You've heard me say that in Paris, weather is irrelevant? Or at least unimportant? Well, today it set out to prove me wrong! If last week it was sunny and in the 70sF (low 20sC) here, today it's just a couple of degrees over freezing. Add the wind and you are way below cold. Open the window and you get wet snowflakes in your face.
Happy April!
And yes, we are happy. Snowdrop, because she slept solidly and woke up refreshed. Gogs -- well, because it really doesn't matter what the weather's like.
We will manage!
Breakfast, downstairs and as is typically the case -- full of the good baked goods I so crave when back home. (Snowdrop is intent on finishing her scratch drawings of Paris that the hotel gave her.)
Progress! Time for bacon. (I push protein.)
And then we spend a little time in the room. She watches French cartoons and continues with her drawing, I try to fix her iPad which unfortunately continues to break down (hence the French cartoons).
And when the snow/rain pauses, we set out. Which of course gets the snow/rain going again!
Should I hold back? We start slowly. To a local clothes store to pick up something for sibs and cousins. Snowdrop doesn't like most things for herself that are outside her normal repertoire, but she loves picking out things she thinks the other kids will like. (For herself? A stuffed koala, which she then carries all day long, prompting waiters to treat it with respect, as they believe this must be her Doudou. French children carry their love object (Doudou) into a ripe older age!)
We fill a shopping bag and I wonder at the sense of this, given that the weather is terrible and we have a day ahead that may have us out and about a great many hours. Well, no matter. We will manage!
(In the store, by the checkout counter.)
I hesitate on what to do next. It's not Jardin Luxembourg weather. (Note the apparel on people out and about...)
I have museum passes for the afternoon, but how do we fill the morning? Maybe find another enclosure? You want to go to the department store?
(passing the "hidden" Eiffel Tower, I ask her: can you find it? It's hard!)
We pause at a bookstore to warm up. Out again, I see that she is a little dragging. It's just barely after noon, but I can tell she is hungry so I scrap the department store and steer her instead a little further, to Cafe Varenne for lunch.
This place is always supremely busy and I never make a lunch reservation and yet they always squeeze me in. I love it for its atmosphere, for its traditional home cooking, and perhaps equally importantly, for its best wait staff on the planet. (The owner is caught in this pic. His wife is always keeping things in order behind the counter.)
They aren't just friendly, they look you in the eye and intuit what you need. She has a Doudou? Here's a stool to keep the animal happy. There's no pasta on the menu, but they'll always fix it for your kid and put great slabs of parmesan on top, in addition to grated stuff on the side, which pleases Snowdrop no end.
Me, I order their special for the day -- white asparagus (with thin prosciutto and parmesan). It's on a menu only for a very short while (in early spring) and it is outstanding.
I remind Snowdrop that she actually likes asparagus and indeed, she eats my tips and proclaims them to be great.
As we eat, the table squeezed just behind ours gets a customer. He hears our English and decides to engage us. He's my age and speaks English perfectly. As well he might -- he went to the university in the US. At our university in Madison no less. At around the same time Ed studied there. His work now takes him to the west coast, but he mostly lives in Paris. And no, no grandchildren. No children either. I dont like to give the impression that having children is some kind of a life obligation, so I mutter some words of understanding about all courses of life, but he interrupts me: it's not like that. I like children. I'd like very much to spoil my granddaughter and take her on a trip to Venice and Paris. It just wasn't meant to be.
And as I leave, I think about this for a while. I always said that I wasn't the older person who desperately needed grandkids. Creating families, I felt, was my kids' decision and I would be happy for them however they took this. Nonetheless, the grandkids came and they have written my retirement playbook for me and now, as I travel with Snowdrop, I recognize how nearly everything about my years is shaped in some fashion by the little ones. It could have been otherwise, but it wasn't. And now I can't imagine it being otherwise.
Short-lived musings. I return to the business at hand which means I have to push us against the wind as we make our way in dismal weather across the river and to the Tuilerie Gardens, nearly empty on this windy and wet day.
Chestnuts. So many green chestnuts, nearly ready to bloom! I ask Snowdrop -- what do you think of this statue? She answers -- to me, it looks very much like (fill in name here of one of her teachers). I let it go at that.
My goal is to get us to the Musee d'Orangerie. I love this place quite a bit and slowly, I am pushing onto Snowdrop (and any grandchild who will listen!) a familiarity with its themes, so that she can begin to recognize the points in art that can bring happiness to the soul, even on a cold day in April! Not only has she heard of Monet at home, but they actually studied (and replicated!) his waterlilies in art class in 1st grade. Seeing these canvases comes at a good time for her.
I'd promised a coffee shop moment with a pastry before we dig into the world of lilies, but you're not going to get that at l'Orangerie. She settles for a bag of potato chips. You make do and indeed, Snowdrop is proving to be quite the strong kid on the block, withstanding the knocks of weather, and grandma's program, and the setbacks as if she were in thick clad armor. Nothing phases her today.
So, onto the art of all art:
We all have favorites: canvases, corners of canvases... and so does she.
And of course, after the lilies, you don't want to go back to the other canvases in the museum. We looked at a handful before, but none after. You want to let the beauty of these unusual lily paintings sink in.
We leave the museum and heroically brave the elements as we cross the river back...
... to the Musee d'Orsay for our encounter with the Impressionists there. I am so glad I have my pass and that I revalidated it. (You can skip all lines with it.) And I am so glad I have my N95 mask. It is crowded! Still, we manage to take in the faves! Names that she will for sure remember -- Monet, Renoir, Degas.
Though again, the cafe experience is not to be. Neither she nor I want to stand and wait in the long line.
On the way out -- the second Statue of Liberty of the day!
From here, it's a very long walk back to the hotel. Snowdrop proposes a taxi, but this is not an easy thing to accomplish in Paris and I refuse to give in to Uber either. We zip ourselves up to the max and slog back. Hey, on the upside, the wet snowflakes mean that we really do not have to open the umbrella. They land, they melt. Big deal!
Close to our hotel we finally pop into a pastry shop and I let her choose anything she wants to take back to our room.
Like her mommy, who was often offered the most exquisite looking baked treats in the city, she too passes them by and opts for the simple chocolate eclair.
Snowdrop is a total chocolate girl.
(This is the weather we're fighting all day long!)
Thank goodness for suckers! They pump a little energy into the last handful of steps!
Late in the afternoon, with frozen cheeks and happy thoughts (that always swell when you finally find shelter from cold weather), we settle into our coziest room at the Baume Hotel...
... and I can honestly say now that the weather was no big deal! Awful, and strange, and still, totally amazing.
Dinner? I quickly cancel a reservation that required another trudge and book a table at the newly opened Gemini Odeon. Right around the corner, with foods the little girl loves. I admit to messing up and forgetting her tiny characters that she likes to bring with her for the often long waits, so she loses herself in the offered alternative.
This is a pasta/pizza place and you can be relaxed about your kid's habits. As I point out to her, the place is packed, but the age is 100% between 20 and 35. With the occasional child.
Bedtime? Better than yesterday! I dont doubt that we'll sleep well. I feel we hiked mountains today. I suppose you could say that in some ways, we did.
With love...
