in and around Paris

The skies have cleared somewhat, at least for the morning, but it's definitely cold by Parisian standards. No matter, by so many counts, it's a beautiful day. I'm grateful. I've long planned for this to be our day for an outing and really, this outing fares poorly when there is rain, even though, in travel, you have to take what comes your way. If the skies want to throw down snow or rain on you, well, you don't get a vote. I am, therefore, so very happy that we were dealt a cool but dry hand today!

It's the day where I ask Snowdrop to put on her new dress. This is a total favor to me and you could argue that I should just let her choose to stay with her comfortable favorites, but we'd made a deal back in Madison and so here we are -- a day for flowers. 

Breakfast, downstairs. 

I'm trying to stack up on protein because really, I have no idea how lunch will work today. Finding dinner foods is easy for this child compared to finding good lunch foods. Especially when we're on the run. We do go out to the local bakery and I try to coax her into a take-out sandwich, but she's not excited by any of it (this was entirely predictable as most sandwiches have butters, sauces, veggies, and all those other beautiful things that a child might have grave doubts about). So I buy cheesecake and mentally add fruits to the bag (thank you, dearest staff at the hotel for resupplying us with fruits!) and hope that this fills her calorie needs for the day.

We also pick up some macarons for dinner dessert. We've been skipping restaurant desserts, but a tiny sweet treat at end the day is always a special thing. Snowdrop doesn't have a real sweet tooth unless there's chocolate and especially if it comes in the shape of a macaron.

And at around noon, we come down to pick up the taxi that is to take us to the train station Gare St Lazare.

This is where the journey starts to be interesting. Meaning, things don't go according to plan.

The taxi driver, who happens to be the same one who did not know where to drop us off yesterday for the boat ride, tells me that he will take us to Gare Montparnasse. That is a train station exactly in the opposite direction to the one we want. I explain -- no, St Lazare. He answers -- sorry, I cant get there. Because of the marathon.

I knew there would be a marathon. The desk yesterday checked the hours of it and we were sure that we could sneak over just at midpoint. Apparently not. Not by this cab driver anyway. Why Montparnasse?

From there, you can take the metro to St Lazare. 

Well, that may have worked had we an hour or more to spare. There's no hope in hell that we'll make our train in that way. Even if I were willing to risk getting a positive Covid test by using a crowded metro, Montparnasse is a zoo of train lines and I dont even have a loaded metro card. So no, that wont work. Minutes are ticking away. What to do?

If we lived in Paris, we'd skip the planned trip to Giverny today and try for another time. But we dont live in Paris and it's today, with tickets in hand, or not at all. So I stop thinking about the credit card bill that will greet me upon my return to the US and tell him -- okay, can you drive us to Giverny?

Where is that?

Up the road. (haha) But first, maybe you should tell me how much this will cost.

He looks things up and comes up with a sum which seems only slightly more than a cab ride to the Venice airport from our hotel there. (That's my justification for it.) 

Okay, go for it.

It takes him an hour to get out of the city. The traffic is awful. I am grateful that no one got car sick because it certainly was that kind of a ride.

The only pleasant moment? seeing the yellow rapeseed fields of France out the window once we get out of the city...

... oh, and the joy of finally getting to the village of Giverny!

As predicted, the tourists haven't yet descended on this place, which is awfully nice for us. The first cafe we enter has tables available. I mean, how unreal is that!

Lunch was okay. Usually there are too many sauces on every dish on every menu for Snowdrop's taste, but here they had a Normandie cheese plate and she is usually happy to go with bread and cheese when all else fails. Me, I order a kir Normande. That's cider with a splash of cassis. It reminds me of old times and more importantly, it's like a big exhale. I mean, we made it!

And at 3:30, we meet Ariane. She is from Giverny and often works in the gardens. Why I should think I would benefit from this is hard to explain. Initially, I thought we could not get into Giverny this year without an escort. No tickets were being sold. So I emailed her and we set a time for our walkthrough.  I  figured Snowdrop wont care whether or not there is a person with great knowledge to explain stuff, while me -- well, maybe I'll learn something. I have questions. She'll have answers.

Ariane was very nice and indeed very knowledgable and she played to Snowdrop, engaging her at every turn. Still, later in the evening Snowdrop and I agreed that we would have been better off on our own. We would have moved at our pace. She would have been given a chance to lose herself in the magic of the gardens. 

Nonetheless, Ariane was good and Monet's gardens (which are the reason of the trip) were, as always, magnificent. Here, spend the late afternoon at Giverny with us!

Over the years, I have been so inspired by these gardens! There were times when I would come to Giverny straight from the airport. I'd overnight in the village and visit the gardens twice -- in the morning and late afternoon. I've learned that late afternoon is best. Less crowded, better light.

But I've never seen the flower beds in very early spring. 

They'd been closed for Covid and closed for the winter, opening for the first time in a while just two days ago. 

Total heaven...

(inside Monet's house: the yellow room...)

(one last one...)

