Our apartment building is quite small. From the street, you enter a vestibule and then pass through another door into the main hallway. Each entrance door requires that a code be entered in a pad by the door. There is no way to announce your arrival to someone in the building if you are a visitor so either you tell guests the code or they phone you that they are downstairs and you climb down the 82 steps to let them in. I don't know how one arranges with workmen or people delivering something to contact you if they don't have your phone number. Mysterious!
The staircase rises in one corner of the building. It is an elongated circular staircase. At each landing there are two apartments and there is a doorbell at the apartment door. We also discovered that there are toilets off the staircase between every two floors. Wonder if this remains from earlier times when apartments may not have had their own toilets.
The front windows of the apartment face the street and there are back windows facing a courtyard which makes the apartment very bright. Coming into the apartment itself, there is a small room off of which is the toilet. Here there is a desk by the window; the room serves as an office since the DSL connection is here. Then you pass into a good sized living room with a kitchen arranged along the wall opposite the front window. The bedroom is to the left of the entry room. It too is a nice size and also has a window facing the courtyard. Off the bedroom is closet space and the salle de bain - a bathroom without a toilet. It is common in France to separate the toilet from the rest of the bathroom appliances.
The kitchen is well stocked with equipment except for the lack of sharp knives or a sharpening stone. And it would be nice to have a couple of non-stick fry pans to replace the ones which have no non-stick surface left.
In the rear courtyard are multiple trash containers so that, in addition to the normal waste, you can dispose of bottles and glass in one place and paper in another. Very convenient.
Today I followed a shortcut which I discovered yesterday to the newsstand which carries the International Herald Tribune. It shortens the walk in the morning by a good bit - nice if you are lazy but bad if the exercise is needed. Have to decide if it is a good idea to take the shortcut or follow a longer route. Depends on plans for walking the rest of the day. The news kiosk opens at 7:00 and I am usually there shortly thereafter. Gotta get the news and the crossword.
After lunch we took the metro to the Bibliotheque National, the new national library. It is quite an imposing structure. It covers an area of about two long city blocks on one side and one long city block in the other direction. On each corner of this rectangle there is a large, tall, L-shaped building. Leading up to the entrance is a formidable staircase. When you climb the staircase, you are on about the fifth floor of the complex since far below, in the center is an open area which has been planted with a small forest. Between the buildings are closed walkways which themselves contain rooms of books on diverse subjects.
One of the buildings contained a fascinating display of two huge globes which were made as gifts for Louis IV by an Italian artist commissioned by a French bishop. One showed the earth as they knew it at that time and the other was their concept of the heavenly sphere. Along with this display were a series of videos showing features of the earth and Mars which were discovered by recent space probes.
Sunday - March 8
No paper today. The IHT publishes on Saturday for both Saturday and Sunday. This edition contains the Sunday New York Times crossword which took me a good part of Saturday and Sunday to complete.
Sunday is supposed to be the best day for the marche Richard Lenoir which we visited last Thursday, so we rose early to get to the market shortly after 9:00. It was an overcast. drizzly day but we tramped through most of the market and made many purchases - salmon, cheeses, pate, several vegetables, more of those delicious olives with garlic, some fruit. Again we will eat well for several days. But we didn't find the pruneaux d'Agen which are like no prunes found at home. We will continue our search again next week.
We hurried back to the apartment to put away our stash since we were to meet Nelly, Yvonne's daughter, at 11:30 at another market, marche d'Aligre. We arrived in plenty of time but then proceded to get very lost as we tried to find our agreed upon meeting place. By this time it was raining hard and my shoes and pants, which are too long and drag in the water, were thoroughly soaked. Finally, after asking a number of people for directions, we discovered, that I, as navigator had gone in exactly the opposite direction as we left the metro so that, after an hour of trudging throught the rain, we found our meeting place, a very popular pub (or the French equivalent thereof) but no Nelly. We were very late. We decided to wait and struck up a conversation with two men who allowed as how the US was horrible under M. Bush but had improved in their view now that Obama was president. Couldn't have agreed with them more. Just then Nelly returned and we started off to visit the market. It is a multi-part market including a flea market, a very chic indoor market and an outdoor market with lower prices.
Our first stop was at a stand selling African food ready to eat because, by this time, I was starving and so we ordered a large plate of various finger foods all of which were delicious. They also sold pecan pie (is this African?) which Harley could not resist. I had ginger juice to drink which I could not resist. We sat a tiny table with three chairs on the side of a narrow aisle and enjoyed our food. Nelly called her mother Yvonne who was in Biarritz at a market (what else matters in France except food) and I got a chance to say hello. After recovering from this great hunger we strolled about the market getting wetter and wetter with each passing minute. But great success was achieved when I found drain unclogging liquid in a shop to try to make our kitchen sink behave better. Haven't tried it yet but here's hoping! (So far it hasn't worked and we will try another application, but the problem probably requires a plumber.)
Nelly had brought her car and she drove us back to the Marais where we searched for a long while for a parking place. She ended up parking on a crosswalk facing the wrong direction on a one-way street hoping not to get a ticket. We'll see! And then she came up to the apartment where I changed out of my very wet clothes and we had hot tea, some sweets we had bought at the market, pears, cheese and honey.
