|
|
I don’t know how this could happen but the suitcase that I brought to Paris is no longer big enough for all my things. I didn’t do a lot of shopping but I did buy a few books, a couple pairs of little black flats, some gifts that I will not describe because my friends might be reading this but let’s just say they are smaller than a shoe box. Oh yes, and a sweater for my daughter. And I forgot about the four pounds of coffee for e-husband (and boyfriend) who immediately missed the Parisian coffee when he returned home to the U.S.. My suitcase won’t zip so I walked a block to a row of souvenir shops and bought a Paris duffle bag with the Eiffel Tower stamped on it for $20.
It is rainy and overcast today, I’m walking across the square near the Grand Palais carrying my red umbrella with black polka dots. The wind is blowing slightly and it feels a little like fall. There is melancholy in the air. The leaves on the trees are turning and I’m not sure if it is because of the water shortage or if it is because fall is coming. I walk the long way home because this will be my last stroll through Paris for now, the last walk along the Seine and down Rue St. Honore that has been my neighborhood for the past 25 days.
After packing my two bags, checking out of the apartment with the rental agent (I had to pay for a broken wine glass and for the electricity I used) I say adieu to my little apartment across from the Louvre. I have become my true self in Paris—I have sat at cafes, strolled through parks, visited museums, learned the language (un petite peu) sipped wine, purchased little black flats, baked bread, ridden bikes to the Eiffel Tower and eaten the most amazing food on the planet. I will never be the same.
There is never any ending to Paris, and the memory of each person who has lived in it differs from that of any other, … We always returned to it … Paris was always worth it and you received return for whatever you brought to it. ~Ernest Hemingway
In Paris, the key to good living is very simple: wine, cheese, cafes and pastries. C’est tout. You will also find at least one patisserie on every block. My friend Eliza gave me the book Patisseries that provides a list of the most well known shops and their specialties—many are my immediate neighborhood.
 The book Patisseries has been very helpful Sadly, I will never be able to try all the pastries–at Miss Manon Patisserie they make 40 different pastries. But I’ve done my best to visit as many patisseries as I can before I leave. They are very easy to find, just look for the shop with a line all the way out the door into the street.
La Boulangerie Julien, 75 Rue St. Honore: one block from my apartment, this shop is known for its sable cookies. These delicious cookies are large and flat, almost like a tea biscuit, with melted chocolate chips on top. They come in additional flavors but the day I visited only chocolate was available.
Philippe Gosselin:125 Rue St. Honore I’ve been watching this closed shop for four weeks, hoping that it would open before I return to the U.S. and today—voila! It is open. In addition to being a patisserie, Gosselin is a chocolatier—I try one of his delicious chocolate truffles.
Aux Castelblangeous, 168 Rue St. Honore: Known for its cake like creation called Elegance—but I can’t get enough of the tartelettes with framboises. Also, Aux Castelblangeous is the best place to pick up a sandwich—incredibly fresh and beautiful—they are made on a crusty baguette and look like a movie prop they so perfectly represent the French sandwich. And they are incredibly cheap—2.90 Euros for a huge fresh delicious sandwich!
Laduree—one of the most famous patisseries and tea rooms in Paris. I stop in for macarons during a sudden rainstorm and stay for a drink to stay out of the rain (plus I don’t want my macarons to get wet. This delicate little cream filled cookie is not like the macaroons we think of and it comes in many many flavors. I choose chocolate, orange, lemon, pistachio, caramel, and rose petal. The writer Marybeth Bond advised me to try the rose petal macaron. It is light pink and has a light rose flavor, hard to describe, but if you can imagine eating delicious rose petals, this is it.
 Macarons at Larduree Jean-Paul Hevin: (should be spelled Heaven)—this popular shop on Rue Saint Honore is popular with the couture fashion crowd. The perfect gift for the lovely woman I met with at the cosmetic company—I bought a box for her which I will drop off today. I also picked up a few extra small boxes for gifts back home.
 Miss Manon Loic is my guide today for a private class and tour of Miss Manon—a very popular patisserie on Rue Saint Antoine. We will learn how to make bread, (or pain) and croissants. I arrive at 8:00 a.m. but the bakers have arrived at 1:00 a.m. and will work until around 1:.00 p.m.. Then the second shift arrives. In most bakeries, there is only one shift in the morning and the bread sits all afternoon so when people pick it up on their way home from work it is not the freshest. At Miss Manon, the bread is warm and fresh until 9:00 p.m. In France, many of the bakeries that appear to be authentic are actually not. They may ship their bread in from an industrial producer. Not Miss Manon.
