Paris, once more

We meet downstairs for breakfast. This is the treat of traveling with friends: you get to start the day together.

We. pick up the conversation we last had on the farmhouse porch. One without end. About children, mothers, grandmothers. Elections in Poland, war in Israel, and the relation between the two. About our past lives. About the apartment in Warsaw I once owned that Karolina gutted, redesigned and decorated so beautifully for me.

And it could have continued, this endless stream of thoughts, of shared experiences, but of course, this is Paris, a city where words can flow, but so can the time, away from all you want to see and do here.

As is my habit in Paris, I tend to eventually wander off by myself. These guys are both architects, active participants in the world of design, and they have a full itinerary of Parisian sights, exhibitions and such that they want to cover. They ask me if I want to join up, but I'm feeling less ambitious and so I wave them off and we arrange for a later meetup.

Besides, I have one unfortunate and one fortunate commitment before me.

The unfortunate? Well, I got a call yesterday from the Auberge du Pere Bise. Madame Camic, do you, by any chance, still have the key to the bike you used the other day?

Oh dear.

In the flurry of the return (it was late, there was some truck activity in the parking lot, we were all distracted), I'd not remembered to give back the key. So, first thing on my list? The post office. Located at this intersection of streets:

The second priority is to make use of a ticket I have for the Picasso-Stein show at the Luxembourg Museum. 

(on walk to the museum I pass these kids on a field trip; maybe to the park? elsewhere?)

The exposition itself is not an easy one to view. Predictably so -- Stein is all about words and Picasso -- well, he's Picasso. The title of the exhibition is the Invention of Language: Gertrude Stein's and Pablo Picasso's Shared Revolution. All the descriptive text in the rooms of the museum is in French. But, the two were in the thick of a circle of artists, collectors, and women and men of letters in the Paris of the early 20th century and the exhibition focuses on their connections in that milieu, bring out themes that lead to the further creation of conceptual art in the later part of the century.

G.Stein: "Pablo is doing abstract portraits in painting, I am trying to do abstract portraits in my medium, words."

Possibly one of the more controversial (and therefore interesting) pieces displayed is one by Warhol, from 1980 I believe, created long after Stein was dead. It's a silkscreen called Ten Portraits of Jews of the XXth Century (Warhol nicknamed it "Jewish Geniuses."). Gertrude Stein is among those depicted.

It's interesting to see this show in the Musee Luxembourg, which is right in the park. Both Stein and Picasso lived just a few blocks from this park and both were visitors to it.

(from a publication about the two artists)

(oh, this caught my eye at the gift shop!)

Afterwards, I walk the entire Jardins Luxembourg. The periphery, the obscure corners -- all of it.

It's such a day for it! Warm, sunny, yet autumnal.

(the south end of the park draws young people from nearby schools during lunch break)

(I rarely photograph the Palace from this perspective...)

It's the afternoon and I'm wondering whether I should break my habit of skipping lunch in favor of some midday meal. I scour the neighborhood in search of an idea as to where I could pick up something. Ultimately I shrug my shoulders at every new place and go back to Les Editeurs. Sometimes the act of returning is everything! I always return to Cafe Varenne because of the level of perfection in the simplicity that one finds there. I return to Les Editeurs because it has saved me more than once and I would so miss it were it not there. Countless breakfasts, many lunches, occasional dinners when kids were in Paris. It's never great, but always good enough, and the seating is as comfortable as it gets in these outdoor-oriented eateries.

(salmon, cucumbers, and a blini)

(local strawberries and meringue are hard for me to resist)

(Evening walk to park, just before closing, for my daily check in with Ed...)

And now my friends and I meet up again to eventually make our way to a new place for dinner...

(a pause by a colorful doorway...)

...a restaurant that is recommended by the staff here: Brasserie des Pres (it just opened this June). It's big. It's trendy but ultimately traditionally French. It's a bit crazy, but the food is really good and it does have a more youthful vibe to it, which is appropriate, as my friends are... well, a generation younger than me.

And so the day ends. Well, probably not for them. They're off to explore the far corners of Paris.

Me, I retire to the quiet of my room. To write, to catch up on those back home, to enjoy the floating images that run through my head as I review the day.

with love...

leaving Annecy

The breakfast buffet at the Auberge du Pere Bise isn't huge. In that lies its charm. Curated, like at an art show, to pull out the best so that you'll pick out not your standards, but their choices for you. So that you'll be excited not just by a croissant, but by their cheeses (lake fish and cured meats too, but I pass on those), by their home made yogurt. By their pain perdu.

