PARIS, ONE LAST TIME

In a few hours I leave for the airport to return home. It is a clunky and awkward return because I have to navigate the subway with the suitcase, computer, bag, and now an additional sack because of the repacking that the painting necessitated. All this during morning rush hour on the metro. It can be done!

Last night I ate dinner outside, listening to street music, people watching to the hilt. (The street musician came around for his handout. I thought he deserved it. So did the waiter who called him over to give him some money as well. When I looked on with interest, the waiter explained that these guys rid him of his salary each evening, but he doesn’t have the heart not to pay, they are so good.)

I can’t not post a single food item from my last dinner, so I’ll post the salad for a change (with little crustacean tails thrown in; it did not take long to get used to French food again!).



This morning I get up at dawn and walk endlessly. It is a cliché, but I really do love watching cities wake up on a regular work day. In Paris, I have a perfect vantage point in a café that I know is close to an elementary school. There, I even took a photo of it -- one can see left-over croissant pieces at my table of choice.



I watch the parents walk the kids to school and I try to listen in on the conversation of a handful of women that gather here afterwards. The men routinely stand at the bar for their swig of espresso and a quick friendly exchange, the women stay at the tables, housewives obviously, seemingly privileged, for this is the 6th arondissement. It’s a ‘left bank’ sort of privilege, not quite the ostentatious wealth of the right bank, but everyone certainly is dressed well. And the children! Oh, the clothes on the youngest children are so carefully assembled, so navy, so tailored! The girls and boys are learning early about the aesthetics of appearance. (You can tell there's a parental hand in this because as they get older they lose the dresses and the tailored pants in favor of a toned-down (as in the photo below), though still polished, appearance.)



Just a closing photo of a 'sight,' not just any sight, taken from the vantage of the Place des Invalides, home of my first green ice-cream cone. And now I’m off, to post again, from Madison, on Tuesday.

PARIS & BEYOND

IF YOU LOVE IT SO MUCH, WHY DID YOU LEAVE IT TODAY?

Because innocent obsessions can be indulged and my love for the spring garden knows no bounds.

I have always thought that Giverny (Monet’s garden, about an hour away by train from Paris) was overwhelming in its outrageous beauty. But I’d never seen it in spring. Now is my chance. And it follows well on the heels of Japan since, as I wrote earlier, Monet himself was fascinated by Japanese gardens and had them in mind in his design of the lily pond, the ‘second’ half of the Giverny garden.

I leave Paris very early, even before the cafés have poured their first café crème. (I am staying close to the Sorbonne and so the cafés have names with literary pretensions.)



It’s a bit of a hike from the train station in Vernon to the gardens in Giverny (most people take the bus), but I am up for it. The day is brilliant with sunshine and I pass old houses on the river Seine and blooming chestnuts.





But my hiking plans are foiled half-way through by the generosity of an older couple who take pity on me and pull over to offer a ride. I can’t resist such niceness. They take the time to drive me around and show a better route for my return walk later in the day. I sit in the back seat amidst clutter that includes a stack of baguettes. The smell is terrific! The older man tells me I have a good accent. I say that maybe it’s because I am French. He responds – absolutely impossible! Okay, okay, I wasn’t really serious. I can be fluent in one sentence and completely lost in another.

I am at the gates when the gardens open but it is still crowded. Tour groups are the wrost: they move slowly and block paths.

The garden is indeed splendid, really splendid, but I have come too late for the early spring flowers and too early for the later spring ones. I had thought that I would like this version of the garden better than the mid-summer brilliant spill of nasturtium, lavender and climbing roses, but I’m not sure I do. This garden (unlike mine!) seems to improve with each month. Still, it never disappoints. It remains in my mind the champion of all gardens.







And of course, there’s the part with the pond and the Japanese bridge, so favored by Monet in his paintings, even when he was already losing his sight.







Only after I finish walking through the gardens do I search out a place for the morning café and croissant. All good things have to have their right moment.



I have time before the noon train to Paris and so I walk along dirt roads up the hills behind Giverny. Wild poppies and buttercups are everywhere. I feel like I’m inside a Monet painting. The old village houses contribute to this.





Just outside Giverny I find a small house where a woman is displaying some of her own paintings. Her daughters come in and out, sometimes resting on her lap, other times talking to friends outside. I am tempted beyond temptation by one small painting. It is NOT expensive, really! I’m supporting local artists after all. And I’ll frame it when I get back to Madison. You are not allowed to say you don’t really like it!





Outside the little ‘gallery’ I run into my old village pal who gave me a ride this morning. He is out on his bicycle now and pauses to ask about my morning. We talk and then I tell him that I am on my way to find the secret path into town. He asks when my train is and expresses surprise when I say 50 minutes. “Better really hurry” he warns and pedals off.

Indeed, he is right. The path goes on forever. FOR FUTURE REFERENCE IT TAKES MORE THAN AN HOUR OF SPRINT WALKING TO GET FROM THE GRADENS TO THE STATION.

As I alternate between a jog and a sprint (with the painting, it’s really hard to jog), I begin to think that I cut it too close once again.

But no! At an intersection with the road there stands my village pal! He had gone back to his home, gotten his car and came back to find me and give me a lift to the station.

I AM SO TIRED OF PEOPLE SAYING THAT THE FRENCH ARE RUDE AND UNFRIENDLY!

I learn that he is a retired elementary school teacher. He tells me that a life of teaching in the village has been supremely agreeable. The parents tend to their children, classes are small, and when the weather is good, he’d take the kids for long walks in the woods. What could be easier? He has lived just outside Giverny all his life. His children and grandchildren live here as well. And is there a big family dinner each Sunday, I wonder? But of course! Ah, hence all those fresh baguettes in the car. I tell him it’s like straight out of a movie: time standing still in the village of Giverny.

In Paris, everyone, EVERYONE is flooding to the parks. The little children ride merry-go-rounds and sail boats, an older man feeds the birds. So much good spirit, all because of the gorgeous Sunday weather.







I pass my favorite bookstore. It’s ‘favorite’ status is entirely attributable to the fact that it is on a restaurant path and it stays open late into the night. I often buy a book or two with the resolve to get through it back home, to keep up the language. But I never do get to it and so this time I show great restraint and buy nothing. Even though I was tempted by this title:



It translates to “why don’t the French and Americans understand each other anymore.” It begins with an 1849 quote from Victor Hugo: “Un jour viendra ou l’on verra ces deux groupes immenses, les Etats-Unis d’Amerique et les Etats-Unis d’Europe, se tendre la main par-dessus les mers…” (which, correct me if I’m wrong, seems to mean: ‘A day will come when one will see two immense groups, the United States of America and the United States of Europe, extending a hand over the oceans’; okay, so he was a half visionary). There is a chapter on “la Francophobie Americaine” and “Antiamericanisme” as the author attempts to locate the hostilities each feels toward the other in a historical context. Yes, of course, it’s understandable. But I see the author speculating about a Bush reelection and I know that the vision of a stronger Europe building better relations with the US is suddenly very much in doubt.

I have to pause now. Excessively long posts are disconcerting –even to the writer. Besides, There are still blocks to be walked, cafés to be visited. I’ll end with a sight picture again. On a day like today, the Louvre is competiting with the parks to attract visitors.