Back, back, awayyyyy back

We're back.

Actually, we've been here for a week now, but it's just not quite like other visits.

We are staying in the "second apartment" of our friends Martin and Annie. Their apartment is next door, and it's a good thing it is.

Because we are staying in a French/German construction project of uncertain, but apparently permanent, duration.

We were here in February of 2006, and they showed us the apartment. It would have been easily recognized by Rousseau or his contemporaries -- I don't think much had been done since it was built to house junior cadets of Napoleon's army. One large room of 350 square feet, it didn't have a bathroom, just a toilet in a closet next to a small kitchen -- and two fireplaces with chimneys, which are forbidden to be used in modern Paris -- indeed, in modern France, fireplaces in apartments are interdit.

We have since seen photographs of the process of restoration -- removing the 200-year old oak flooring to see the huge beams underneath, with little basins of space between. That was all cleaned up and filled with gravel, then subflooring put down, then matting, and finally, in the new kitchen, slate tiles.

In other places, the flooring has been returned to its location, some of it refinished, other, not yet.

The kitchen is brand-new, and has a very interesting sink of almost black matte-finished metal with a sort of rubberized coating. Never seen anything like it before.

All German appliances (Martin is from northern Germany, and is reasonably certain the French have not built anything that works since the Eiffel Tower), including a dishwasher and washer/dryer (in a single unit about half the size of American laundry equipment).

Just one small catch.

No water.

Also, no bathroom fixtures. They were ordered three years ago, but the bathroom sink arrived in Paris in several more pieces than it was supposed to be, so a new one had to be ordered, and custom made. It didn't arrive in time for the plumbers to come (from Germany), and horrible weather in December and January kept everyone off the roads anyway, and so there is no water.

Fortunately, we know the landlord, AND the neighbors. So, we take our dishes next door to be washed, and our clothes, and, our selves.

Last week, Martin drove us to Normandy. It was a fascinating, and deeply moving experience.

On earlier trips, Kelli and I have visited the cemeteries at Nettuno (Anzio), Italy, and also at Monte Cassino, Italy. I indulge my passion for history on every trip here.

But I had never made it to Omaha Beach. Tried several times, but it's really a difficult trip without a car.

Because nothing ever happens on time in Paris, we didn't leave until after 11:0, and it's about a 2.5 hour drive to Normandy. We arrived in Bayeux around 1:30.

Many fascinating things about Bayeux. It's best known for the Bayeux Tapestry, telling the saga of William the Conqueror, who made Britain what it is today -- French, but unwilling to acknowledge it. William was a Norman (hence, "Normandy"), and he defeated his cousin, who usurped the throne of England, at the Battle of Hastings in 1066.

The cathedral in Bayeux had its cornerstone laid in 1047. It is 963 years old, and rather chilly inside. Very gothic.

Beautiful stained glass windows, most of them a lot newer than the 11th century.

The tapestry simply requires that you Google it, or look it up on Wikipedia. It's amazing -- a piece of linen some 70 meters, or about 225 feet, long. On that is pictured William's story, from the death of the prior king, including his having appointed William the heir to the throne, through the usurpation, the preparation with the Archbishop of Bayeux, Otto, to fight in England, to the crossing, the battle itself, and William's accession to the throne. All of this in embroidery (wool) on the linen background, broken into about 40 scenes.

It was brought out and displayed to the public twice a year, a history lesson. The panels were each done by different craftsmen and stitched together into a single tapestry. The original, now more than 900 years old, is displayed in a long oval gallery, accompanied by recorded information in many languages. If you know about the Bayeux Tapestry, you're amazed. If you don't, you're speechless at what you see. It takes about 20 minutes to walk the length of the tapestry, which is behind glass but only a couple of feet away, so our view is undoubtedly much better than that of the Bayeusennes for whom it was originally made.

More interesting things about Bayeux: There are no boulangers in the old part of town. Or ATM machines. It took us a long time, later in the evening, to find either.

The few bistros near the cathedral all had signs painted onto their front windows, on the street. Each said, in English, some variation of this phrase: "We gratefully welcome our liberators back to Normandy."

From there we headed to "the beach". Time did not permit us to see all that there was to see -- we went straight to Colleville, and to Issigny-sur-Mer.

Between them, below Colleville, lies Omaha Beach -- one of five beaches stormed on June 6, 1944.

I just was not ready for what I saw.

For openers, a rainbow over the sea.

A drive down a draw -- the "cliffs" there at Red Dog Sector are not very high, or steep -- perhaps 75 feet is all -- but the drive takes one past a small museum.

In front of the museum is an American tank. If you've ever seen a 1970s vintage Cadillac, you might remember that they were sometimes described as "like driving a tank". Until I saw a Sherman tank, I did not realize how close to the truth that saying was.

The Sherman did not appear to be much larger than a modern delivery van.

The landing craft on display appeared to be made of plywood, was flat-bottomed (to let it get as close to shore as possible), and looked unstable as hell on dry land. It looked like a modern bass boat, but perhaps 10 feet longer and 5 wider. More than two dozen men were in each.

The beach itself was next, and I was stunned at how flat and shallow the water was (we could have walked 100 yards off shore and still had our heads out of the water, had we no concern for our comfort), how wide the beach was from headland to headland, nearly four miles, and how shallow the beach was -- even at a receding tide, at Omaha, only about 50 yards of sand before the first rise where the shoreline road lies.

The cliffs were probably 250 yards away. The pillboxes still there made it clear that anyone trying to land on the shore had to come 500 yards, about 1/3 of a mile, wide open and exposed. And, of course, they had to get off the landing craft well offshore, because that flat and shallow beach allowed the German army to place metal barriers in the sea to prevent landing craft from getting close.

It's amazing to me than anyone survived long enough to stand on dry land. It was only due to the sheer volume of attackers that they were not all slain in the sand. Accounts of the day say that the ocean "ran the color of blood" from the thousands of casualties. The beach was mined, and also under constant mortar fire, as well as heavy artillery, plus the machine gunners.

And in the midst of this, trying to imagine the panic, the smoke, the noise, while accompanied only by silence, I noticed two new buildings close to the beach.

The D-Day Hotel, and the Omaha Beach Snack Shop.

Each is within 100 yards of the huge sandstone monument to the 101st airborne, which landed behind enemy lines (and was scattered to the four winds) the night of June 5.

At first, I was brought up short by this modern construction, and these buildings devoted to earning money on this sacred ground where so many American, British, Canadian and German boys died.

But I turned around and walked back toward the beach, and I became aware of the fact that I was smiling broadly, and as I figured that out, I broke into an almost lunatic grin.

Because those buildings belong on that beach.

Because THAT is EXACTLY what we were fighting for -- for the right of local people to build a snack shop and a hotel.

To restore normalcy. To restore sanity. To make the world safe for whatever -- even commercial silliness.

It's just right.

We then went to the cemetry. It's exactly as you see it in the beginning of Saving Private Ryan. One thing that Steven Spielberg missed, though, is that in the third row of crosses, very close to the center aisle where the flagpoles are, is a cross for a soldier from Virginia who died June 6. His name was George H. Washington.

A small vignette from our cemetery visit: as we were walking the path along the top of the bluff, with the beach occasionally in sight, a man and his two daughters approached, returning from the cemetery. The little girls looked to be maybe 7 and 10. They were each carrying, and waving, American flags.

I was going to ask them, when we passed, if they had lost a family member in the invasion, but as they drew close, I realized I didn't know how to ask.

You see, they were French.

And I resolved, then and there, to never again smile or be silent when fellow Americans slight the French, or suggest they are "ungrateful that we saved their bacon". Just try to imagine Americans even finding French flags to wave as they leave a Revolutionary War battlefield. The French don't owe us gratitude, we just paid them back for helping us win our independence -- but they are, nevertheless, grateful, and even admiring, of America, for the sacrifice, and for the strong sense of patriotism that we have -- something they envy.

WE had a nice meal in Bayeux after dark -- we finally found the banks, all lined up side-by-side on one street, with the restaurants and bakeries nearby. On our way out, we drove past the double-life sized statue of Dwight Eisenhower that greets everyone who enters Bayeux from the highway.

The next evening we had dinner with our dear friends Pierre and Cathrine. Pierre is the managing editor of the company that pulishes all the law books in France, and his father was a teacher and diplomat during the war.

His father was, in fact, the dean of a school of political science in Paris during the war. He knew that "something" was to happen in early June of 1944, but was not told until the 5th that it would be the next day. He took his wife and children out of Paris for their safety, to his summer home.

In Normandy.

On the beach.

About 10 miles north of the invasion site. Even the French thought it was to happen at Pas de Calais, so complete was the subterfuge Eisenhower pulled off.

Pierre's mother told him growing up about that day, that the sky was "dark with airplanes turning home to England right over the house, to refuel and get more bombs or paratroops." They didn't hear the assault on the beach, but they were about as close as one would want to be.

Saturday we got up bright and early to go to a painting exhibition across town. Of course, when we got there, we were informed it did not open for 2 more hours. Again, we had trouble finding a boulanger for a sandwich. The down economy has forced many, many businesses to close here also.

We went to the Marais, and saw a magnificent exhibition to commemorate the 100th anniversary (about 3 weeks ago) of the great 1910 flood that inundated much of central Paris.

When we were finished, we walked by L'As du Fallafel, but Saturday daytime is still the sabbath, so they were closed until sundown.

We went to the Hotel de Ville about 3 pm to see a photographic exhibition, stood in line for 1.5 hours and moved 50 feet -- they only allow people in when others leave -- so eventually we had to leave to buy some flowers and go to see Pierre and Catherine.

All for now -- packing to take the Eurostar to London for our first-ever visit to England. I've been studying English for about 55 years now, I hope I can speak it well enough to communicate there. I'm not optimistic.

Yes, It HAS been a while . . .

When last we left you, it was in the fervent hope that we would catch a taxi in the morning and head out of Paris, with the intention of getting home, doing the holidays, and then returning to Europe in January for a trip to Bordeaux, San Sebastian (Spain), and back to Paris.

