Denny is an 84 year-old woman who has been a friend to my mother, and by association, our family, since before I was born. Denny, known to me as Vi, but to most everyone else as Denny, has been my personal friend ever since I went to Barnard, and especially after I lived for a year on West 106th Street, just down the street from her apartment on West End Avenue. Vi worked in Admissions at Teacher’s College for many years, and had a lovely side-line as a tutor to child actors, including Christian Slater, for a period of time as well. She never married, and has no living relatives, but has a wonderfully large circle of friends, a circle which has widened over time as she became close to her friends’ children as well (I fall into that category). During my consulting career and my many trips to NYC, I made it a point to take Vi out for dinner on a regular basis; we always had plenty to talk about and her advice always seemed right on the mark. I gave Vi an 80th birthday party in 2004 on the Barnard College campus; there were 66 people in attendance, from all over the country, and included her childhood friends, college friends, neighbors, church friends, and at least one entire family who had all made it to the event. It was a wonderful testament to the enduring legacy of her friendship.
Vi has five goddaughters, at least two of who are named Christina (including my sister), and one of whom is Cynthia Nixon. I have known Cynthia as long as I can remember, and I dutifully saw her in movies and plays throughout the years (starting with “The Philadelphia Story” in 1979 and most recently, her Tony Award-winning performance in “Rabbit Hole” in 2006), often joining Vi for a performance in the City, and frequently Cynthia would join us afterward for a post-performance dinner. To Vi’s delight, Cynthia attended Barnard College (she entered as I graduated); she could claim that two of her favorite people attended Barnard. During my term as President of the Alumnae Association of Barnard College (AABC), Cynthia was given a Young Alumnae Award at her 15th Reunion Dinner in 2003, and it was my pleasure to invite Vi to be a special guest at the event and sit at one of the head tables with Cynthia and me. That night Vi was in seventh heaven.
To fast forward and condense a bit, it was three years ago that we all noticed that Vi was losing her short term memory, and began to be concerned that she could no longer live alone in her apartment on West End Avenue. And almost two years ago now, after a fall getting on a NYC bus, Cynthia was able to find an affordable place for Vi to live out the rest of her days, in a quasi-hospital on the Upper West Side, in which she has 24 hour supervision and whatever medical care she needs. I have continued to visit Vi in her new home, and on this trip, I had arranged to bring my niece Chelsea with me, as I hoped to pass along our family’s tradition of friendship with Vi to Chelsea.
So it was that Chelsea, Vi and I were sitting at a four-top at Café du Monde on Broadway at 112th Street (right across from Tom’s Diner, for those in the know) enjoying a bright sunny day in October. We had just ordered our lunch when we were interrupted by Cynthia, who came over and embraced Denny, exclaiming, “I’ve been looking all over for you!” Apparently Cynthia had decided this was a good day for a visit too, and with that, she joined our table for lunch.
I have known Cynthia for a long time, so I didn’t really think about it, but when I introduced Chelsea to Cynthia, I thought, OMG, Chelsea is meeting a movie star for the first time! I knew that Cynthia is an oft-spoken of alumnae of Barnard on campus, and would be known to most females of Chelsea’s age as Miranda in HBO’s Sex in the City, and most recently of the SITC movie, which I had gone to with Chelsea, my sister and mother on the opening night of the flick. She could have sat slack-jawed throughout the lunch, but no, Chelsea kept her cool, identified herself as a Barnard freshman, and then proceeded to go through the meal without once asking a question that would have identified her as some star-struck fan. I was very proud of her! Indeed, I asked most of the questions that might be considered in that latter category, but got some interesting answers (the next SITC movie will be released in 2010; her next play “Distracted” begins on Broadway in January).
It was a classic moment in NYC for me – running into people serendipitously, having experiences that are familiar, yet new, and enjoying friendships that are long-standing.
Monday, October 13, 2008
NYC and Me II: Central Park Runs
I started my competitive running career in Central Park in 1983, and after running 10s of races in the park, including two NYC Marathons, it holds a special place in my heart. Running in the Park is always my way of “touching” the City when I am visiting; and I am always astounded (but perhaps shouldn’t be) when I run by someone I recognize.
I had three runs in the Park this visit. The first 5 miler on Thursday morning was capped off by a stretching warm down with my host Clara and friend Jay with their personal trainer in the Park. (I was sore the next day!) The second was on Saturday morning – the NY Road Runners Club was sponsoring the Norwegian Distance Races that morning, and I ran past runners as they took off on a 1.87 mile race around the south end of the park. As I ran past Tavern on the Green, I heard the finish line announcer give the crowd the news that five-time NYC Marathon winner Grete Waitz was standing at the finish line – which gave me a little thrill, as Grete was a significant icon in my early racing career (although Joan Benoit Samuelson has always been my hero). On that Saturday run I also noticed runners training for the NYC Marathon, which occurs on November 2nd. My friend Jean Yves will be running the race this year. Run #3 was on the morning I left the States; it was a crisp sunny morning and I was feeling fast, and had the lovely ego boost of passing most of the runners on the road during my 7:30 a.m. run. On this run, I ran around the north end of the Reservoir, which provides one of the most spectacular views of the City, especially as the sun is rising.
A fitting way to say good bye to the City.
I had three runs in the Park this visit. The first 5 miler on Thursday morning was capped off by a stretching warm down with my host Clara and friend Jay with their personal trainer in the Park. (I was sore the next day!) The second was on Saturday morning – the NY Road Runners Club was sponsoring the Norwegian Distance Races that morning, and I ran past runners as they took off on a 1.87 mile race around the south end of the park. As I ran past Tavern on the Green, I heard the finish line announcer give the crowd the news that five-time NYC Marathon winner Grete Waitz was standing at the finish line – which gave me a little thrill, as Grete was a significant icon in my early racing career (although Joan Benoit Samuelson has always been my hero). On that Saturday run I also noticed runners training for the NYC Marathon, which occurs on November 2nd. My friend Jean Yves will be running the race this year. Run #3 was on the morning I left the States; it was a crisp sunny morning and I was feeling fast, and had the lovely ego boost of passing most of the runners on the road during my 7:30 a.m. run. On this run, I ran around the north end of the Reservoir, which provides one of the most spectacular views of the City, especially as the sun is rising.
