We’ll miss you Paris

This will probably be my last post.  We’re going home on Monday which leaves us just a few more days of Paris.

I’ll miss the Paris cafés.

I won’t miss the itty-bitty coffees.

I’ll miss hearing the French language.

I won’t miss speaking the French language.

I’ll miss the delicious Parisian croissants and baguettes.

I won’t miss French cheese.

I’ll miss the little old ladies walking their tiny dogs. 

I won’t miss having to step around all the dog poo.

I’ll miss living right in the heart of the city.

I won’t miss living in the tiny appartment.

I’ll miss not having to deal with the car.

I miss my car.

I’ll miss going to the playground with Sonja and visiting the cats.

I miss my cat.

I’ll miss Montmartre.

We’ll be back for Christmas;  thanks for reading everyone!

-Ken

November in a flash

November has been as busy as we imagined and it’s not over yet!

We had a great visit with Linda several weeks ago. I think we managed to balance showing her some of the sights and letting Sonja and her Nonna have plenty of playing time too. We really lucked out with the weather which had been predicted as rain – but in the end was beautiful; the very last of the warmer weather.

The next weekend we visited Ken’s friend in Germany, known to all but his wife and children as “Stuff” or “Stuff MC.” Stuff’s daughters, Nayeli and Aileen, are 2 years 8 months and 8 months old, so Sonja was right in between. Luckily none of them were going through an unable-to-share or hit-everything-in-sight phase and got along well. Stuff and his wife have a beautiful house and the girls all played and generally had a blast. We also got to see the Cologne Cathedral and the Cologne Zoo, and have some German food. Stuff and his wife speak English really well (plus a bunch of other languages, putting us totally to shame!) and Nayeli speaks German and French. She usually only speaks French with her dad, so she thought our broken French was pretty funny. Although my French is still very basic, I can at least ask for simple things in shops and understand basic questions, so it was a bit of a shock to go back to not being able to ask for even the simplest thing in Germany. I can understand how Europeans are so motivated to learn other languages. I certainly would be.

In keeping with our busy schedule, Glen came to visit the weekend before Thanksgiving. We went to the Catacombs, the Montparnasse Tower, and had some fine French food. And I think Ken and Glen did some work somewhere in there too. It was a whirlwind 4 days. Sonja mostly knew to call Glen “Gen,” but called him “Dada” a few times. Let the confusion begin!

While Glen was visiting the Beaujolais Nouveau arrived, which is a pretty big thing in Paris. It is the new wine made with the grapes harvested 6 weeks before in early October. We had a bottle then, and also had a bottle with our Thanksgiving dinner, which included a roast chicken and fancy dessert. Ken’s dessert was a glisten orb of moose, on a brownie with gold leaf on it or thyme flavored chocolate – it was quite amazing!

We are headed to Madrid on Saturday. It will be great to see Dexter and Rosa, and we have never been to Spain, so we are very excited!

I think our last two weeks will be quieter, unless we make another effort to get to London, the first time was thwarted by a cold I had in early October.

A very happy Thanksgiving to everyone.

~Rachel

P.S. Sonja turned 18 months yesterday. She will seem so different to everyone when we get back. She talks all the time and even has simple conversations. Some of her new words are: kiwi, open (everything can be opened – doors, jackets, packaging, it is a very useful word for a baby), apple juice, and Germany. She is saying little phrases and even using possessives (like pointing at my dessert and saying Mama’s).

La visite d’une vie

We’ve been in Paris a little over a month, and have exactly one month left before coming back home.  It’s been several weeks since I’ve done any blogging. (I’m glad Rachel’s been picking up the slack.) When we first got here, I was eager to set up a blog and keep a diary of all the exciting things we’re doing here.  It’s not that we’re not still doing cool things (we’re going to Germany tomorrow), but it’s that we’re becoming so accustomed to everything that makes living Paris so different from our lives in Massachusetts.  If I go back and re-read my first few blog entries, a lot of it was me pointing out unusual and unexpected things that we’d seen. A month later, most of these things seem normal.  Some of the things I wrote about turned out to be flukes, not typical of Paris atall.  This goes a long way towards answering the question of why I wanted to live somewhere different for an extended period of time.  How long does it take before you’re able to tell a fluke from true local flavor? start to feel at home? settle into the local routine? become a regular at a local restaurant?  know your way around town without a map? I’d say for me it took about one month. 