Ariane is helpful in one additional way -- she takes us to the train station in Vernon at the end of the day. She says that they are planning to introduce a self-driving shuttle between Vernon and Giverny very soon. For now, getting to the train station remains a challenge.

(the train ride: so good, especially when compared to the car ride over)

The return train pulls in to Paris toward evening. We are tired and hungry of course. There are no taxis at the cab stand, so we set out to walk back to the hotel. A good 45 minute walk. Except we get lucky and a cab pulls up and we get in and boom! Over the river...

And we are home.

I'd booked a table at a restaurant that is literally a block up from our hotel door for dinner. I'd never eaten there but it's always crowded and no one seems to be complaining. Au Petit Suisse. 

Just what we need. Some chicken, haricots verts, and fries for her, some veal for me and we're done. It was a long day. With flowers and crazy cabs and in the end, grand memories. 

Tomorrow is our last day in Paris. I let her set our schedule. You'll see what she came up with for the two of us!

Good night, with love...

Paris

If I researched hard to gear Venice to a child's interests, Paris to me requires no such adaptations. Yesterday's schedule, for example, was as perfect for an adult, as it was for seven year old Snowdrop. Still, since we are here for five days, I thought that I should maybe try to include something that truly invites children. Today (and then one other day) has a child's imprint all over it. It's not just for kids, but it clearly encourages you to bring them along. Let's see how it goes.

The first tough part is the wake up. The activity is early and it calls for skipping breakfast. To soften the blow, I book a taxi. It's a bit of a hike to our meeting point and it's still near freezing here. Now, where are we off to?

The place is called Manon and it's a family run bakery and pastry shop in the Marais section of Paris. They have opened themselves up to family visits, where you and your kids can come down to the bakery part and watch the bakers do their craft. But it's not just about watching. You then get to roll out your own baguettes and croissants and squeeze out your own trays of financier cakes. What you bake, you can take home with you.

I'm not really sure why Manon has done this. They're quite the well known bakers in Paris and everyone knows that bakers don't like to have people peering over their shoulder when they do their thing. And the spaces are tight and the tools are not safe for everyone. But in France, there's the belief that you have to start young in your education about food and, too, personal responsibility will lead you to make good choices around knives, ovens and such.

So at 8:30, we meet at the bakery. 

(Is this it? Yes it is!)

Our little group has a Norwegian couple (here visiting their daughter who studies in Paris) and Snowdrop and me. 

(Pre-baking snack: some pains au chocolat, an eclair. Great beginning for the little girl!)

Our guide, Igor isn't himself a baker. He's the organizer of this whole set up and he does his work well. (He's with a group in Paris called "Get Your Guide" if you want to look him up on the internet.) And by the way, though he's lived in Paris since he was a child, he is originally from Poland. (And next week he is taking a break from teaching about baking to go back to Poland and help do work with the Ukrainian refugees.)

We go down the narrow stairs to the bakers' kitchen.

(Explaining the difference between a "classic baguette" and a baguette "tradition"...)

Igor points to the myth of the French bakery being somehow exclusively French. Sure, the owners of Manon (and its two sister stores) are French, on the other hand the baking team is anything but. Out of about a dozen bakers, actually only two are French, The others? Try Somalia, Mali, Rumania. 

French men and women don't care for the baker's work which starts at 2 at night and requires not a small amount of physical stamina. (Don't I know it! I worked for two years baking L'Etoile's croissants for Saturday market.) The immigrant population, on the other hand, is enthusiastic and hardworking. I asked one baker (from Somalia) how long he'd worked there. Five years. And he still sports a grin when he watches us stumble through the steps he can do with eyes closed by now.

Okay, here's our baking effort:

(making a boule -- a loaf)

(here come the baguettes!)

("do you know how to braid a loaf?" She does now!)

Next, we make the financier cakes. That's upstairs in the patisserie kitchens.

Here's the one French baker -- he's been here for thirty years and he is in charge of croissant rolling.

We help him. Because natch, on a busy Saturday, he needs our help.

(You're going to tell me Snowdrop needs to tie her hair for this. I asked Igor, hoping he'd say yes, she does need to, but he said no, she does not. She shot me a smug look. The girl does not like to pull her hair back.)

Eventually they will look like this:

We then tackle the pain au chocolate. I've never made these before, so it was fun for me to learn as well.

The financiers are ready! (Snowdrop doesn't really love financiers, but she puts on an appreciative face.)

What she does love is the bread product. Here are the loaves and baguettes that she and I and the Norwegian duo baked:

It's a two hour experience and Snowdrop had tremendous fun. I asked Igor how young some of the kids were who signed up for this and he said they will allow them as young as three, but they dont do much beyond throw flour around the place. Still, I can tell you, Snowdrop, at 7 (and a more serious young baker even at three -- I'm thinking of Primrose and Sparrow who are extremely good and careful in the kitchen) really loved every bit of this morning. Every single bit.

We walk back from the Marais, on the right bank, to our hotel on the left. She is a little apprehensive (isn't it far??) but in fact it's an easy half hour or so and the route crosses places you'd want to take a look at when in Paris. 

