Our Last Saturday in Paris

Well it's another overcast and dreary morning here in Paris. Frankly, I have trouble with putting the word "dreary" in the same sentence with the word Paris, but there you have it.

We gained an extra hour this morning, which was a nice feature to be sure; one more hour in Paris that we might not have otherwise had to spend. And we spent it over an extra cup of coffee scanning the headlines online. (photo, left to right: Yumi and Misato at Pascal's.)

And speaking of cyberspace we’ve had the oddest thing happen to us here in the 11th arrondissement. We cannot connect to the one (US) website that hosts all of our websites and attending email addresses, thus we cannot send mail normally. We can, however, send it abnormally via our Apple account so that’s nice.

(If you must know, on Friday I discovered that while we could send emails we couldn’t receive mail although we could access our Internet Service Provider’s website to view our mail directly on their site. A day later, that situation was reversed: we could not longer access their website nor could we send email but we could receive email. A French conspiracy some think, but I doubt it.)

That aside, after a leisurely morning Saturday we left the apartment a little before noon and walked west on rue Chemin Vert until it ran into Boulevard Beaumarchais, where we turned left, walked a block and turned onto rue pas de la Mule, in the direction of the Place Vosges. We cut through this pretty green space, dominated by a statue of Louis XIII on a horse (kings loved horses it would seem), surrounded by a square of attractive, very upscale buildings with little cafes and galleries tucked beneath the arcades, under the porticoes. Upon leaving the place we headed for rue Saint Antoine, crossing just a bit east of Saint Paul church. (This street eventually becomes the very busy and very famous rue de Rivoli that runs alongside the Tuileries to the Place de la Concorde.)

But our journey led us away from the frenetic activity of these major streets and we wended our way through the backstreets on our way to the Seine, which we crossed at the Pont de Sully, and found ourselves at the tip of the Isle St. Louis. Making our way to the rue Isle Saint Louis we strolled up the street peeking in the occasional window, commenting that we had been in that shop or eaten in that little café somewhere in the not-too-distant past.

That’s right folks, it’s the beginning of our “Melancholy Tour of Paris” where we make every effort to see those places we’ve seen before, do those things we’ve done before, together, with friends or family (often one and the same thing you know).

Frankly I think it’s only natural at this stage in our life. We’ve been vagabonding for nearly two years now and that phase of our life together, we sense, is about to come to an end. Very soon we will have a home (and mortgage!) again, and after almost two years in storage we will have our “stuff” back again.

Of course we will miss Paris – and Italy even more so in some respects. But if the past two years have taught us anything at all, it is that life is meant to be lived, to be experienced, to be savored. That change is not to be feared. There is absolutely no reason one cannot savor life in Providence as well as in Paris.

So just as we are coming to an end of our life in Paris so we came to the end of the Isle St. Louis and crossed the small Pont St. Louis bridge to the Isle de la Cite. We stopped on the bridge for a few minutes to listen to a small jazz band playing for the benefit of the passers-by and their euros of course. We dropped a coin in their violin case and moved on skirting Notre Dame on the rue by the same name, passing another, smaller jazz combo playing right on the edge of the street. Fine music being tossed out for anyone to hear and enjoy. Like so much of this city.


As we came around to the front of one of the world’s most famous ecclesiastical landmarks we swung back toward the river and crossed at the Pont au Double.

Officially on the Left Bank and more or less in the Latin Quarter, we headed up rue Lagrange until it became rue Monge.

(Interestingly, it is often reported that the name “Latin Quarter” came from the fact that the universities of Paris had their start here and that everyone spoke Latin. True indeed. But we mustn’t forget that this area was also the very site of the ancient Roman city of Lutetia.)

We strolled to Pascal’s where Susie tidied up some last-minute recipe notes for Pascal (he is hot on brownies and American-style cookies, as are many other pastry chefs in the city).

From Pascal’s we walked over to the rue Mouffetard, the “Mouff” as it’s known locally, to stroll this wonderful little street of open air markets and tiny shops, not terribly upscale at all but somehow fashionable nonetheless.

It was now almost half past one and time to stop for lunch and there’s probably no better location for such a thing than on the Mouff. We checked out a couple of menus as we walked toward the Place Contrescarpe and stopped at the tiny, which specialized in the cooking from Savoie, a tiny part of southeastern France bordering on Switzerland. Both of us had the Fondue Savoyard, bits of ham, potato and bread cubes we dipped at our whim into a large pot of bubbling reblochon cheese, accompanied by a small delectable salad, and all washed down by a wonderful crisp white wine, Apremont de Savoie, aptly named since it was from Apremont.

We savored the afternoon letting the time slip away from us.

But go we had to go of course and after paying the bill, something they appreciate here in France, we walked to the Jardin des Plantes. Passing through the gardens we caught the no. 61 bus across from the Gare Austerlitz.

We got off at Basfrois, just short of the Place Leon Blum, and did some last minute shopping for essentials at the Monoprix near the Place. I must say this store is one of my least favorites I think – mainly because the grocery section is on the upper level (2nd floor in Americanese), with some items, such as bar soap and the like on the first floor. And it was busy on all floors.

With bags in hand we walked back to the apartment.

Later that evening we walked over to St. Ambroise where we caught the no. 9 Metro to the Trocadero. About 25 minutes after we left our apartment on the eastern side of Paris we were standing on the “terrace” between the two fairly unremarkable buildings that comprise the several museums on the Palais de Chaillot. Like many other people from all over the world that evening – and probably every evening I imagine – we were standing there fixed in one spot staring at the gorgeous structure of the Eiffel tower, bathed in a soft yellow glow of how many thousands of lights, lit up for the evening, all waiting for that moment, when on the hour the little champagne twinkle lights come on and one senses that this is what makes the French so different from most other cultures. This is why so many have flocked here from all over the world for the past two hundred years or more. Not to make money or make their fortunes as one might expect to do in other parts of the world.

No they came to flex their imagination, to let their ideas run free, sometimes to run amok to be sure. But run, fast and far.

You see it everywhere you look in this city.

Wish you had been there.

Steve