 Bread at Miss Manon  Pastries at Miss Manon
To begin our tour, Loic and I sample a pastry of our choice and I discover a choco framboise. It is a croissant with half dark chocolate filling and half raspberry filling—a dream come true. Next we walk down very steep stairs to the basement where the bread is baked.
 Loic my tour guide
In France, bread bakers and pastry chefs go to vocational school at around 15 years of age. After completing 2-5 years of school, then they apprentice with an experienced chef for about 5 years before going out on their own. The work is physically demanding with long hours and as a result you see very few women in bakeries in France (or as chefs.) In Miss Manon there are no women.
Antonio, who is 25, begins our lessons with the importance of bread in France. It is not just a food—bread is a thread in the fabric of French life. The making of bread is regulated—you are not allowed to deviate. First we see the most popular bread of France—baguette. This is the long narrow loaf of bread that we see French people marching down the street at night carrying like a saber. The other bread we will learn about today is the traditional bread. Years ago, the French government saw that baguette was becoming commercialized—you could complete the process entirely with machines. To save the careers of artisanal bread makers, the government began allowing the production of “traditional†bread. This loaf if made with a starter like sour dough and it is a fatter loaf with more air than baguette. It is yellower in color than the white baguette. The traditional loaf has a yeasty smell from the starter. Both are made with professional yeast that is not like the yeast we find in stores—it comes in large blocks like a pound of butter and it is moist to the touch.
In Paris there is a competition each year to see who makes the best bread. The winner is allowed to make bread for the President for one year.
 Antonio knows the recipes by heart but he keeps notes on the bread that he bakes each day
The bread is mixed in a larger mixer, and then it is cooled to allow it to rise. I am surprised because I thought bread needed to be warm to rise. The bread in France is placed in a cool place to rise. The dough is divided into uniform sections that will become different shaped loaves. I try my hand a creating a baguette, a braid and a traditional loaf. Then we take a razor blade and cut five cuts on the loaves of traditional bread (always five scores, never more or less). A shot of steam goes into the over—this is very important for the color of the loaf and for the crust. Then the bread bakes for about 15 minutes.
 A variety of shapes
While our bread is baking we now go upstairs to learn how to make croissants. A finer flour (number 45) is used to make croissant, along with butter, sugar and milk. There are 2 kilograms of butters for 6 kilograms of dough but as Loic points out –there is still less fat in a croissant than a hamburger. Miss Manon produces 700 croissants per day during the week and 1200 per day on the weekend. Marcel our teacher in croissant techniques has made over 1 million croissants in his life.
 A butter sandwich
There are 170 layers in a croissant—that’s why they are flaky. You place the butter on the dough followed by another layer of dough creating a butter sandwich. Then you fold the dough over, and over and rolling it out. The bakery uses a machine for this and it is still very time consuming—I can’t imagine rolling the dough out over and over by hand. (the pop and fresh dough in the dairy case at the grocery store is looking more appealing now.) When the dough has been folded and rolled, it is cut into triangles. We stretch out the triangles carefully so we don’t tear the dough and then starting with the wide end of the dough we roll it to the small end creating a crescent.
 Croissant Triangles
Shocking news: France did not create the croissant which means crescent. It was created in Austria. The crescent is the symbol of Islam and when there was Turkish rule over Austria the “crescent†or croissant was created to honor the Turkish. It was brought to Paris where according to Loic it was perfected. The French believe they are the creator or all best things: wine, croissants, chocolate…However, it is true that pain chocolat or chocolate croissants are definitely a French creation.
 Ready for the oven
While we are working there is a “croissant emergency†on the intercom—the people downstairs in the retail bakery need more croissants! We return to work next on the pain chocolate. The croissant dough is cut into rectangles instead of triangles—then a stick of dark chocolate is laid on top of the dough—we sample a piece of the chocolate for quality control and it is delicious. About a third of dough is folded over the chocolate. Then next to that fold another stick of chocolate is placed and the dough folded over that chocolate too. For the chocolate framboise that I loved, you would place raspberry jam instead of the second chocolate stick giving you one side chocolate and one side raspberry jam..
