I set loose my first thoughts for an Ocean post facing the most beautiful sunshine. I'm daring to say this: I cannot remember having weather this perfect for a Paris trip. A light breeze, 57F (14C) now, but it will go up to 63F by afternoon. Besides, in the sunshine, I don't even need my jacket. I shed it, along with the scarf. The latter is just for show anyway. When in Paris, you wear a scarf.
I'm at the Brasserie Bonaparte. I'd been strolling toward the old familiar Cafe Deux Magots for lunch -- they have such a big terrace! But just across the narrow street, I saw Le Bonaparte and it had 100% French hanging in the air and I know that at Deux Magots you can never reach such numbers because foreigners (like me) occupy many of the tables, so I stop here, facing the sunshine and thinking -- I will have to pay my weather dues for this beautiful, sunny day. I'll probably have to contend with rain on Christmas and a snowstorm on my April birthday, because you cant ever have it all, and this day surely grabs an outsized share of weather perfection. Well, let me soak it in. Me and the numerous others on the Bonaparte terrace.
The day began unconventionally. It was close to 2 am before I finished my post and finished my reading for the day. And just as I was willing myself to sleep, the phone pinged and I glanced to see that Snowdrop was sending a "missing you" message. This called for a response and so we texted for a while and now it was getting to be awfully close to 3am. Do you blame me for then not waking up until 9:30? Oops. I was supposed to show up for breakfast downstairs half an hour ago. Never mind. I'm not crowding the breakfast room. By the time I walk down (which, by the way, always reminds me how more casual I am with my appearance than a typical French woman -- the stairwell has pictures such as this one to make that abundantly clear)...
... everyone is done with the morning meal and I have the breakfast room to myself. Delicious stuff.
Now what?
I vaguely thought that maybe I should do something slightly more touristy. Paris is beautiful in many ways and to neglect the major iconic monuments, bridges and architectural splendors is just plain dumb. Back home, I did purchase tickets for an important and probably marvelous art exhibition, but I'd gotten the scoop from those who have gone before me that it is a headache. Even with advance tickets, there was a wait, it was crowded and spacing was difficult. So I turn my back to it, art and purchased ticket notwithstanding. In any case, anything indoors today is just not right. The weather, remember?
So I head for the River Seine (pausing along the way to book a table for dinner in the Bucci area). (And pausing for what seems to be a daily selfie habit.)
(Passing a very esoteric bookstore: all about the Alps. Amazing that it has survived both Amazon's war and the pandemic closures.)
(Ditto the poster and booksellers along the Seine...)
I love the Seine, for many reasons -- only one has to do with the fact that it so neatly chops Paris in half: the Left, where you can easily find neighborhood quiet and still be within walking distance to everything important, and the Right -- the side with most of the biggies: the Louvre, the Arc de Triomphe, Champs Elysees, and the wealth soaked streets of the super rich (if gawking is your thing). Toward the east and the back of the Right there are some pretty interesting neighborhoods perfectly suited for people half my age, but they are to the east and the back. You have to walk a lot, or use the subway to see anything within the heart of Paris.
I love the Seine, too, because Monet loved it and he painted it and its moods so well!
Photos for you, looking east and west. It's all about the river right now!
(The long Pont Neuf -- the oldest bridge spanning the river in Paris.)
(the Musee d'Orsay and THE Tower.)
I cross over to the Right just for a short while. I pass by the Louvre, where I see they've done a lot of tunnel building since I was here last. No more traffic careening in front of the pyramid. It's all directed to go under and around.
Then I turn toward one of my favorites on this side: the Tuileries Gardens. I feel a little nostalgic because this is where I always bring the kids -- the merry-go-round is so good! -- but still, I take stock of this place in autumn. A not so crowded autumn. It's obvious that the tourist traffic here is significantly less present than in normal times.
(with a corner of the Louvre...)
I look at my watch: past the noon hour. I should be imagining a place for lunch. I consider just picking up a baguette sandwich, like one of these:
... and taking it to the Luxembourg Gardens. They do sandwiches so well here! None of that thick loaf of bread that makes it impossible to fit the thing in your mouth. No overload on the stuffing either. So should I buy a sandwich? No. Not today. I want to sit down and look at a menu.
And that's how I wind up at Le Bonaparte.
(French selfie)
There is for me a challenge in ordering a meal in France: it's not that I can't read the menus. By now I can, and google translate will help me with any menu item my brain hasn't retained. The stress for me is in ordering well, or at least not poorly. It's okay if the restaurant isn't the best in the world. You can't pick "the best" all the time. You have to try new spots and unreviewed spots and spots that just catch your fancy. And they can't all turn out to be winners.
