Paris Deux

It shames me to admit that I was reluctant to go to Paris (the sound you hear is the collective gasp of all Francophiles).

This reluctance was due to my swallowing the stereotype of the French as fashion, food and language snobs. Shameful, I know.  Normally I try to rise above these prejudices but in this case I foundered and sunk.
Susan and Rosalie bouyed me with their experiences but somewhere in the back of my mind I thought "well, those two ladies are so exceptionally beautiful and kind that not even the French can be mean to them."

But the boys had so few requests for our year: Time's Square, the Four Corners and the Eiffel Tower.  Three items. Could I deny them a third of their desires?  I couldn't.  Even if it meant risking the disapprobation of skinny French women sipping champagne.

Folks, not since Chicago have we encountered such friendly, warm, helpful, hospitable people.  We didn't have a single unpleasant encounter.  Not one.  Even the airport security woman who confiscated our bottles of wine was kind about it.  Nay, she was apologetic.  She even checked with her colleague to be sure there wasn't some loophole she could use to allow us to sneak it through (our fault for trying to obfuscate large amounts of liquid in a carry-on in this post-9/11 world.  Really, we know better).

Now to be fair, we have been treated very well throughout Europe.  And I don't mean to give the impression that I think locals are obligated to bow and scrape to tourists.  But it's refreshing to have someone stop and ask if you need assistance while you are standing on a street corner looking confused.
Mihai's French is quite good and most of the time we communicated in French but people always offered to use English if we preferred.  No eye rolling or indignant huffing about it.  So much for my preconceived prejudices. (Hey, at least I own up to it)

I expected to get many more photos.  But frankly, it was cold.  Doesn't it look cold in these pictures? Yeah. And it was. By now everyone is aware of the record low temps across Europe and there we were, trying to sight-see in the midst of it.
So we didn't really sight-see so much as we scurried from restaurant to museum to cafe to shop seeking sanctuary from the bitter wind.
The few times we paused to get photos I could only manage about 2 or 3 before my hands grew so stiff and pained that I couldn't focus the lense.

But we got to the Eiffel Tower where we stood in the painfully bitter cold of dusk and waited to to buy tickets to go to the top.  Once we were up at the top we were so cold we didn't care at all, we just wanted to get back down and go to the restaurant where we'd planned to have crepes.
That kind of sums up our sight-seeing experience.

We also managed to make it to Notre Dame.
As I stood looking at the cathedral my thoughts took me back to days long past when Abra and I endlessly discussed the tragedy of Esmeralda and Quasimodo and the villainy of Frollo and Phoebus.  How I wished Abra was with me, as we'd so often dreamed in our youth.

And we visited the Louvre.  You might say, "of course" but let me tell you that we didn't do the Uffizi in Florence so don't put it past the Ionescus to miss out on a major attraction.  Particularly if it comes down to a choice between eating and visiting said attraction.
Lucky for me the Louvre was warm and we were overly full.  Otherwise it would have been just another building I photographed from the outside.

As it was, I was amazed how liberally we were allowed to take photographs inside.
I love the faces Mihai found in the paintings.  Unfortunately I wasn't paying attention to what he was doing so I can't credit the artists.  I'm sure this is an unforgiveable faux pas but I'm posting them anyway because they bring warmth to my soul and I hope they do to yours also.

Other than eating, Mihai had only one desire in Paris and that was to visit this store and buy a copper pot.  Sadly, they were all monsterously heavy and we were daunted at the thought of trying to get it back to the States.  So we settled on a crepe pan for us and a potato dicer for Silviu.

Fortunately we had a decent view from our hotel.  I'm not normally a big fan of modern industrialism but I found myself photographing the buildings around us in both the light of the early morning and the evening.

The take home lesson is not "Indulge your children's every travel desire" but rather, "Don't believe everything you hear" and "Rise above your own inclinations to be unnerved by fashionable people who have well developed palates".
Also, "Use a little more prudence at the dinner table".
Because, in my effort to be less schleppy, I left my fat pants at home and guess what?  Not only can you not take bottles of wine on board a plane but you also can't use a giant safety pin to try and expand the space between the button and the button hole on your regular pants.  Airport security doesn't care how many servings of creme brule you ordered, the safety pin/needle/instrument of potential stabbing stays behind madame.
I think this little sculpture says it all.
Oh the indignity.

Paris Un

One night at dinner we sat next to this lovely couple.  

Bob is British, Ghislaine is French.  They've been married 50 years this October and divide their time between England and France so Ghislaine speaks fluent English.  That, and the fact that they are both extremely kind, made for an enjoyable conversation over dessert.

While sipping some Izarra, Ghislaine pointed out that it wasn't so long ago when French was the international language and English speakers had to struggle along with phrase books when they travelled abroad.

"Yes," I concurred, "I remember visiting Europe in '87 and spending a great deal of time consulting Berliz."

"Indeed." she sighed.  "Somewhere along the way we French just...lost."

Mihai, Bob and I consoled her with the fact that the emergence of English probably has more to do with the proliferation of computers into every day life rather than any specific failing on the part of the French.

"And" I pointed out "Not everyone needs computers" (so I tell myself every time our internet goes out) "but everyone needs to eat and you French have nailed that."

And that is probably the biggest understatement I have ever made.

How do they do it?

Take the restaurant where we were eating and conversing, for example.  
Le Volant was merely a restaurant close to our hotel that we checked out as we walked past. Although it was closed for the day, the chef saw us looking at the posted menu and came out (wearing red shoes, a black beret and holding a wine bottle in his hand-I kid you not).  We asked him for a recommendation on where to eat for dinner that night and he suggested this place:

which, besides being a cured-meat-lover's paradise, was warm and inviting and absolutely perfect for a cold Sunday afternoon.
An Irish/Welsh rugby match was on, the patrons were all shouting and cheering and we sat in a back, cozy corner and felt like we could stay there for hours.

which we did because no one was in a hurry to give us the bill (I love that about Europe) and they seemed content to let us linger as long as we wanted over dessert and coffee (which, in general, was the only thing that wasn't stellar in Paris).

Eventually our butts grew numb and we had to head back out into the city where we passed any number of these:

as well as grocery stores filled with clementines and wine and cheese.
Since we had a fully functioning kitchen in our hotel/apartment, we stocked up in anticipation of breakfast the following morning which looked like this:

We were so in love with the bread and cheese and other delights that we ate far more for breakfast than we should have.  That resulted in us not being hungry at all for lunch which wasn't too great a problem except for the fact that it was fiercely cold so we frequently were in need of shelter from the weather. A nice, warm restaurant usually fit the bill quite nicely.

So in we would go.

And there the food would be so good that we would order course after course even after we promised ourselves to eat lightly.
Near the Siene we were feasting at a place where one of the waiters spoke no English.  But it didn't matter, he stood behind the bar and asked for thumbs up, thumbs down or thumbs neutral with each dish that came out.  How can you resist gorging in this type of environment?  You can't.  So we ate and kept our thumbs up.

By the time it was nearing the supper hour we were in a food-induced, bloated stupor.

But we had to go back to Le Volant.  After all, the chef was so generous with his recommendations, how could we not go back and try his restaurant?  And he even checked to make sure we had gone where he had suggested (how relieved we were that we could answer yes).

And that was how we met Bob and Ghislaine.

You see?  English, French or Japanese, in Paris it all really comes back to food.