While all of those things DID occur, nothing quite happened as planned.

We woke up in time the next morning. We traipsed down the stairs, around the corner, and found a cab.

(Side note: That morning, the drivers of the RER Ligne B, the one that serves DeGaulle Airport, began an “action sociale”, what we in the US call a strike. We were not planning to use the train, so it theoretically had very little effect on us. Theoretically.

Actually, it put about 25,000 more cars on the peripherique. Then there was the accident that blocked it pretty badly, besides.)

To give a little geographic perspective, please imagine Paris as a clock face. Our apartment is near the center of the clock, about half-way out the “little hand” when it is pointing at 9:30 or so. De Gaulle Airport is just past the end of the BIG hand when it is pointing to 10 minutes past the hour.

Our cab driver took us along the river, but did not cross it. I began to worry immediately, but tried not to get Kelli upset. When our driver took us all the way to Issy, which is around 7 on the clock, I knew we were in trouble. When he proudly pointed out he had been driving a cab in Paris for 4 days now, I started looking for the aquamarine necklace from the Titanic.

We finally made it to the peripherique, about 40 minutes after leaving the taxi stand. We left two hours early for a ride that normally takes 35-40 minutes, but with the trains on strike, we were expecting some delay.

Then, our driver turned the LONG way on the peripherique.

At that point, I knew I wasn’t going to make my flight. Kelli’s was scheduled out 50 minutes after mine, and it was going to be nip and tuck for her.

Sure enough, we finally came dragging into the airport, $90 later (most of it spent on waiting time), 4 minutes before my flight was to close. I grabbed bags and sprinted, but was two minutes late.

The Air France folks tried to get me on, but security rules (in France, anyway) say that late arrivals are held off planes, for obvious reasons. I would have to pay $200 to change my ticket; furthermore, I could ONLY fly on Air France, and their next flight with an open seat was in two days.

Kelli barely made her flight, which included no fewer than 4 security inspections/checkpoints because she was so close to closing time for the flight. We were able to holler good-byes across several yards because the security folks were nice enough to let me inside a secure area to communicate with her.

I ambled down to the American Airlines terminal, where in 90 minutes I met Deborah and Taylor stumbling sleepy-eyed off the flight from New York. I clambered back into an Air France bus with them and went back to the apartment for two more days, which was sort of fun even if I spent a lot of it dealing with trying to hook up her MAC to the internet – it required us buying a new cable modem (and the first one was defective, so I had to get it replaced, a concept somewhat foreign to French retailing), then getting it properly configured to deal with a Mac.

Started feeling a little punk on the last evening – kind of a cold, maybe.

Got home, uneventful flight. Plunged directly into holidays and Cal basketball coverage and Sharks hockey.

Got sicker.

And sicker.

Finally spiked a fever of nearly 6 degrees. Called Kaiser. They said (over the phone, of course), “it’s the virus that always goes around this time of the year. It will take either 6 days of 3 weeks to go away – ride it out, there’s nothing we can do.”

Stayed sick for a while. When it was time to return to Europe in mid January, I was just getting over the severe chest congestion and what the doctor-folk like to call a “highly productive cough”.

Was very low-energy, but looking forward to the trip to Bordeaux and Spain.

Flights were pleasant enough, no problems, arrived in Bordeaux, took a bus to downtown, met with Jean d’Alos and his family at their cheese shop, had a lovely dinner with them (the chef had worked in San Francisco for several years), went back to the airport, picked up a car and headed for Spain. Rainy day, runny nose.

The weather got worse as we got closer to the ocean. I was starting to honk and snort in that anti-social way people do when they start a real cold.

We arrive in San Sebastian and wander for a while in driving rain trying to find the hotel. We finally do, and I’m kinda cranky by now, but the hotel is so charming, on the water, with a Kandinsky in our room (large enough to rollerskate around in if one were so inclined) – and the coolest elevator ever, with wooden doors that swing into the elevator and a wrought-iron and glass door on each floor.

I’m getting sicker.

I start drinking Echinacea as though it were tequila shooters and I was on spring break.

Sicker. Still, we have a fabulous week in Spain – we are now fully assimilated into two families, were in the main square at midnight with the tamborrada began, stayed up most of the night walking through town playing our drums, ate fabulous food with fabulous people, generous to a fault. I got to not only eat at one of the closed gastronomic societies, I got to cook there also. We went into the mountains to eat clabbered fresh sheep’s milk for dessert (with mountain honey), then said “hola” to the sheep, who did not understand us because they speak Euskadi, the Basque language.

We have fallen madly in love with Donostia, the Basque name for San Sebastian, and highly recommend it to each of you for an extended visit. The second highest concentration of Michelin stars (17 in all) of any region in Europe.

Returned to Paris, really sick, now. The plane flight was rather painful.

Horrendous sinus problems. Must sleep sitting straight upright. Drainage is constant. I’m beyond miserable, and getting worse. By the third day in Paris, I’m only able to function by holding steaming compresses to my face until they cool off, then putting them back into the microwave.

By Friday, I’m getting worried. We are able to be tourists for a few hours a day, but the pressure is indescribable – I’m taking Percodan just to sleep – and I am concerned about getting on the airplane.

We contact our friends, Martin (from the apartment in December) and his wife, who is a pediatrician. After significant conversation, she decides that I’ve got a critical chronic sinus infection, and that I’ve had it since my last trip to Paris. She prescribes steroids and very serious antibiotics.

They work.

By Tuesday evening, when we go back to the old neighborhood and kidnap Martin for dinner, I’m 80% improved, and he then tells us that he was not supposed to let me get on the plane if I wasn’t mostly better already, because Annie was concerned that I might have something rupture in my brain. I was so grateful that the aching in my jaws and teeth had subsided, and that I still HAD all my teeth, that anything else was pure joy.

So, we arrived home together, I finished my course of antibiotics and now feel truly great. I spent a week with Kelli in San Jose at the SAP Open tennis tournament, and am now in Arizona for Spring Training (for another 5-week stint).
I’ll begin occasional posts about spring training, for those who are interested. At last, we get to the baseball part of the blog’s title

Le dernier Metro

The title of today's piece is taken after a Francois Truffaut movie. Made in 1980, set during the last war, it stars Catherine Deneuve, who is, as she has been for 45 years, the most beautiful woman in the world.

Paris is a private city; many secrets happen behind the sidewalks, behind the massive and forbidding doors. Some, however, are right in front of us, waiting for us to find them. They are still hidden; it takes some effort to find them.

We found one on Friday night.

Hidden in plain view, by itself on a quiet street way out in the 20th Arronidissement, in the village of Belleville, annexed to Paris only within the past hundred years or so, is the Parc du Belleville. It is above Pere-LaChaise Cemetery. About 5 blocks from a Metro station (just about the theoretical maximum distance one CAN be from a Metro station in Paris), right there, around the bend. . . there are a few street lights here, and as you crest the hill and veer to the left, there is a pool of limpid, ecru light spilling onto the narrow sidewalk. It must be here, the street dead ends at a cliff at the top of the Parc.

Over there, on the left -- it is so much smaller than imagined, a tiny, narrow room -- if the door were wider it would hit the bar when it opens -- a row of tables down the right side of the building, and three more on the left after the bar. Perhaps 45 people could fit into this dingy, buff-colored room with the photograph of Edith Piaf in the back and the black and white tiles so typical of old Paris' bistros.

It's a throwback. Come on, it's not dangerous to go somewhere unexpected -- step in. You've been brave enough to telephone and make a reservation and survive the experience. Your reservation is for 8:30, you enter at 8:27, and, lo! behold! Every table is reserved, only the names on the cards are "Edith Piaf", "Josephine Baker", and "Maurice Chevalier". You are a few blocks from Menilmontant, another neighborhood annexed in the 20th century, which spawned Chevalier.

You are about a million miles from the Champs Elysees at this moment, and 70 years from the present.

You are about to step into pre-War Paris.

The bar, the refrigerators behind it with their buff-colored doors that are two inches thick, with the pull-down latch handles typical of the 1940's -- the architecture, the paint itself, might well have seen the German occupation. And little has changed.

You are seated. The telephone is next to your table, on the wall. It never rings.

It is useful, however -- the large ardoise, or blackboard, with the evening's offerings, is propped on the phone for you to read.

There are 4 entrees, a soup and three salads. There are 6 main dishes, and two desserts. Simple fare -- a steak; roasted lamb shanks, blanquette du veau, a veal and mushroom stew served in a white "blanket" over rice.

You order -- a bottle of tap water is placed on your table automatically -- no room for foofy water here. Wine is available -- one flavor only -- vin maison -- by the bottle or by the pichet, or pitcher.

The room fills in moments -- the whole long wall is occupied by a single group of about 30 people. How did they all get here at once? There's three generations -- it's not a business group, that's for sure. A young man of perhaps 16 is carrying a large, unwieldy case by its handle. Several of the young men step up to the bar; others begin to drink at the table. A short chorus of "happy birthday" is sung in French.

The salads arrive -- two whole cold goat cheeses on a slab of country bread, toasted, sitting atop greens for Kelli; Endive, lamb's lettuce, roquefort and walnuts for me. Better than I was expecting.

As we are waiting for our main dishes (Kelli, the steak, which is typically French, meaning utterly untrimmed, and about 50% inedible, and me, the veal stew, for which I've been Jonesing for two weeks; finally, I've found it, and it's as good as I hope), she arrives.

I don't have the power to describe this woman -- finch-like, I think, comes close -- delicate, high voiced, petite, yet dressed in a dark red organdy dress with a skirt that has petticoats underneath, and bright, brilliant, St. Louis Cardinals-red high-topped sneakers. The look is altogether la Boheme, including the many bracelets and the intricate ivy-vine tendril tattoed from her right wrist halfway to her elbow. She is somewhere betwen 40 and 65 years old, probably; or not.

She lugs case after case into the back of the room, setting them on top of the silverware service furniture. A few are clearly accordion cases -- French accordions, with buttons on both sides, no keyboard. They look just like the half-dozen vintage instruments on the shelves above the heads of the birthday group.

