Bastille and Place des Vosges

Saturday, September 8: Bright blue sky, not a cloud anywhere, high of 73 and sunny all day. Set out for a walk in the neighborhood with goal of returning to Fragonard shop on rue des Franc Bourgeois. It's always good to have a goal ! :)

Manicure, anyone? On the way, I pass an Institut de Beaute de B_____. It looks like a very nice place, and here are a few of the prices posted outside:
Manucure classique 25 euros
Beaute des pieds 40 euros (I assume this means pedicure)
Maquillage jour 35 euros (makeup day)
Maquillage soir 45 euros (makeup evening)
Epilations 1/2 jambes 14 euros (leg waxing)
Can't wait to see what they charge at the Georges V! Clearly, I need to find a little manicure shop run by some nice Vietnamese ladies like we have at home as these prices are out of reach. Since the French used to occupy what is now Vietnam, one would think this would be possible. There certainly are many Vietnamese restaurants in Paris.

The Vietnamese nail salons have flourished in CT since the state no longer requires a license. I've heard that some of the other nail establishments would like to go back to licensing since the Vietnamese have substantially undercut their business with lower prices and walk-in business. But, hey, that's capitalism and free enterprise.

Fragonard shop. Fragonard is a famous French parfumeur but the shop also has a selection of very unusual cotton tops/jackets; colorful hand-embroidered bags for just about every purpose: jewelry, shoes, lingerie, la linge salle (quand on est en voyage); and other assorted knick-knacks, both useful and useless but all lovely to look at. Lots of gift possibilities were it not for the danged exchange rate.

Aussies. In the process of trying to work out the French/English zodiac equivalents (embroidered on another set of cotton bags), I meet an interesting Australian couple, Lutz Presser and Christine Harris. Christine has seen another shop that she wants to return to so we go along together to what turns out to be Pylones, an amusing shop that I have seen before elsewhere in Paris. Pylones produces hundreds of ordinary household items but in a very whimsical fashion, such as a funnel that looks like an elephant's head with the trunk of the elephant as the functional part of the funnel (Eleanor, remember?) Today I saw a salad bowl and colander combination, decorated to look like what Pylones calls "Uncle Ho," your friendly Chinese smiling relative wearing a hat. Very cute.

Lutz and Christine are in Paris for two weeks, he is an Art Historian, she is an illustrator, and they have lived all over the world. More on them later. They invite me to their little studio apartment for dinner at 7:00 p.m. , to which I readily agree, but later realize this means I have to keep looking at my watch to make sure I get back to my apartment on time to clean up, walk to their place and find some pate to bring as an hors-d'oeuvre. So now I'm stressed (well, only a little!) but it's different from the last two days when I haven't had to think about the time at all. I realize that I embrace this freedom from time constraints. Well, I guess I can cope with this one little "constraint;" after all, I will be going to classes at AF next week!

Place de la Bastille. Walked down to rue de Rivoli which becomes the rue Saint Antoine, all the way to Place de la Bastille. Sunlight glinting off the gold sprite (actually the figure of Liberty) on top of the Colonne de Juillet. The "new" Opera Bastille is on the square.
Noted on walk:
-Street musician, Olivier Francs, playing soprano sax with an accompanist on a tiny upright piano with the front off so you could see the hammers. Throw in all of the ,02 and ,01 coins I have accumulated!
-St Louis St Paul, Classical 18th c. church, which replaced a Gothic building dating from 1627-1641 (demolished around the time of the Revolution). It is now a parish church.
-P. Trotte Fromager, a wonderful, tho' tiny, cheese shop. Will come back to this.
-a shop that sells only honey
-a shop that sells nothing but leather belts (how do these people make a living? do they really sell that many belts to tourists?)

Along the way, I pass another branch of Paul, the wonderful bakery. (There's also one a block from my apt as well as one in the 6th that Lyn and I have frequented many times.) This one seems to be purely take-away, without a little sit-down restaurant. Succumb to une tarte aux trois fromages, un macaron vanille et un Orangina. My first taste of the nearly-irresistable French goodies that are available everywhere. For some reason, I have passed them up before today but suddenly I am ravenous (perhaps the smells wafting from all of the traitteurs I have passed!) Oddly, I really haven't felt real hunger before now - perhaps Paris itself fills me up!

