Trois grandes jours

My wife is a bad influence on my writing. For this, she does not suffer, nor do I, but my writing suffers, and, I hope, so do my readers.

A lot of things have happened in the 5 days since last I wrote, and I no longer remember many of them.

We installed Skype on the computer here, and used it to talk to everyone late Thanksgiving night at Doug and Deborah's home -- our four children were there. The sound quality was astonishing, and we talked for one hour and forty-five minutes, gratuit. Since we used the laptop's speakers, it was just like having a high quality speakerphone. We're glad everyone enjoyed their holiday -- for Thanksgiving, we had a smoked turkey sandwich just to keep up appearances.

However, we had our first moderately fancy meal, at lunch-time -- that's the secret to affordably sampling Paris' best restaurants. The same menu, virtually the same portions, but half as costly.

On Wednesday, the last day of predicted bright sunshine for a while, we went to the top of the Montparnasse Tower for lunch. Normally, it costs $9 per person to ride the elevator to the 58th floor observation deck -- with the exception of a very few buildings on the outer edge of Paris, and, of course the Eiffel Tower, nothing but churches is much taller than 100 feet or so -- the Pompidou Centre is 7 stories and has a pretty good view all over the city. But, the Montparnasse Tower is as tall as the Bank of America building in SF, and the restaurant is appropriately called Ciel du Paris -- The Skies of Paris.

Oh, and the elevator ride is free, which is like getting 20% off the price of your lunch.

Entree, main dish, and dessert were 33 Euros (about $40) per person. Add a bottle of water, a half-bottle of wine (quite reasonably priced), and coffee, and the bill was just over 100 Euros. The view was beyond price. And, it was really fascinating to watch Parisians and Frenchmen from the countryside alike walk over to the windows and gawk. The Maitre' d Hotel seated us on the lower level of the 3-tier restaurant, away from the window -- the tables are placed so that those away from the window are not blocked by those with window seating -- neither were we bothered by all the people who came and stood next to the window-seated diners to look at the view.

The food was merely superb.

The chef had served as a lieutenant with, I believe, Alan Ducasse in one of Paris' three-star Guide Michelin shrines to elegant dining. It showed.

First, of course, une amuse bouche, an "amusement for your mouth" -- it was a single poached mussel surrounded by perhaps two tablespoons of the most perfect Vichyssoise I've ever tasted. My bouche was très sérieusement amusé.

We had the same first course -- a chaud-froid (a hot-cold) of pureed creamed lentils with small cubes of seared fois gras -- they looked like they were floating in butter, but it was the duck fat coming out of the fois gras. Each spoonful prompted sighs, murmurs, tiny burblings of pure ecstasy from each of us. We remembered our manners and filled our spoon by pushing them away from us toward the opposite rim of the bowl. The half-bottle of rose was perfect with this, and each subsequent course.

Kelli ordered a mahogany-brown roasted lamb shank, and I stayed true to my promise to myself to order fish the first time I got to a good Parisian restaurant. I was not positive that I had ordered fish, and it might have been something dreadful instead, but I knew it was not rognons du veau (veal kidneys) or pied du cochon (pig's feet) -- I just had no idea what a mille feuille de lieu jaune was going to be -- turns out, a "lieu" is a small saltwater flatfish -- think sand dab -- very, very delicate in flavor. The plate started with four filets (two fish) and was covered with a melange of concasse of fresh peeled tomato and brilliant kernels of yellow fresh corn, all in a saffron sauce. Lieu jaune means "yellow lieu", but the chef had a field day with the topping, executing a tres clever joke on the fact that the fish has a yellow skin, which he had removed but "replaced". In the center was an inverted ramekin of a chiffonade of endive Belgique braised in possibly a cup of butter -- it was tender, but bitter, unctuous, but sweet....Heck, it was GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOD.

For dessert, Kelli had pain perdu -- sort of grilled bread pudding -- made with circular brioche, an egg-based bread, plus eggs and cream and you could taste all those good things in it, plus a small spoonful of freshly made burnt caramel ice cream with sea salt.