Shortly after nine, she announces to the barman (right next to our table) in this improbable bird's voice that an aperitif would be of great benefit to her voice.

About 9:30, as the plates are being cleared, she unpacks an accordion, opens the cases, and they turn out to be expanding file wallets. Inside, they contain many sheets of paper, and on those sheets of paper, many words in French.

Words to songs.

Songs that you are about to sing.

The entire restaurant becomes the stage for a theater with no spectators.

For three and one-half hours we whisper, bellow, and generally gasp with joy at the fact that French, perhaps the most difficult language on earth to understand when sung, actually turns out to be pretty easy to SING in -- at long last, music that is MEANT to come out of my nose........

the second pitcher of wine goes down well. The foursome of Swiss people at the adjacent table have toasted us, have begun to speak to us in a polyglot of english, french and german (the two closer to us), and english and french (the two farther away). The closer ladies have trouble coping with the accordion music -- one actually gets severe "chicken skin" from the music, and begins itching uncomfortably.

I have a dear friend whose wife is deathly afraid of clowns; I did not know this when I got him front-row seats to Fool Moon at ACT a few years back. Poor Kat had to excuse herself at the intermission, because the show is done entirely in mime by graduates of the Pickle Family Circus; she missed her husband's stage debut -- I knew one routine looked for a certain type of person from the audience, and her husband was perfect for, and perfect in, the part. Still, it was then that I learned that fear of clowns is real, and pretty serious to those who suffer it.

Apparently, fear of accordion music is, also -- where I just get a little giggle of glee at the thought of 2,000 Chinese children in Mao jackets standing in Tienanmen Square playing "Lady of Spain" on their Chinese-made accordions (this is the visual image I got when at the Chinese Trade Show at Fort Mason 20 years ago, when we FIRST saw ANY products from Mainland China -- people came to the show solely to try Tsingtao Beer -- but when I turned a corner and saw two dozen mother-of-pearl and candy-apple-green accordions in the case, my imagination took off at breakneck speed and produced the image above), some people get physically ill. Our immediate neighbors went home early.

Nobody else did.

AT one point, the lights dimmed and a birthday cake came out with a Roman candle on it. Try blowing THAT out, kids.

The young man opened his case and pulled out his own accordion, got up and played two pieces. Older folks from his group began to dance, and that then became a staple of the evening, along with the raucous, uproarious, and remarkably in-tune singing. The most "modern" song we got had a copyright of 1960 -- some were more than 150 years old.

Then, individual members of the "audience" got up and started doing solos with the musician, or call-and-response songs, or even, in one case, a gentleman wore the accordion on his back, and the lady danced with him while playing it behind HIS back.

To suggest that a marvelous time was had by all is to radically short-change this experience. How often do you get the chance to step into a time machine? How often do you TAKE THE CHANCE? Why not?

Of course, as always in Paris, there was a price to be paid. Yes, you are absolutely allowed to have "too much fun", but it's not on the installment plan, it is pay-as-you-go.

We exited the building at 1:15.

Le dernier Metro, the last Metro, is at 1 AM.

From our spot atop the cliff above the park, we could see the Montparnasse tower. You can see it from most parts of Paris, and somehow, it always seems just about 10 blocks away.

Not this night.

The symbol of modern Paris, it looked 70 years away. The Eiffel Tower was almost too small to find.

We were a long ways away. From anything.

We descended a staircase of perhaps 100 steps to reach the street below the park. The map book showed a Taxi stand a few blocks away. We found it.

Unfortunately, none of Paris' 11,000 cab drivers had the same map book we use, apparently. None were at the taxi stand. We began to walk, from the outside edge of the 20th.

We walked, from abandoned taxi rank to abandoned taxi rank. We shared the streets, for the first hour, with young couples too much in love to go home yet -- much handholding and smooching was observed -- and, just at the French don't eat French Toast, they apparently do not French Kiss in public -- it is all pretty tame and enchanting.

We crossed the 20th, and crossed into the 11th. We found the rue Oberkampf, and walked from one end of it to the other. We reached the Canal St. Martin. We saw 10. 955 of Paris' 11,000 cabs, each with a yellow light on top, indicating it was already occupied.

We went to the Bastille, we crossed into the Marais, in the 3rd, then the 4th, Arrondissements. We trudged through the Marais, looking for a night bus, but they just changed the night bus system in october and haven't put up the schedules and routes in all the bus shelters yet, so we never found one.

We walked through the Place des Vosges, past the Hotel Sully, and over the Sully Bridge to the Ile St. Louis. Then, across the island, and into the Latin Quarter at the Arab University. Then, along the river front for another half-mile. We found one taxi stand which was occupied by someone who was, himself, occupied by several other people, each of whom took turns holding coversations with each other. After a while, we abandoned that spot, and trudged to the Place Maubert, about 4.5 miles from where we began the evening. There, we had about 20 companions waiting for the one cab every 15 minutes that came by.

After three cabs were taken by people who had arrived after we did, I decided that being polite in 27 degree weather had its shortcomings. We wandered to a corner, and when a white-lighted cab came down a side boulevard, we literally went into the street and stood in its way.

The cab driver pointed out that, on a Friday, they only make money between 1 and 3 AM, until they have taken home all the people who have missed le dernier Metro. A young, well-spoken (in English, too) Arab with a spotless Renault cab, he was very apologetic when he took a wrong turn that took us a block or two out of the way -- I could not have cared less; we were off our feet.

These "common" folk who make a city run often know the most about it.

I asked him if he lived les Banlieu, the suburbs where the troubles had been happening last month. He said "no, I live further out in the country. Paris is a very, very stressful city to work in -- if you are not here for the art, for the monuments, for the history, it is a very hard place to be. I need one day a week where I hear birds instead of sirens."

Saturday, we walked through the Jardin des Plantes, the arboretum for Paris, which also holds its small zoo. Saturday evening, we joined my old friend Mel, from San Rafael, who has led a very successful life by any measure you can devise, and who now lives and works part of the year in Paris. He and his wife, Judy, treated us to dinner at a fabulous restaurant not far from the Arc du Triomphe -- French food, prepared in the minimalist Japanese style. I haven't seen them in way too long; it is beyond ironic that we connected in Paris. We have promised to stay in closer touch back home, too.

Sunday, we slept in, went to two separate street market areas, each as it was closing, then returned home to find our markets closed, also. We will pack, we will meet Claire for one last evening at a brasserie where I might just have choucroute garni, and then we will pack, face the brutal task of getting 80 pounds of luggage down those 85 stairs, wander around the corner, and hope, and pray, the since le premier Metro will already have begun service, we can get a taxi from the rank around the corner at 7:45 to take us home.

* * * * * WARNING -- PHILOSOPHY COMING * * * * *

John Ruskin, British writer and art critic who considered a great painting to be one that conveys great ideas to the viewer. His works include Modern Painters (1843-1860).

Ruskin believed there was only one way to possess beauty properly, and that was by understanding it. A thoroughly untalented artist as a child, he grew up to write a pair of books on the subject, The Elements of Drawing (1857) and The Elements of Perspective (1859). For four years he lectured at the Working Men's College in London, teaching primarily Cockney tradesmen to draw. "There is a satisfactory and available power in everyone to learn drawing if he wishes, just as nearly all persons have the power of learning French, Latin or arithmetic, in a decent and useful degree."

It wasn't about drawing well, or about becoming an artist. Ruskin believed that the true value in drawing was that it teaches us the disciplne of seeing, the power to notice, rather than merely to look. Imagine, for a moment, if you will, just how passersby would regard you, were you to stop in the street and look at something, anything, long enough to be able to sketch it. This shows how hard-wired we are to inattention.

The process of looking, truly looking, at something, may serve to help us figure out what is missing from it, or what is present that causes us to describe it as "beautiful", "harmonious", or even "sublime".

Ruskin also believed that people have the ability to "word-paint", to cement their impressions of beauty. While I can not draw a lick, I understand the concept -- when Ruskin was shown a series of misshapen and nearly unrecognizable drawings of the English countryside produced by some of his students, he said "I believe that the sight is a more important thing than the drawing; and I would rather teach drawing that my pupils might learn (to see), than teach them (to see) that they might learn to draw."

Freidrich Nietzsche, the nearly unapproachably dense German philosopher of the late 19th century, said the following in remarking upon the works of Joseph de Maistre, who wrote two books, one on a journey around his bedroom, and another on a journey around his bedroom at night.

"When we observe how some people know how to manage their experiences ----- their insignificant, everyday experiences ----- so that they become an arable soil that bears fruit three times a year, while others ----- and how many there are! ----- are driven through surging waves of destiny, the most multifarious currents of the times and of the nations, and yet always remain on top, bobbing like a cork, then we are in the end tempted to divide mankind into a minority (a minimality, in truth) of those who know how to make much of little, and a majority, of those who know how to make little of much." (emphasis is mine).

It is my sincere hope that, through this process of writing these past five weeks, I have accomplished two things. One is entirely within my control -- I write so that I may learn to see -- the discipline of describing, sometimes several days after the fact, what happened, when, in what circumstances, and where and how, causes me to think afterwards, but even more so, to observe during. I write for myself; to ensure that I have at least made an honest effort to wring every drop of experience out of the everyday experiences of being, here. The writing is for me.

The reading, however, is for you. And over that, I have no control at all. It is as if this were inscribed on a streamer of paper and set adrift in a gale -- perhaps it is read, perhaps not, perhaps partially. Some read for fun, for the genuine (and, occasionally, the absurd) humor, some for the descriptions. I would be very proud if, even for a few paragraphs, I could honestly be placed in Nietzsche's minimality of those who know how to make much of little.

Going Native

When last we visited with our intrepid travelers, they had just come home from a wonderful evening at Cafe Prosper in the Place de la Nation on Monday night, filled with the fully fulfilling fullness that can only be fully achieved with new draperies.

Tuesday, we went out in the neighborhood to get stuff for dinner. I had something special in mind, and that's exactly what we wound up with -- something special.

