Thursday 3/15/12 - Driving Back to Paris

Got back in the car and drove to a Super U supermarket we had passed to buy some items for lunch. Some things in France are expensive but some are really dirt cheap.  The shopping trip resulted in the following:

• Mimolette cheese, similar to cheddar, about 250g (1/2 lb), 2 euros
• Pork liver pate, 100g (1/4 lb), fresh cut from the deli counter, 50 cents.  That's right, when in france we eat pork, and it is delicious.
• 1.5 liter bottle of sparkling water, 40 cents
• Baguette, 80 cents

By "cents" I mean euro cents, 1/100 euro, worth 1.33 american cents at the current exchange rate.  Those prices are approximate, since I didn't save the receipt, but it should give you an idea. The total came to about 4.80 euros.  

The pate was literally 5 dollars per kilo, and 100 grams (1/10 kilo) was more than both of us could eat in a sandwich since it is so rich.  We threw about half of it away.    But what we did scarf down was delicious nonetheless.  Duck pate is considerably more expensive, about 12 euros/kilo, but still not expensive considering how little one needs in a sandwich.  

We thumbed our nose to the French lifestyle and ate American style, meaning in the car in the supermarket parking lot.

We then drove back north toward Paris, again relying on directional signs in each town and our macro-level map of France.  We stopped in Blois and tried to find a place with internet access so we could find a hotel for that evening.  After trying the park, the library (closed), and not finding McDonalds, we went to the Holiday Inn and paid 5 euros for their wifi service.

We booked an Ibis hotel in Velizy, a southern suburb of Paris, for 59 euros.  This is part of the Accor chain which also owns Motel 6, and was about that level.  We were able to get within 1/4 mile of it with our directions, but the last few blocks took about 45 minutes because we made a wrong turn and ended up in a mall parking lot.

Our Autoroute tolls came to about 17 euros in each direction from Paris to the Loire Valley, plus 4 euros we spent accidentally going into a tunnel in the Versailles area that sent us in the wrong direction.

Finally found it and just ate in the restaurant in the hotel, which was lousy and had a very limited menu, but we were exhausted and didn't really want to go anywhere.  I wouldn't go out of my way to stay here, but it was passable for a one-night stay, and the bed was comfortable.  On the plus side, it was the only hotel we stayed in the entire trip that had free wifi service.

Monday 3/12/12: Bicycle Ride to the Left Bank, Sacre Coeur

We rented the “Velib” bikes that are all over town.  We needed to do this online and our hotel seemed to give us ½ hour free slow internet access every two days, which was barely enough time to get that done. 

This is a system of rental bicycles primarily for transportation.  You get an account, and then you check a bike out from a station and check it back in at a station near your destination.  Americans need to sign up online because our credit cards with the magnetic stripe cannot be read by the machine.  The fee for visitors is 1.70 euros per day, and bikes are free for the first ½ hour and about 1 euro for every ½ hour after that until they are returned.  

For the most part, the bikes worked well.  However, we found many stations to be out of order, and/or without vacant spaces to return bikes.  We realized that since many people use them to commute, in some areas there are plenty of bikes and no stalls to return, and in others there are no bikes at various times of the day.

Our hotel was ideally situated to rent velib bikes because there is a station across the street, and there are bike paths on either side of the canal.  We rode along the canal de Villette and continued all the way to the Seine.  I had a bike map of Paris but we soon realized that many of the paths on the map were actually bus lanes, and we found ourselves along with many other riders darting in and out of traffic.

We crossed the river to the left bank (5^th) and tried to return the bikes to a station, but the station screen had the blue screen of death and was in need of a rebooting.  I later realized I didn't need the screen and probably could have just returned it there, but I didn't realize that at the time, so anyways we kept riding.  We happened to find the bridge of locks, which we had seen on the Late Late Show when they filmed in Paris.

 The next several stations we found were all full of bikes with no spaces to return.  Finally we found a station where some people were checking bikes out, so we could put ours there. 

