covered with fried potato slices).
Les Diablotins
I have also really gotten into French bread. And bismarcks (which they call beignet). The latter is not particularly good news, but I have been walking a lot more than I do at home, so maybe it balances out.
The house in Suresnes is really comfortable and it is only a couple of blocks from the main street with all the shops, including about five hairdressers, two butchers, one high-end delicatessen, a cheese shop, two gfree-grocers, a frozen-food shop, several unpretentious restaurants, including Asian ones, two supermarkets and three bakeries. Most of the apartments are public housing, built in the 30s and 60s. But they are extremely well-built, and the older ones are even rather elegant-looking. Everything else is single-family, suburban houses, like this one. This is, after all, the "fashionable" West — the area is even known as Val d'Or or Golden Valley. But Suresnes is the poor cousin of St. Cloud, its southern neighbor, which is where all the ex-pats live, including Johnny Depp.
Last week I house-sat for a friend in the 13th (SE. of the center, up the river on the left bank). Her apartment is on the top floor of a skyscraper right at the edge of Paris proper. From her 28th floor windows, there is a great view of Paris, and at night you can watch the Eiffel Tower sparkle with its strobe lights, which they turn on for 10 minutes just before the hour until they shut it all down at 1 AM. The Invalides gleams, the Pantheon broods, and you can even see the towers of La Defense, on a clear day – although there weren't many of those. Fortunately, another high-rise entirely blocks the view of the ghastly Basilique Sacre Couer! The neighborhood (Port d' Choisy) is the center of Paris's Chinatown (or, more precisely, Indo-Chinatown). dozens of Asian restaurants, mostly Vietnamese and Lao. lots of Asian and African people, too, and not many Frenchmen. (Notice how European racism has rubbed off on me? As though the French of African and Asian descent were not really French!)
Outside the front door!
In any case, there was something really appealing about Port d' Choisy - more cosmopolitan and less suburban, I suppose. I even had a nice conversation with a young butcher at the supermarket there, who was of European extraction. As I was stumbling over my French (so many people speak English now, that I have not been forced to practice) he switched to English. I grunted something, and he said "you speak very good English". I thanked him and told him that it was it, in fact, my native tongue. He asked me where I was from and I told him America, Minnesota. He brightened and said that he had never been there, but he did go to Georgetown University, where he earned a BA in political science! We chatted for while, which he was eager to do, and it was all very pleasant. This kind of thing would never happen in Suresnes.
Next Tuesday, I will fly to Morocco for two weeks. Everybody must be afraid or something, because there are some really good deals. I am paying about $700 for 14 days, including airfare! The hotel has a big pool, a Turkish bath, and a garden. It's a cab ride to the old-town, but I really just want to sit in the sun, anyway. Time to get out of the chill, and get a head-start on spring. It seems to be in the 70s in Marrakesh. When I get back here it should be pretty nice. Maybe even nice enough to go out to Jean-loup's retreat in Brittany. And Claude (of the high-rise apartment) wants to take me out to Fontainebleau. I expect to be home on March 29.
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