The secret of Paris ...

We’re on a blog-roll here. For those of you who foolishly only check in here twice a week, there was Anne’s post on our canoe adventures, as well as some of my notes on visitors and Narbonne in the fall.

Speaking of which, it’s early afternoon here on a Sunday and this is what it’s doing outside:

We’ve had a drizzle or two since our arrival in August, but this is the first day it’s truly poured. It’s perfect for a Sunday afternoon, especially the Sunday afternoon following our first adventure en famille in Paris.

***

I can’t speak for Anne, but my relationship with Paris is checkered. I’ve been three times (this being the fourth). The first time, in 1989, I went with my college roommate after doing the obligatory Europe blowout (twenty cities in three weeks). We saved Paris to the end, which was a mistake, since we both arrived with something just slightly less serious than cholera, and all I remember of Paris from those three days is standing in the Musée D’Orsay trying not to blow chunks all over Le Déjeuner sur l’herbe.

The next time was 1994, the fall before I met Anne, and I was in Paris after visiting London, Dublin, and Galway, researching Martin Sloane. Paris was my four-day treat after my hard “work” in the UK and Ireland. It was November, and it poured a cold, slushy rain for all four days. I recall torrents of dogshit-filled rainwater sluicing down Rue Rivoli in the Marais, where I was staying. The ice-needle-filled rain came down so violently that if you looked up any higher than 30º, you risked having your eyes put out.

Twelve years passed until my next visit: summer 2006. Anne and I were in Paris to research where we wanted to live the following year (as in: now). It was in the middle of one of the worst canicules ever in France, almost as bad as the one that killed as many as 10,000 people in the summer of 2003 here. The temperature reached 40º most days. But the canicule was not the most trying thing about my third visit to Paris: it was my back, which was beginning to crumble (I would be in intractable pain for most of September and October) and on many of our days in Paris I was hobbled. I recall collapsing in pain in front of the Hôtel de Ville, and many, many nights spent with an icepack.

Now, I know this sounds intemperate: poor you, you had three imperfect visits to Paris, you twerp. To this, let me add that despite the less-than-optimal circumstances, Paris is still one of my favourite cities in the world. I think I could see Paris in the middle of a bout of dysentery (be careful what you wish for) and still get something out of it.

***

So now, here we are, planning our first trip to Paris with the kids. On September 3, I spent most of the morning and afternoon finding the right hotel for us, not too much $$, and close to where we’d want to be. On Sept 27, the night before we left, I realized I’d lost the piece of paper with the hotel name and address on it and had no other record of it. They would not charge our card until after 6pm on the first night of our stay and I couldn’t even recall how I’d found the hotel. So the night before we were to leave for Paris, we spent two hours finding a hotel for our first night, hoping the original hotel would charge our card and we’d find out where we were supposed to spend our second night.

Off to Paris. Our emergency hotel, the Novotel in the Marais, was actually a great hotel. But Ben was getting sick, and it was raining pretty steadily. That night, Ben lay awake most of the night sounding like the intake pipe that sucks up Augustus Gloop in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. So Saturday morning, we decided we’d pack it in a day early and come home that night, rather than Sunday night. Plus, the original hotel was still shrouded in mystery: it hadn’t charged our card. So off we headed Saturday morning to make what we could of the rest of our time.

And this is when I discovered the secret of Paris. You have to play hard to get. The second we’d decided we weren’t going to stay, Ben’s cold cleared up and the sun came out. We went into a toy store to let the guys buy some Pokémon cards and the shopowner did a whole magic act for them. The guy in the winestore spent a half-hour with me talking me through Bordeaux and when I said I’d come back in the afternoon and buy two of the bottles I liked, not only did he believe me, but he put them aside, where they were waiting for me at 5pm. We visited the Village Voice, one of the city’s English-language bookstores, where the owner, Odile, had heard of me via Michael O and treated the four of us with surpassing kindness. And then, the biggest magic of all, Anne agreed to go up the Eiffel Tower. That’s right: Anne Simard, for whom a second-floor balcony is a little scary, decided she would go up the Eiffel Tower! To the second level.

Here is proof:

"Hi. My name is Anne. I could crush filberts beween

my buttocks right now."