A fitting way to say good bye to the City.
NYC and Me
Last week I was in New York City and Massachusetts, visiting friends and family, and attending events at Columbia University. I had planned this particular trip home around the October 2nd Columbia Athletics Hall of Fame Dinner; I had been on the selection committee for the awards, and I thought it would be appropriate to be in attendance at the event (besides, I love black tie dinners – why else does one have a short black dress and three-inch-heeled pumps?). And it would be the first time I would see my niece, Chelsea, as a freshman at Barnard, and frankly, I needed to manage a visit out of the country during the Fall to make sure I was not in violation of the three-month stay rule in France. (I can’t be in France longer than three months at a time without a visa. I don’t have a visa.)
But as I stood in the Nice Cote d’Azur airport on October 1st, getting ready to board my Delta flight to JFK, along with a bunch of other chatty Americans (looking like the AARP crowd), I realized that I was not really ready to leave France quite yet. It felt like I had just arrived; and indeed, it had only been five weeks since I had left Dulles Airport for Nice. But I was scheduled to go, and had a long list of visits planned, things to buy, and correspondence to catch up with (where I wouldn’t have to pay overseas rates for calls or postage). JFK beckoned.
Before I left, Priscilla had commented that she wondered what culture shock I would experience when I arrived in the States. Given my short time in France, I have to admit, not much. In fact, arriving in NYC felt like coming home. Not only was I going there to see people I wanted to see, but the City itself has felt like home to me for a very long time.
My family has a long history in Manhattan: at the turn of the century (1900, that is) my Dad’s family first settled in the north of Manhattan (the part that is currently Central Park), before moving to New Haven and Westchester County; my Mom’s father attended Union Theological Seminary on the Upper West Side; my Dad’s father and uncle worked at Schumacher Fabrics on Lexington Avenue most of their business careers; my mother was living on Claremont Avenue behind Barnard College when she met my Dad (who was an East Sider); and then I went on to attend Barnard, and lived in the City for two years after college. And as a management consultant, I spent nearly half of my ten years in consulting working for NYC clients – and commuting from Washington to work in the City five days a week for them. My ex-husband’s first question, after we decided to separate, was, “Are you going to move to New York?”
Memories of my brief stay in the City became separate postings here. They are numbered, but in no particular order, above.
But as I stood in the Nice Cote d’Azur airport on October 1st, getting ready to board my Delta flight to JFK, along with a bunch of other chatty Americans (looking like the AARP crowd), I realized that I was not really ready to leave France quite yet. It felt like I had just arrived; and indeed, it had only been five weeks since I had left Dulles Airport for Nice. But I was scheduled to go, and had a long list of visits planned, things to buy, and correspondence to catch up with (where I wouldn’t have to pay overseas rates for calls or postage). JFK beckoned.
Before I left, Priscilla had commented that she wondered what culture shock I would experience when I arrived in the States. Given my short time in France, I have to admit, not much. In fact, arriving in NYC felt like coming home. Not only was I going there to see people I wanted to see, but the City itself has felt like home to me for a very long time.
My family has a long history in Manhattan: at the turn of the century (1900, that is) my Dad’s family first settled in the north of Manhattan (the part that is currently Central Park), before moving to New Haven and Westchester County; my Mom’s father attended Union Theological Seminary on the Upper West Side; my Dad’s father and uncle worked at Schumacher Fabrics on Lexington Avenue most of their business careers; my mother was living on Claremont Avenue behind Barnard College when she met my Dad (who was an East Sider); and then I went on to attend Barnard, and lived in the City for two years after college. And as a management consultant, I spent nearly half of my ten years in consulting working for NYC clients – and commuting from Washington to work in the City five days a week for them. My ex-husband’s first question, after we decided to separate, was, “Are you going to move to New York?”
Memories of my brief stay in the City became separate postings here. They are numbered, but in no particular order, above.
Sunday, October 12, 2008
La Vie en Rose
Even before I had the idea to move to France, I had the idea to improve my French, in a nod to my then French boyfriend. I looked for a French tutor on Craig’s List, but didn’t get any responses to my emails (why, then, were they advertising on the List?), so my friend Erick suggested I check out the Alliance Française. He didn’t know it in Washington, but he said that the Alliance was a French-sponsored organization in most foreign cities; when I looked for it online, I found it with no problem.
Ensconced on Wyoming Avenue in a lovely townhouse just north of Dupont Circle, the Alliance Francaise of Washington (http://www.francedc.org/) offers French classes, tutoring, an active library of books, CDs and DVDs, and lots of programming for its members. I joined it in January 2007, and immediately signed up for a mid-level French class. (The class, held on Saturday mornings, was an interesting mix of Washingtonians, mostly foreign-born, in which I was by far the best speaker – most of them were learning it for the first time. I gathered that many of them were being sponsored by their workplaces as well; although the class began at 10 and ended at 1, my classmates took a liberal view of when they actually needed to be in the classroom – some actually showed up at noon at times. Fascinating!)