I opted for the cheese plate.

The adorable young Thai waitress, who after the meal introduced herself as Mai-Lon, brought out a tray with at least a dozen cheeses, which I recognized as being from Anne-Marie Cantin's fromagerie. She kept recommending cheeses until my dinner-sized plate was full -- I wound up with 6 sizeable wedges of cheese, a half-dozen dried apricots, fresh walnuts, and grapes. There was a crottin of goat cheese with the texture of Parmesan, a reblochon, a blue de Gex au lait du vache, a camembert that was fresh and sweet and didn't even smell like a Camembert, another Camembert du Paysanne avec Calvados, a Camembert coated in bread crumbs and then "finished" by being doused for several days with Calvados, a clear eau de vie made from Normandy apples.

Through it all, (we went through 4 changes of silverware, and coffee came with these incredible cookies -- like Florentines without the chocolate -- lace caramel and almond slices draped over a form while hot -- one each flavored with lemon rind, orange rind, and grapefruit rind. These folks know how to make a cup of coffee feel at its best) we watched people -- the late middle-aged couple that arrived an hour after us and left a few minutes ahead of us, bolting their food as though they got meals of this quality with this sort of view only on days that end in a "Y"......a business luncheon of about 25 people who all got aprons to start the meal (from the vendor who picked up the tab), and a 3-generation family in the corner, with grand-mere easily pushing 90 years of age, spry, active, and as interested as the 7-year old kids in gawking out the window after finishing her meal.

After the meal, we met Karen's friend Claire Aynard. We met at the entrance to La Coupole, a very famous (and, allegedly, the largest in all of France) restaurant. Claire is a most interesting woman -- married for years to a Tunisian, her sons were schooled in Tunisia and France and speak both Arabic and French, and she herself is working as a translator at the Orsay -- she speaks very good English, very good Italian, French beyond my comprehension, but I suspect it's good, too, and Arabic, of course.

She said "let's go someplace French -- La Coupole hasn't been French in decades", so we found a fairly smoky bar a few blocks away, had a glass of wine and a very serious but fun conversation for the next 4 hours. We covered everything, from Islamic family groups and how they entertain in their homes to why Burt Lancaster's 1960 "il Gattopardo" -- "The Leopard", brought up to modern times in the movie, it's an expose of Sicilian cultural mores based on a play written in the mid-19th century, was her favorite movie. She has offered to take us next week to Senlis, a small medieval town about 40 miles north of Paris, an ancient walled city, where the Capetian dynasty of kings (France has had four major dynasties of FRENCH kings, not counting Clovis of the Franks (remember, Franks are German and Bretons are English but now French -- because of this, his name is pronounced Clow-vees, because he's NOT French and you pronounce that last consonant, even though he was king) -- the Carolingians, based on the line of Charlemagne, the Merovingians, the Capetians, and the Bourbons (a bunch of the Louis). Hugue Capet, (pronouced "oooh", not "huge") was elected the first of the Capetian kings in Senlis way back then. There's a Christmas market there on Friday, and we will have a magnificent tour guide besides......one of her sons, by the way, is a philosopher. That's a person who writes books about philosophy. I thought I'd better define the term, because we don't have any philosophers in the United States.

Philosophers sit around, smoke pretty nasty cigarettes, drink wine of extremely suspect lineage, and discuss, in logical and rational ways, the meaning of life. The greatest philosophers have come from Greece (Aristotle, Socrates, Plato) and Germany (Hegel, Kant). They believed in the purity of thought, and thought that it could be expressed rationally, even in disagreement with others.

In America, instead of philosophers, we have a cadre of largely anti-intellectual commentators who substitute entertaining rhetoric for actual thought -- Bill O'Reilly, Rush Limbaugh, Bill Maher, Al Franken and Ann Coulter. All can be entertaining, but none consistently acts in a rational way with integrity -- expressing a logical progression of thoughts towards an integrated ethos. Instead, all are driven by dogmatic adherence to their political beliefs, and an intense need to play "gotcha" with the other side, focusing on belittlement instead of reason.

