Friday in Paris

Madison Wisconsin is going to be pounded by a winter storm; temperatures are plummeting. The coming of the coldest season has not been a gentle matter there.

In Paris, it's sunny and 50F (10C).

My stays here are easy -- perhaps the easiest of any stays anywhere. There is nothing I have to do. No one to see, no imperatives for the hours ahead of me. (This could be a little disconcerting to a busy person, but I accept it!)

(It's dark when I wake up. The moon shines brightly, a lone figure seems to be sitting at a table, reading...)







Eventually I am up.

And then I agonize over where to eat breakfast and then whether to have a croissant with pain au chocolat or a baguette avec confitures. Strip a person of her essential problems and daily chores and she'll find something else to fret about. Nature made this mistake in programming the human form: she did not make it easy for him or her to just be.

Finally I decide that Les Editeurs is cheaper than my hotel and has better bread product than most cafes around me and so I head there.

(I pass a woman Parisienne walking her dog. You get the picture.)






And then I torture the waitress by going back and forth about which breads should grace my little table.






It's such a lovely day that afterwards,  I take great pleasure in simply strolling the streets of Paris. I do have goals: Christmas is just before me, Snowdrop is getting taller by the day, four family birthdays are coming up. So shopping sets the parameters for my stroll, but it's not a worried hassled shopping. I know what I want and where to find it. Everything about this day is easy.

Walk along with me!

(Passing numerous pastry shops. This cake. Yeah, I want this cake.)






(Okay. You say just a pastry? Then I take this one!)






(A buche de Noel? I chose this one!)






(Parisians will eat outdoors no matter what. Bad weather. Lousy views. Noise. Not important!)






(Much debate as to what to buy for Snowdrop. Not so much for now, but when she jumps sizes. Which is about to happen. This? Or this?)






(Honestly, in that particular store, she would have been happy to just take the paper penguins home!)






(A flower shop I would love to have back home...)






(Oh! Here's an even better one? Damn!)






(Park beauty again.)






(With the most lovely and soothing fountain...)






(The more quiet corners of the Luxembourg Gardens.)






(Preteens, out on the streets. Buoyant!)






(At the Bon Marche department store food halls, the job that seems fun: tasting the various champagnes that come in!)






(Outside the Bon Marche, I pass this waiting family of four: three girls, one mother. The car doesn't come. The youngest takes matter in her own hands. I so see Snowdrop doing this!)






Just this year, a new indoor market opened in "my" neighborhood -- the Marche Saint Germain. I'm sure to return to it in the spring, when I am here a tad longer and staying in an apartment. For now, what I really love are the small eateries that spill out at the sides. They're not set to France's ridiculously rigid eating schedule and instead, serve fresh and honest salads, soups, sandwiches, quiches all day long. It's close to 4 by the time I sit down for a snack of a wonderful salad with bits of smoked salmon.






I do have one touristy thing I've been itching to accomplish, but it turns out to be a bust.

 (On the walk over: a father with a beautifully fussy little girl! )






(I'm in the neighborhood of the Sorbonne, so I'm guessing these are students, doing what students do: talking.)






(A drop-dead gorgeous sky!)






The goal: the newly refreshed and just recently reopened Pantheon, just as the sun is nearing the horizon.






It's not that I'm drawn to the experience of communing with distinguished dead French men (well, out of the nearly 100 there, you will find two women -- one of them Marie Sklodowska-Curie), but I know there is a splendid view from it's cathedral tower and I'm quite willing to climb many steps to take a look. But it's closed for the off season. (And judging by the opening months, the Parisians consider the off season to be very long indeed.)

If I want to admire the Eiffel Tower, this is the best I can do:







On the walk back -- let's focus on grandparents.

(Oh, you make me feel so guilty! It's 50F outside and the child has more wraps than Snowdrop has on a day three times as cold!)






(Sometimes it's fun just to talk about grandchildren!)






Dinner. I've always had this great love of going back again and again to a favorite place in Paris. But you can't sit on your hands and ignore reality. Some favorite places lose imagination. Others close. It's a life's lesson: you can't sit still. So I've shifted again and now, after giving it four separate tries this past year, I'll call Semilla a favorite place.