For me, to have a car in Paris which has a wonderful public transportation system is madness. There is a traffic jam on every street and parking is an eternal challenge, but if you love driving a car it seems to be worth it.
When Nelly left, both of us took naps, exhausted by the busy morning.
Monday - March 9
Walking about the Marais continues to be a delight. On Sunday many of the shops remain open although Nelly told us it is not legal and they will all pay fines. But, it must be worth it to them since so many were open.
I may have mentionned this already but it is fascinating that, to preserve the history of the area many of the old signs above the shop windows have been retained announcing the type of shop which is below the sign. However, when you look at the shop it turns out to be something totally different such as a hotel lobby with a sign above that says "bakery" or a brasserie under a "butcher shop" sign.
I haven't yet learned how to add photos to the blog. Perhaps today and if not some other time!
I am about to make lunch and since I haven't yet figured out the regular microwave or it there exists a regular oven, the salmon will have to be prepared on top of the stove. Another challenge. And in addition we will steam some broccoli and reheat the delicious tiny potatoes that were cooked on Saturday. Food, food, food. Or to quote Peter Mayle about France, food is the basic religion here. Not a bad idea! No wonder I love France. Just so the recipe is not lost - pan-fry the salmon in a very hot skillet with some olive oil until almost done. Add some orange juice mixed with tamari and cook another few seconds. Serve. Yum! The fish which was from the marche Richard Lenoir was wonderful.
After lunch we wandered over to the Jewish area on rue des Rosiers. (Part of walk #9 in Paris Walks) This used to be a neighborhood of small Jewish shops, especially food shops and small restaurants. Although there are still quite a number of such places, there are also quite a few new falafel stands and chic clothing and accessory shops. One of the food shops, Sacha Finkelsztajn, was recommended by Nelly. It had a large selection of prepared foods of all kinds: gefulte fish, borek, tarama salata, many kinds of bread, desserts and many more items. Just what we needed for supper.
On interesting fact of little importance - the dishwasher takes 177 minutes to wash and dry a load of dishes! Wonder if there is a better setting to shorten the time. But then the clothes washing machine takes about 2 hours. Perhaps this is normal for appliances here. It is possible, since our washing machine at home, which is European, takes 1 hour and 20 minutes to do a normal load of wash, part of the time being used to heat the water since the machine takes in only cold water.
Tuesday - March 10
It started out quite rainy this morning so we planned to go to the Picasso Museum instead of taking a long walk in some new area. But, by the time lunch was over, the sun had come out (and besides, Picasso Museum is closed on Tuesday) so it looked like a good time for another walk.
This time we headed for the Hotel de Ville by metro. Having a month pass for the metro makes it convenient to go places at a moments notice without worrying about the cost or having to stop to buy a ticket. In the long run, it may not be cost effective, but it is very efficiency effective and that counts for a lot. In any case, the walk led to the church St. Gervais which we had visited on an earlier stay in Paris. We went in to admire the organs - there are three and I have photos of two of them. The grand orgue (large organ) is about 500 years old and was played by Francois Couperin, a contemporary of JS Bach. It wasn't being played but Harley may yet return to hear it and I may tag along to visit some of the great shops in the neighborhood.
Harley stopped into a shop, Orphee, which had antique musical instruments for sale. They dated from the 17th century to the mid-20th century. As we left the shop another hard rain shower began and we ducked into a tapas bar to escape the downpour and to refresh ourselves - a pression (draft beer) for Harley and a hot chocolate for me. Then, as quickly as it started, the rain was over and we continued our ramble. The next stop was the most wonderful to date! The name of the shop is Izrael. It carries the most amazing collection of food stuff. It is quite small and has shelves floor to ceiling and very narrow aisles. The shelves are chock full of jars and bottles of every unusual ethnic food you can think of from all over the world. It also had every spice imaginable and large containers of dried fruits, nuts and fresh foods such as hummus, sour pickles, the equivalent of samosas, olives, etc. etc. etc. To quote the information on the Paris Walks card it is "a legendary spice shop stacked high with shimmering candied fruits and other treats." Here I found chestnut puree which is delicious. Anything with chestnuts is delicious. They are apparently used more widely here than in the US as I see chestnut soup and other dishes including chestnuts on many restaurant menus.
Across from the shop are two half-timbered houses from the 15th century. Probably taxes were assessed according to the number of feet of house facing the street because each is five or six stories high. There are very few of such houses left because frequent fires destroyed most of the them and their construction was finally forbidden.
We then turned a corner and walked by a medieval mansion dating from 1475, the Hotel de Sens. Hotel was a word used to described a very large private house in earlier days. Behind the house is a beautiful "tapestry" garden, a formal geometric arrangement of boxwood.
Thoroughly exhausted by this time, we decided to return home but I hope to return to shop at Izrael and to see more of the Hotel de Sens and its garden.
The closest metro stop at this point did not go in any direction that led quickly home so we followed a circuitous route going far south to Place d'Italie, changing for a metro to Bastille and changing again for a metro to St. Sebastian-Fossarte. The length of the walks when changing metros and the many stairways might have made it more effective to just have walked home!
And guess what - it was almost time for supper and early to bed.
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