But they are a hell of a lot more fun to listen to than Hegel or Nietzsche.

STRIKE THREE

There was a train strike, sort of, for a couple of days this week, so even the train folks didn't know which trains were running.

We went to Gare Montparnasse to see if we could get to Chartres. We could buy tickets, but one fellow in the ticket office said there was a train at 12:15, and the other said "no, there's no train until 2:45". Turns out the doom-n'-gloomer was right, but she spoke very good English and advised us to buy our tickets anyway because they were good for 60 days and we were already there and why waste a trip?

Instead, on what turned out to be a rainy day (and, folks it has been cold here. Really cold -- with the wind chill, it's been about 18 degrees at night), we explored Paris' arcades.

The arcades (known locally as les passages) came into vogue in the first half of the 19th century, and were ways to provide both retail space and walkways to connect important areas to other important areas. The Palais Royale was connected to les Grandes Boulevards designed by Haussmann (pronounced Ohss-maun - remember, you never pronounce the Haitch in France. This has led me to want to go into a DHL store and ask if they are just called "DL" in France) in the 1850s or so by a series of arcades -- indeed, the garden behind the palace itself is surrounded by arcades that contain little enclaves of specialized stores. Several in a row sell medals. You know, the kind that are pinned onto a sash with great pomp and circumstance and kisses on the cheek by elderly men and women who have chins beyond counting -- the Order of Public Health, the Legion of Honneur, etc. There's a couple of photos through the window -- it costs several thousand dollars to buy yourself one of these gewgaws and pin it to your powder blue frock coat for Halloween, so I did not ask the proprietors to take them out of the cases so I could get photos sans reflections.

The arcades are wonderful -- one was built by Robert Fulton, the American inventor who harnessed steam for all manner of uses, and who had come to France to sell his new invention, the steam-powered torpedo. He had come up with a method of showing aerial views of great scenes, and he built an arcade with two large rotundas where he had circular screens, with clever lighting projected onto the screens to create the effect of three-dimensions. People who saw it said it was so life-like that when they later took a balloon ride over Athens "I recognized every monument as though I had already seen them."

Today the arcades have a lot of Indian restaurants and Asian restaurants and some very interesting shops, including a few very expensive ones. There's a shop that sells printed paper (stationery) that has been in the same spot about 170 years, and it is just darling. Others have old leather-bound first edition French books, of a slightly higher quality than those sold by the famous boquinistes in their green-metal stands that line the quais of the Seine.

We have a favorite shop, and we eventually found it. This shop has more than 750,000 postcards, most at least 90 years old, of Paris, other parts of France, and of "other stuff". I've spent hours there -- to be able to buy a postcard with a 100 year old photograph, complete with a stamp, a postmark, and incredibly florid lavender script applied by a fountain pen of high quality, for a dollar, is one of my secret pleasures. We're bringing home another dozen or so this year -- views of Place de la Republique from before the second War, when it really looked different.

I've been reading a book by Peter Mayle entitled "Acquired Tastes" -- damn him, he did the book I wanted to do! Peter Mayle is a well=known British author who wrote "A Year in Provence" and "Hotel Pastis", both of which I highly recommend to everyone reading this blog. Anyway, Acquired Tastes is my vote for the most charmingly successful boondoggle in the history of writing, and I'm bereft I didn't get there first.

Mayle convinced a publisher to fund him as he wrote about 20 different things that the insanely rich spend their money on, which are essentialy not available to you and I -- everything from the true cost of maintaining a mistress (real estate included) to purchasing hand-made shoes and clothing.

His final chapter discusses a bistrot in Paris, reputed to be the most expensive bistrot in all the world. We thought, "what the hell -- how expensive can a bistro be?"

Not being stupid, however, since the book is now about 12 years old, I wrote down the addresses and Metro stops of several other establishments, "just in case" it turned out that Paris was, somehow, still in France, and, therefore, things just didn't quite turn out as we expected.

Cold, rainy night. I made the mistake of selecting the Place Republique Metro station. When we entered the metro, it was dry, but when we exited at Republique, it was a downpour, close to freezing, and there are, by actual count, 417 separate exits from that warren of Metro lines that "intersect" at Republique.