Among the programming offered by the Alliance Française is a variety of French film viewing opportunities. It was through the Alliance that I was introduced to the E Street Cinema, in downtown Washington. For some reason, after years of watching foreign flicks at the Shirlington movie theater, I was unaware of the E Street offerings – and frankly, E Street was far more convenient by Metro (Metro Center)! The movie that I signed up to attend at the cinema was “La Vie en Rose,” telling the compelling story of the French chanteuse, Edith Piaf, her music and her early death. I think I was motivated to sign up for the ticket after seeing the listing in the weekly Alliance-emailed newsletter; this was June 2007, and I was in my mode of wanting to submerse myself in all things French, and here was a free opportunity to do so. Also, when I went to the Alliance to pick up my ticket for the movie, I got a free CD of the songtrack, which was pretty cool.
I enjoyed the movie, with Marion Cotillard in the lead role (she received the Oscar for Best Actress for the movie in 2008), which was shown in French, with English subtitles. I sat next to some other Francophiles in the movie theater, who were equally entranced by the movie. It was dark and disturbing, but it was the music that was captivating and Marion’s performance was compelling.
In January 2008, the Alliance again offered a viewing of “La Vie en Rose” at one of its Monday evening Ciné evenings at the Wyoming Avenue location. Interestingly, I almost didn’t remember having seen the film nine months earlier; and later, once I had, wondered why I had signed up to see it again. But I was happy I had; this time, I watched the movie in French, with French subtitles. At this point too, I had decided to move to France, and had signed up for private French tutoring lessons (my first session would be that same week). Knowing the story already, I didn’t need the English to follow the story line, and given the slangy French spoken by the lead character, it was immensely helpful to read what was being said on the screen. I’ve often thought during my first weeks here in France, I wish I had French subtitles!, as I’m trying to understand conversation around me. Being a visual person, this would help. But I’m getting along…
So, given my introduction to and immersion in Edith Piaf, when I was walking along a street in Nice a few weeks ago, a flyer stuck on the parked cars in the street caught my attention. It advertised a Mass in celebration of the 45th anniversary of Edith Piaf’s death, at a nearby Catholic Church, scheduled for early October. The flyer also indicated that there would be music before and after the church service. I knew from the movie that Edith Piaf had spent her final days in Grasse, the city where Priscilla lives, northwest of Nice. So the affection for her in this region made some sense. But another part of me thought that such an event would be a little over the top. But I took a flyer with me, anyway. I’m looking for ways to get to know my new city, and this would be one way to do it.
So, yesterday at 5 p.m., I put on a respectable outfit, and headed over to the Église Saint Pierre d’Arène on rue de France, about 10 blocks from me. I found the church, and as advertised, a woman was performing songs made famous by Edith Piaf on the church steps, accompanied by an instrument called a limonaire (not found in my French dictionary). The limonaire is essentially what many Americans would recognize as a player piano, except that the player is a box, which the singer, Domino, wound with a crank as she sang, and the “recorded” music played as she cranked. I noticed people going in and out of the church as she was singing, so after a few moments, I too walked up the steps into the church. I found the church full of people sitting in the nave, awaiting the start of the 6 p.m. mass. In my concert-going with Priscilla in France, she has typically encouraged us to be at church concerts well ahead of their advertised start. And this has served us well in securing seats, as free concerts in France, as just in about any other place, are well-attended. So, seeing the crowd in St. Pierre, I quickly found myself a seat about mid-nave, and hunkered down for the 40 minute wait. I had brought a paperback book with me, in case of this very situation, and although the church was pretty dark, managed to get in about 20 minutes of reading. (am reading a first novel written by a Barnard alum and a former consultant who worked for me at PwC, Marisha Pessl, called "Special Topics in Calamity Physics").
The mass started at 6. This was my first French Catholic service, and I thought, fittingly focused on a singer. It was a standard mass, but with Edith Piaf’s music sung throughout, “Mea Culpa” and “Les mȏmes de la cloche” sung by Domino; “Les 3 cloches” by a young boy, and a recording of Edith singing “Jerusalem.” It was pretty moving. The service included a presentation of a plaque naming a street “L’Allée Edith Piaf” (not sure where in the city it will be) to the Conseil Générale of the region.
After the service, the crowd stayed in their seats for the recital to follow. The program listed eight selections that were to be sung by Domino and another singer, Gil Florini. The selections included the most famous songs of Piaf, including “La vie en rose,” “Padam,” and “Rien de rien” (at least those are the ones I know from the movie!). This was what many of those in the audience had come for, I think, as the applause following these performances was enthusiastic and sustained. The singer Gil Florini, a man past middle age, reminding me of someone like Neil Diamond, drew the most applause, for his belt-it-out style – which was pretty Edith Piaf-like. (I have since learned that M. Florini is a priest in the church; which explains the exhuberant applause.)
I left the church happy to have taken part in a Niçoise event; also to have participated in my first French mass, and having been inspired by an evening of uplifting music.
Ensconced on Wyoming Avenue in a lovely townhouse just north of Dupont Circle, the Alliance Francaise of Washington (http://www.francedc.org/) offers French classes, tutoring, an active library of books, CDs and DVDs, and lots of programming for its members. I joined it in January 2007, and immediately signed up for a mid-level French class. (The class, held on Saturday mornings, was an interesting mix of Washingtonians, mostly foreign-born, in which I was by far the best speaker – most of them were learning it for the first time. I gathered that many of them were being sponsored by their workplaces as well; although the class began at 10 and ended at 1, my classmates took a liberal view of when they actually needed to be in the classroom – some actually showed up at noon at times. Fascinating!)
Among the programming offered by the Alliance Française is a variety of French film viewing opportunities. It was through the Alliance that I was introduced to the E Street Cinema, in downtown Washington. For some reason, after years of watching foreign flicks at the Shirlington movie theater, I was unaware of the E Street offerings – and frankly, E Street was far more convenient by Metro (Metro Center)! The movie that I signed up to attend at the cinema was “La Vie en Rose,” telling the compelling story of the French chanteuse, Edith Piaf, her music and her early death. I think I was motivated to sign up for the ticket after seeing the listing in the weekly Alliance-emailed newsletter; this was June 2007, and I was in my mode of wanting to submerse myself in all things French, and here was a free opportunity to do so. Also, when I went to the Alliance to pick up my ticket for the movie, I got a free CD of the songtrack, which was pretty cool.