Boudin blanc is a sausage "made from white meats", as it says in my French culinary dictionary. This is to keep it fully separated from its evil pseudo-twin, Boudin, which is blood sausage, which is not made just from white cells.

Veal and its close friends constitute major portions of boudin blanc. We found a butcher who made his own, and has won many, many awards for the best boudin blanc in Paris. We purchased two -- one with truffles, the other with veal sweetbreads. While the prices seem very exorbitant ($15 - $22 a pound), they aren't, really -- one sausage is enough for dinner, and they are about $5 each.

I had already posed the "wine" problem with Renaud, our wine guy, and he offered up a fruit-forward Burgundy, "to be drunk slightly chilled". The sausages are poached in simmering (not boiling -- don't want to burst the skins) milk, turned over, and when they read an internal temperature around 130 degrees, are removed from the milk and rinsed and patted dry. I made a vegetable melange of fresh zucchini, mushrooms, fresh tomatoes, shallots, onions and garlic that was properly spicy to set off the fairly bland sausages.

Once everything was ready, I fired up the grill pan and striped/crispied up the sausages. With Dijon mustard, they were extraordinary. The wine was a perfect accompaniment to the sausages.

We tried something new today -- we rode the busses. Same pass that works on the Metro; they have a GPS system built in so that a display on the bus tells you exactly how long it is to a stop. I was very surprised that they were faster than the Metro, primarily because there was a bus that went right where we needed to go without a 6 block walk to transfer.

We went out by the Pasteur Institute, to the Oceanography Museum. Not on our first try, but on our second. The first place we went to, rather foolishly, was labeled the Oceanography Institute, and had the exact address of the museum, but the young man was genuinely baffled when I approached the front desk and asked for two tickets. As well he might be, seeing as he is the research librarian. In my defense, as soon as we saw the stairway into the building, I said "I didn't expect this to be here", thinking it was around the corner. The museum, in fact, WAS around the corner.

Not much of a museum -- I'm sure they do some fine work with children -- I know this, because we arrived at the same time as 35 adorable kindergarten-aged French children with name tags strung over their necks, hanging in front of them like bibs, with first and LAST name. They were very, very active.

We went in to watch the movies. They were in French (imagine!), and were between 15 and 25 years old. They involved all manner of odd things, including the distribution of tube worms, and the walking patterns of Atlantic lobsters, which were demonstrated by suspending a rather irritated lobster in a stirrup-hanger gizmo and putting him with his legs just touching a treadmill. Regular, slow-motion, stop action, and reverse photography were simply riveting, until they were replaced with sonograms, or "voice prints", of each of the lobster's legs as it walked. Protractors and retractors, etc., etc.

Then we watched shrimps have sex. It was mercifully brief.

We saw some static displays of intertidal areas ("le littoral ), which sadly did not include the marine snails Kelli ate a couple of weeks ago, the bulots. Then, we went shopping to purchase a Christmas gift for our daughter, Maureen. The best part of that was that it was I who knew Maureen's sizes........we'd tell you what we bought, but if we did, she would pick this Blog to read (she's only read one so far on the whole trip) and it would spoil what I'm sure will be quite a surprise for her........I WILL tell you, it's not new draperies.

Came home, had dinner, watched a couple of episodes of Nip/Tuck on the slingbox, and turned in rather early, as Wednesday is the day the Louvre is open from 9 am to 9:45 pm, and we planned to hit it early, hard, and often.

Wednesday morning. Alarm went off, Kelli got up, showered, and made coffee. I got up, got into the hot, hot shower, and shampooed, then soaped up fully. Just at the instant that I was reaching around to put the soap back into the tray, the hot water went off.

All the way off.

As in, from 110 degrees to 56 degrees, in about two seconds. I know how cold it was, because I tested it with an instant-read thermometer. 56 degrees -- that's cold enough to require a wet suit.

I had to choose between hypothermia and slippery stinky soapiness for the day. I was all for slippery stinkiness, but someone messed with the damned butterfly ballots in Florida and hypothermia stole the election. George Costanza knows of what he speaks, folks. Shrinkage, boy, howdy!

I dried off (pretty quickly, since the temperature in the hot-water-heated bathroom was plummeting) and went out to the kitchen to look at the heater.

It sure was off. We called our downstairs neighbor, Martin, who cheerfully came up, spent an hour trying to get the heater to re-light, then finally called the company that installed it, asking for a service person, since there was no hot water OR heat in the house. They were properly abashed that the system they had just pronounced "healthy" two months ago was not functioning, and offered to drop by sometime Thursday afternoon.

Martin also told us of the building's history -- 100 years old, it is the third and final building from the street frontage -- "built for poor people, it has no elevator. It was built to house the cadets at the Ecole Militaire, with cold-water flats (boy, we now understand just what that phrase means)." It was built at the same time they were tearing down a train station, and it "creatively re-uses" many of the materials from the station -- including paving stones, bricks, cobblestones, and rails, in its polyglot wall composition.

So, off we went to the Louvre, right on schedule at 12:30.

We saw a good deal of the Louvre last year, but we found out today how lucky we were -- we saw the crown jewels in the Apollo Salon which had JUST re-opened a week or two before, and we got a sunny day to dazzlingly light them up, and we took gazillions of photos. We also stood in line for a while (less than 20 minutes, which is no time at all) to see the Mona Lisa, eventually got to the front of the line, and took terrifyingly bad photos of a small painting displayed behind bullet-proof plastic that is thicker than the painting is wide.

On this visit, we learned that, because certain of our co-visitors over the years (I won't name any names, but about half are American, and the other half anchor down the Pacific Ocean's opposite coast) are apparently too stupid to understand a two-foot-square pictogram of a camera with a flash bulb going off, with a huge slash through the middle . . . well, now it is forbidden to take ANY photographs whatsoever of ANY of the paintings in the Denon wing, which includes the entire Italian masterpiece collection. Thank you for playing, please accept these lovely pointy shoes with the bells on them and this long, tall, cone-shaped cap as our parting gifts, you jackasses. It's not bad enough that it's just plain rude (and ruins the photos most of the time) to use flash, it also fades the colors of the artwork, which is only important until YOU have seen them, then, who gives a tinker's damn, right?

So, anyway, we decided to go see the Medieval Louvre exhibit, and the History of the Louvre exhibit. Hot Diggety Damn! The first place we went, the History of the Louvre (the largest palace in Europe, with about 800 years of history to learn about), is CLOSED ON WEDNESDAY! Of Freaking Course it is! It's just the sort of thing people would go look at on a day when they could take 12 hours to view the museum, so let's close it then!

Having gotten our obligatory daily closure out of the way, we went to the Medieval Louvre exhibit, where we were taken underground to see the base of the battlements, the walls, the wells, and even one of the old rooms from the 13th century fortress that started it all. It was a lot of fun, especially in the final room, where they displayed cases of things discovered when they dug up the courtyard to build I.M. Pei's magnificent glass pyramid entry. One of the things they found was a golden ceremonial helmet from King Henry the something or other, Fourth, I believe.

MEA CULPA, MEA CULPA, MEA MAXIMA CULPA. Your loyal correspondent, not having married into the Medici family, or the Henry family, has been mixing his monarchs. Catherine de Medici married Henri II, NOT Marie de Medici, who, irritatingly enough, married Henri IV.

Even more irritatingly, Henri II was a Valois king, a member of the Angouleme branch of the Valois. He was killed to end his reign, but not by an assassin, as I earlier reported - instead, he died of wounds inflited on him during a tournament by Montgomery, Captain of his Guard. The joust had been organized to celebrate the marriage of his daughter Elisabeth fo Philip II of Spain. There is no word on who wound up paying for the wedding when Liz's daddy proved unable to sign the tab after the final waltz.

Henri's third son, Henry III, was the last of the Valois line -- his father had started the Wars of Religion (Catholics vs. Protestants -- the Irish are latecomers to THAT party), and he, after a short interregnum of 16 years after his father's death, took the throne and continued to prosecute those wars. His extravagance earned him nearly immediate and widespread disfavor. He also proved adept at making enemies -- he not only fought the Protestants (supported by Denmark and England), he also turned on the Roman Catholics (supported by Spain, whose king was married to his sister). This nasty business, coupled with the fact he was so unpopular he had no heirs, led to the accession to the throne of Henry IV in 1610, after Henry III had recognized Hank-Four as his rightful successor (Hank-Four was leader of the Huguenots, the Catholic faction that Hank-Three supported). Hank-Three was then nearly immediately stabbed to death by a Jacobin priest (Roman Catholic).

After wearing out his first queen, Margaret of Valois, the royal widower married Marie de Medici, thus rather completing a semi-incestuous circle dating back to Henry II. It was all right, though, because he was not really a Valois, he was a Bourbon, and the founder of the house of Bourbon, the final (and current) royal dynasty of France. It was THIS rapscallion who was assassinated by Ravillac -- married to Marie, as I believe I earlier reported, but your debt of culinary gratitude goes to Catherine, not Marie.

Now, back to our story.

The helmet, found in the rubble, has been pounded out and put on display, but also used to fashion a casting to make a new one that looks like the old one would have. There's a photo for your enjoyment.

After that, we did Egypt. Great Thutmose IV, we did Egypt. We did about 30 ROOMS of Egypt. Did you know that Egyptian houses had windows? I didn't. No glass, but frames and wooden stuff inside the frames, kinda like bars. They were on hinges. We saw all sorts of things that were truly interesting, but Egypt isn't my thing, and 2 hours of it left me nearly numb. It also left me as far away from the coat check (where our sandwiches were laughing at us) as we could get. We went in reverse order through the Middle East, starting in medieval Crete and working our way back to Assyria, Sidon and Tyre, and all their happy deserty friends. There is a colossal column from a theater of about 3,000 years ago which I tried to photograph -- you would have been the first people in the world to see that photo, but, alas, it did not come out. Welcome to France.