Amazingly, on our very FIRST try, we went the wrong way!

Also, on our second try.

Soon my elbow was wet, despite it's residing inside two jackets and under a working umbrella. It was then that I realized we only had to turn right and go 5 blocks up the street and we'd be right where we should have exited the Metro in the first place.

Without any further ado, we got ourselves to a set of streets that were rather familiar, enough so that we took the wrong ones two more times before finding our way to the street which held Chez Ami Louis, at number 32.

It's dark and looks like a neighborhood joint. In fact, you think it's just another bistro, until you take a closer look at the menu outside, and realize that there are no commas in the prices.

A word about numbers in Europe: They use commas like we use decimal points, so, 5,40 Euros is 5 Euros and 40 Euro-cents.

So, when you saw fois gras on the menu at Ami Louis for 54 Euros with no comma, you began to understand why it made the book.

The portions are "nostalgic", according to the book -- the fois gras entree was large enough to serve a table of 6, but the other 5 people had their own problems.

Mayle then ordered the simple roast chicken. At $85 US, he ought have had a clue, but somehow he missed the key word entier on the menu.

He was served a roast chicken of about 5 and a half pounds, plus a plate of fries "in excess of 6 inches high". They skipped dessert, even though the entire pineapple drenched in Armagnac was tempting . . . .

We just weren't that hungry. At half those prices, I'd have taken a crack at it, but we knew we would not do justice to the volume of food we would be trying to peer around to see each other.

On to plan B, which was only two metro stops away. Meanwhile, however, we had work to do.

On an earlier visit to the RER (regional railway) station in our neighborhood, Kelli was unable to remember she was on vacation, and pounced on the cellular phone that someone had left on the platform -- the "lost and found maven" in her was aroused, and we had to do right by the lost phone's owner.

It was late at night, and the RER ticket/information office was closed, so sorry, but surely we can figure out something, no?

Needless to say, Kelli's work was quite finished when she handed ME the phone, and the problem.

I put the phone into my pocket. Nice color Siemens Model 55 phone.

At 5:30 that morning, the phone's alarm went off.

As God is my witness, this is true. I wandered through every crook and nanny of this tiny apartment, and finally the damned thing shut itself off (it was screaming the first three bars of a head-banging heavy metal song over and over -- it truly was effective at extinguishing sleep). I returned to a rather troubled sleep within the hour.

The following morning at 5:30, my suspicions were confirmed -- it was the damned phone going off. I removed the battery and it shut up. Kelli slept through this episode, which only strengthened my resolve to get this electronic scourge out of my abode.

So, I researched and tweaked and wrote out the saga of the telephone's discovery. It had a chip from SNF. We went to a phone store that sold all flavors of phone systems, and gave them our tale of woe.

They looked up the number of the SIM chip, (they were REALLY impressed that we would do this for some stranger), but it asked them for the phone number, which, of course, we did not have, because the phone had a security code activated. The user had changed it from the factory default of "0000", and i didn't keep trying since the phone would shut itself off and basically become a large plastic electric turd if I failed two more times at entering the code. Why I thought that was a BAD thing, I've no idea.

They said they could go no farther in solving this riddle for us, and sent us to a SNF store a few blocks away, where the entire two-act opera was reprised, with the ending this time being that "the phone is prepaid, so we cannot trace the number -- but -- in France, when you lose your phone, you go to the Police, who register all lost and found telephones."

Of course, the police -- the largest group of employed people in the Republic of France that contains not a single English-speaking person.

We were directed a few blocks to the police station, which was exactly where they said it would be. Nice young French cop outside, machine gun at the ready. I approached him with "Parlez-vous l'Anglais?" and he immediately and quite smartly replied "Parlez-vous Francais?"

Still, he let us into the station, we danced with the nice young lady behind the desk for a while, sang a rueful duet in Franglish, and handed over the cell phone, along with our names, address, and phone number. If no good deed goes unpunished in most of the world, I can hardly wait to see just how the French amplify the experience.