 Voila--my loaves
We are in the bakery for three hours and at the end of our tour I am given two loaves of traditional bread and one braided loaf. I’m wondering if I might want to enter the presidential competition for best bread but then realize I will be going home in two days so I don’t really have time. I am full from the choco framboise that we ate earlier in the day and as I walk down the street wondering what to do with my loaves, I see a homeless woman and child sitting on the sidewalk. The boy is wearing sneakers with Cookie Monster on them. “Voulez vous du pain Madame?†The woman extended her hand and took a loaf. “Merci Madame!†I walked another block with the warm loaf and found a white haired man and his dog. “Voulez vous du pain, monsier?” “Oui, Madame! Merci!” He gave me a toothless smile. I walked back to the apartment feeling that there couldn’t have been a better use for the bread I made.
(
First let me say that my computer has gone haywire. For some strange reason, spell check has switched to French. So when I type, every English word that I type appears underlined like it is misspelled. But the French words are not underlined, in other words, c’est parfait. I may have typos now because only my French words are being spell checked correctly. Go figure.
Something I may not have mentioned: I actually have a meeting scheduled in Paris for a public relations client. My small public relations firm is working with a beauty service provider in Jackson Hole that is unlike any I’ve come across in my spa trekking around the U.S. She has a spa near Los Angeles that attracts the celebrity clientele and now she is opening a spa in Jackson Hole. The product line that she uses is based in Paris. So voila, the next thing I know I am scheduled for a facial and a meeting with the Directeur des Ambassades de Beauté followed by lunch.
This all sounds great, n’est ce pas? Except for the meeting and lunch which is making me nervous. The French have different manners than we do in the U.S. I watch a video on YouTube about how to eat in a French restaurant. You put the napkin in your lap immediament. You keep your wrists on the table (no hands in the lap.) You wipe your mouth before taking a drink of anything. You keep your fork in the left hand—always. You eat everything you are served.
The Ambassade is located on the Champs Elysee so I take a cab. I arrive at my appointment early; the note I received telling me my appointment was at 11 :00 but it is actually scheduled for 11 :30. The people are gracious and make me feel very welcome. I meet with the director and a vice president who explain the company philosophy before continuing for my facial treatment. The facial treatment is fabulous–I have never had such an experience and when I leave I’m quite sure that I’ve never looked better.
 Note: this is not me but you get the picture Following the treatment, I am invited to lunch with the director—a woman my same age who is the spitting image of Nicole Kidman. People approach her on the street and ask if she is Nicole Kidman so I am not making this up. She is lovely and so easy to talk to. Lunch is going swimmingly but that is exactement when I commit the faux pas.
I cannot eat my entire lunch. I try, really I do but then my lettuce is swimming in ceasar dressing, all limp, and I cannot eat the final third. The well-mannered beautiful French woman eats her entire salad and there is not a drop of dressing remaining on her plate. I can tell that our relationship has now changed so I’m determined to redeem myself.
She orders un cafe. I am not a person who ever drinks espresso and certainly not at 3 :00 in the afternoon. But when in Rome, or Paris, or whever I am…I do it. My hands are shaking ! I will not sleep for days! But at least I look great!
One thing that Sarah wants to do while she was in Paris is a wine tasting. I find one that sounds great: Our French sommelier will teach you how to read a French label and how to navigate a wine list. We’ll go through the major French wine regions and the interesting details that make French wines unique.
The tasting takes place in an authentic royal wine cellar in the center of Paris, right near the Louvre, in a cellar that was once a prison–the perfect dark, damp place for a wine tasting.
Sarah and I take our seats at the table, pour ourselves some water and try a piece of French bread as we wait for the sommelier to begin. We will taste champagne, two whites and three reds—perfect because I love white; Sarah loves champagne and red.
 The wines we will chug, I mean, taste
Our sommelier talks so fast that his English sounds more like French (we will call him Jacques because we couldn’t understand his name). He had worked at St Jean Vineyards in California for a while. But since then, he has worked at several French winemakers before coming to Paris. When he talks about California wines he put his nose slightly in the air and uses a tone of condescension.