We ate. We bought a thimble of orange juice and a bottle of some peculiar liquid they think is water here in France -- these folks have great taste, but they don't know from squat on water -- give me some Italian bottled water any day -- tastes sweet, quenches your thirst -- the stuff they sell here is just like the damned Paris tap water -- 200 grains of hardness from calcium, which makes it taste like you are licking the inside of a brass pot. And, both the thimble and the unsatisfying bottle of water checked in at just $7.

From there, we assaulted the second floor of one of the other wings, the Richielieu. We did serious justice to the northern school of classical painting - your Germans, and your Dutch Masters. Whole rooms of Rembrandts. Van Eyck's, Hieronymous Bosch, etc. We found, this time, the audioguides and rented them -- we basically blew off any room that didn't have something on the audioguide -- and probably listened to descriptions of 150 paintings this way. We are now frighteningly uppity about Dutch and German paintings, and can tell you why nearly all Dutch hunting-scene still lifes full of food also include a watch or clock.

From there, instead of taking the final hour to try to flog another floor of the joint, we left, rode up to the top of the Champs Elysees, and took the promised photos of the christmas lights and general foofaraw at the car dealers, as promised earlier. Those photos are included for your edification.

Karen called before the crack of dawn to talk about the water heater and tell me what to do when the plumber came.

So, I stayed home today to make sure the plumber would know what to do when he/she got here.

Scheduled to arrive "after 4" -- we called everyone on Karen's list to try to have a translator here, but to no avail -- oddly, everyone seems to be gainfully employed in the afternoon. Karen's delightfully dry-witted British friend Alison, however, offered to be available by phone for any required help.

Would but that I had needed her.

As the 4 o'clock hour rolled around, we were sweet-smelling, having taken remarkable sponge baths in the large bathroom sink -- I heated a couple of gallons of water on the stove, put half in the sink and used the other half for rinsing -- that "frivolous" instant-read thermometer I brought along was invaluable, as we did not scald ourselves on the water.

At 4:45, I called Martin to ask if I should begin to get obsessively nervous about the lack of vigorous knuckle-rapping on our door. He said no, not to worry until 6 at the earliest.

So, at 6:20, I called him, and he called them, and their answering maching said "what are you, nuts? It's 6:40, we're already home. Fuhgeddaboudit."

Alison has kindly offered us the use of her shower "if the situation gets desperate", and she appreciated when I said that I'd try to come by a day before it got "desperate."

On the other hand, I can just hope and pray that I get to sit next to a French plumber for the entire flight (non-stop) home next week.

Cooked some parts of dinner, sent Kelli out on her own to get the rest, since she would have been no match for the mythical plumber, Monseiur Godot. Had her go get two baguettes tradition and a cooked poulet fermier, or free-range chicken. The butcher played patty-cake with her over the counter, then cleverly slipped into her bag a roasted ramphoryncus. Until now, thought to have been extinct for millions of years, this flying dinosaur proved to be the utterly perfect cap to an utterly perfect day -- no touring, no museums, did not go out into the first sunshine in three weeks, no shower, no heat, no plumber, and, finally, a dinner which featured a piece of poultry whose breast meat was a shiny chestnut-mahogany color approximately 1/4" deep into the flesh.

Mighty damned tasty, though.

"Madame, I yam Soo-pozz-edd to be"

Sunday. The first Sunday of December. In France, just about any museum worth a diddly-damn is free on the first Sunday of the month. We trek to the Invalides Metro station, where there is an interchange with the RER C-line. You may remember, from the early days of this trip, that I went out to Versailles already and inventoried each of the 1.3 million trees on my walk around the place. I also had to walk the distance from Metro to RER because the 1/2 mile long moving sidewalk (the one that goes UPHILL, naturally), was broken that day.

We decide to go to Versailles.

The people-mover is, once again. alors, deader than a stick. The downhill one is moving at a brisk clip, made all the more rapid-looking by the fact that we are hiking up a continual half-mile slope to the RER station. This fact is brought into sharper focus when we remember that, exiting the metro portion of the complex, we had to climb 3 flights of stairs in order to descend 5 flights of stairs in order to be at the bottom of this, the French Grapevine.

Trains that run every 8 minutes during the week run once per hour on Sundays, even on "free" Sundays. We wait about 25 minutes for a train.

The ride to Versailles is short -- it's only 10 miles from downtown Paris. When we get there, they have signs, ala Disneyland, that say in multiple languages "Your wait from this point to the entrance is 90 minutes", spaced 15 minutes apart. Amazingly, they are of no particular value this day -- we can walk directly up to the building, where fewer than 25 people are in line ahead of us.

We enter, and are told by the friendly lady at the "host" desk, who, of course, speaks English, that today the King's apartments and the Queen's apartments are closed, terribly sorry, but the State Rooms are open and free, and we can rent an audioguide over there, and if we are incredibly good and insanely lucky, at the end of our tour we can see if there is room on one of the (rare) guided tours of the Opera House built into the Palace.

We set out. First, just in case being surrounded by 4 square miles of French architecture has allowed us to forget where we are, we must go to the vestaire, the free coat check, where they take Kelli's bag, through which she has woven her coat. When I slip off my two-layer jacket with the pockets full of guide books, however, they (with appropriately sorrowful looks and perfectly-praticed Gallic shrugs) tell me that they don't accept coats. While actually holding Kelli's in their hands.

It turns out the vestaire (same root word as vest, it means CLOAKROOM) does not actually have any coat hangers. Not that they have run out, they don't have ANY.

Bags, sure. Strollers, no problem. Umbrellas by the squadron. COATS? in a Coat Check? Who do you think you are? Roberto Begnini?

Fine. We march through about 11 rooms, each getting closer to the King's throne room, where he would hear the pleas (in writing, only) of commoners. Finally, we have gotten through that wing of the palace, and we are in the War Salon, which is on the corner. We can see out into the gardens, and are about to make the left turn into the most famous part of Versailles.

First, we stop to watch the incredibly long HD video of the work being undertaken to restore the "Hall of Mirrors" -- there was a sign at the beginning of the tour telling us the room was being restored, but was open during the restoration and was, in any event, being restored in sections, so.

We make the turn, in anticipation beyond measure, to this magnificent salon, more than 200 feet long, 30 feet high, and nearly 40 feet wide.

We make the turn, into the most famous room in all the world -- the Incredible Salon of Scaffolding, Particle Board and Plaster Dust that you have all heard about all your lives.

To be fair and honest, not ALL of the room was encased in a carpet-covered wooden tunnel, although all of the flooring was covered. No, true to their statement about doing the room in sections, there was about a 40-foot long area with no scaffolding, no particle board, no carpets.

Also: no mirrors, no wall covering, no open windows.

Hooray. We can now go down the list and check off "Versailles, Salon des Glaces".

The rest of the visit is, again, quite interesting -- the other wing, with it's balancing Salon of Peace at the turn, takes us in reverse order through the Queen's area, including the bedroom from which she escaped the rioting crowds. The secret door built into the wall coverings is left open for all to see.

At the end of the tour, we exit into a pair of rooms from later periods, one of which has monumental paintings (not GREAT paintings, but HUGE peintings) commemorating all the battles won in French history to that time (go ahead, all of you, and tell me that since it went through Napoleon's time, it actually commemorates ALL the battles EVER won in French history). Waterloo was strangely absent, and we were struck by how often Napoleon, or other great French generals, managed to wage their campaigns on green grassy fields, absent of rocks, trees, or dwellings -- even Austerlitz, which took place in December after a major snow storm, was represented as a verdant pasture, albeit with some snow-covered mountains in the distance, at least.

On to the Opera tour. We get to the desk, I ask in my Francaise comedie for two spots on the next english tour, and we are awarded two sticky "my name is" tags that instead have the time of our tour -- and, it's in only 5 minutes! Hooray, we now know just exactly which one thing is going to go right today.

Our tour guide shows up -- a gentleman, about my age, in a tan cashmere topcoat and scarf. We assemble, and he sets off across the room, then across the main courtyard, at a pace slightly quicker than the Blitzkrieg. Exactly no one can keep up with him, especially since we are sprinting across a sloping, wet cobblestoned yard about, well, no, EXACTLY the size of the hall of mirrors, about 80 yards.

Breathless, we arrive at the rendezvous point, where ever-chirpy Kelli puts on her BEST customer-service face and says "you are very quick, sir." Staring down at her as though he had just noticed that there was a living, walking booger in his group, he says with great dignity "madame, I yam soo-poze-edd to bee" and takes off again. I thought I was gonna die laughing.

His tour was fantastic -- he was witty, urbane, totally knowledgable, and possibly, just possibly, more opinionated than even I am. He has a soft spot for royalty, and pointed out that the house of Bourbon still exists in France, ready to return (to, I presume, a ceremonial role much as in England and Holland). It's really not a bad idea, when you think about it. The Queen gives Englishmen something to rally around and agree on as Englishmen, allowing their politics to be as slug-it-out nasty as it needs to be, while still allowing for a patriotic rallying point. Makes more sense than suggesting that anyone who disagrees with the President is unpatriotic......I can't for a New York second, imagine most ANY US President, but particularly our current one, surviving the kind of vitriolic questioning that is a staple of Britain's House of Commons.

He even taught us how people sat in those days -- "etiquette was everything -- ladies could ONLY wear diamonds after dark, and after dark, could wear ONLY diamonds -- rings (worn over gloves), bracelets, necklaces, earrings, even shoe buckles could only be diamonds in the presence of the King." Gentlemen carried their plumed hats under their left arm, never to be worn. Their right hand rested on the handle of their jewel-encrusted sterling or vermeil (gold plated silver) sword; the left held a silk handkerchief (never to be used). The benches in the opera did not have backs, and one was seated only on the front quarter of the bench, turned at a 45-degree angle toward the King and Queen, whose backs you were looking at. Wonderful day, wonderful tour. At the end, he entertained questions, and I asked him if, with the great national motto of "liberte, fraternite, egalite" guiding everything in French life (it even explains why they don't queue up -- if everyone is equal, then getting there first means nothing), did that affect how the history of the monarchy was taught in school?