I enjoyed the movie, with Marion Cotillard in the lead role (she received the Oscar for Best Actress for the movie in 2008), which was shown in French, with English subtitles. I sat next to some other Francophiles in the movie theater, who were equally entranced by the movie. It was dark and disturbing, but it was the music that was captivating and Marion’s performance was compelling.
In January 2008, the Alliance again offered a viewing of “La Vie en Rose” at one of its Monday evening Ciné evenings at the Wyoming Avenue location. Interestingly, I almost didn’t remember having seen the film nine months earlier; and later, once I had, wondered why I had signed up to see it again. But I was happy I had; this time, I watched the movie in French, with French subtitles. At this point too, I had decided to move to France, and had signed up for private French tutoring lessons (my first session would be that same week). Knowing the story already, I didn’t need the English to follow the story line, and given the slangy French spoken by the lead character, it was immensely helpful to read what was being said on the screen. I’ve often thought during my first weeks here in France, I wish I had French subtitles!, as I’m trying to understand conversation around me. Being a visual person, this would help. But I’m getting along…
So, given my introduction to and immersion in Edith Piaf, when I was walking along a street in Nice a few weeks ago, a flyer stuck on the parked cars in the street caught my attention. It advertised a Mass in celebration of the 45th anniversary of Edith Piaf’s death, at a nearby Catholic Church, scheduled for early October. The flyer also indicated that there would be music before and after the church service. I knew from the movie that Edith Piaf had spent her final days in Grasse, the city where Priscilla lives, northwest of Nice. So the affection for her in this region made some sense. But another part of me thought that such an event would be a little over the top. But I took a flyer with me, anyway. I’m looking for ways to get to know my new city, and this would be one way to do it.
So, yesterday at 5 p.m., I put on a respectable outfit, and headed over to the Église Saint Pierre d’Arène on rue de France, about 10 blocks from me. I found the church, and as advertised, a woman was performing songs made famous by Edith Piaf on the church steps, accompanied by an instrument called a limonaire (not found in my French dictionary). The limonaire is essentially what many Americans would recognize as a player piano, except that the player is a box, which the singer, Domino, wound with a crank as she sang, and the “recorded” music played as she cranked. I noticed people going in and out of the church as she was singing, so after a few moments, I too walked up the steps into the church. I found the church full of people sitting in the nave, awaiting the start of the 6 p.m. mass. In my concert-going with Priscilla in France, she has typically encouraged us to be at church concerts well ahead of their advertised start. And this has served us well in securing seats, as free concerts in France, as just in about any other place, are well-attended. So, seeing the crowd in St. Pierre, I quickly found myself a seat about mid-nave, and hunkered down for the 40 minute wait. I had brought a paperback book with me, in case of this very situation, and although the church was pretty dark, managed to get in about 20 minutes of reading. (am reading a first novel written by a Barnard alum and a former consultant who worked for me at PwC, Marisha Pessl, called "Special Topics in Calamity Physics").
The mass started at 6. This was my first French Catholic service, and I thought, fittingly focused on a singer. It was a standard mass, but with Edith Piaf’s music sung throughout, “Mea Culpa” and “Les mȏmes de la cloche” sung by Domino; “Les 3 cloches” by a young boy, and a recording of Edith singing “Jerusalem.” It was pretty moving. The service included a presentation of a plaque naming a street “L’Allée Edith Piaf” (not sure where in the city it will be) to the Conseil Générale of the region.
After the service, the crowd stayed in their seats for the recital to follow. The program listed eight selections that were to be sung by Domino and another singer, Gil Florini. The selections included the most famous songs of Piaf, including “La vie en rose,” “Padam,” and “Rien de rien” (at least those are the ones I know from the movie!). This was what many of those in the audience had come for, I think, as the applause following these performances was enthusiastic and sustained. The singer Gil Florini, a man past middle age, reminding me of someone like Neil Diamond, drew the most applause, for his belt-it-out style – which was pretty Edith Piaf-like. (I have since learned that M. Florini is a priest in the church; which explains the exhuberant applause.)
I left the church happy to have taken part in a Niçoise event; also to have participated in my first French mass, and having been inspired by an evening of uplifting music.
Wednesday, October 8, 2008
Visit to the States
With apologies to my Washington friends, I was in the States this past week, visiting friends and family in New York and Massachusetts. It was a whirlwind visit, that included attendance at the Columbia Athletics Hall of Fame Awards Dinner (with my mom), the Columbia/Princeton Homecoming game, lunch with my friend Vi (with a surprise appearance by Cynthia Nixon, her goddaughter), time with my niece Chelsea, a Barnard freshman, and her dad, Kenny; golf with my Dad, an afternoon with my brother, Eric, and his wife Jan, and my nephew Ned. And catch up phone calls with several of you! Pictures are to the right. Other memorable moments: runs in Central Park, watching the VP and Presidential debates, mailing in my absentee ballot, and catching up with Ula, Carrie, Rachel, Philippa, Judy, Clara, Christine, Laura and her new son, David.
My next trip to the States will be in December when I fly into Dulles for visits with my Washington friends!
My next trip to the States will be in December when I fly into Dulles for visits with my Washington friends!
Monday, September 29, 2008
Brugges
When Joanne suggested a visit to Bruges (as I was thinking of it then), I said, Bruges? Although the name was familiar, and I knew that it was in Belgium, that was about all I could raise out of my memory bank. But I was game for an adventure, and Joanne is well travelled, so I figured that her suggestion was not completely out of left field, and probably worth following. And I was not disappointed.