Have you ever visited a new place for only a few days and wished you could live there?  A few days or even a week… it isn’t long enough to get a feeling of a town or city.  In fact, visiting a place for too short a time can lead to false impressions.  For example, maybe you visited Paris and you found: a beautiful open market, some very dirty sidewalks, a completely empty restaurant, the crowded Metro, etc.  How do you know if that market is daily, weekly, monthly (or even yearly like the flea market we encountered on our first weekend here)?  The street might have been dirty on Tuesday, but maybe that’s because they clean that street every Wednesday.  The restaurants was empty because you were there at noon, which is not when the Parisians eat lunch.  Maybe the Metro was busy because it was rush hour… This trip is about experiencing the rhythms, the flow, the repeating cycles of a place, which you simply can’t do without spending long amounts of time there.

When you’re bustling around on a week-long vacation, you’re constantly encountering new situations, but you’re completely excused from having to learn any details.  You don’t have to learn your way around as the map and guide is always in hand. You can struggle through buying some Metro tickets, but you don’t actually have to remember how it worked.  That restaurant on the corner might be closed on Mondays, but you don’t have to remember this because next Monday you’ll be gone.  This transience creates a very temporary connection to a place that (at least for me) is quickly forgotten and replaced with false memories based on my photos.  This trip is about creating real memories, and learning the intricacies of life in Paris.

These are the things that differentiate “living” from “visiting”.  And the truth is that before this, I’d never lived anywhere outside of Massachusetts. When I realized this, it became unbearable.  ”Let’s live somewhere else for a while,” I said to Rachel, and this trip was born.

How long before I’ve ridden all 14 metro lines, visited all 20 arrondisements, learned to speak enough French to have an engaging conversation, and learned to distinguish a glass of Côte du Rhone from a glass of  Côte du Sud? Maybe not on this trip… But for now I’ll be satisfied to be au fait with the streets of Montmartre, to be able to understand immediately when a shop-keeper tells me the total (and not cheat by glancing at the cash register), and to get a friendly “ça va!” from the server when I go into the local café.

O-BA-MA!!!!!

What a week! I haven’t felt any homesickness since we have been here, but election day and the day after I was wishing we were home to share the suspense and joy with everyone. It’s likely that our absentee ballots were never counted in the presidential election since it wasn’t a close race in Massachusetts, but we are still proud that we cast our ballots in this amazing election. I was congratulated by several people after they asked me if I was American, which was fun. We’ll just have to have an inauguration celebration instead! I was surprised to find myself crying during the acceptance speech. It was a great moment in history.

 

Gallery Lafayette Christmas Lights

On Sunday we went over the Montmartre Cemetery. It was a beautiful day and after walking for a bit Ken took Sonja so I could draw. That evening Ken met up for dinner with an Italian friend who was in Paris working on the big Christmas light display at a Gallery Lafayette department store. Ken got a behind-the-scenes tour of the light display – very cool!

 

Monday, Ken had his conversation exchange and Sonja and I went to the lovely Parc Monceau (in the 8th), which is an English style garden. It was a nice change from the rigid geometry of some of the parks here. We were there in the early evening and the light streaming through the trees was majestic. I felt like we were in the final, happily-ever-after scene of a romantic movie.

Tuesday Ken and I took a walk without Sonja (she stayed with the babysitter) and saw Place de Madeline, Trinity Church (in the 9th), and went to the famous Angelina Tea Room. We are looking forward to Linda’s visit starting tomorrow.

~Rachel

Eating well

 

Paris Arrondissments

Above is a map of Paris showing the arrondissements (districts). We have recently formed the goal to visit all of them before the end of our trip.