He gave me a very honest answer -- and the one I fully expected -- which was "it all depends on your teacher -- one cannot teach history without one's personal bias creeping in." And then he abruptly turned heel and disapeared faster than Lance Armstrong on the Alpe d'Huez, before I could ask the journalist's follow-up question, which was whether he was, in fact, a royalist himself.

We walked through old Versailles, found a bakery open, got bread and came home to eat.

Monday. The plan: to meet with Claire and conquer the fabric marts of the Marche Saint Pierre, at the foot of the funicular railway that leads to Sacre Coeur Cathedral.

We meet at our old standby, Picpus Metro station, and walk to Place de la Nation, one stop further up the line. The reason: as can only happen in a city where the underground has more "floors" than the above-ground, it is a shorter walk to our desired Metro line at Nation (where 2 end and 4 meet) that it would be to ride to Nation and then "transfer" (a word the French translate as correspondance, because your walk will be long enough for you to meet, have social intercourse with, and then grow weary of, a pen pal) to the correct line. These are the sorts of things that only a native Parisian can truly teach a denizen of the Second World (yeah, that's right. That's us. You've only heard of the "third world", but, cleverly enough, there were two that preceded it, neither being Africa, which apparently preceded everything.).

We exit the Metro at Anvers station, which is at the foot of Montmartre. Or, to put it another way, we begin our daily Parisian Death March in the only direction available to us: uphill.

We wander through streets largely familiar to us from last visit, although we were there at night, and in the rain, then. Today it is "mostly cloudy, with occasional periods of sun", as the weather forecast says. Also, it is windy (over the weekend Brittany, Normandy and the south of Great Britain were under warnings for hurricane-force winds), and about 36 degrees, with a chance of reaching 40. Chance gras.

We are here because the lovely Mrs. has decided that our tattered drapes that sit in our very narrow windows that flank the front door (which are, for the most part, invisible to all who visit us because they are also set about 4 feet under our porch and receive slightly less light than graced the Man in the Iron Mask at bedtime) have draped their last, have welcomed their final guest, and are more accurately described now as a loosely organized gathering of lint.

We want French draperies for the front door. Since the windows are only about 6 feet tall and 18 inches wide, there is a fleeting, but perceptible chance that we can afford this excursion.

The possibility of finding said drapes, however, is rather somewhat less than robust.

I merrily plow headfirst into this sojourn (a French word that loosely means "sore day"), convinced that, since Kelli admires the similar draperies in Karen's windows, which are linen with cutwork, that we are, in fact, in search of narrow panels of linen with cutwork, as we have seen in so many 2nd/1st and 3rd/2nd story windows on our prior Death Marches.

And now, a word from our sponsor: Gentlemen, please be aware that there is a demonstrated link, attaching itself to the Y-chromosome, which makes THEIR definition of "like", as in "let's look for draperies like these" only marginally related to YOUR/OUR definition of "like". Your definition: Let us go find something similar in size, shape, color, and design to this example you are holding in your hands. Their definition: Let us go find something.

We arrive in the fabric district. This is an oddity about Paris that is probably similar to how New York City once was, also -- I've not had the opportunity to truly live in and explore any other European cities, so I don't know if it is slightly unique, unique, or VERY unique (that's a linguistic joke, people), but is an oddity -- in Paris, you can go to a fabric district and most stores sell fabric or sewing materials. A few blocks away, everyone is selling, well, let's just leave it at "deeply (and we DO mean DEEPLY) creative personal sculptures in a variety of silicone-based materials, frequently requiring batteries (not included)", and a few blocks further away, everyone is selling ready-to-wear (pret a porter, literally, "ready to carry") clothing.

Of course,



(wait for it)



You know it's coming . . . .



it's closed.



BUT

only for a few hours -- they open at 2 pm on Mondays, and stay open for 3.5 hours, to help out those poor souls who neglected to purchase enough sheer organdy silk to complete the redecoration of their seraglio (we're branching out -- that one's Arabic, and means "harem-room", at least, it does in the New York Times' Sunday Crossword).

We take a walk. That's what you do when you can't do what you WANT to do in Paris, you walk. It's also what you do to GET TO what you want to do, and it's what you do when you are doing what you want to do. You also do it when you have stopped doing what you want to do, and are moving on to the next item in your programme, which will also, alas, be closed just now.

We wander the neighborhood and find the first modern church built in Paris -- it's entirely made of brick on the outside, just after the turn of the 20th century. Claire enjoys these excursions with us, because we just boldly march into these buildings that she has seen for years but never explored. Some nice stained glass inside; I drop another $10 on a long-lasting candle as this week is "really" the week that our agent is sending out the book proposal -- last week was spent on the phone and e-mails, preparing publishers for its arrival. Sounds like a very appropriate strategy to me -- get 'em excited before it arrives, so they will read it. Anyway, keep doing your juju or white magic or prayer circles, as you feel appropriate.

There was plenty of time left, so I proposed a visit to a museum. That's another great thing about Paris -- wherever you go, there's a museum. We did not have time to do justice to the 5-story Musee de l'Erotisme, right there in that "sculpture district", (while walking through it, Kelli asked two questions -- "Is that person standing in the doorway in the fur coat waiting for a client, and, is it male or female?", to which my answers were "yes", and "yes", respectively), but we did have time to visit the home and atelier of a 19th century French artist named Gustave Moreau.

Neat house. Lower floors preserved as he left them (he was pretty wealthy and had no "issue", so left everything to the state for a museum), and the upper floor atelier was turned into two floors, each with about a 15-foot ceiling, for display space. He did some monumental paintings, but he was also a prolific draftsman and sketch artist, and the museum displays literally thousands of these items in large cases with many vertical drawers, which, when opened, contain framed items on hinges that can be leafed through, stacked about 10-deep. The outer walls of both rooms are, literally, wall-to-wall cupboards which, when opened, have 10-15 leaves with dozens of sketches, studies for his paintings, engravings, and drawings. It's one of those places that crams a lifetime of work into a few large rooms, and it's fascinating.

Also fascinating: the way they added the extra floor in the atelier. It's a big room -- I would guess perhaps 30 feet wide and 70 feet long -- and they didn't mess around -- they brought in 15-inch steel I - beams and laid them across the room, on BOTH floors (one set holds up the roof), so that, in the event it becomes necessary to route the Metro through this house, they can just drop the tracks on and go.

Speaking of this sort of construction, we also visited the Montmartre cemetery, where we paid our respects to Stendahl, Offenbach, and a plaque for Fragonard, but missed Zola, who was apparently hiding near that plaque.

Forgive me, there's no other way to say this: going to a cemetery with Claire truly brings it to life. Descended from a once-but-no-longer wealthy family whose members, about 125 years ago, decided to restore a great abbey in the countryside and became unwealthy in the process, she's related to the Montgolfiers (inventers of the hot-air balloon), and knows her stuff -- art history and French history -- in a personal way, so as we walk by apparently anonymous graves, she explains that this family is from Tunisia, that one is famous for inventing this item, this other one grew hugely wealthy from producing such-and-so. Truly, gone but not forgotten.

And now, the fabric stores are open.

We begin our cautionary tale by pointing out that, on the walk UP (there's that word again) to the big fabric markets, we walked past Tissus Saint Pierre, the fabric store where last January we purchased fabulous brocade fabric to reupholster our dining room set, at silly bargain prices. They, of course, being a mere fabric STORE and not a fabric SOLAR SYSTEM, were open to capture any stray trade that might have thought the huge stores were open early on Monday. We ignored them (we spit on you! ptah!) and proceeded to our day as already described.

It is now mid-afternoon. We have stopped at an artisanal boulanger and obtained sandwiches and all-butter palm leaf cookies larger than our heads. They were fabulous. Claire said they reminded her of her girlhood, when her mother would have palm leaf cookies for her after-school snack. Claire insisted that no Proustian tomes would result, however -- as good as these cookies were, they were not her madeleines.

We head back UP the hill to Marche Saint Pierre, where the voilage is, but of course, located on the 3rd (French) floor. Being a warehouse, the floors are rather tall -- about 21 stairs between them. We trudge up, and find hundreds of bolts of curtain fabric.

In lace.

OK.

Lace.

So, we're contemplating replacing WHOLE drapes that might be wearing a little thin, thus producing a couple of tattered spots with tiny holes, with all-new fabric consisting almost entirely of pre-planned holes, done in the patterns of dolphins or sailboats or fruits and vegetables. Bound down the sides, the fabrics are sold in 12, 18, 24 and 30 inch widths, with fringy-scallopy kinds of details and regular holes every foot or so -- the deal is, you buy a length, cut it to fit your particular window (which was probably not made in a factory in the first place), and thread a rod through the holes. If you want fringy-bottoms, you cut at the bottom of the fringys, and if you want scallopy-bottoms, you cut at the TOP of the fringys.

We look through approximately 4, 113 bolts of lace curtains. None is quite right.

No problem, there is always Reine across the street. If the King of Fabric warehouses isn't right, then the Queen surely will be.

Astonishingly, voilage is on the top floor at Reine, too. We enter the store, which Claire has visited "hundreds of times", and march directly to the staircase on the far right, where I strap on oxygen and begin, once again, to climb Jacob's Ladder.

Reine has some nice products, actually -- as well they should be, since the prices would require that we call AAA to come out and jump start Marie Antoinette's heart. Fortunately, none are "just right", although Goldilocks seems to be getting closer and closer to finding the proper chair.

With heavy hearts, (horse manure -- with heavy LEGS) we descend the stairs, turn right to go out the exit, and, right there in front of us -- yes, RIGHT THERE -- IT IS!


Wait for it.



You KNOW what's coming, don't you?




The elevator.

Which Kelli and Claire both walked past without even the slightest nod of recognition. Despite the large yellow sign hanging down from the ceiling. And the shiny stainless steel doors. And the buttons and indicators.

I stopped dead in my tracks. It was surprisingly easy to do so. And I pointed.

Neither of them recognized where I was pointing. They both LOOKED RIGHT AT THE ELEVATOR! and did NOT recognize it as a small private room which takes you to high places while preserving your feet and legs.