I'm the first one down today. The train, I have that train to catch. Madame who is at the breakfast buffet greets me by name. I find this to be so impressive. She is not the same as yesterday's breakfast madame. But she, like all the staff here, always include Madame Camic when they talk to me. And today the breakfast person asks -- would you like pain perdu for your last breakfast with us? She noted it's my last breakfast and that I didn't always eat the French toast on previous ones. It's not a very large hotel -- 23 rooms total, but still, do the staff members sit down each morning with the guest list and memorize who is who? At my beloved Paris hotel, it took them several years of frequent visits to finally greet me by name when I showed up. Oh, I'm family now, but I had to prove myself. Here, four days and nights is proof enough.

Would you like your usual cappuccino Madame Camic? 

I take my walk before I sit down. To admire one last time what's blooming here, by the shores of Annecy.

(Gaura dominates. Just like at home!)

And to cast one last look at the mountains before sunrise, and of course, the lake itself.

And now to the Auberge, for my last meal there.

Breakfast. With blueberry juice ("Madame Camic, there is no sugar added. Are you sure?") and the same cheese made a five hour hike from here. And a baguette with local butter, and honey taken from the hives of the Auberge. And pain perdu.

(at my favorite corner table: garden to the left, lake and mountains to the front)

And punctually at 9:29, the train leaves Annecy for Paris.

And  at 1:14, as scheduled, it pulls into the Gare Lyon in Paris.

Now, how should I go to the hotel? On the one hand, I feel my legs have gotten some more muscle to them in the past days, so a walk, even with the backpack and suitcase, is doable. The taxi stand has a long line and the metro connection isn't great, in that I would need to take two separate metro lines. And the weather! For the rest of my stay here and starting today, the temps hover around 80F (27C). It's too warm, but it surely begs for a walk.

So I walk.

I take the Right Bank circuit this time, which is slightly more attractive...

(Canal Saint Martin and the Bastille Monument)

... but it is longer and, too, it's Sunday and the flocks are out. The restaurants spilling onto sidewalks are packed... Truly, 50% of Paris must be eating right now. Outdoors. At a restaurant.

The strollers and the tourists and the families and everyone is out and about. So I say a lot of pardon, as I weave my way through the not so quiet streets. And still, in Paris, you can always find that quiet corner.

Feeling somewhat burdened with luggage, I'm not wanting to stop for a midday meal. But, there are snack opportunities and I seize on one as I cross the Isle St-Louis! Here:

For this (not colorful, but absolutely delicious -- honey nougat and caramel salted butter):

I'm thinking -- it's so easy to put yourself in a Lake Annecy mode after having been in Paris. It's harder to reenter urban life after Lake Annecy. But, it's Paris, I love Paris, I'm staying close to a park, and my beloved Hotel Baume is on such a quiet street that once I get there, I forget about the crowds outside. Heck, let there be crowds! Let everyone enjoy the great Parisian outdoors! 

(At the hotel Baume: the quiet of my room -- heaven!)

Tonight, my two architect friends from Warsaw, Karolina and Pawel, arrive for a Parisian meet up. The last time I saw them was when they visited me in Madison more than a year ago. I am very happy that they found the time to come to Paris! We have some catching up to do!

But I do still have the late afternoon to myself and I surely should go to the park... Maybe grab a coffee first? Or a glass of rose? I canvas the neighborhood for the perfect spot and I find it, actually just two steps from the doors of my hotel. The Odeon Theater has a cafe on the square that in good weather fills with locals and visitors alike. I settle in to chat with Ed, to take in a FaceTime with a granddaughter, to finish the book that has held me captive on this trip. And to people watch.

(the two girls move around on their scooters, the parents walk)

(mamman loves papa -- so what else is new...)

(Grandmere, can I show you how to use that app?)

On my phone call with Ed, he says I caught him in the middle of a visit to the Monroes Street Farmers Market. They have a delivery of pawpaw trees!  -- he tells me with some excitement.

I did not know we were in the market for pawpaw trees.

Apparently you dont find many such trees for sale and you rarely find pawpaw fruit at the market (hard to grow, hard to keep fresh). But lo, a grower is selling some baby pawpaw saplings and Ed is looking to replace about a dozen failures among the five dozen nut trees and maples we planted a couple of years ago. 

I'll help you put them in when I get back.

Too late! I have to do it in the next day or two!

How soon will they bear fruit?

Maybe 4-7 years from now.

I laugh at that. In one of our phone calls, Ed predicted I'd be moving out of the farmette within five years, because it will have become too much work for me by then. He was teasing, but realistically, it's not an off the wall speculation. Of course, either one of us could become overwhelmed by the work required to keep the farmette running, but I know Ed imagines himself to live there and only there. Eh, who can tell! Maybe we'll both be spooning out pawpaw into a ripe old age!