He teaches us about the different regions of wine making in France—very helpful to know. He recommends small French champagne makers–but the problem is that many of the smaller wine makers don’t export. When he gets to the Beaujolais region, he warns against drinking too much of the trendy nouveau Beaujolais or you’ll get a headache.
When reading labels, he points out, French wines are made by domains or chateaux. “I like to buy domains because there are smaller producers under 50,000 bottles per year and they are usually a good value. You won’t be paying extra for the marketing of the wine like you do at the larger chateau labels.â€
One thing I’ve noticed is that when I drink wine in European countries, I can drink a lot more without any effect. “Which types of wine give you the best buzz?” I ask. O.k. not really, I rephrase it to sound a little more mature. “Why is it possible to drink more of some wines without feeling the effects of alcohol?” I ask him. He says it’s because many French wines have lower alcohol content—Americans produces wine with has higher alcohol content due to their production process. The definition of high alcohol wines are wines with 13 percent alcohol and above—reds can be very high in alcohol content.
What are some wine faux pas? Always look the person in the eyes when you toast or it is bad luck and you’ll have seven years of bad sex. Do not chug the wine although you may gargle with it and you will look like a wine connoisseur (plus he told us this is a way to get drunk fast). Hold the glass by the stem. If you do not care for the wine, do not say “This is cat urine!” simply pour the glass into our friend’s glass or into a plant. If you open a bottle of wine and it smells bad–do not drink this wine! Life is too short to drink bad wine!
We taste the wines and evaluate them by color, legs or tears, and fragrance or bouquet. “Actually thees wine has lemon, citrus and grass—can you smell eet?†Sarah and I inhale; yes by gosh there is a little grass in the bouquet. If you want to compliment a wine but you don’t know what to say, just say, “eet is complex.”
 This is Jacques after I've had a few glasses of wine
Since we were only catching about every third word of what he says, we simply enjoy the wine. At the end of the tasting, Jacques talks about the future of wine. Actually, he is very very concerned that people are drinking less and less wine. Each year people are drinking about a liter less. His parting message to us is to drink more wine and help the French wine industry. So Sarah and I leave the tasting feeling like it is our moral duty to drink more French wine and we set out for a cafe so that we can help the French economy.
My friend Sarah arrived for a visit! She is my friend Sandy’s daughter—Sandy and I have been friends since the fifth grade. Sarah is a beautiful poet from Los Angeles who has a smile like Cameron Diaz. I have promised Sandy we will not get into trouble.
 Sarah in Paris
Here is something I adore about e-husband (and boyfriend). He loves Sandy and Sarah. He was very excited about Sarah coming to Paris and he gave me ideas about what we might want to do: I bet Sarah would like Versailles Do you think Sarah would want to go on a walking tour? You’ve got to love a man who looks out for your friends.
So I thought e-husband (and b.f.) had a splendid idea—we would go on a literary walking tour on the Left Bank. Sarah and I allow 45 minutes to get there which seems like ample time. On this beautiful Paris morning, we walk along the Seine to the Left Bank, follow the map to find the Classic Walking tours gathering place Metro Stop Cardinale Lemoine.
In Paris, it is sometimes hard to gauge how long it will take you to walk to your destination. Some things look very close on a map but take longer than you think to walk there. We have walked thirty minutes and we are still pretty far from the metro stop. We pick up our pace—practically jogging. My daughter complains that during her childhood she suffered because I am such a fast walker and sometimes I’m oblivious to the pace of others. But Sarah is right there along side of me. Finally when we reached a maze of side streets, I ask a man on the street for directions to the Metro stop “C’est la!†he says pointing.
Sure enough, he gave us directions to the Metro stop but it is the wrong metro stop. The tour starts in five minutes but we will not give up! We retrace our steps, ask another woman for directions and arrive at the tour precisely at 10:30 (sweating, panting, but on time.)
 Ernest and first wife Hadley lived on top floor
The tour is “A Moveable Feast Tour†taking us to Hemingway’s Paris haunts—we see his studio, his home, the Mouffetard area where he lived. We also see where James Joyce lived, and we learned about their lives in Paris in the 20s.
 Hemingway wrote in a studio on the very top floor
We are happy we made it to the tour—it would have been disappointing to miss it. Afterwards we walk to the Luxembourg Gardens that Hemingway loved and watch the children playing with their little boats in the lake.