Already Visited: 1, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 12, 14, 18, 19

To Visit: 2, 8, 9, 10, 11, 13, 15, 16, 17, 20

So we are half-way there, and less than half way through our trip, so I think it will happen!

 

We were a bit decadent this week. We had the new babysitter on Tuesday and she came again on Friday. On Tuesday, Ken and I went out to lunch at a cute restaurant near our apartment whose name translates to “the cafe that speaks,” a rather unusual restaurant name. The food was amazing and we were able to have a French-style 2 hour lunch. After that we needed to walk off lunch a bit, so rather than taking the metro, walked for about an hour through the 18th and 19th Arrondissements to Parc des Buttes Chaumont. The walk was not very scenic, but it certainly made us appreciate what a scenic area we live in and helped us get a lay of the land, which can be a bit hard to do when always jumping on the Metro. On the walk we got to see the locks that they use to bring boats from the Seine into one of the canals. The Parc des Buttes Chaumont was adorable. It is all fake – a fake grotto, fake waterfalls and streams, fake cliffs, but it was all done in the 1860s, so even if it seems a bit Disney-esque, is is still quite old, settled feeling, and much older than Disney. We were hoping to stop for hot chocolate, but we lingered at the park too long and had to get back. Sonja loves the babysitter who she calls “Ana.”

Wednesday, Sonja and I went over to the 6th to check out a consignment store to get some nouveaux* clothes for her. I was feeling a bit bad that the kid didn’t seem to have much winter clothing and was wondering why I hadn’t packed her more. Then I remembered that it was because she didn’t have any. The last time it was winter she was a lot smaller. 

Thursday was my last class at the language school. While I think it was really valuable in the beginning, the lessons were becoming repetitive, and listening to the other students’ terrible pronouniation wasn’t helping! Next week I’ll start lessons with a private tutor, which will actually be cheaper and (I hope) more effective.

On Thursday we also got to try the crêpe place a few doors down from us, with the odd name “Le Crêp’uscule.” It was very simple place, but good, and Sonja more or less sat through it all, which was awesome. 

We hadn’t originally planned for another French style (2 hour) lunch for our second day out, but our babysitter’s fiancé works at a well-known restaurant, “J’aime Jean”, and her enthusiasm for the food led us to go out for lunch again on Friday. Wow. What an amazing meal. Both Ken’s and my appetizers involved wild rabbit. Game is a specialty on their menu in the fall and winter. My main course had all kinds of wild mushrooms and chicken and Ken had duck and lamb. The Pièce de résistance however was dessert. I had the rice pudding recommend by Ana and Ken had the “chocolate tasting.” Each dessert was enough for about 6 or 8 people. We did the best we could! As delicious as the first two courses were, we’d really like to go back and just have dessert so we can give it the attention it deserves. After lunch we walked through Les Invalides to get over to the Metro and attempted to go to the Catacombs, only to find that the line was very long and there was no way we’d get in before closing. (I guess we weren’t the only ones with the idea to visit on Halloween. Additionally it’s school vacation here this week.)  So, despite the crummy weather, we took a walk around the Montparnasse Cemetery. When we got too cold, we took the metro toward home stopping a few stops before ours to get hot chocolate. And we would have had some too if the place (which still proclaimed on its sign to be a “salon du thè”) hadn’t recently turned into a gift shop. Oh well, I guess cute little bags are more lucrative than hot chocolate and tea. 

Today we took Sonja to the Natural History Museum. It turned out to be very kid friendly, and she had a great time. We were very surprised that her favorite part seemed to be the hall of extinct animals, which was very dark, moodily lit, and full of snarling taxidermied animals. Go figure. She also seemed to like the giant minerals. And pointing out any animals she could identify: “FISH!”, “BIRD!” , “BUG!”, etc.

November will go by in a flash with all we have planned: Linda visiting, going to Germany, Glen visiting, Peter (our cousin from Belgium) visiting, and going to Madrid. It’s going to be busy.

