I slept fitfully last night. Speaks mountains, doesn't it! The day will be a warm one (all my remaining days in France will be brilliantly warm). I am in no hurry.
I FRIENDSHIP (skip this section if you're not into idle thoughts on abstract ideas)
Slowly I am beginning to process my five day visit to Warsaw. In the past, I always returned to Poland with trepidation and left with a dust storm in my head. A million spinning particles of memories and questions about family, friends. Now that both of my parents have died (my mother was the last to go -- she died in September), has that changed?
Yes and no. It's not a dust storm anymore, but Warsaw will always be a place where I fall back into my memories. I can never visit the place with a clean slate. I wonder, is it that way for everyone who travels back to the town of their childhood? I think it must be so, if nearly every single person you knew then is still in place. Those friends of mine with whom I ate dinner on Wednesday? They were once in Warsaw, they are still in Warsaw. More than half of them were with me at the University in the Econometrics Department. One dated back to my high school -- I've known him since I was 13. The rest are spouses or friends of us "Econometricians." (Obviously I did not stay with the field.) So yes, our roots run deep.
But maintaining an overseas friendship structure has been difficult. (With the exception of Bee of course -- she and I are very close.) You could say that initially that was my fault. When I married an American, I pretty much severed my contact with these guys. But for the last twenty years, I've been going back to Poland frequently. And I am quick to write emails. Far quicker than any of them.
There are two things at play: not everyone enjoys writing as much as I do. I get that. But of course there are other forms of maintaining contact these days. Enter the second factor. All my best friends from that past, all six of them were men. Every. Single. One. It's not only that the field of Econometrics skewed toward being male dominated. There were plenty of women in the Department. But my group of besties was male. And we all eventually married. And the friendships suffered.
This brings up that perennial question: can men and women remain great friends as they get older? I don't care what great minds and movie makers say about this, my experience has been that they can not. Unless one of them is gay. Which is absurd.
Really, it kills me that this is the case! Here, I come back to my parents: my mother's only friend in the last years of her life was a man. A married man who lived in the same Assisted Living facility with his wife whom he loved and cared for. But he liked my mother's spunk and fire and they would have many a conversation before she decided to tune out everyone. My mother, who herself never finished college, worshiped anyone who was professorial and he had been a professor. If she were the Great Almighty, she'd give you a passage to heaven when you came to her pearly gates, no questions asked, if you could only flash a resume with "professor" on it. I admire the guy so much for staying with her, actually until the day she died -- even when she no longer acknowledged his existence. He was unusual.
Try as I do, I cannot understand this prudish aversion to cross gender friendship. The jealousy it inspires. The taboos that poison it. Maybe when we were younger, you could worry your head off if there had been line crossing, triggered by attraction on a non-intellectual level. But friendships are based on emotion and intellect, and nearly all lack a physical component. It seems that our society holds as dangerous that emotional link as well. All my besties now are women (except for Ed of course). It would not be okay if they were men. What a shame. I cannot correspond with men (or Zoom with them), I cannot rely on them, I cannot share life's peculiarities with them on a steady and regular basis, because they were born with different genitalia. We are such a weird species -- making life difficult for each other at every turn.
[To be fair, I am deeply satisfied with my current beloved friends. With my far away Bee, and far away Diane, and far away Barbara, and all you others who keep up with me via emails and Zooms because you don't live anywhere near me. You all do such a good job of maintaining intimacy up there in the Cloud! Still, I know my circle of distant but close friends would be even richer, were we not so obsessed with gender.]
Of course, it could be that men simply lose interest in friendship, especially long distance friendship as they get older. It can't be a healthy direction, but then neither is emailing or zooming if you can have the real thing. Unless you like your friends too much to let go.
Wait, what does all this have to do with Paris??
Everything. This is the place where, when alone, my mind runs free.
During breakfast...
And beyond.
II THE PLAN, SUCH AS IT IS
So what's the plan for the day? Spell it out already!
Well, I had on my list two "musts" and one "maybe" and none of them panned out, but in pursuing them, I did so many other things that my feet ache and I feel a need to take an afternoon pause. Here's how it went:
I wanted to go to the Red Wheelbarrow bookstore and get a copy of Movable Feasts by Chris Newens. The bookstore is actually a three minute walk from my hotel and I tried to go there yesterday, but it's one of those places that never adheres to a posted schedule -- it was closed of course. I went back today. The Newens book came out last month in France, but it wont be available in America until February. You can't even have it sent to America before then. Believe me, I tried. I don't know why the publication discrepancy. But no matter -- you can get it in France. (I subscribe to Dorie Greenspan's newsletter and in her August mailing, she described the book.)