Time to take a walk in the Luxembourg Gardens. Ah, the Sunday crowds! And they belong here! The weather, the anticipation of winter, the freedom that so often comes with a Sunday afternoon, the kids that need a good run before the evening sets in...

But here too, even on a Sunday afternoon, you can always find that quiet spot. For love...

For finishing my book.

In the evening, I'm pretty much starving for dinner -- I go back to Georgette for that, because it's such a neighborhood place and I know I will hear French spoken at the table next to mine and that is indeed the case.

(a family... she's the daughter, with her boyfriend... that's a guess. I love to be the one trying to piece together the puzzle of their lives!)

I order what so often tempts me when I am away from home and in a place that does meat well -- a beef filet (with potatoes dauphinois, and braised endive). What can I say -- every once in a while, the idea of a good cut of meat is... irresistible.

Back at the hotel now -- they're here!

They check in, and then we go out. To the Bucci neighborhood, where there is plenty of activity and food/drink choice. It's so good to spend these first few hours together in the warmth of an October evening!

Such a special night! But I know my limits. Eventually, I leave them to their own Parisian escapades. It's nearly midnight -- I need to call it quits for now. 

Good night you two! Good night to all good people everywhere!

with love...

Lake Annecy

I am from Wisconsin. I moved there in 1979, when I was already a total fan of small farm, artisanal cheese. If you asked me then what foods I could not live without, I would have answered without hesitation -- good bread and cheese. Since then, I've visited many cheese makers -- goat milk cheese, sheep's milk cheese and of course cow's milk cheese. In Wisconsin, in France, in Italy. Maybe this love of good cheese is in the blood: my grandkids, fussy eaters all (I'm lookin' at you three Wisconsin guys!), make an exception for cheese. All of them love an aged cheddar or a smelly d'Affinois spread on a flatbread cracker. 

So this morning, after a stroll by the lake...

(like the bronze statues sprinkled throughout farmette lands, only different...)

I sit down to breakfast and I say non, merci to the eggs and I say non, merci to the pain perdu and I focus my attention on the platter of cheeses  (a Tomme de Savoie, a Comté and a Tamié) offered for this morning meal. Because, of course, cheese is to Savoie what it is to Wisconsin. They're known for it! [Technically, a Comté, sometimes affectionally called the "black dress" of all cheeses -- so versatile! -- is not from Savoie, but from the valley of the Jura Mountains, maybe 50 miles north of here. Cheese makers have argued for allowing on the market a Comté de Savoie, but this brings on nothing but hostility from those involved in the production of the authentic Jura Comté -- read about it, for example, here, with the help of google translator if you wish.]

I pick for breakfast a cheese that it new to me -- the Tamié. What the heck is a Tamié?

(Here's my breakfast today:)

A few words on this new to me cheese on my plate. A fresh cow's milk cheese, the Tamié is produced locally, at an Abbey in the valley that's just a five hour hike to the south of where I'm staying. No, I'm not going to hike there! I'm satisfied in reading their story here: Fromagerie de Tamié.

What impresses me with all these very local Alpine cheeses is how much care the cows are given, how fussy they are in their diet (just Alpine grasses and flowers in the summer, just locally grown wheat and barley made into hay for the winter, none of this random silage stuff). It becomes a point of pride to take in milk from these animals. Happy cows, fussy cows make for excellent milk, excellent cheeses. [And yes, we have them in Wisconsin as well, though we also have the commercial stuff back home. Ed and I bike past countless farms where, in the middle of summer, the cows are huddled in muddy enclosures, without access to pasture, to meadowland, to prairie. But, there's a market for this kind of cheese too. You don't eat it as a single slice with or without bread. You eat it stuffed in a thick sandwich, or grilled over a burger. And yes, there are plenty of burger places cropping up all over France as well. 1548 McDonalds alone, as of last month.]

So, full of Alpine thoughts, after breakfast I set out for an Alpine hike.

The desk clerk had suggested a walk to the waterfall. But I'd stopped by the village Tourist Office yesterday and the grumpy bored guy there put forth the idea of simply going up the mountain to a small church that offers a good view. How long is the hike? -- I asked. One hour each way. I study the map. How can that be? The trail is maybe 4 inches long. The one I'd followed my first day here took me three hours and it was easily 12 inches long.

I have the answer to this puzzle today: this one, to the church, has me walking straight up. At least for the first half of it. But no matter! I have my walking stick with me! I'm up for it, albeit at a slower pace than a French person's estimate.

(no, I'm not aiming for the summits!)

And here's the thing, I am embarrassingly slow as compared to the people who pass me. Unbeknownst to me, today is the day of the annual Gravity Race. The participants (and there are many! though thankfully very spread out) run and swim and for some reason, some of them are connected to each other by rope and it's all extremely athletic and their uphill is my uphill only I walk it, relying heavily on my stick and they run it. Straight up. Then down. Then who knows where.