Brugges, as it is know in Belgium, was the hub of European commerce starting in the 10th through the 14th centuries. It was never governed by a king or queen, but by a council of merchants, and kept its commercial qualities all the way into the 15th century, and, one could argue, today. In 1000, the city was actually a port on the ocean, and ships could sail right into the Markt in the middle of town to unload their wares. But over the next 200 years or so, silt built up in the water ways into the town, and eventually choked the water back about 10 kilometers back to the sea shoreline. (The ocean is visible from the Belfry in the center of town – see photo.) Today, the town is almost purely a tourist attraction; in the late 1900s, the English, many of whom had settled themselves in the town across the Channel, convinced the townspeople that its history was worth preserving, and the effort to renovate the medieval town was begun.
My historical perspective is based on readings from Joanne’s guide to Belgium and from the tour we received from Marie-Paul, a professional colleague of Joanne’s (had been at the conference in Wales with her the previous week), and a professional tour guide in Brugges, as well as a Brugges native. Marie-Paul picked us up at 5 p.m. the day we got into the town, and took us on a two-hour walk through the town, and then we persuaded her to sit down with a glass of wine, during which we got another hour of personal and historical conversation out of her (stories of her family, best place to buy chocolate, etc.). Apologies in advance for any gross misstatements of fact, but I am writing this in my breezy way of remembering things, perhaps not quite exactly…
Joanne and I took the train from Paris to Lille and then into Belgium on a Thursday morning. (See previous posting on Paris adventures, with description of train rides to and from Belgium.) It was a bright sunny day, and we arrived in the Brugges station by 10:30 a.m. I was struck immediately, as we left the train station, by the enormous number of bicycles parked outside the station (see photo). This was clearly a biking town! I learned later from Marie-Paul that bikes are king in Brugges (car use is discouraged), and a biker can go in any direction on any street in the town, and ALWAYS has the right of way over a vehicle. This appealed to the biker in me, of course. We took a taxi into town, however, to our hotel, Koffieboontje. (No idea what that name means or stands for – it’s Flemish for something!). (http://www.hotel-koffieboontje.be/) The hotel was exactly in the middle of town, right next to the Belfry, the highest structure visible for miles around.
We attempted to check in early to the hotel, but were told to come back at 1. Joanne was a little eager to check in, because on the train she’d discovered her clothes were all wet in her overnight bag as a result of a water bottle not being completed closed when it was shoved in the bag early that morning. So, forced to wait for our room, we left our bags at the hotel and wandered in to the main square, the Markt. This is where things happened in the early years of the town, where commerce began in the Medieval era. According to Marie-Paul, the bourse, or stock market, had its beginnings in this town, as the merchants engaged in business transactions amongst each other in the town. The Belfry, towering over the Markt, with its 366 stairs, beckoned to me. Now a working carillon clock in the town, it was depository for vital town documents in the Middle Ages, as well as the main trading location as ships unloaded their wares in the nearby dock. The dock is no longer there, but it was an innovative place for unloading, given its protective roof that allowed ships to unload even in bad weather (not uncommon in this northern clime).
Leaving Joanne in the square, I climbed up the 366 stone stairs, negotiating past other tourists making the climb. It didn’t take me very long, and frankly, I wasn’t even winded. Darn, I was looking for a little workout! But the view from the top was pretty interesting, and I took a bunch of photos of the town (without really knowing at what I was looking at that point). (Its climb reminded me of a similar tower in Bologna, Italy, I had climbed with my sister and niece, with a wonderful view of the town.)
We were in Brugges for a few reasons. Joanne had been reading the Dorothy Dunnett House of Niccolo series, in which Niccolo (a fictional character) has adventures with Anselm Adornes (an historical figure) in 15th c. Brugges. In that spirit, we made a pilgrimage to the Jersualem kerk (church) in Brugges built by the Adornes family and where Anselm and his wife Marguerite are buried. (see photos). The other draw for Joanne was the art of several Belgian artists in the several museums in town – those artworks known specifically as the Belgium Primitives (which all acknowledge is a strange decription, but it differentiates them from a later period, I gather). I have to acknowledge my own ignorance with respect to art, and in this instance was happy to explore the town without spending time in art museums.
Coming back down the 366 stairs (quite a bit faster, of course), I joined Joanne in the main square. It was chilly, but manageable in the sun, so we took advantage of one of the many open air cafes and enjoyed an al fresco early lunch, whiling away the time (and following the quarterly updates from the Belfry carillon) until we could check into the hotel.
Finally, we walked back across the square to the hotel and were given the key to our double room, just inside the hotel courtyard. It was a small room, but sufficient for our needs for one night, with a shower and water closet, a TV, and two beds pushed together. During lunch, we had decided to head toward the museums in town, but, given her need to minimize foot travel, Joanne decided to rent a bike from the hotel to bike to the museums, and I would walk. I left Joanne at the bike rental place, and headed off on foot to the designated museum, which took me about 5 minutes. I figured it would take Joanne a little longer to figure out the bike and such, so expected her in about 15 minutes. But then the 15 minutes stretched into 20, and then 30 minutes. At that point, I had walked into the museum, making sure she hadn’t slipped past me, and checked out the particulars, and, noting the 8 € entry fee, decided that I wasn’t really that interested in the art. Joanne finally showed up at the museum, admitting she had gotten hopelessly lost trying to the find the museum. I told her that I was going to let her do museums on her own, and that I would walk around, and then go for a run before our planned rendezvous with Marie-Paul at 5. My thinking was that I should go on my run while the sun was still out and bearable in shorts and a long sleeved t-shirt; I had not brought my running tights or hat, and I was pretty certain that early morning temperatures the next day would require some serious outerwear.