In French class we are allowed to bring in a question and the teacher Sonita will answer/translate for us. Today I asked, “How do you say, may I photograph your dog?â€
I thought this would be a very handy sentence. But the other students manqué (mocked) me. The teacher was very nice and did not make me feel petite about my question. On the contrary, she taught me how to say it in French and I plan to put it to good use on the streets of Paris.
We learned the word manqué today because our teacher told us that people mock the French President Nicholas Sarkozy and his wife Carla Bruni who was a super model and dated Mick Jagger in her former life. They make fun of them for being inseparable lovebirds–even though Paris is the City of Love, and you see French lovers kissing on the streets of Paris, apparently the French are uncomfortable when it comes to PDA by the president. There was the famous “chou-chou†episode where Carla Bruni called the prime minister chou-chou (honey) in front a journalist—next thing you know it’s an internet sensation. (In class, we learned the new word chou-chou.)
 French President Nicholas Sarkozy and wife Carla Bruni
Another very useful word we learned today was “merde.†I was only familiar with the swear word, “merde!†the word that you would say if you accidentally hit your ankle with the kickstand of your Velib bicycle and it means crap. However, merde! Also means “good luck.†In France, before an actor goes on stage, someone might say “merde†to wish them luck. But it is bad luck if you say “merci†in return. You must simply walk onto the stage.
Here’s a trick question: If your friend was rushing up the stairs to wish you luck before you went on stage and right when they reached you they stubbed their toe and said “merde!” Do you think they meant crap or good luck?
You, mes amis, are learning to speak French by reading French words and you do not even need to come to Paris to do it. But you still may want to because sometimes things are lost in translation.
I just couldn’t stand them anymore—the Trashed Tuilleries shoes went into the trash today for many, many reasons. But now, what will take their place?
You may wonder, “what’s the problem! She has plenty of shoes.†Au contraire.
Guess what –the German Nanny shoes gave me blisters. No German Nanny Shoes to wear, no Trashed Tuilleries Shoes, what will I use for shoes that
a. are comfortable enough to walk miles in
b. I don’t care if they get ruined.
I’m walking out of class today asking myself this question wearing the German Nanny Shoes and limping slightly when I see a rack of shoes at the Les Halle Market–row after row of little black flats for only 15 Euros. I try on a pair and they feel 100 times better than the German Nanny Shoes currently torturing my feet. So I hand over my 15 E, put the German Nanny Shoes in my bag and wear my new purchase during the ten-minute walk home.
 Les chaussures plastique! Picture walking down the streets of Paris wearing plastic milk cartons on your feet. That’s how my feet felt about a block away. I counted the miserable blocks to the apartment, walked inside, took a photograph of the shoes for my blog and threw them in the trash too, feeling only slightly guilty that I wasted 15 E. Remember the old saying: You get what you pay for. Now on a quest to find another pair of little black flats!
In Paris, parks are a serious form of entertainment. You go to a park to do nothing. Lie on the grass. Kiss your chou chou. Watch people walk buy. You don’t see much activity–when you see people jogging, you know they are Americans. When I have looked for a dog to photograph in the Tuileries, there was not a chien in sight.
It’s cooler today—the perfect day for a stroll to the park. In the late afternoon, I pack a book, a bottle of water, sunglasses and a camera and head to les Jardin des Tuilieries. Once the Royal Garden of the Louvre Palace, the Tuileries is considered Paris’s grandest park. Located on 60 acres connecting the museums of the Louvre, the Orsay, the Orangerie and the Jeu de Paume, its location makes it a favorite resting stop for weary tourists as well as for tired Parisians after a busy day at work.
 A fountain at the Tuilieries with the Ferris Wheel in the background (notice white dirt)
The Tuilieries has dirt walking paths with white dirt/pebbles that completely trash your shoes. The dust is impossible to wipe off so I planned to always wear my Trashed Tuilieries Shoes but today I forget and wear the German Au Pair Shoes. Merde! (but perhaps the raison etre for another pair of black flats!)
 People sitting by a fountain
People occupy every chair. They are sunning by the fountain, watching children play in the mazes, taking photographs in front of the lavender gardens. I walk midway through the park until I find a spare chair under a tree and then I plan to do what the Parisians do in parks. Relax.