From there, we headed to Au Bascou, a Basque restaurant near Arts et Metiers Metro stop. We entered the warm room, which had 6 diners, only to learn that the room was, desole, booked solid for tonight, and please, you are steaming our windows and our patrons, and only the mussels are steamed here, so, merci, au revoir.

Plan C involved two Metro rides and a trip back to our old neighborhood from last year.

Where we now live is elegant, but it's really a residential district full of well-=to-do folks and diplomats, who must be the ones that can afford the magnificent cherries from Argentina that are offered at only $17 a pound at the fruit stand down the street. It's very quiet at night.

The Marais, on the other hand, is as active as North Beach -- narrow streets full of people and the occasional brave driver; groups laughing and moving about -- it's a very lively, active neighborhood. We were proceeding to Camille when it happened again -- an African gentleman, pulling a suitcase behind, with no umbrella or cap, stopped to ask for directions. I told him I was sorry, I was a "foreigner", and he said thanks and started to bolt away, but I said "wait, I have a map, if it is directions you seek". He was excited about the map and said he was looking for "rue Elzever".

I don't make this stuff up. Rue Elzever was the street our next restaurant was on, and it was "prochaine, a droit -- the next street, on the right. I knew this without opening the map, and boy, was our friend impressed -- he bolted down the rainy street, got to the corner about 10 seconds ahead of us, and turned and gave that jaunty wave of the newly confident once he read the street sign.

Better still, Camille, our restaurant, welcomed us with open arms, taking from us garments holding enough water to provision a Sudanese village for a week and ushering us to a table. It was a real, live Parisian bistro -- l'Ardoise, the blackboard, held the entire menu. We were given English menus, for which I profusely thanked the waiter while handing them back.

Cassoulet that fell into shreds -- every bite tender -- was Kelli's fondest desire; I had the entrecote, a sirloin steak, thin but tender and quite flavorful. My first course was a salade Landaise -- with smoked duck breast, little tiny strips of cooked bacon, and geziers du canard -- duck gizzards.

I wasn't expecting the gizzards -- this, indeed, must have been my punishment for the good deed performed earlier in the evening.

I expected duck gizzards to be like chicken gizzards -- you place them in your mouth, chew vigorously for between 15 and 40 seconds, until you dislocate your temporal-mandibular joint -- then, you swallow them, whole and untouched -- your teeth have not laid a glove on them.

Instead, they turned out to be my reward for working so hard to return the phone.

They LOOKED just like gizzards.

They TASTED just like duck. Tender, meaty, and, as Campbell's would have you believe of its concentrated Cream of Sodium soup, MMM---MMM--Good.

At the next table, an obviously Parisian woman plopped down, scrunched the table away from ours and next to its mate along the wall, and waited for the rest of her party to arrive.

The rest of the party, it turned out, were a pair of documentary film makers from New York, delightful ladies who had made a film about a man who escaped Vienna and lived in Switzerland during the Holocaust, despite the fact the Swiss didn't take in emigres. It was an interesting story, and I wound up helping that Parisian lady translate the menu into english, avoiding the heartbreak of grilled kidneys while selling the gizzard salad and cassoulet. Another delightful evening resulted from an horrendous beginning.

Our first visit to Paris, in January, we stayed in the Marais, in an adorably minuscule apartment owned by Alix Stecker. Alix grew up in Paris, but has lived in San Diego for many years. We corresponded during the rental, and then I made some suggestions to make the place a bit more inviting to renters after my return, and we just sort of struck up this friendship.

Alix is reading the blog -- she has, with my grateful permission, printed out the series of e-mails from our last trip and forwards them to each American who rents the apartment now, and yet, they still all come to Paris. Anyway, Alix has served as our concierge for this trip -- she dropped me a note a few days ago, saying that my discussion (and subsequent extended e-mail conversation) about the immigration situation in France caused her to get in touch with an old flame from 30+ years ago whose family is well-known in France, and who works for the family foundation dedicated to promoting understanding amongst diverse peoples in the world. Pierre was interested in meeting us and spending an evening, and this will happen in the next few days. Alix has also set us up with a friend who works for the French Senat, housed inside the Palais Luxembourg, and we will get a private tour of that magnificent edifice next week. The kindness of strangers is a wonderful thing, indeed, and I have learned not only to trust it, but to expect it now.