Brugges is really a small medieval town, that was surrounded by a canal in its early days, but it was never a town that was fought over, so the type of garrisons typical of medieval towns are missing. A town of about 20,000 today, its population was nearly double that in the 1400s. Today the older canal surrounding the city is built over in places, and a larger canal surrounds the larger more modern town. For my run, I scrutinized a town map, and figured out how to make it out to the outer canal, on which it looked like there was a biking or running path. And indeed, there was – one can almost always count on European cities for this type of outdoor activity convenience. My run took me up past several windmills on the Canal, and then back toward a water park (at least that’s what I took from the name); a good 40 minutes by the time I was back at the hotel. Along the canal I found a few runners, but mostly bikers, and school kids on their way home from school, older people out for a stroll, and tourists lugging cameras and ogling the windmills. Joanne and I would take bikes out to the canal path the next day, and do the same exact thing – ogle windmills.
I showered and changed in time for our meeting with Marie-Paul. She was a lovely woman, and shared her very extensive knowledge of the town and its history with us. I gave her credit; she had spent the day speaking French with another town client, and then had to switch to English for her tour with us. Flemish is, of course, her native language; and she described learning the Brugges dialect from her mother, but how she decided not to burden her own daughter with having to learn a language that no one ever uses…
At the end of our walk and talk with Marie-Paul, Joanne and I looked for a place for dinner. We didn’t want to walk back to the restaurant we had seen along the way and recommended to us (it had already been a long day of walking), so we ended up at the main square, with its many cafés. In the chilly evening air, we sat ourselves directly under two heaters in the café we arbitrarily chose (closest to the hotel), so we enjoyed our shared Flemish beef stew and Goat Cheese salad and a few Belgian beers in relative comfort.
The next morning, we luxuriously slept in, although I made sure we were up and on our way to the hotel breakfast before it closed down at 10. We had a 3:30 train back to Paris, and on the list of things to do before we left was a bike ride and a visit to the Jerusalem kerk – also a visit to the recommended chocolate store. The hotel had one of those wonderful European hotel buffet breakfasts, including coffee and warm milk you could pour into little carafes to take to your table, a full cereal offering, plus hard boiled eggs, a selection of breads and rolls, yogurt and fruit juice, and of course, cheese and sliced meats! I suggested to Joanne that we “take out” some cheese and bread for our lunch; the 50€ dinner from the night before was more than I had expected to spend on food on this trip. She was agreeable and we wandered out of breakfast with lunch in hand.
By the time we had finished breakfast, it was nearly 10:30 and checkout time was 11, so we packed up our things so we could check out and leave our luggage in the hotel lobby. I rented a bike for four hours for 7€ (Joanne had rented hers for 24 hours the day before), and we headed out for our meandering on wheels around 11. As mentioned, we took in the Jerusulem kerk and the Canal, also the Minnewater – not a water park per se, but a crossing of the canals, creating a fairly large water body around which a park had been built. We found the chocolate store and spent quite a bit of time and money there too. We finished up our bike ride near the St. John’s Hospital (built in the 1400s, and a working hospital for the indigent until the 1970s) where we sat by the canal and enjoyed our cheese and bread sandwiches, as well as some fruit brought on the train from Paris.
We returned our bikes around 2 p.m. and wandered back to the main square and our café from the previous day’s lunch to have a farewell beer in the hour we had to kill before leaving for our train. It was the fitting end to a lovely two days.
Brugges, as it is know in Belgium, was the hub of European commerce starting in the 10th through the 14th centuries. It was never governed by a king or queen, but by a council of merchants, and kept its commercial qualities all the way into the 15th century, and, one could argue, today. In 1000, the city was actually a port on the ocean, and ships could sail right into the Markt in the middle of town to unload their wares. But over the next 200 years or so, silt built up in the water ways into the town, and eventually choked the water back about 10 kilometers back to the sea shoreline. (The ocean is visible from the Belfry in the center of town – see photo.) Today, the town is almost purely a tourist attraction; in the late 1900s, the English, many of whom had settled themselves in the town across the Channel, convinced the townspeople that its history was worth preserving, and the effort to renovate the medieval town was begun.
My historical perspective is based on readings from Joanne’s guide to Belgium and from the tour we received from Marie-Paul, a professional colleague of Joanne’s (had been at the conference in Wales with her the previous week), and a professional tour guide in Brugges, as well as a Brugges native. Marie-Paul picked us up at 5 p.m. the day we got into the town, and took us on a two-hour walk through the town, and then we persuaded her to sit down with a glass of wine, during which we got another hour of personal and historical conversation out of her (stories of her family, best place to buy chocolate, etc.). Apologies in advance for any gross misstatements of fact, but I am writing this in my breezy way of remembering things, perhaps not quite exactly…
Joanne and I took the train from Paris to Lille and then into Belgium on a Thursday morning. (See previous posting on Paris adventures, with description of train rides to and from Belgium.) It was a bright sunny day, and we arrived in the Brugges station by 10:30 a.m. I was struck immediately, as we left the train station, by the enormous number of bicycles parked outside the station (see photo). This was clearly a biking town! I learned later from Marie-Paul that bikes are king in Brugges (car use is discouraged), and a biker can go in any direction on any street in the town, and ALWAYS has the right of way over a vehicle. This appealed to the biker in me, of course. We took a taxi into town, however, to our hotel, Koffieboontje. (No idea what that name means or stands for – it’s Flemish for something!). (http://www.hotel-koffieboontje.be/) The hotel was exactly in the middle of town, right next to the Belfry, the highest structure visible for miles around.