(Setting out: it's Paris so... lipstick!)






(Walking over to the Buci neighborhood, just a handful minutes from where I stay.)






It's not that I arrive without issue. I wanted to sit there, they seated me here and even the smile of the cajoling waiter didn't soften my feeling of let down. I wanted to sit there!

But the fact is, here was better than there. I have a terrific place from which to watch waiters and chefs alike. And the food.... Oh, it goes without saying that the food is grand. Scallops with endive, a fish with spinach and gnocchi, an apple millefeuille. (Here's the scallop endive dish; in the background a most amazing waiter.)






I could have eaten silently without much attention to the people around me. I almost went that route. But the French gentleman on my right was engaging (he needed a listener for the hour before his wife or was it partner or was it girlfriend arrived) and it was between silence, or being his little sounding board,  or talking to the woman on my left who was a nurse from Wyoming. The nurse won.

It was her second time in Paris and on this trip, she had signed on to a tour-like situation (was it "Paris by Mouth?"). It seemed to be going well for her but what I especially liked was the way she tried to use French. She tried even with me. (She had only a high school knowledge of it and high school happened many many years ago.)

Her tour person came in toward the end of the meal and after having an argument with the French gentleman to my right (they're all habituees who have firm opinions about protocol), he came back to his charge, the Wyoming nurse (who, btw, loved photos of Snowdrop on my iPhone -- she asked!-- but this is not at all why I liked her... not at all!).

We (the tour person, the waiter and I) went through my usual malaise where I am appreciated for my accent but not for my vocabulary. But but, you speak so well! Quit saying that, French people. I'm just okay. I sound good and that throws you. Speak your rapid fire French at me and I am lost! Slow down and I'm good. So   just    slow   down!

The evening ends with my dropping my camera. Sigh. Bang and bust. Usually when I travel I bring along my back up, but this time I didn't. Sure, sure, I can use my i-Phone, but Paris is already very difficult to photograph. I don't need this added burden.

You know I'm not really complaining. I have no burdens at this second. (It will be a burden if I have to replace a camera, but I don't know that yet.) I have a (free) glass of champagne from the hotel before me and lovely holiday music on my computer to enjoy.

I hope you have at least that much to guide you through a beautiful evening!

Thursday travels

If I break my return trip to the States with a stopover in Paris, everything becomes much simpler. I can catch the 12:55 flight out of Warsaw. That means I can have a leisurely breakfast, like this:





... and take the time to set things in the apartment exactly right, down to smoothing out the last wrinkle on the bead spread and pulling down the shades just so. Good bye apartment.

It means that I don't have to take a taxi to the airport. I can take the public bus. (My sister, then friends write me quickly: don't use a ticket! all public transportation in Warsaw is free today! I ask -- why? It's the air quality. They want to encourage people to not use their cars.)

And so on Nowy Swiat, the street that I nearly always get to when I leave my apartment...






... I wait at the bus stop, looking for one last time at the people around me, imagining their stories...






And then I ride the easy 30 minutes to the airport (well, it's 30 minutes when, like today, there's little congestion in the city center). Ahhh, the sights of Warsaw!






And then everything works like a charm. Onto the Air France flight... (I am always moved at the sight of groups of high school girls. And there is just such a group on this flight -- traveling as a team for some athletic event. I'm thinking -- that was me, here in Warsaw. Different times, different circumstances, and yet so many similarities!)






Flight on time, arriving at exactly 3:20, and I roll my suitcase to the train station, and am lucky to catch an express into town, so that one hour ago I was disembarking and now I am alighting at the gate to the Luxembourg Gardens! How lovely is that! (It's particularly fortuitous because the park begins its closing at 4:30 in the winter. I have ten minutes of beauty before me!)






And so I have a lovely pre-dusk stroll, once again with suitcase in tow.






(Was I really here just a few days ago? It seems like such a lot of time has passed since then!)






I'm staying at the Baume hotel and the staff treats me so nicely! I pay for a wee room and get a huge space in grateful appreciation for my constant return here. For  three nights, this is just exquisitely lovely and I am grateful. I don't travel expansively in France or indeed in western Europe in the way that I did before retirement, so the few days I am here feel like a very precious vacation getaway.