Friday dawned cold and gray. We got up very early -- about 7:30 our time -- in order to talk with everyone at the end of Thanksgiving dinner in California. It was a lot of fun to talk with everyone, but we had the additional benefit of being up off our rusty-dustys and moving about before noon.

So, we decided to make the trip to Chartres.

There was an "A" List of things I wanted to do before dying -- it wasn't very long, but it was important -- one was to see the Grand Tetons (and this was BEFORE I knew enough French to know what that means), the only mountains on this planet that rise more than 10,000 feet without any foothills. The other was to see Venice, and my experience in the train station there, where I was nearly afraid to open the door and look out, for fear it would not live up to my expectations, was a watershed moment in my life.

I've completed the "A" list, and have now moved to the "B" list. At the top of that list was the quest to see the Cathedral at Chartres, one of the cathedrals of pilgrimage for devout Catholics, and one that I had pounded into my stubborn skull in 10th grade world history -- one was not to think of one's self as educated until one had stood in awe before the great Rose Window of the cathedral at Chartres.

I didn't expect to climb the three blocks from the train station and find the square in front of the cathedral mantled in fresh snow.

Chartres is very, very special, perhaps unique in all the world, because it was built in only 30 years. This means that, unlike almost any other Gothic cathedral on earth, it is almost purely Gothic -- its construction did not extend into the Renaissance period.

Well, not much, anyway. The two towers, or fleches, were clearly built at different times -- one is austere in extremis, while the other has the hooks and dentations expected of late Gothic architecture.

Chartres is an architectural marvel. The nave is the highest of any Gothic cathedral, and the pillars that support the roof are set 50 feet apart, farther than in any other cathedral -- Notre Dame -Paris is next, and Notre Dame Amiens, but Notre Dame du Chartres is the biggest, boldest most soaring.....

And the windows---- Kelli, at first, thought the incredible windows we saw in Carcassone in 2001 were better, because they are taller, and Sainte Chapelle's windows are more approachable because the chapel is much smaller -- but the wonder of Chartres is that there are dozens of windows along the choir, past the nave, that you don't see when you enter the building --- and, only Chartres has "Chartres blue", a color so clear, so intense, so blue as to bring tears to your eyes from the sheer beauty of it all.

Oh, and it's old.

Really old.

Like, 900 years old. Some of the earliest stained glass extant. It leaves you with a rubbery feeling in your knees, a sense that you are almost floating into a spot on the space-time continuum that is not available to regular people.

We were going to rent the CD-players that explain everything, but did not because, well, we're in France, right? So, something unexpected was bound to happen.

In our case, it was the fete du Sainte Genevieve, the patron saint of Paris (some 50 miles away), but also, the patron saint of Police.

The police, in this case, the "Guarde Republicaine" of France, better known as les Gendarmes, which is a made-up word, a contraction of "les gentlehommes des armes", the gentlemen at arms.

Once a year they have a grand celebratory mass at Chartres, on the fete du Sainte Genevieve, their patron saint. The honor band plays during the mass, along with the great organ. The mass is at 4:30 in the afternoon. We arrived about 3:00 to a practicing band. No way we could have heard the tour guide, so instead, we got a concert, a processional, and mass. I've been to three of the four great churches of Catholic Pilgrimage -- Assisi, St. Peter's, and Chartres -- and each time, a special celebratory mass was being said -- to commemorate the Pope's 50th anniversary at St. Peter's, to commemorate an ecumenical meeting of religious leaders from around the world (including the Pope) in Assisi, and now this.

These things just happen to us. No research, no rhyme, no reason. They just happen to us, and we take them in stride, as though they were our due. And we cherish every moment. If you are interested, I have stereo sound of some of the mass, with the band and the great organ of Chartres.