Place des Vosges. From Place de la Bastille to the Place des Vosges, the beautiful 17th century square (the oldest in the city), one of the loveliest sights in all of Paris. I find a bench in the park to have my lunch during which a group of what appeared to be student-musicians (practically an an entire string orchestra!) sets up under the arches across the way and begins to play Pachelbel's Canon. Ok, I know it's overused but it's perfect in that moment. As I finish up and begin to walk around the square, they launched into something else familiar, Katchaturian perhaps? I dropped a Euro in the cello case; I'm such a sucker for street musicians.

The square is filled with high-end shops and art galleries. An exquisite display of scarves (each one a mere 250 Euros) in alternating bands of bold oranges, reds and blacks. There are also a number of artists displaying their wares under the arches. I stop to admire some drawings and the artist, who had apparently just arrived and was setting up, began asking me (in French) about how best to arrange her display (she had two tripods holding the drawings as well as a small table and chair): "C'est la grande decision du moment!") So we try out a couple of possibilities and decide one was best for capturing the foot traffic going in both directions. These are the times when it's fun to be able to converse (however poorly) in French! Unfortunately, the hand-colored drawings were tres cher; the one I admired most was 200 Euros. Quelle dommage.

Hotel de Sully. Left the square by the Hotel de Sully, a fabulous hotel particuliar with a fantastic librarie (this is what is called un faux-ami in French: librarie is bookstore, and biblioteque is library). All of the publications sur la patrimoine: l'histoire de patrimoine, les itenaires de patrimoine. Amazing, amazing. The French love their country. Books about artists and writers and painters and cities and . . . I'll be back. Almost all in French, so I'll need a lot of time!

Place du Marche Ste Catherine. Around a couple of corners to find the Place du Marche Ste Catherine, a cobblestoned "dream" square with several little restaurants, all with outdoor seating. Dappled light streaming through the trees.

Hotel de Carnavalet. Back to rue de Francs-Bourgeouis and the Hotel de Carnavalet, which houses the Museum of the History of Paris. I haven't been here since 1967 or 1968 but I remember the maquette of the Ile de la Cite which is still here, if a little shabby (it was probably shabby in 1967 too!). It shows the Ile during the 16th c. when Notre Dame dwarfed the rest of the island. And Ste Chapelle is completely unobstructed from view, standing alone. There are houses on the bridges connecting the island to the Left and Right Banks. Interesting factoid: Pont Neuf, which is the oldest (16th c.) of the current Paris bridges, was the first bridge designed to be built without houses on it (this is the kind of really useful information one learns by reading the captions on paintings!). I stay for only 30 minutes because I'm watching the time for dinner! On the way back to apt, I see a small blond boy walking with his mother and carrying a bouquet of yellow flowers almost as tall as he is. The bottom of the bouquet is virtually dragging the ground.

Vite, Vite. Up the 63 stairs, wash up, grab a sweater, change shoes, down the 63 stairs, and head out for dinner with Christine and Lutz. Walk all the way up rue du Temple to # 170.

Dinner with Christine & Lutz. A maze to reach their apartment on the 6th floor (the elevator goes only to the 4th floor, then it seems you cross (through a glass door) into another building entirely, adjacent to the one you entered, then up two more flights of stairs and around several corners). Tiny studio with a tiny balcony but kitchen and bath are very nicely renovated, much nicer than mine. You could actually cook in their kitchen which has a combination micro/convection oven built into the wall along and enough counter space to work on. Fabulous shower in the bath. We have pate with bread, pasta with meat sauce, a salad, and a bottle of red wine.

Back home at 11 p.m. Pedometer reading for the entire day: 15,900 (of course, it's impossible to tell distance from this because, even if I measured my stride, not all strides are equal. In a city, one has to adjust length of stride all the time due to other people on the sidewalks (reminds me of one of James Herriot's clients complaining about going to the city and having to take "big steps and then little ones, could never get going"), and then there are the teeny-weeny steps one takes when browsing in shops! I'm sure I have walked a few miles however.