Lady Frye's Chronicles of Paris: II
01/01/2019
Welcome to the second installment of our venture to Paris. Today is the first day of the year, so we decided to take the metro to the 1st arrondissement, and almost everything was closed. The 1st is a historic district, home to many well-known sites like the Louvre and Jardin de Tuileries. The Tuileries Christmas Market was also open, and was the best one we saw in the city.
We started our day taking the Metro to Concorde station and seeing Place de la Concorde, which we learned later was a major site of executions. A common theme of our trip was that there are SO many amazing pieces of architecture, that many times we had NO idea what we were looking at until we pulled out Google Maps. This always followed with my wise remark like, "oh that's the Louvre, that's a nice Louvre as far as Louves go". We obviously knew what the Louvre was, but many of the buildings have no signs or placards . I mean why would they, being centuries old and all.
Feeling Louvre-y
The Louvre, like many museums, are closed on New Years Day, but the pyramid is still a sight to see. Now, I did say I was going to be honest here, and I'm going to hold myself to that. One of the many annoyances was that the "street vendors" who all sell the same light-up Eiffel-Tower-plastic-statue-made-in-China were all over this historic monument square. And this kept happening everywhere. I get that they need to make a living too, but maybe not right on top of these monumental historic sites. Just my opinion.
Right across from the Louvre is the Jardin de Tuileries, which is a 17th century garden with amazing statues throughout. This place must be spectacular in the summer, and I know we would have spent more time here if it would have been warmer. But today was colder, so we walked quickly down it's paths.
The pond that's pictured here is full of gulls, ducks, and pigeons. We befriended a few while sitting in the green chairs.
Even after the holidays, the Christmas Markets in Paris are bustling with locals and tourists. The one at the end of Jardin de Tuileries was no different, and was impressive in size and quality of food.
Street vendor selling pasta melting into a wheel of cheese
The scent of wood fire lingered in the air of the Christmas Market
The most interesting food that we saw at the market were raclette sandwiches. What you see here is a wheel of raclette cheese that is heated with the instrument beside it. Once melted, the raclette melts onto your sandwich of choice. We ordered the sandwich au jambon avec raclette, and it was fantastique! Warm melty cheese on a freshly made sandwich, we said oui s'il vous plaît!
Next, we explored Place Vendrome and the many shops nearby. Again, everything was closed, but it was still incredible to see the decor that dressed the streets and doorways.
The Ritz Paris
Looking back, I'm realizing we fit a lot into our days. We walked quite a bit, which helped in the consuming pastries department. The last stop of the day, was in fact that. If you ever go to Paris, you'll hear everyone say "hot chocolate at Angelina". It's a right of passage kinda thing. Angelina is a tea salon in the 1st arrondissement that makes you feel like the Queen could walk in at a moments notice. It's that fancy. Yet no one goes in dressed up. You wait for close to an hour to get in, and you'll be in there even longer. As Americans, it took us a long time (I still don't even think were used to it) to adapt to the slower style of dining. I found myself getting anxious sitting so long. Anyway, Angelina's hot chocolate is the elixir of life; rich decadent, and royal.
And the best accompaniment to that elixir is a Mont Blanc, or the little brain guy you see here. It's their best seller, and we didn't come up with many ways to describe it besides hazelnutty, creamy, and meringue-y. I've never tasted anything quite like it.
After grabbing some souvenirs for the fam (esp. my loving parents who cared for Anouk) we walked off the Angelina.
01/02/2019
Today we traveled to the 4th arrondissement by Metro. The most well-known landmark of the 4th is definitely Cathédrale Notre-Dame de Paris. Besides the Eiffel Tower, this was the place that took my breath away most. Whenever I think of monuments, they're so much smaller in my mind. There is nothing small about Notre Dame.
Cathédrale Notre-Dame de Paris by day
Cathédrale Notre-Dame de Paris by night
On New Years Eve, we heard the bells of Notre Dame ringing at midnight. They're such a familiar sound, and once you hear them, you'll never forget their bellowing rings. And time seems to stop as well. You could find everyone in the square still in the square with their eyes pointed towards the sky. Perhaps Quasimodo was with us that night.