Of course, we have to go back now and listen to the tour guide. Too bad.

We walked the beautiful small country town's old town center, all lit up for Christmas, and with everyone out and about on foot. I love these towns even more than the great cities of Europe -- There is a sense of history, and of place, but these are ordinary folks signing up for cell phone plans and buying toys for christmas and looking for dinner. I don't know whether Gertrude Stein ever made it to Chartres, but had she so done, she would have known to a certainty that there is assuredly a There there.

We wandered town looking for someplace with stick-to-your ribs food -- a stew, or a blanquette of veal. We wound up, somehow, in a phone store (trying to get help at deciphering the message I got when trying to pick up the messages left by other people -- it was in rather speedy French. The only thing I could understand was to enter my secret code, and if I pressed "1", I could once again record my "hello, it's Michael, leave a message" outgoing message. Everything else was Sanskrit to me. It turned out that the nice lady was saying that if I would just press 1, then 3, then 14, then 22, then stand on my LEFT ear lobe with my RIGHT index toe and sing the Marseillaise, then I would be able to get my messages. The problem has been fixed.) where I tried to find someone who spoke english.

The lady right next to us said, in a wise-cracking British accent, "I speak English, but I don't work here" -- I replied "no, you speak British", she said "are you American", I said "regrettably", she said "why" and I said "because the French seem to understand the British but not the Americans very well."

Anyway, we asked her for a restaurant recommendation, she said "what do you want", I told her "pot a feu or blanquette du veau", and she said, without the slightest trace of irony, "Oh, you want FRENCH food, not much of that here."

She sent us to a restaurant "across from the cathedral" called Sur Pont. I thought it was odd, since there were no bridges nearby, but who am I to inject logic, n'est ce pas?"

We looked high and low and finally just said the hell with it, we'll eat at the Snake restaurant on the corner, it's getting late.

Snake.

Serpent.

(Sur-pont in French). So, we stumbled into the right place in spite of ourselves.

Warm, French country place decorated with Toulouse-Lautrec and coffee bean burlap bags among other things. we had Soupe al'oignon (not truly authentic, with stock made from hours of beef bone roasting and braising, but bracing and delicious anyway), Kelli had a mushroom omelette and I ordered the Steak Tartare.

They mixed it all together -- the chopped filet, the cornichons, the onions, capers, and egg yolk.

And then, they shaped it into a football and served it to me.

It was also the size of a football. There must have been a pound of meat there. I darned near finished it, too.

After dinner, way too stuffed for dessert, we ordered coffee, and our adorable young waitress brought a bottle of Calvados and poured us "une lagniappe", a free-extra. It was redolent of crisp green apples, tasted much like grappa at first, but the apples and their sweetness came through on the finish. I now have a new, expensive addiction.

We rushed through dinner, hurried down to the train station -- and our train was en retard, which means "you've gotta have an IQ below 90 to even THINK that the trains are on time this late in the day, Buster." 25 minutes, which shortly turned to one hour en retard. So, we took the NEXT train, which got there before the FIRST train, and slogged home, with the first-class section of the car occupied by a whole pile of roisterous Gensdarme and our car full of youngsters, including two brothers around 10 years of age who were put on the train to Paris by their parents in Chartres -- you could see them as the train was pulling out of the station -- "clearly, miracles DO happen here! How about giving them a little sister?" was written all over their abundantly relieved and expectant faces.

The young'uns sat behind me and entertained Kelli for the entire trip. The only time they were quiet was when the policemen lined up at the door next to their seats to get off the train. Otherwise, they acted just like brothers do.

Saturday morning, Paris lifted her skirts and let us peer underneath to her most secret spot.

We awoke to leaden skies and cold. I checked outside, it was dry, and I went about my business.

I looked two minutes too early.

When Kelli joined me moments later, she looked outside, and cried gleefully "it's snowing!"

Indeed, it was snowing -- not spitting flurries, either -- great, fluffy, cotton-candy sized flakes which were sticking to things like rooves and plants -- see the photograph for proof. It rarely snows in Paris. It even more rarely sticks.

These things just happen to us.