After returning the bikes we walked around the 5^th in the student area, stopped at a crepe stand for lunch and ate our crepes in a churchyard/park nearby.  Then we walked further south to the Jardin de Luxembourg, which was partially under construction.  However, it was the first beautiful and sunny day in Paris since we got there, and probably in quite a while, so there were many people enjoying the sunshine.

We observed that Parisians are big readers.  Almost everyone there was either reading a book or doing some kind of writing in a notebook, in full sunlight.  We saw no gadgets such as Ipads or Kindles.  (Lots of people have iphones and blackberries, but they did not use them for things like reading as far as we could tell.)

At that point we thought we might ride up to the Marais again to walk around some more.  We checked out some bikes and found ourselves riding through the middle of rush hour, and it was very harrowing.  We gave up and walked through the 3^rd and 4^th areas, past the Pompidou center, and then decided to take the metro up to Sacre Coeur.

We got off the metro down the hill from Sacre Coeur and Nancy finally found a clothing store she could sink her teeth into.

This was about a million miles from les Champs Elysees.  As far as I could tell, it looked like piles of peoples’ laundry with price tags on top.  However she didn’t buy anything.  It even took too long for her to hunt for anything.  I would have taken more pictures but some of these people clearly didn’t want their pictures taken there.

Then we walked up the hill and nancy waited about 40 minutes to use one of the automatic restrooms.  They are great if nobody is ahead of you, but each cycle of using the bathroom, washing, and cleaning takes about 5 minutes.  So with 7 people ahead of her, it took a while.

Took the funicular up the hill.  Sacre Coeur was a nice view but there were a bunch of teenagers there listening to folk music and we didn’t stay long.  We walked north from there along Rue Clignancourt, intending to catch the bus along Rue Ordener back to our hotel.  Clearly this was a part of Paris that doesn’t make the guidebook. 

We were hungry and cold so we stopped in Chez Fille a la Peau de Lune ("The House of a girl with skin of the moon"?), a West African restaurant with about 2 visible tables (more in the back) for dinner.  A woman who seemed to be the owner of the restaurant was from Gabon and sat right at our table while she chatted with her other clients.  We couldn’t communicate well with anyone there, since nobody spoke English and I was limited to my high school level French, but people were perfectly nice to us.  Nancy got chicken wings, which were delicious, and I got pork ribs, which were good but was the kind of food I can’t eat very much of, so I helped nancy with her wings.  We both got plantains on the side, although I later wished I had ordered fufu, which my old roommate Ricardo used to make, and she said they served.

At the restaurant I ordered a beer, which featured this warning label:

At Rue Ordener, we caught the bus back to our hotel.  While on the bus, we saw someone outside chasing another person and yelling at him.  It was pretty apparent that the person being chased had just pickpocketed the person doing the chasing.  Nobody on the bus seemed to care very much.

Got home and were tired.  Hit the sack.

Sunday 3/11/12: Joinville Market and lunch at Chartier

All four nights in Paris, I wasn’t able to sleep more than about 5 hours per night, even though the room and bed were very comfortable.  I don’t think it was due to jet lag, because I was going to sleep in the evening without a problem, and I didn’t feel especially tired during the day.  Maybe too much coffee.  Whatever, it wasn’t really a problem.  I was just awake.  Nancy was somewhat annoyed because I kept waking her up, and we didn’t have another room I could go to while she slept.

Anyways, I woke up very early and walked over to the Joinville market around the corner from the hotel on Saturdays, at Joinville Street.  Still had leftovers from yesterday’s shopping so didn’t buy anything.

Later, after Nancy woke up we had breakfast at the hotel, which is included with the room.  It was excellent.  We didn’t make any real plans for the morning due to our opera tickets that afternoon.  We went to McDonald’s to use the internet.