When the trail flattens out a little, they veer off to a more uphill destination (of course they do!) and I walk in the quiet of a forest.

And when I emerge by the church, the views open up...

... and I hear the distinct loud clang of cow bells. Even thought the cows are far, sound carries in an Alpine valley. (I've watched enough Pete the farmer YouTubes that I know why this bull is off by himself in the field!)

I'm above that blasted rock of my first day, so now I can see all the way up to Annecy...

Oh! I hear  the runners again, fortified by this pause stop...

And encouraged, as always in France, by anyone and everyone shouting at them -- courage, courage! Allez, allez!

I turn around and head back down the mountain. I take a less steep trail this time. My knee has been behaving, but I dont want to push it.

In the early afternoon, I go to the garden of the Auberge. It's time for a "lunch" and there isn't a doubt what I should have:

This time I'm less in a sharing mode with the sparrows. All mine! 

But they outsmart me. As I keep the tart out of their reach, a brazen bird snitches my macaron. What are you going to do...

I had thought that a sauna would be a sweet way to end the afternoon, but honestly, just sitting outside today felt pretty toasty warm (it's sunny, with a high of 75F (24C) today). Instead, I opt for a massage. I earned it, no? The last one I had was back in March and it was fabulous. This one, called "the hay of the region" has a different feel to it (it starts with a foot soak in a basin of water, milk, salt and hay), but it's totally fabulous as well. I have friends my age back home who have a massage every week. I get it. If you can afford it, it's a life line toward total relaxation.

Afterwards, the goal should be to sit back and read, twiddle thumbs, recline, repose, do nothing. But there is one thing here that I had wanted to do and I haven't done it and I'm just so curious about it that I give up on the do nothing idea and instead ask the desk clerk instead if I can use their electric bike. 

I wouldn't have been tempted if my Annecy driver person yesterday hadn't told me that once you're out of the village, you can pick up a dedicated bike path that makes its way all the way around the bottom of the lake. That seemed safe to me and even the village roads -- one-way for cars but two-way for cyclists! -- seemed doable. The French are mindful of rural cyclists because there are so many of them! Sometimes I think on the weekends the whole population is training for the Tour de France. They're all out there screaming down the mountains and up again. So, despite the fact that the bike comes without a helmet, I decided I am up for an (flattish) Alpine ride.

It was a fast bike! By comparison, the e-Bikes back home, both the rentals and my own Alpine Blue (!) require effort, even on the strongest boost setting. This is a good thing. You want some exercise! The Auberge bikes have an intense burst and though I went all the way down to the bottom of the lake and up the other side some, I have to say, I exerted little effort throughout. I pedaled, sure, but I felt the bike was dismissive of my efforts and did its own thing.

(the "bottom" of the lake is a nature preserve...)

(I'm never the only cyclist on the bike path...)

(a timed release selfie...)

And in the evening, I eat at the 1903 again. It's a tiny bit more special than the Marius Bar and I go all out and eat a three course meal. (Breakfast was a long time ago!) And honestly, I am surprised at how good the dinner is! I'd asked for recommendations with each course, and with each paired wine. And I listened. And it was perfect. This, at the lesser Auberge restaurant than the one for which the chef claimed rosettes? The ever genial water suggested I go with the mushroom appetizer. They're in season now! We have a mix of chanterelles, trumpet mushrooms... I'm sold. And for the main course? They had 4 choices and I didn't want to pick the fish yet again. I nearly always default to the fish. Out of habit. But this time I again let the waiter speak. The duck, he said. With orange and cocoa. And bits of cabbage. Fantastic! And I would have called it quits then, but this very helpful waiter seemed surprised that I should pass on dessert. Okay, bring me the lightest dish on the menu. Without hesitation, he carted over the apple, poached, cut up, spiced, and importantly -- covered with a thin layer of meringue. How did they do it? It was.... fabulous.

I'd convinced myself so many times that I don't need great food to make me happy when eating alone during my travels. (In France, I am always the only one eating alone in the room.) Good enough is just fine for me. But when everything lines up to create something so delicious, I have to say -- I'm glad I occasionally get hit with a bombshell meal! It makes me humbly grateful for all the hours that went into its preparation. Believe me -- been there, in that restaurant kitchen, done that, and it is not easy.

In my room, I pack my suitcase and think about tomorrow: I'll be catching a morning train to Paris. There, if all goes well for them, I'll be meeting up with some friends, ones I haven't seen for... a whole year!

Until tomorrow then, good night from the shores of Lake Annecy.

(out my window...)

with love...