Claire: "I never knew there was a elevator here! Look at the things you are finding in Paris!"

At the prices they charge, they ought to have Arabic castrati carry us about in sedan chairs, but I surely would have settled for the elevator.

Anyway.......

Just on a hunch, now 7 hours after our first arrival in the neighborhood, I suggest we walk the extra two blocks (what the hell? It was downhill anyway, and no stairs were harmed in the making of this additional walk) and check at Tissus Saint Pierre.

There's no chance we will find what we are looking for here, because it's just a sham of a fabric store -- it only has ONE flight of stairs. Our quarry, apparently warming up to spend its useful life at the highest point in a home, is, of course, UP those stairs.

Of course, they've got what we "want". And, they have some that is turned the other direction -- only 12 inches long, but it offers the key benefit of covering the top of the draperies we will be sewing, because the fabric we wind up selecting does not have those pre-built holes woven in.

The fabric we select also doesn't have binding for the first 10 inches or so -- having Claire with us, we are able to let the attendant know that we need her to start measuring from the point where the binding begins --- victory number one.

The "valance" fabric is tres cher -- only twelve inches long, it is about $10 per running foot. It comes in repeating panels about 6 inches wide. We decide to purchase 4 for each window, since they will have to sit on a separate rod in front of the other drapes, and will have some pleating, etc., etc.

We unwind the fabric from the bolt. It is linen, which explains the price.

The second panel in has a black thread which has been woven into the panel. Visible from a distance of, oh, our neighbor's living room.

I'm NOT going to spend the extra money to buy two extra panels to get past this blemish.

The attendant explains (via Claire) that this is linen, and imperfections like that are to be expected.

I unwind 8 panels, then 10 panels, and point out that only THAT panel has an imperfection.

They can't give us 10 panels for the price of 8.

They can't cut off two panels and discard them.

So, I suggest we unwind ALL of the fabric from the bolt and start at the other end -- perhaps we can find 8 clean panels there.

Absolutely not.

Now, if I have learned anything in my time here, I have learned that the French see themselves as logical people (stemming all the way from Descartes' famous "I think, therefore I am", which, illogically, he uttered in Latin, yet the French see it as their national motto).

They also have a deep-rooted belief that all good ideas are French in origin. Nothing wrong with that, as Americans are identical -- Darwin was not an American, so we ought to throw out his proven scientific concepts in favor of God-fearin' American ones, don't you know?

I have also learned to wait. Stubbornness is a powerful force. Now, she had already cut the other fabric, so we were on the hook, but I was perfectly willing to walk away from that linen fabric -- and come back another day, after the flawed piece had been sold -- but I made it clear by my silence that we weren't going to buy it that way.

We dithered. We dickered. We wandered about the room, hands in pockets, whistling tunelessly.

After about 10 minutes, it happened.

Enough time had passed, and the attendant came up with a brilliant idea to solve this impasse.

"Why," she said to Claire in French, "don't we just unroll all the fabric and cut from the other end?"

Why, indeed?

You know, even if I wind up HATING these curtains, they represent a victory that demonstrates I have genuinely learned how to deal with the French national psyche and attitude, at least for one day, and that is priceless to me. Regrettably, the curtains themselves are not priceless, and will wind up being about $50 per window. Ah, well -- better that people should be able to be voyeurs looking through intended holes in the draperies.

We proceed to a cafe on the Place de la Nation, where we go for a drink and stay for the evening. Kelli has her first steak in France, and loves it. We bludgeon poore Claire into eating with us, then stagger home after some wonderful wine from St. Chinian (a tiny village at the entrance to the Pyrenees, the so-called "gateway to Erce", where I obtained my beret and Kelli's famous fringy brown lined jacket at the weekly market) and much good food, including Berthillon peach ice cream.

There's more, but I don't want this to take an hour to publish, so, enjoy the photos, see if you can match them to the text, and come back for more soon.

Cinema, oui! Paradiso, non!

Friday, we met again with Claire. She is a friend of Karen's who lives here in Paris, and she has been our secret weapon, helping us with finding things, deciphering colloquial French, and taking us to out-of-the-way parts of Paris.

On Friday, she took us way out of the way -- we met her at the Picpus (pronounced Peek-Puss) Metro station (a good meeting place because it has only one exit, and is therefore moderately difficult to get lost in), walked to her car, and piled in. We headed out of Paris entirely.

North, to the area around Chantilly, we went to Senlis (pronounced Sen-lease -- it was somebody's name once, it's not TRULY French (they hold a grudge a long time -- it's been called Senlis since at least the 12th century), so you DO pronounce the "s". In this very old, very Gothic church, the Capetian dynasty of French kings began when Hugue Capet was elected king when there was no successor to the throne. It was a darned long time ago, you'd have to put extra batteries into the "Way-Back Machine" to get there -- in the 13th century or so. That's so long ago, even conservative Republicans would be a tad uncomfortable there -- largely because there were no Protestants yet.

Paris is a wonderful city -- a very private city, in fact, because so much of what goes on happens behind locked doors and high blank walls. With the exception of a couple of blocks on the Montmartre, there are no front yards in the city, buildings are on the sidewalk, or even on the street itself, and the facades, while fascinating, give little or no clue of what goes on inside.

The countryside, however, is another story. Still not many front yards, but the old downtowns are often pedestrian only, the weekly market day frequently takes over most of downtown, and everyplace just literally spews charm from every orifice.

Senlis is one of those places. Just past the forest that Jean-Jacques Rousseau used to walk through for inspiration, it's one of those French anachronisms -- just 30 miles from Paris, you would swear that you are so far out in the countryside that you might not actually be able to find anyone who had ever even HEARD of Paris. Old buildings, with tile pictures on the front to show what sort of business is conducted inside, in case you might still be illiterate. Wrought-iron signs swaying in the wind, affixed to the buildings about 10 feet off the ground. Not much neon. And yet, as always happens to me in these towns of about 20,000 people, I'm amazed at the amount, and quality, of commerce that goes on. Restaurants of national repute, full-on lingerie stores, a butcher and a baker on nearly every block, quality cheese stores, a place that specializes in foie gras, children's clothing, art galleries -- it is SO civilized, so charming. Were I to stay in a place like that for 5 weeks, I would know people by name and greet them on the street by the middle of the visit.

We stopped for lunch at a "typically French" bistro/brasserie. The room had a slightly grumpy and mildly forgetful woman very close to 60 serving us. The plat du jour was langue du boeuf, sauce piquant. Kelli decided to go native on me and order it, even after I told her it was beef tongue in a spicy sauce. Claire was quite impressed -- I, less so, because I knew how this would turn out. Claire ordered the omelette forestiere, meaning with wild mushrooms, and I had the onglet sauce roquefort, a hanger steak (near the flank) grilled and sliced, served with spinach and mashed potatoes. Well, I had most of it. Kelli decided that one slice of tongue was experiment enough - she stocked up on the boiled potatoes and had eaten all of her fish soup, which was a reddish-orange puree with a special sauce and croutons and grated gruyere cheese to put on top. I did the loving husband thing and gave her a couple of bites of the steak, so as not to have her grow faint on the ride home.

On the ride home, we avoided the Autoroute for a while, driving through the countryside. Your loyal correspondent was busy surveying all that was placed before him, and spotted the family of harts, European deer, bounding fanatically across the plowed field to our east - Papa was a 6-point buck, and mom and the two kids were close on his heels. They covered some serious ground in just seconds.

As we rolled into Paris, Claire had said she had "an appointment" at 7 pm, but when the phone rang at 4:00, I knew it was her boyfriend. It's quite a treat to be privy to young love in Paris, let me tell you -- and young love happens at any age. Claire has two adult sons, was divorced a couple of years ago, and speaks in that matter-of-fact way that Europeans seem to have -- "Peter, who I had an affair with for a while, works in the hotel field and is now in Oakland, California, of all places!"

It was Rene on the phone, and right before our very eyes, this rather demure 50 year old woman became a giggling schoolgirl.

We had already set up an appointment to meet on Monday to go shopping for curtains -- fabric in Paris is one of the few true bargains -- and we were driving down the street when, wonder of wonders, a car pulled OUT of a parking spot just as we drove up, giving Claire a place to leave her car for the weekend (if you've been reading along, you know these things just happen to us, even when they aren't really happening to us), and allowing her to gaily say "we're here, time to get out!" So, let that be a lesson to all you youngsters out there -- hormones still work, and mighty damned well, at just about any age.

We came home, and I did yesterday's long blog entry. All along, I had plans for us to go to the movies on Friday night -- to the digitally projected Harry Potter in English with French subtitles. It was showing on the Champs-Elysees (the most expensive retail space in the world). The movie was at 9:15, we left the house (four metro stops and one line change away) around 8:00.

And waited for about 9 minutes for a train at our station. This was not a particularly good sign; coupled with the fact that the blogger site was not accepting my photos (I tried for 45 minutes to post them and failed), we were off to a bad start.

It got worse. We changed at Concorde (Place de la...) to Line 1, the oldest line in Paris. They have signs telling you when the next two trains are coming. The trains usually run every 2-3 minutes on this line.

8 and 13 minutes, the sign said.

When the train arrived after 8 minutes, I thought the doors were going to fly off and drive us all into the wall of the Metro station -- cars designed to hold about 75 people had at least 95-100 each, and there were easily 150 of us on the platform waiting to get in. We failed.

The next train had room. We rode two stops to Franklin Roosevelt, got out, and were standing on the Champs-Elysees.

Pictures will come another night. I didn't bring my camera that night, I had every intention of going to the movies.

The street is lit up in a way that is hard to describe -- General Electric has filled all of the London Plane trees that line this grandest of all the world's grand boulevards with lights, and big ones -- regular incandescent screw-in bulbs -- that appear to twinkle when the breeze blows, as the lights bob back and forth behind the trees' leaves. This extends from the Arc du Triomphe almost all the way to Concorde. It's dazzling.