Doesn’t she look happy?

And here are a couple of tourist moments for you:



And another, from Friday afternoon in the rain: a non-French food moment!! Yes, folks, it’s pastrami on a bagel.

Also, on Friday, we took the kids to the Musée D’Orsay. And I stood in front of Le Déjeuner sur l’herbe for the second time in twenty years. Later that night, I told the kids of the first time I’d seen that painting, and told them that I wished I could go back and stand beside that 23-yr-old version of myself and say to him: You moron. What were you thinking, bicycling 22 kilometres in the dark of night before coming to see Paris for the first time? Serves you right. Hey: in eighteen years, you’re going to be standing right here, on this very spot, with your partner and your two sons. Honest.

We had an hour for the gallery, which is actually perfect for your first visit if you're six or nine. We told the boys the story of Vincent van Gogh, which was sufficiently disturbing to spark their interest, and they spent about twenty minutes looking at the swooning, beautiful works. They saw Gauguin, Monet, and Degas as well before the museum started to close, and not a second too soon for the guys, who we think did brilliantly for their first art gallery.





(I’m sorry, I forgot to take down the name of this painting, but I thought you’d be amused:)









And here are a few more pictures from our 48 hours in Paris. It was another imperfect visit, but I still love it …



Max in line for the Eiffel Tower, with a typical post-treat look
on his face.

The three boys on the tower ...

We walked the boys with their eyes closed to the front of Notre Dame and then
told them to open their eyes (Click on this picture for the full effect)

You can get any kind of food in Paris ...

A VISIT TO MAS BLANC

Long before we came to France, there were the original expats: Bob and Isabel Huggan. They’ve lived near Nîmes (which Bob assures me is in Languedoc, not Provence, as I previously, erroneously, stated) for nine years now, in a way remote commune called Tornac, northeast of Sommieres.

("Commune" here may suggest that Bob and Isabel run about naked and chop wood with their hairy co-religionists, but that is an incorrect suggestion. They do not chop wood.)

(Okay, what I mean is that a “commune” is more a civic/municipal designation for a general area which may include many small collections of houses spread over a largish area. That is Tornac, and in fact, where Bob and Isabel live is a house called Mas Blanc in Tornac.)

Anyway, we’re here in France partly by the good graces of Bob and Isabel, who not only advised us on how to make the move here, but acted as our fairy godmother and -father and signed various letters stating we could live with them, that they would pay all our debts should we misbehave, and so on. But, as hinted at in an earlier email, this is not the rotten part about them. The rotten part is that they live in the most beautiful farmhouse in France, and we wanted to have the most beautiful farmhouse in France (one day) and now, obviously, we won’t be able to. Because they have it.

Their house is so beautiful that I neglected to photograph it. But suffice it to say that it is as old as 500 years in some places (the basement and some parts of Isabel) and is gorgeous, standing right beside a river. I did manage to take a picture of us out on the patio having lunch, though.

From left to right: Anne's friend Brenda, Anne, Isabel, and Bob



An ancient church sitting among the vines in Tornac



One of the Huggan olive trees



One of the Huggans (Isabel)

After our lunch, we took a walk and the boys dove into what I called “The Gourde,” but which is actually called “le gour de l'oule” – this is to ensure that when you go to Mas Blanc, you don’t ask for the wrong swimmin’ hole. But I'm calling it "The Gourde."

Max and Ben ready to jump in "The Gourde"

One of the wonderful things about the Tornac area is the sense of its ancientness, sitting as it does right below the Cévennes where you know the Romans spent a lot of their time mushrooming, building bridges, and putting down the Gauls. Isabel told a story of coming across a guy between the vines with a metal detector: he was hunting for Roman coins. What we found on our walk, though, were little pieces of pottery from various periods, some painted in lovely colours, just hidden in the earth. Anne collected a few pieces, but they were nothing compared to the big pile of shards Isabel had in a bowl on her front porch.

***

Now it’s almost 8pm, and we’ve spend the day with the lowering clouds outside the window doing absolutely nothing and loving it. France is also sitting on your ass for ten hours watching television. Although the cheese is much better while you're doing it …