We attempted to check in early to the hotel, but were told to come back at 1. Joanne was a little eager to check in, because on the train she’d discovered her clothes were all wet in her overnight bag as a result of a water bottle not being completed closed when it was shoved in the bag early that morning. So, forced to wait for our room, we left our bags at the hotel and wandered in to the main square, the Markt. This is where things happened in the early years of the town, where commerce began in the Medieval era. According to Marie-Paul, the bourse, or stock market, had its beginnings in this town, as the merchants engaged in business transactions amongst each other in the town. The Belfry, towering over the Markt, with its 366 stairs, beckoned to me. Now a working carillon clock in the town, it was depository for vital town documents in the Middle Ages, as well as the main trading location as ships unloaded their wares in the nearby dock. The dock is no longer there, but it was an innovative place for unloading, given its protective roof that allowed ships to unload even in bad weather (not uncommon in this northern clime).
Leaving Joanne in the square, I climbed up the 366 stone stairs, negotiating past other tourists making the climb. It didn’t take me very long, and frankly, I wasn’t even winded. Darn, I was looking for a little workout! But the view from the top was pretty interesting, and I took a bunch of photos of the town (without really knowing at what I was looking at that point). (Its climb reminded me of a similar tower in Bologna, Italy, I had climbed with my sister and niece, with a wonderful view of the town.)
We were in Brugges for a few reasons. Joanne had been reading the Dorothy Dunnett House of Niccolo series, in which Niccolo (a fictional character) has adventures with Anselm Adornes (an historical figure) in 15th c. Brugges. In that spirit, we made a pilgrimage to the Jersualem kerk (church) in Brugges built by the Adornes family and where Anselm and his wife Marguerite are buried. (see photos). The other draw for Joanne was the art of several Belgian artists in the several museums in town – those artworks known specifically as the Belgium Primitives (which all acknowledge is a strange decription, but it differentiates them from a later period, I gather). I have to acknowledge my own ignorance with respect to art, and in this instance was happy to explore the town without spending time in art museums.
Coming back down the 366 stairs (quite a bit faster, of course), I joined Joanne in the main square. It was chilly, but manageable in the sun, so we took advantage of one of the many open air cafes and enjoyed an al fresco early lunch, whiling away the time (and following the quarterly updates from the Belfry carillon) until we could check into the hotel.
Finally, we walked back across the square to the hotel and were given the key to our double room, just inside the hotel courtyard. It was a small room, but sufficient for our needs for one night, with a shower and water closet, a TV, and two beds pushed together. During lunch, we had decided to head toward the museums in town, but, given her need to minimize foot travel, Joanne decided to rent a bike from the hotel to bike to the museums, and I would walk. I left Joanne at the bike rental place, and headed off on foot to the designated museum, which took me about 5 minutes. I figured it would take Joanne a little longer to figure out the bike and such, so expected her in about 15 minutes. But then the 15 minutes stretched into 20, and then 30 minutes. At that point, I had walked into the museum, making sure she hadn’t slipped past me, and checked out the particulars, and, noting the 8 € entry fee, decided that I wasn’t really that interested in the art. Joanne finally showed up at the museum, admitting she had gotten hopelessly lost trying to the find the museum. I told her that I was going to let her do museums on her own, and that I would walk around, and then go for a run before our planned rendezvous with Marie-Paul at 5. My thinking was that I should go on my run while the sun was still out and bearable in shorts and a long sleeved t-shirt; I had not brought my running tights or hat, and I was pretty certain that early morning temperatures the next day would require some serious outerwear.
Brugges is really a small medieval town, that was surrounded by a canal in its early days, but it was never a town that was fought over, so the type of garrisons typical of medieval towns are missing. A town of about 20,000 today, its population was nearly double that in the 1400s. Today the older canal surrounding the city is built over in places, and a larger canal surrounds the larger more modern town. For my run, I scrutinized a town map, and figured out how to make it out to the outer canal, on which it looked like there was a biking or running path. And indeed, there was – one can almost always count on European cities for this type of outdoor activity convenience. My run took me up past several windmills on the Canal, and then back toward a water park (at least that’s what I took from the name); a good 40 minutes by the time I was back at the hotel. Along the canal I found a few runners, but mostly bikers, and school kids on their way home from school, older people out for a stroll, and tourists lugging cameras and ogling the windmills. Joanne and I would take bikes out to the canal path the next day, and do the same exact thing – ogle windmills.
I showered and changed in time for our meeting with Marie-Paul. She was a lovely woman, and shared her very extensive knowledge of the town and its history with us. I gave her credit; she had spent the day speaking French with another town client, and then had to switch to English for her tour with us. Flemish is, of course, her native language; and she described learning the Brugges dialect from her mother, but how she decided not to burden her own daughter with having to learn a language that no one ever uses…
At the end of our walk and talk with Marie-Paul, Joanne and I looked for a place for dinner. We didn’t want to walk back to the restaurant we had seen along the way and recommended to us (it had already been a long day of walking), so we ended up at the main square, with its many cafés. In the chilly evening air, we sat ourselves directly under two heaters in the café we arbitrarily chose (closest to the hotel), so we enjoyed our shared Flemish beef stew and Goat Cheese salad and a few Belgian beers in relative comfort.
The next morning, we luxuriously slept in, although I made sure we were up and on our way to the hotel breakfast before it closed down at 10. We had a 3:30 train back to Paris, and on the list of things to do before we left was a bike ride and a visit to the Jerusalem kerk – also a visit to the recommended chocolate store. The hotel had one of those wonderful European hotel buffet breakfasts, including coffee and warm milk you could pour into little carafes to take to your table, a full cereal offering, plus hard boiled eggs, a selection of breads and rolls, yogurt and fruit juice, and of course, cheese and sliced meats! I suggested to Joanne that we “take out” some cheese and bread for our lunch; the 50€ dinner from the night before was more than I had expected to spend on food on this trip. She was agreeable and we wandered out of breakfast with lunch in hand.