There were theaters -- across the street, of course, but that didn't seem right to me. So, I got my bearings for a few seconds, and realized the theater was behind us, on our side of the street. The sidewalks on this street are about 60 feet wide, so it wasn't obvious.

Now, the Metro HAD failed us -- we arrived only 45 minutes before they opened the doors, and 1 hour and 15 minutes before the movie started. As I dashed to get into line to buy tickets, the tote board behind the cashier gave the baleful, yet so-deeply-in-my-bones-expected news that the final four seats to Harry Potter had been purchased by the person in front of me.

I believe I forgot to mention that I skipped dinner entirely in order to not be too late to get tickets. This left me in a MOST festive mood.

No sense in looking anywhere else, either -- everyplace that was showing HP in English started the show at 9:15.

The Mrs., who had NOT skipped dinner, was truly enchanted with the dazzling light display, and thought this provided the perfect opportunity for us to walk up and down the Champs-Elysees to enjoy the holiday spirit. With apologies to Bill Fields, on the whole, I'd rather have been in Philadelphia.

But, good trooper that I am, we hiked up to the arch, crossed over, and back to the Rond Point, then back up the street to the George V Metro station. The Rond Point, which is, well, a traffic roundabout installed midway between the Arc and Concorde just to keep driving a lively sport, was all decorated for the holidays, with conifers everywhere dusted with fake snow. Which was pretty odd, since the wind blowing up the street in our faces produced a wind chill that made it feel like it was 5 degrees -- real snow certainly would not have melted.

Our progress up and down the streets was somewhat impeded by the mass of emergency vehicles that were attending to a traffic accident that involved a motorcycle or scooter in the middle of this avenue that is so wide one crosses it on foot in two signal cycles. I was jolted out of my black mood when we passed the accident on the way back down the street and realized it was not being attended by ambulances, but by the Coroner.

Peugeot and Citroen have their main showrooms here. I promise to walk by them and take some photos for you, and for me -- let me tell you, they don't have Cal Worthington OR his dog Spot selling cars here -- they had concept cars, city cars with no side doors, sports cars with wings sticking 3 feet out on either side......car design on acid. I'll have to get photos -- these car showrooms have a second floor which is a relatively fancy restaurant. At least, the French have their priorities in the right places -- can't decide much of anything without a decent bottle of wine, you know.

I was dumbfounded to find a McDonalds, and their French counterpart, Quick, on this too-expensive-for-words street. Also, there were several restaurants with extremely moderate prices -- fixed meals for under $20, taxes and tip included. I didn't expect this.

So, I grumpied my way down the street to the Metro, rode back to our neighborhood, and decided to take a walk down our market street -- I was pretty sure most places would not still be serving at 10 pm, but it was worth a try, even though Kelli had already eaten.

Deborah, take note: About two blocks down rue Cler, on the left, is a little Greek restaurant that has a plastic tent in front for extra seating. In the tent they have a crepe stand. The guy who runs it speaks wonderful English, along with French and Greek, of course. For about $4 he will make you a crepe with a slice of ham, a large handful of grated Swiss cheese, and a fresh egg all folded inside. I could have kissed him, but, well, he was Greek, and might have mistaken me for a graduate of an English public school such as Eton......

In fact, I went back for breakfast today.

Arranged the interview with Anne-Marie Cantin for next Thursday. Called Enrico Bernardo at the George V hotel, left a message -- his outgoing message is in French AND English -- my incoming message was in English only. Hoping to hear back from him.

We decided to do the Museum thing today, so after the cheese store stop and our lunch crepes (me: three cheeses and an egg -- Kelli -- Egg, cheese, onions, peppers, and ham, I think) we headed back to the Champs-Elysees, where I proudly marched in and asked in perfect, well, intelligible, at least, French, whether they sold tickets that early for the evening cinemas. He said "you betcha, buckaroo", or words to that effect in perfect, or at least intelligible, French, and I ordered up a couple of his best seats for the 6:00 show. Magic coupons in hand, we set off for a day of high fashion.

First the Baccarat Museum, which includes, at no additional charge, the opportunity to go through the Baccarat boutique. Not for the faint of checkbook, but it is a stunning retail space in a mansion on the Place des Etats-Unis, just up the street from the embassies of the Sultanate of Borneo, Kuwait, and the Sultanate of Oman. Hilarious, don't you think, that all the Islamic countries have their diplomatic legations on the Place des Etats-Unis? Saudi Arabia is right around the corner, too........

Hard to say exactly what was the most amazing thing -- the 4000-crystal chandelier in an enormous bullet-proof aquarium in the entry, lighted even though under water, was pretty impressive. So were the tiny LEDs buried in the carpet margins going up the stairs -- and the 11 foot high candlestick made for Tsar Nicholas II was amazing -- so was the crystal chair and ottoman designed for Edith Ann (you had to watch Laugh-In back in the day to get that reference) -- it was not a rocking chair, but the footstool would require a ladder to mount.....and the chair was about 14 feet high.

But, the bathroom!

Oh my sweet Lord, the bathroom!

Polished sandstone on the floor. The entry door had red crystal mirror tiles covering the entire surface, while the ante-room had crystal mirror tiles on all walls and ceilings. The "lavatory" consisted of four squarish legs -- they were blown crystal surrounds masking the metal legs holding up the table. The entire top of the table was flat, polished Sterling Silver. The "basin" was actually a free-form kidney-shaped piece of half-inch-thick sterling, about three inches high, which produced a catchment.

The museum had examples ranging back to the early 19th century of Baccarat work, and a movie in a ball-room of immense size and ornate beauty. Everywhere, there were crystal hurricane lamps set directly on the floor that were somehow plugged in beneath their bases in such a way that no cord showed. Items from the Paris Expositions throughout the 19th century, monumental vases 5 feet high of multi-layered blown crystal with artworks etched into the sides. For the entirety of the 19th century Baccarat kept a major factory operating at full capacity solely to provide items commissioned by the Romanov family of Russian Tsars.

From there, we hiked to the Galliera Musee -- the museum of Parisian clothing styles.

On the way, I was able to give directions to a lovely group of ladies who had somehow lost the Champs-Elysees. I told them to turn left and walk until they ran out of movie tickets, you can't miss it.

The museum of Parisian clothing styles was given over entirely to one designer's show, an Italian designer apparently quite popular in Paris, Popy Moreni. We were stunned by the bizzare nature of many of the clothes, particularly the shoes and hat that were truly intended to be worn by court jesters.

That didn't take much time, so we dashed to the Metro and went to the Opera Garnier, the old opera in Paris, and got in line to buy museum tickets. Of course, someone was rehearsing in the hall, so we could not enter the auditorium, with its 4 stories of private boxes, but we could peer through the doorway into one of the boxes. We walked up and back down the monumental staircase inside the opera -- I believe the staircase in San Francisco's City Hall is patterned after this one -- it was best described by a young lady from London who walked through a side doorway ahead of her friends and said "oh my frigging God you won't believe this".

The museum was interesting -- several rooms devoted solely to costumes designed for the Opera over the past 150 years or so, all in shades of red. The text accompanying it was a challenge for me, but I was able to decipher enough of it to get the gist of their discussion of the symbolism of the color red over the years, both in ethnology/religion and psychology. The costumes were all fabulous, but what really interested me was both the substance of some of them -- wearing them would make you perspire heavily, let alone adding makeup and stage lighting and acting and singing -- and the fact that they were too elaborate to be dry cleaned, even, so many of them were really pretty darned filthy, but you'd never know it from a distance.....secrets of the society.

From there, we got decent sandwiches at Paul, a boulanger/tea shop with outlets in some Metro stations, in business for about 140 years now. Sat on a bench on the Champs Elysees and watched the world go by for 15 minutes while eating, then decided to go into the movie theater about 45 minutes early, just in case.

The movie was being shown downstairs in the grand salon. These were the most expensive movie tickets I've ever bought, at about $12.35 each for the "projection numerique", or digital projection. The stairs took us into a circular waiting area large enough for about 100 people; there were 500 tickets sold for the showing. There was a nice, orderly line just long enough for us to get to the end of; after that, people just started filling the space from the front without regard to arrival time.

I said something in French to the effect of "screw this" and dragged Kelli near the front of the mob, which, when the doors finally opened, was so tightly packed we could only shuffle our feet about 6 inches at a time. Someone in the crowd had a recording on their phone of bleating sheep, which they played to everyone's amusement -- apparently, there was ANOTHER door on the other side of the theater, because when we entered, about #60 in line, the theater was half-filled with people who were saving 7 seats at a whack. We sat on the side aisle, with a dozen delightful American, British and Canadian children, plus a couple of French kids, all celebrating an 11th birthday with one Mom and Dad riding herd over all of them. It worked very well.

French movie seats are like Recaro seats upholstered in velvet -- back supports, two arm rests for EVERY seat, no fighting your neighbor, and the seat bottoms are fixed and don't fold up. Comfy in the extreme, we watched 20 minutes of entertaining French commercials, and were occasionally able to intuit what was actually being sold, but not always. Some previews, then the great moment began, with a hundred or more kids leaping to their feat and screaming and applauding. It died down by the finish of the opening credits, the sound system was wonderful, and because the aisles don't go straight from the back of the theater to the front, but rather radiate outwards until at the front the side section has only two seats, the seats, which are "squared up" to the aisle, are staggered and nobody blocks your view, even though the seating is not "stadium style". So, after the cattle call for entry, and the mass sprint for seats, the movie itself was a delight -- in English, with French subtitles, and my French, while not nearly good enough to allow me to watch the movie that way, is good enough to know that several of the translations were, well, lacking, particularly in the more colloquial parts -- but what really surprised me is that many of the Potter characters have different names in French -- not just phonetic pronunciations, but actually different names.

It's a fun 3 hours. See it digitally projected if you can -- there's so much put into this film, the ending credits list about 1,000 names -- see it the way they made it.

All for now. Every museum in Paris, nearly, is free tomorrow, the first Sunday of the month. We're going to make another attempt to storm Versailles. The weather report calls for clouds and rain tomorrow, and it is one of the best weather reports for the coming week.

TTFN