The owner was just opening up the bookstore (!!) when I walked in at 11. No, she no longer had copies of it, but she sweetly looked up which bookstores in Paris carry it (you can do that!). Shakespeare and Company is unreliable so don't go there, and that other English one is closed for vacation... here: go to Smith & Son (it's an independent English bookshop on the Right Bank). They seem to have it.
It's a bit of a hike so I thought I'd take the bus. That's when I noticed that I left my Navigo card back at the farmhouse (it's loaded with bus and metro rides). Yes, I could still ride the bus and pay in cash, but the driver doesn't always have change for a larger bill and I have exactly that -- one larger bill. So I walk to the Metro, where I can buy more tickets.
On the way to it, I passed the Petit Bateau clothing store where I often find cute casual stuff for the kids. I go inside, just to look.
Next, I remember that I need stamps, so I stop in at the post office -- the one that always, always has gruff postal clerks dressed like executives, who use minimal words to tell me that what I want is impossible, for one reason or another. No, I don't know the weight of a card I want to send. Of course, I then have to overbuy, paying probably twice as much as necessary. Either that or go back and get said card and weigh it.
I continue toward the Metro. Ah, but I am now close to Cafe Varenne. I always go there for a meal, usually lunch, when in Paris. I want to see if it's open. Saves me a phone call.
It is not. Closed for three weeks for vacation.
I often get caramels for my daughter across the street. Closed as well. For a full month.
I take the Metro to the Place de la Concorde.
Smith & Son is on Rue de Rivoli -- a wide street that hugs the northern border of the Jardin des Tuileries. Unfortunately they are filming a movie there today. I must go around, cutting through blocks of the Right Bank that I do not like. Not all of Paris thrills me!
Finally. I'm at the store. It's huge!
And they have my book. Plus some other European ones that apparently I cannot get in the U.S. anytime soon. (I checked on my phone.) Suddenly I have a bag full of books!
You'll remember that I had three goals for the day. The second one was to visit Les 3 Chocolats. A chocolatier-patisserie, right there on the Right Bank. I'm not a big reader of Instagram, but I do follow some businesses. It's random. I dont now what lead me to any of them. Les 3 Chocolates is one that I do indeed follow. Holy Hannah, do they have beautiful stuff! At the very least, I want to look inside. I check on line. Closed for this week and next. Maybe longer. Google only guesses so far in advance. In France, I can't blame them.
Close to the chocolate shop (which I am now not going to) there is one of the three swimming areas on the Seine River. No way do I want to bother with changing into swim stuff to jump into the river (though it's tempting, just to say I did it, and the day is certainly warm enough for it). But I want to see the set up. How do they ensure people don't, for example, drown?
Well, that too is closed. Turns out that on Saturdays they close it up at 11 a.m. Who knows why. (On other days the swimming areas stay open longer. So they say.)
No matter, I take a very nice stroll through the Tuileries. Once again, it feels so dry! The leaves are dusty and some are turning brown. The fact is, the majority of departments in France are facing a drought crisis this year: too little rain in spring and now the second big heatwave is hitting the country this week, leading to tap water usage alerts and mandatory restrictions. Some areas, along the Spanish border are at the highest level of alert, with a ban on all but essential water use.
In the Gardens I find something that I completely forgot about: the return of the Olympic Cauldron (until September 14th anyway). It rises 60 feet at sundown and stays up there until 2 a.m.
Apparently the new thing is to stand in front of it and have someone take a photo of you with arms raised as if you were carrying it on your shoulders. Everyone is doing that.
Well, nearly everyone.
From there, I walk back to the Left Bank.
It's nearly 2 and I should eat lunch. But first I pick up a t-shirt that looks a little better than a t-shirt. Because I'm low on those and the summer sales are fantastic.
As I turn into my familiar neighborhood, I notice that a grocer is open. In I go, buying a peche de vigne (an insanely red peach), and a bunch of sweet Mirabelle and Greengage plums. (Why don't we grow these back home? They are so yummy!)
Anything more? Well, I start to really think about lunch. Maybe a salad at one of the many places I pass along my way back to the hotel? This is when I walk past Eric Kayser.
Rare is the day that I buy a Parisian pastry, take it back to my hotel, and wolf it down. In a restaurant? Sure, but back in the room? Not so much. Yet, when I go by the Eric Kayser Patisserie (which always struck me as a store that had either an extremely friendly staff, or extremely surly staff), and I glance at their pastries, and the person behind the counter, I note, is in the extremely friendly camp, I decide to go for it. An apricot tart with pistachio filling, to go.