I catch my breath, but not for long. Paris streets beckon. Yes, it gets dark early, yes, it can be cold in December (though it isn't this year), yes, it's tough to imagine a picnic in the park now, but Paris is still so very lovely in the weeks just before Christmas.






Eventually I make my way toward a cozy sweet place for dinner, a place I'd read about just recently. It's a minute away from the Bon Marche department store. (Les Botanistes) It definitely has the feel of a small family run place. Two sons, father chef, and a waiter:


 


It's a great meal: pumpkin soup (!), cod, a stewed pear (with raspberry compote and ice cream).





It's just perfect for tonight, though woah, I have to get used to western prices again. Poland is so light on the pocketbook by comparison!  (And I say this even as the exchange rate -- dollar to euro -- has never been more favorable for us: it's almost exactly one to one right now.)


I walk back to the hotel smiling. I'm not sure if it's because of Paris or Warsaw, but no matter. I'm smiling. The days have been grand.

(The typical street scene... even in December.)

Wednesday in Warsaw

It's very late. Maybe three? Later? I don't really know.

I finished cleaning the apartment an hour or two ago. I'm left wondering if this is really a good time to figure out how to run that darn washer/dryer, or whether I should not wash or dry anything when it is so late and I have a flight to catch tomorrow. 

Whirley thoughts. Must let go, must let go...

I can't let go. It's been a quick three (was it four?) days, but the shortness of my time here is irrelevant, no?  It's how you spend your time that matters. I feel I spent it in ways that would make a speed demon proud.

No one fully understands why it is that I come here for such a short time (ha! if you want to worry about the shortness of my trips, talk to me again in January 2017! Now there's a short (but important!) trip to spin about!). If you understand the push/pull factor, you'll know that I just cannot stay away for long.


But let's get to the basics: How does this day begin? With a look toward the living room. I smile big when I see the twinkling lights that Karolina strung for me last night. And the mistletoe!  Snowdrop would be very happy here right now!






Breakfast.






I start out being late. I'm to meet my sister down at the bank near her home and I'm late. I care about this -- really I do!  -- and yet I cannot rush here like I do back home. Even with my crazy short travel schedules, I see my time in Warsaw as having an easier pace. And so I'm late.


After the bank technicalities (yesterday I opened an account, today I closed one), we do some shopping. You'd think this is a ho hum activity, but it's in filling a list of groceries or shoes or gifts (all three are at play for me today) that you get to know what the locals are up against.  So we shop.

(I say to my sister: doesn't he look like a typical Polish male? I do now know what it is about him, but I could have picked him out from a crowd of hundred: his guy is so very Polish.)





Shops. So many shops to investigate!

(Hey, my grandma made these! Did yours? Really? I loved the ones mine made! For those who haven't a clue as to what this is -- it's poppyseed cake!)






It is, at the time of writing, nearly 4 a.m. so I am going to rush through the remaining photos. Even though the pics are of the most lovely neighborhoods of Warsaw. For example, the Old Town.






There is a skating rink on the Old Town Square. I find this interesting. They used to have a Christmas Market here in past years but someone decided (correctly, I think) that the market interfered with the visual splendidness of the Square and, too, that the city should promote fitness over consumption. So there is now an ice skating rink.





I am so tempted to rent skates and just let myself go!

No. I will be sane. I have things to do and I'm leaving Poland tomorrow. There is a time and place for insanity. It's not here. It's not now.


On my walk home today, I encounter my friend who is also my neighbor. Perhaps this is my biggest signal of belonging: I go about my business, yet boom! There's a friend, going about her own affairs. And yet our paths intersect. And one thing leads to another and now I have a house full of people again...






....  except I really do not know how to work the appliances just yet ... oh, don't fret, I'll help you! Friends to the rescue!






And now here we are,  relaxed and happy all over again.







If it wasn't for the fact that sunrise comes late here in December, I'd say it is nearly dawn. I need to go to sleep so that I can get up soon. My next post will be from Paris. I love Paris, but I never forget that Paris is like a vacation.  Warsaw is like home.