~Rachel

* Footnote by Ken:  French has two different words corresponding to the English word “new”. Nouveaux/nouvelle (that’s masculine/feminine) refers to something new to you.  Neuf/neuve refers to something that has just been created and is new to the world.  For example, in English if you say you bought a new car, it’s not clear whether or not it’s a used car.  In French, a “voiture neuve” is clearly a new (and not used) car, while a “nouvelle voiture” is a car that you just bought (used or new).  Confused yet? There’s also corresponding versions of “old” for each meaning.

My baby is my copilot

I think Sonja must have some kind of playground 6th sense. I attempted to take her to the Opera House yesterday, but she flipped out every time I tried to take the map from her. So like any mother who doesn’t feel like causing a scene on the Metro, I let her have it. She seems to know exactly what maps are and says “Map” very clearly when she sees one. She also knows you are supposed to scrutinize them, and definitely don’t give them up easily. So, with Sonja on the baby leash, holding the map and leading the way down the streets of Paris, we came to the Jardin des Tuileris again. Sonja seemed both thrilled and assured that she had found her way to the good stuff. What a nut.

My French classes are going well. I’m getting to the point where I pronounce most words semi-correctly (not saying the last letter), and not with a complete American or Portuguese accent. Ken’s going to try to find a conversation exchange, so he can get more real-life speaking experience.

I’m disappointed to say that after one night out our babysitter has disappeared. It’s weird actually. I could understand if she didn’t want to tell us the night that she babysat that it wasn’t going to work for whatever reason, and had phoned or emailed the next day to say it was a no go. But that didn’t happen. We set up for her to come on Wednesday at 1:00 and she didn’t show. I called and emailed, but no response. What does this mean? I checked her references. Very recommended. Sonja seemed totally happy when we got back from dinner. I’m just confused. So I’m going to start looking for someone else. Darn.

My drawing class continues tomorrow. I really love it. For some reason sitting down and drawing for a couple of hours is not something I do on my own, but when I do it in a class I find it relaxing and fun. Maybe when I get back to the US I’ll continue it on my own.

Our absentee ballots came!! (Thanks for forwarding them Linda). I was getting worried that our city might not have its act together enough to send them out.

 

Funny things:

Once a week this tuba player with back up music on a PA comes down the street, sounding not like one guy, but like a whole parade.

 

When Ken and I went to dinner alone, a guy came in the restaurant and tried to sell us the little flash lights that project a pornographic picture. Um . . . How many couples eating dinner out could this guy possibly sell to? 

 

~Rachel

Live from Fontainebleau

I was relaxing in the lounge of a hotel in Ury, a tiny town outside of Fontainbleau. I say “was” because an entire bus load, or possibly more than one bus, of Japanese tourists just poured into the lobby. I’m typing on the iPhone so I’ll keep this short. Heading out tomorrow for some mountain biking and maybe even some bouldering. Foret de Fontainbleau is 100 square miles of managed forest, criss-crossed by old carriage roads. It’s a short train ride from Paris. Hope I don’t get lost .

Internet Joy

I was starting to write a post that went: “I mentioned on my facebook status that we were looking for a babysitter on craigslist.” And then I remembered a much more interesting thing I have been thinking about – how dependent we are on the internet. If we had taken this trip 10 years ago, it would have been impossible to start with since Ken wouldn’t have been able to keep up his normal work without major concessions. We wouldn’t have found a babysitter on craigslist. We wouldn’t have been able to auto-translate the French messages written on the main door of the apartment telling us important things like: the water is being flushed on Monday, don’t drink it after 9:30. We wouldn’t be able to type two locations into google maps and get walking directions with approximate times. We wouldn’t have gotten to video chat with friends and family. We wouldn’t have our home phone ringing in Paris. Heck, we probably never would have found such a great apartment to rent. Ok, so maybe this takes some of the adventure out of the situation. But it sure makes it lower stress and more doable with a 1 year old. 