But what's galling is when you pick a fine eatery, and then pick a stupid menu item that (what a surprise) turns out to be possibly their worst offering. Sort of like going to a fish place and ordering a hamburger. Or going to Le Bonaparte and ordering poached eggs with asparagus.
The eggs were fine enough. Not perfect but ok. Poaching eggs is all about oversight and a under-cooking or overcooking is pretty common. But what's really stupid is ordering something with asparagus in October. The vegetable is not in season and so it has to come from some place like China, Peru or Mexico. The dish was fine. Just not the best choice.
Since I was mildly annoyed with myself, I decided to hold the waiter accountable for one little infraction. I seem to have forgotten the cardinal rule of French dining: never argue with a waiter. They're not used to it, they will not like you for it. French people, whose palates have to be refined at some higher level, nonetheless never criticize their dish and in all my years of dining here, I've never seen a plate send back to the kitchen. Ever. If they dont like it, they dont come back. But they eat what is put in front of them without so much as a frown. But I wasn't about to complain about the food (which was good after all). I just noted that perhaps he should not charge me separately for the salad, since the egg dish was under a heading "Eggs with Salad."
Ah, but Madame, your egg dish came with asparagus.
Yes, and the other egg dishes on the list came with cheese or ham or potatoes. What they all had in common was that they were under the heading of "...with salad."
Guess who won that argument?
(Even these school kids would know better than to challenge a waiter's authority on any matter whatsoever.)
After lunch, I meandered this way and that...
... popping once again into the bookstore, then finally making my way to that department store -- Le Bon Marche. (I'll share this secret: they have the best restrooms on the Left Bank in the Bon Marche!) And in that store I bought a book about walks outside of Paris. I cannot wait to test it out. Not on this trip, but soon. I have faith!
(Le Bon Marche is staging an "art installation." Flowers hanging on green stems from the ceiling...)
And now it's getting to be late afternoon and I am tired. My legs ache. My feet ache. Time to come back to the Luxembourg Gardens where, because of all that glorious sunshine, people are congregating. I find a chair, I take out my book, and I join the reading, smooching, eating, sleeping, chatting, baby feeding hoards.
(crowded on one bench)
(Spaced on many chairs)
And this stands out for me: I choose to be here, rather than back in my room with the pretty little balcony which, too, has plenty of afternoon sunshine. We surely are social creatures.
The hour in that chair is magnificent: it feels like a stretch out on a beach (with palm trees!), only without the water. No, it feels more like being in a garden cafe at the base of a mountain: the air is crisp but warm, and there is a hum of French all around me. So maybe it's at the base of an Alpine mountain. This is what total relaxation feels like!
Leaving the Gardens, I come across something new: wooden animals. Makes me think of home. We surely have deer grazing in our gardens at the farmette...
And where is dinner tonight? I go back to Atlas, in the Bucci neighborhood. (Wonderful terrace, with heat lamps!)
I'd eaten here before. It's never great, and never bad. It is what you'd expect, even with your inflated high standards, from a Parisian brasserie. They specialize in oysters for apps, but I dont really want an oyster. I take, instead, pink shrimp (which in France are very good -- they come from Madagascar and are plump and have a delicious flavor). And then (please don't tell Ed!) veal, done in the Normand style (with cream and mushrooms). With the exception of chicken, Ed and I never eat meat at home and we especially would want to avoid veal. Still, veal is common in Europe. Even in postwar Poland -- if we had any meat at all, it was always veal, straight from the village. And I took that veal habit into my adult life and indeed, whenever I would travel with my daughters across the ocean, the one thing they would always like from the often weird for them menus was veal. And tonight I feel like the vegetarian who has gone off the wagon: drunken with meat love. Just for this one night!
No dessert. I still have cookies back in the hotel room. Slowly, I turn around and head back to the hotel. The Bucci area is always packed with night eaters and drinkers, but today I'm especially amazed by it: this is how life looks like, even among the grumblers and nay-sayers, when a mandate leads to near total vaccination of eligible people. They did their bit. It may not last, it may someday unravel, new variants may emerge -- life is unpredictable! But I can surely say that their September and October are feeling very wonderful for them.
I have a goal for tonight: go to bed before midnight 1am. No more words for today. Just a soft pillow or two or three and a quiet night, getting me ready for another day of Paris tomorrow.