A few streets over from the cathedral is a literary hot spot in Paris: Shakespeare and Company. The lower level of the shop is filled with books for sale, including a special Hemingway collection. The upper level is entirely a library, and home to a cat named Aggie. We respected the stores wishes to not take photographs inside the store, but just know it's a pretty terrific place for bibliophiles.
For lunch, we had a craving for authentic french cuisine, and found Bistro Marguerite. Before coming to Paris, we kept a mental list of dishes we wanted to try, and boeuf bourguignon was very high on the list. Julie and Julia is definitely on my top 5 favorite movies of all time. Last summer my Memere and I made Julia's recipe, and it was killer. So, Levi and I decided to try Marguerite's version of the classic dish.
The boeuf bourguignon was very similar to the pot roast that were used to, and it was delicious. There was a subtle wine flavor, and the beef was extremely tender. It tasted a lot like home. If you've ever had Julia's recipe, the dish is very wine heavy (almost an entire bottle, save a glass), and the beef has been browned, browned, browned to create this scrumptious sear. It takes a lot of time and effort, and the most perfect little pearl onions.
To me, it will be hard to beat Julia Child's boeuf bourguignon.
After lunch we went on a search to find Hemingway's apartment. This was his first flat in Paris during the years of 1922-1923. And almost a hundred years later, we got to see his window from the street.
Now, I'm going to keep my promise about staying honest in my writing, especially after visiting 74 rue du Cardinal Lemoine. Hemingway said "write hard and clear about what hurts", and I intend on seeing that through.
I was going to wait until the end to express this, but I feel as though I'm not being totally honest if I don't write it now. So here it goes. Paris was not what we expected it to be. It was always this place in our minds that we went and imagined all of the wonder of the 1920s being. It was our "if you could visit anywhere in the world, where would it be" place.
And now, sadly, it's not.
Believe me, I would have loved to have written a blog post all about happy baguettes and the sparkling Seine. I would have loved to have said it was a romantic place. But that would have been a fabricated piece of writing that wasn't right. Oddly enough, I haven't read anything online like I'm about to write to you, and I'm not sure why.
There wasn't a single place we went that didn't scream of cigarette smoke. It has become a constant fog in the city that the locals don't even seem to notice anymore. The streets are littered with their addiction, mixed with dog feces and yesterday's burned riot vehicle.
Men are constantly "catcalling" women on the streets, in the Metro, and in very populated areas.
Paris' historic buildings and landmarks are being surrounded by a modernized-city that is running faster than it can walk. The streets are grasping at American culture so hard that it is suffocating the local charm right out.
We spend a week in Paris, France and unfortunately, it was enough. It was discouraging to think that the bad began outweighing the good. We held tight to every "gem" that we could find, like the terrific jazz of Caveau de la Huchette, seeing the Eiffel Tower illuminating the night sky, and hearing the bells of Notre Dame. It was painful to see that the Paris we thought we knew existed only in rare moments. And maybe that's our fault. Perhaps we had expectations that were unrealistic, or the media romanticized the idea right into our heads and we believed it. But I can tell you that Levi and I have both been to new places that we were sad to leave, and Paris was not one of them.
I think we finally understand what it means to "always have Paris".
I said in my opening, Paris is just a place after all, and this is what I mean. Levi and I don't regret taking our honeymoon here, in fact we're glad that we did. We're glad that we got to experience the gems that I described. We were always going to wonder what Paris was like until our dying day. But I, like Hemingway don't want to keep some romanticized version of a place in my head if it doesn't exist. To "always have Paris" means to have unforgettable moments with someone you love, no matter where you are in the world. Our friend Humphrey Bogart could have been talking about London, or Shanghai, or Albuquerque when he said that. But he and Ingrid Bergman had a love affair in Paris, and no matter what, they'll always have those memories forever.
I warned you that this wasn't going to be rainbows and butterflies, but reader, I truly believe that you're not into the sugarcoating thing either. So if I may, I would like to continue our account of Paris, and describe the gems that we found in the remainder of our trip.
Please stay tuned for the III and final installment of this series.
-Lady Frye