Anyway, back to the babysitter. Amy is a New Yorker, who just graduated from NYU and is teaching english outside of Paris. I was very nervous about the whole thing. (Will she kidnap, harm, feed too many cookies, or ignore the baby?) But I did as Leslie suggested and trusted my instincts that she was fine. Ken and I went out to dinner at The Quiet Man last night and had a lovely baby-free time. I think Sonja had a lot of fun without us. She usually gets to see Nonna and Grandma a lot, so it is probably getting a little monotonous for her with boring old Mama and Dada 24-7. So we are going to try to have a regular gig once a week with Amy. I’m very pleased!

 

We took Sonja to the Musée d’Orsay on Thursday. She was most interested in the little cords that they use to keep you from getting to close to the paintings, go figure. Though she did like a painting of cows though, as well as the Degas painting that is featured in the children’s book “Olivia“.

 

~Rachel

Send Cheddar

I’m going to use outline format for this blog post.

• Parisians really do love little dogs, and carry them around in handbags or rolling shopping carts.

• Parisians really do carry baguettes under their arms. They buy them like they’re going out of style from the bakeries which are on every block.

• “Fais attention à la petite fille” means something like “watch out for the little girl”.  This and “Regardes la petite” gets said a lot at the playground by other parents while trying to make sure their kid doesn’t clobber Sonja.

• France has a city-wide bike rental system called Velib with thousands of stations around the city. It’s clever but unfortunately the bikes are really heavy and don’t gear very high.  After spending many minutes trying to figure out how to use the automatic console, I rented one and rode it most of the way back from French class. I bailed out at the bottom of the hill for reasons which should be obvious if you’ve ever visited Montmartre. (stairs, cobblestones, huge hill.) Apparently, this is not uncommon and as an incentive to return bikes to the beleaguered Montmartre rental stations, you actually get a discount if you return a bike there.

• Whenever we feel like eating, the restaurants and cafés are ghost towns.  Whenever I’m going somewhere else, the restaurants and cafés are mobbed with Parisians, relaxing with friends.  I think I need to start making a cheat sheet about when the proper stylish time to eat each meal on each day of the week.

• Parisians only wear black jackets. If you see someone in a non-black jacket, they’re guaranteed to be from out of town.

• In stores, when I try to get by using my limited French, I can usually catch enough keywords or just use context clues to figure out what I’m being asked, and construct a response.  Sometimes I can get through the whole exchange without a hitch.  If they say something I just don’t understand at all, and I come back with a blank stare and don’t break into English, they usually realize I’m a foreigner but people sometimes guess that I’m Italian or Spanish.

• British people don’t even try to speak French.  There are quite a lot of Brits here in Paris (due to its geographic proximity I assume) and I’ve noticed this trend. They walk into shops and just make their demands in English.  There’s no “Bonjour Monsieur”, no “Merci”, just straight up English. It’s pretty funny.  Hey whole country of the UK, buy a phrase book!

• We’ve begun to realize what an amazing location we’re in. We’re one short block from the Metro stop, and we have hundreds of shops within a 1 minute walk (although none of them seem to sell towels). We’re two flights of stairs from the tree-lined, wealthy, picturesque part of Montmartre which makes for great relaxing walks.

• Parisians don’t talk on the Metro; rarely to their friends and absolutely never to strangers.  They just sit silently. Awkward.

• There’s wonderful produce here.  Fruits and vegetables shops are almost as numerous as boulangeries or cafés in Montmartre.  This is great if your baby is a fruitaholic. They have a huge selection including everything you could want and several dozen other fruits or vegetables that I’m entirely unfamiliar with.  The sidewalk displays of fruit are presented as works of art, and I sometimes feel like I’m ruining it by buying some grapes.  Glen: Sonja loves those fresh red currants and eats them like candy.

• Sonja keeps amazing me.  She says too many words now to keep track of, including “apple” and “book”.  She calls grapes “bobos”. I have no idea why. She understands everything we say and will sometimes do what she’s told like “Sonja, put this in the trash please.”