Dressed and took Metro to Opera, then walked over to Chartier for lunch.  There was a long line, but apparently since there were only two of us, we were directed past the line and seated immediately.  We were seated with four other people at a table.  On one side of us, two people were dining solo, and on the other side, a couple dined together.  One of the solo diners left shortly after we arrived and we didn’t talk much with him beyond pleasantries.  The other, as best I could understand, is a member of the Corps of Engineers in the French Army and in the next few weeks was going to deploy to a base in New Caledonia in French Polynesia, and would be away from his family for 3 years.  He didn’t seem very happy about it, but said it came with the territory.  The couple to my left was very friendly.  The woman said she has some colleagues in Glendale, CA although we didn’t get into what they or she does.  I noted that a restaurant similar to Chartier in the U.S. would be very expensive, whereas Mcdonalds is cheap, but in France eating at either place almost costs the same, and Chartier is frequented by people from all walks of life.  She said the French actually have a lot of respect for McDonalds because they have introduced some new concepts to France that many people appreciate.  As far as I could understand, these are things like a place to use the internet for free, and food that doesn’t cost extra if you eat in the restaurant, but I didn’t really get all of what she was trying to say.

At Chartier, the menu was completely in French and I understood about half of it and translated for Nancy to the best of my ability.  The woman to my left offered to translate, and we started up a simple conversation.  I had read about this place in a guidebook (Rick Steves perhaps) and also in this yelp review and knew it was near the Opera.  It is known as a classic French restaurant and has been there since the late 1800s, and was definitely a fun place to eat, although we found the food to be just ok.  The atmosphere reminded me of the (now defunct) Berghoff restaurant in Chicago, basically an inexpensive restaurant serving comfort food in an environment that felt very fancy, with tuxedoed waiters, etc.  I ordered an aperitif, Escargots, and lamb chops. Escargots were delicious.  Lamb was pretty good but wasn’t served hot off the grill.   The fries were just so-so.  The aperitif tasted to us like Manischewitz wine.  Nancy ordered shrimp with avocado and a good but relatively unmemorable veal dish.  Total bill was about 33 euros, service compris.  Waiter was friendly and accommodating to our language handicap.

Saturday 3/10/12: Market at Barbes-Rochechouart station and Musee du Louvre

Arrived at the Holiday Inn Express @ Bassin de la Villette in the 19^th Arrondissement of Paris.  

No room was available when we arrived at about 8:00 a.m. so we left our luggage at the front desk and headed out for our first day in Paris.  We first took a walk in the neighborhood of the 19^th.  Nancy enjoyed her first pastry in France, a chocolate croissant, while I had a sesame baguette (not shown).

We went to the Barbes-Rochechouart market, which I had read about on a blog and knew it occurred on Saturdays.  We bought several items for lunch, including:

• ·         Cheese – 2 packages for 2 euros since they were going to expire within the week.  I got small wheels of Camembert and some kind of soft muenster.
• ·         Baguette
• ·         Liver pate from an unknown animal.  The butcher who sold it to me said it was not duck, and since it ostensibly was a Halal butcher I presume it was not pork, but if he told me what it was I didn’t understand him.
• ·         Some vegetables
• ·         Mandarin oranges, samples of which were delicious when he offered them to us.
• ·         Two types of olives
• ·         A knife

All of this was around 10 euros.

Then we headed to the Musee du Louvre.  Since we entered through the train station, the security line at the Louvre only took about 8 minutes.  However I did have to surrender my knife.  The guard gave me a card that I could later exchange for my knife.

We were hungry so we sat at a table in the Louvre lobby and had our picnic.  We hadn’t bought anything to drink so we had to buy a 4 euro small bottle of water at the Louvre, which we shared.  We probably could have saved 3.75 euros if we had bought it before we got on the train.



Here is a photo of the picnic:

Everything was good, nothing was sublime, except for the orange which tasted nothing like the one we sampled at the market.  It was terrible.

Toured the Louvre that afternoon.   Focused on the Mona Lisa.  It’s not just us, or even Americans generally, who focus on greatest hits and superstars. Most people apparently come to the Louvre primarily to see the Mona Lisa, as you can see from this picture of people viewing the Mona Lisa:

Present company included. 

If for no other reason than to say we went to the Louvre and saw more than just the Mona Lisa, we also looked at some other things and spent a while in the Etruscan antiquities gallery.  This is a sarcophagus of what must have been a couple that was relaxed.

 

By then we had about enough art for a while and wanted to walk around.  Exited the Louvre through the pyramid, so we never did recover our knife, and walked around the Louvre’s outside grounds and the Jardin des Tuileries.