 A topiary at the Tuileries
But first—I want to take a few photos. O.K. Now I will read my book about Picasso. Wait, where did I put the French dictionary, I need to look up a word. O.K. now I will relax. I have nowhere I need to go and nothing I need to do—I rarely have this feeling back home.
Another of my other favorite gardens in Paris is the Luxembourg Gardens on the Left Bank. Ernest Hemingway lived near the gardens and spent many mornings there. I’m reading A Moveable Feast for the first time since I was in college (a long time ago) and I read:
You got very hungry when you did not eat enough in Paris because all of the bakery shops had such good things in the windows and people ate outside at tables on the sidewalk so that you saw and smelled the food. When you had given up journalism and were writing nothing that anyone in America would buy, explaining at home that you were lunching out with someone, the best place to go was the Luxembourg gardens where you sat and smelled nothing to eat all the way from the Place de l’Observatoire to the rue de Vaugirard.
 A path at the Luxembourg Gardens
At the Luxembourg Gardens, children sail little wooden boats in the lake. Light filters though the trees on paths through the park. And magnificent flower gardens.
 Little wooden boats at the Luxembourg Gardens
Unlike Hemingway, I am not hungry when I visit the Luxembourg gardens–the bakery shops are my friends. My new goal is to eat every kind of fruit tart in Paris that I can find. I guess tarts are the equivalent of pie in the U.S. and tarts come in many of the same fruit flavors. So far I’ve had lemon, raspberry, apple, pear (my favorite so far). There are still rhubarb, blackberry, coconut, cherry waiting for me. So many tarts, so little time. But then, maybe I will need to join the other Americans and jog through the gardens.
Note to self: it is very hard to read the tiny print in the Paris Circulation (map of Paris) when one is crying. My estranged husband (and boyfriend) left today and I was not prepared for how I felt about him leaving.
 Kiss by the Hotel de Ville, Robert Doisneau
When I originally planned this trip my thoughts were in this order:
A 60,000 ticket to Paris!
Daughter will be gone the entire month of August
Business is typically slower in our office during August (and I can work via the internet)
I could rent an apartment for the month
I could take French classes to help me take the second language requirement for Ph.D. candidates (if I want to go back to school and get one some day.)
I will ask e-husband if he’d like to come
I pictured my independent self sauntering through Paris and oh-by-the-way it will be fun to have e-husband here because we have a wonderful time together when it is just the two of us. We get into trouble when we start adding our families. But when it is just us, we become the two people who met and dated seven years ago and fell in love.
Still, planning a trip as an “educational experience†is much different than planning a romantic getaway. I knew we’d have a great time but the purpose of my trip was learning the language. Before the trip, I looked at Google maps with directions to the school from the apartment; took placement tests for class, and practiced verb conjugation.
You probably knew what was coming. You reading this blog perhaps had insider information about what occurs when two people who still love each other come to Paris. This is Paris after all, the city of love. In the Let’s Go Paris book, a random fact: estimated†romantic encounters†in a day: 4,959,476. The population is listed as 2.2 million people—do the math!
For the first time since we were married six years ago we spent a week together without clients, children or relatives of any kind—just the two of us. We sat on park benches and held hands walking down a boulevard. We sat in cafes and talked about everything like old friends. “This is the best honeymoon ever!” e-husband (and b.f.) says. “Yes, but we are separated,”” I remind him. “Oh yeah, I forgot,” he says. When a waiter asks, “Would you like the same wine as your wife?”, he says, “oh, she’s my girlfriend.” We didn’t watch television, or check email very often. We didn’t talk on our cell phones. We woke up and decided what our adventure would be for the day. And I remembered why I loved e-husband (and b.f.) in the first place: his adventurous spirit, his generosity toward people, his sense of humor, his intelligence—plus he is cute.
Walking back from class today, I call e-husband (and b.f.) who had already arrived in London. I stop in a bookstore for an English/French dictionary and browse through the literature section, listening to Bruce Springsteen singing Queen of the Supermarket on the stereo. I make my way down the street to a sandwich shop and buy a jambon sandwich then stop to consult a map to the Hotel De Ville. But reading a map is impossible at the moment. I have on large sunglasses that are getting wet and it’s like reading a novel through a glass of water. But just so you know, I’m only allowing myself to be sad this one afternoon because this is Paris after all.
|
|