We pop into a cheese store for a Tomme de Pyrennees...

And a fruit store, for the incredible strawberries. (Though I would buy out so many other Fred fruits!)

We cross the river, on this beautifully sunny day. 

And the islands -- St Louis and de la Cite, with the iconic (and closed of course) Notre Dame.

And then we move into the the more touristy part of the left bank, where she could pick up a couple of souvenirs for her class friend (who had in turn very specific requests!).

(Finding her way back to the hotel...)

At the hotel again, it's almost lunch time and in any case, our breakfast was very incomplete, so we spread out a "tablecloth" and have a picnic. Yes, I would have preferred to do this in the park, but it really is still too cold.

In the afternoon, I signed up for another "activity," again, one where you read that families are especially welcome. It involves a boat and the river Seine.

There are many, many operators who run boat tours on the river. It's both an easy way to see the city and a beautiful one, as some of the buildings and bridges are best appreciated from the waterway. Still, I dont think I'd ever done it. Maybe once, when my girls were little. But it looks to be just right for this girl who loved the boats of Venice so much!

In retrospect, we can write this one off as belonging to the category of "adventures." Ones that you don't necessarily want to repeat.

First of all, I thought I'd do us the favor of taking a cab to the dock. It's a very long walk and it hasn't the best subway connections -- at least not during Covid times. I mean, I still have to test negative to return to the US on Tuesday and pretty much no one is wearing masks here, crowds or no crowds (in stark stark contrast to Italy). So we taxi.

Despite my printed instructions, the driver doesn't really know where to drop us off. I dont really know either. Asking me is silly. So he just pulls over by the river and says -- it's somewhere there!

And not that the embarkation is clearly marked, so once dumped, we run randomly to boats that could be THE boats (aided by some tentative advice from French people along the way who may or may not have known what we are looking for.

We make it, with minutes to spare. And the ticket person tells us -- unfortunately all the inside spaces are taken. So, it's rooftop only. Or, we'll let you take the next boat. In an hour.

Well now, I suppose I did not read that there would be a promise of indoor seating, I just assumed. We decide to be brave and go upstairs. (By the end, most people had cleared out, possibly sitting on the floor, but downstairs, were the space was enclosed.)

To say that it was cold would be to be tame. Sort of like a British person telling you something is jolly good when it's actually fantastic beyond belief. I mean, it's in the low 40sF  (a few degrees C), so not impossible to imagine a nice boat cruise on the deck, but that wind whipped things down to a lower level that surely took many of those degrees away from us. You needed to huddle within yourself and it's hard to huddle and look and listen. Snowdrop was only mildly curious in what the guide said (and that's also an understatement). Pretty quickly she took up reading... 

I can't blame her. Pointing out buildings is just such an adult activity! Though I know she is listening because later she asks -- what's this about a royal wife being killed? She's referring to the beheading of Marie Antoinette. Or, maybe she's remembering the death of Princess Diana. Both figured as important landmarks on this tour.

Had it not been so cold, I may have liked doing this hour long passage along the Seine. The boat was on the smaller end of things, and the tickets were cheap. (And so the chairs wiggled and the indoor seating was limited.) And there were the sights: honestly, Paris does look lovely from the River, though not much different than from the river banks. Still, here's some glory for you:

And for me:

After we got off, we found ourselves in the whirligig of the Eiffel Tower crowds. But Snowdrop did not mind. She spotted the merry-go-round and her face lit up.

And then she spotted the cotton candy and her face lit up even more.

I had been thinking a long walk home along the river would be a good thing, but watching the cotton candy blow into her face and hair, seeing the utter stickiness of it all and feeling still the chill of the boat ride, I give up on that idea. We are near a cab stand, there is a cab -- the rest is history. (Do you know how to take cotton candy out of long hair, something that does not require dousing the whole head with water? I do not. I'll worry about it all tomorrow.)

In the evening we go to dinner at Roger La Grenouille (Roget the Frog). That was a midnight find for me. I'd booked something that I now felt was too far for a cold winter's night (haha). So I searched late and came up with Roger. And I really, really liked it.

For being an older place (opened in 1930) and for adhering to a somewhat traditional menu, and having the occasional older client...

... it was (surprisingly) fresh and honest, staffed by hip young men dressed in jeans and well worn high tops. That's not the demographic you'd expect to be solicitous of a young child, but they were. To both of us, actually.

Snowdrop ate a couple of frogs legs without too much push back...

... and was applauded for not asking for ketchup for her fries (she again opted for steak and fries, which is a good choice for a kid who needs her proteins for the energy expanded on this trip).

In all, it was a really good meal and at a 7 minute walk from the hotel -- a good place to keep in the pocket for future reference.

Late evening. It's so hard to start the bedtime routine when both of us enjoy that quiet couch time way past our bed hours. Nonetheless, tomorrow requires alertness and our full presence. Or at least my full presence. Snowdrop! Time to go to bed!

With love...