Rather loaded down now, I stop at one of my favorite coffee places (a block from my hotel) and ask for a latte, also "to go," and take all this home, to my room, where I have my lunch feast.
I could easily stay here for the rest of the day and read the Chris Newens book -- he writes about what he regards to be the quintessential food and eatery in each of Paris's 20 Arrondissements. The book looks to be funny and fun to read. And yet...
Paris still beckons.
III ANOTHER PLAN
In the late afternoon, I go out for what should be a very brief stroll. Dorie Greenspan (I should explain -- she is an author of dessert cookbooks) also lauded a cake mix from Monoprix (really truly!) and macarons from Pierre Hermes. She claims his are the best. Maybe these stores are worth a visit? Especially since the Pierre Herme pastry shop is across the street from my favorite store with very simple jewelry. (They make their own and give a chunk of money for the care of dogs -- old, sick, you name it.)
But first, I pass a cutlery store. This store has been somewhat of a bane to my existence. I bought tea spoons there for my apartment in Warsaw. When I sold my apartment, the teaspoons, colorful and fun, went with it. So I bought new teaspoons for the farmhouse. And so long as I was buying teaspoons, I thought dessert forks to match would be great. Plus a couple of bigger forks because I do not have enough silverware for family dinners. Well, the kids grew, I needed more forks. Bigger ones. Again I supplemented. And still I do not have enough. Once more I go in and pick out one more fork. Thinking this to be rather ridiculous, I up the amount so that I need never go into this store again! On the upside, the sales clerk was fabulous!
The macarons: I buy four. One for each evening. (And I can tell you as I write this that they are good, but so are the ones at Bon Marche or at any number of other places in Paris. Sorry, Dorie, but I wouldn't go out of my way for pricey Hermes. )
At the jewelry store I am in love with a simple necklace, but I'm minding my Euros. Doesn't hurt to look and think about it. For a very long time.
I am so distracted by this, that I forget all about going to Monoprix! (If you aren't familiar with that chain, I would say it's analogous to our Target. Maybe a notch better, maybe not.)
On the way home, I'm passed by several of those colorful old Citroens that you can rent for a driving tour around Paris. Why anyone would regard this as fun is beyond me, but we all have our own peculiar pleasures!
IV EVENING IN PARIS
As I said, I'm trying out new eateries in Paris. I'm limiting my selections to those that are less than 15 minutes from my hotel. My choice for tonight is at 14 minutes. The name of it? Bailotte. And it is fabulous! If yesterday's place was okay, today's is beyond the beyond. If you're anywhere near the 6th, you should book a meal here. Shockingly, it's not that much more in price than your average dinner at a very average restaurant or bistro here. But the quality? Unbelievable! Caveat -- it's not a place I would take a young child to. The sauces and the ingredients are sophisticated (it's French, with Japanese influence). Snowdrop, for example, would likely push away all that makes it special.
I enter just as it opens (within minutes, there will be people waiting). The art work is great! You can tell the place is fairly new. Opened just two years ago.
I can't say that I took good photos. But, just to give you an idea, here is my 1. fig with warmed brie and who knows what else, 2. my meagre fish (which I had never heard of before today) with coco beans and mussels and a sauce that I could not identify, and then 3. perhaps the nicest dessert a restaurant could offer on a hot summer day: a poached peach with creme d'Ange (again --a first for me: it's made with fromage blanc and meringue) and nectarine sorbet. You'll notice the glass of wine and ask me if I've abandoned my alcohol-free dining. I had to. Neither yesterday's restaurant nor today's had any alcohol free wine or beer. They offered iced tea tonight. No thanks. I was good in that I didn't finish the wine!
(Looking back as I was leaving, I noted all the filled tables. I'd say most had French speaking diners, but there was also a sizeable portion of diners from Japan, at least by my rough facial recognition.)
Monoprix, the store with the cake mixes, stays open until 11, so I stopped by on my way home to pick up one of the Nestles (which Dorie said may be the better one) and one of the Alsa Fondant. You add eggs and butter and apparently people trip over themselves in enthusiasm. I haven't used a cake mix since I was twenty years old, but I was amused by her account and was tempted, especially since everyone back home likes melty chocolate cake.
And now I am home. Yes, home is what I call my beloved little Baume in Paris.
Did I tell you? I loved my day!
with love...