• Sonja grabbed someone else’s balloon (off the ground) at the playground today and ran around hysterically happy for ten minutes waving it around say “looon” “looon” “looon” while rubbing it on her face and head.

• Three different guided tour groups came through the playground yesterday morning while Sonja was playing. 

• Paris has free Wi-Fi in certain parks that you can use for two hours.  I tried it out today. Very convenient.  A lot of cafés have free Wi-Fi too.

• Sonja pulled the button off Rachel’s jacket so Rachel brought it one door over from our apartment building to the tailor where he repaired it for free.  Now that’s city-livin’.

• Since the French don’t start dinner until around 8, and we have the baby, we’ve been eating mostly take out (Indian, Vietnamese, etc.) or prepared meals (roasted chickens, quiche, pizzas) which are really easy to come by around here.

• We cooked our first full meal this week.  We might start doing more cooking.

• Sometimes, while carrying Sonja around, I buy a baguette, break off the top, and then hold it so Sonja can reach it. She proceeds to dig out and eat the soft bread from the middle bit by bit until the top of the baguette is mostly hollow.

• Sonja’s sleeping on an air mattress on the floor which has some interesting consequences. For one, she can get into it on her own.  If she’s totally exhausted she can just crawl in and curl up and take a nap. Secondly, she can get out on her own. She was taking a nap the other day, and me and Rachel were talking in the living room.  Sonja comes parading right of her room.  This might not seem like a big deal but it’s a first for a kid of until now always wakes up with a cranky cry. Fortunately this place is fairly spartan and thus rather childproof.  Around 5 AM I got up in the night to get a drink and Sonja comes walking out of her room and walks over to the stairwell door in the dark and says “Walk!”… Yeah right, go back to bed kid.

• I seriously have to do some research on French cheese.  There’s these cheese shops and I just don’t know what to ask for. It’s pretty overwhelming and you can’t just pick one by the way it looks because they all look like moldy blobs.  We bought some Brie and it’s stinking up the apartment. I would kill for a slice of Vermont Cheddar.

Parc de Villette and the Harvest Festival

Thank you to everyone who is reading & commenting on our blog! It’s nice to hear from you!

Though I doubt Sonja would care if we only went to the 4 or 5 parks in our immediate neighborhood, for my own enjoyment I plan to take her a bit farther afield. With this in mind on Wednesday we went to Parc de La Villette. This is a huge park in eastern Paris that used to be slaughterhouses before the invention of trucks with cold storage. It was designed by the famous architect Bernard Tschumi. It was an interesting experience. The playground was entirely fenced in, and to get in you had to go through a small building with a lot of security guards. Inside there were separate areas for different age groups. There were these amazing low zip lines for the older children and an air bounce and giant water mattress for the little ones. It was an absolute mad house. Daycares bring large groups of children to public parks, so there were many more kids than adults. Sonja was one of the littlest kids there, but she seemed to hold her own. 

I had my second drawing class today. It was held at Sacré-Cœur, right around the corner from us. It is so nice to spend a couple of hours enjoying and drawing the amazing view. After class, I called Ken on my cell phone and discovered he was just on the other side of Sacré-Cœur at the playground with Sonja. In the short distance between where I was and where they were, a harvest festival had sprung up. So, we walked around to the little booths tasting and buying wine, apricots in wine, sandwiches, mushrooms, and other tidbits. It made for a lovely afternoon.

Now Sonja is napping and Ken is at a park using the free wi-fi to get some work done.

BTW, I think I’ve discovered the root of the “French Paradox,” wherein the French eat decadently, yet stay thin. The answer is they climb 1,000 stairs a day. (Not exaggerating). Between the 100 steps down (and up again) to the metro and the 100 steps up to the main street (and down again), I think I could eat five chocolaty desserts a day and still fit into my pants.

Tomorrow we have no classes, so we will probably take a day trip somewhere – off to consult our big pile of guide books and choose a destination.