By the time we had finished breakfast, it was nearly 10:30 and checkout time was 11, so we packed up our things so we could check out and leave our luggage in the hotel lobby. I rented a bike for four hours for 7€ (Joanne had rented hers for 24 hours the day before), and we headed out for our meandering on wheels around 11. As mentioned, we took in the Jerusulem kerk and the Canal, also the Minnewater – not a water park per se, but a crossing of the canals, creating a fairly large water body around which a park had been built. We found the chocolate store and spent quite a bit of time and money there too. We finished up our bike ride near the St. John’s Hospital (built in the 1400s, and a working hospital for the indigent until the 1970s) where we sat by the canal and enjoyed our cheese and bread sandwiches, as well as some fruit brought on the train from Paris.
We returned our bikes around 2 p.m. and wandered back to the main square and our café from the previous day’s lunch to have a farewell beer in the hour we had to kill before leaving for our train. It was the fitting end to a lovely two days.
Friday, September 26, 2008
Je vous remercie: Paris hospitality and adventures
In January of this year, my friend Joanne spent a night with me in my condo in Arlington, and I excitedly shared with her my plans to move to France in the summer. Equally excitedly, she told me she planned to be in Paris in September, and I said “I’ll meet you there!” And, being a woman of my word, last week I was on my way to Paris via the TGV (France’s high speed train) to meet up with Joanne.
Joanne had just spent a week in Wales at a business conference and was extending her visit to London and Paris. When she emailed me at the beginning of September, we made plans for me to join her in Paris in mid-week of her stay there with her friends Jean Yves and Olivier. She also asked if I would be interested in joining her for a visit to Brugges, Belgium for a few days. I wasn’t exactly sure why she was motivated to make that trip, but I was game to follow her. I’d never been to Belgium (that I remembered), and, hey, I was on vacation, no reason not to!
I’ll write about the Brugges trip separately, but in a quick summary, the medieval town that we visited appealed to the historian in me and was also the site of much activity in the Niccolo historical novel series by Dorothy Dunnett that Joanne was reading while we were there, and that I have read, thanks to Jan Seymour (and now, need to reread!).
Jean Yves is a former singer with the New Amsterdam Singers, a choral group in New York City with whom I have sung on and off for the past twenty-four years. He had lived in NYC in the early 90’s, a time during which I did not sing with the chorus. We had travelled together on a NAS tour to England and Wales back in 1993, but he didn’t really remember me and I had a passing remembrance of him. However, when I was visiting the conductor of the chorus, earlier this year, and told her about my plans to move to France, she gave me the Paris address and email of Jean Yves and Olivier. She and her husband had been in Paris recently and visited with them, and she encouraged me to get in touch when I was there. Since I decided to move to Nice (not Paris), I had just filed the address information for future reference.
When Joanne told me she would be staying with JY, I felt like somehow the NAS connection would be a door opener, but did not want to assume, and asked Joanne to make a formal request for me to join her in their apartment during her visit. The word back was, Of course.
So, there I was, on the TGV shooting toward Paris. I think everyone has heard about the superiority of train travel overseas, but for those of you who take Amtrak’s Acela between Washington and New York, even the best Amtrak has to offer cannot compare to the French high speed trains. First of all, the French trains are clean. Second, people are polite, and actually use the designated seats outside of the seating carriages to use their cell phones. I can’t tell you how many times I have listened to Americans carry on very personal conversations right next to me on their cell phones (in August, on a train between Richmond and Washington, a 20-something spent an hour explaining to a friend why she had posted sexy photos on herself on her Facebook site). Third, it is smooth and quiet. No shaking back and forth on the rails, no din over which you need to pump up the volume on your iPod. Fourth, the café is really nice and sells good food that people line up to eat – and, given that the café is on the second floor (en haut) of the train, you have a lovely lounge from which to watch the scenery speed by (and you don’t have to keep watch to make sure your beer doesn’t slide across the table – which I know the Brits, returning from Liverpool’s football match against Marseille, appreciated).
I didn’t hang out in the café, however, as I had brought my own cheese, bread and apple slices for the trip. We left a little late from Marseille (I took a local train from Nice to Marseille), so we were 20 minutes delayed into Paris’ Gare de Lyon. Joanne had said that she would meet me at the station, and I texted her ahead to let her know that we’d be late. (Americans my age are still quite a bit unfamiliar and uncomfortable texting, but our European contemporaries are frequent users of the medium. It’s quite a bit cheaper to text than it is to call on your cell phone here – you are only charged when you send a text, not both sides of a conversation, as in the US – which may explain the high usage. That being said, I’ve found that Americans who travel overseas are quite comfortable communicating with text messages, happily.)
We met easily on the train platform, and Joanne steered me toward the Métro – a fantastic subway system in Paris that is rivaled by the NYC Subway (but Washington’s Metro beats them all for its cleanliness, from my view). We were going to head to JY and Olivier’s apartment in the 20th arrondissement (on the 11 line, for those of you familiar with the subway system) to drop off my luggage and then do some exploring in Paris. We navigated a few different lines to get to the Jourdain stop, and then had a 10 minute walk to the apartment. I always remember Paris in grey tones, and this time, even in the bright sun of an autumn day, it still seemed grey to me. But the neighborhood of Belleville was bustling at 3 in the afternoon, and we dodged cars and people on the small sidewalks on our way past the cheese shop, the boulangerie, and the fruit and vegetable stands to our destination.
We finally arrived at the apartment, and Joanne let me in the front gate, which opened into a lovely small enclosed garden, where a table and chairs were set up in the small courtyard. The four story townhouse was a few short strides away – we walked in the front door into the sitting room; our guest bedroom was downstairs, the kitchen and eating area was on the second floor, and the bedroom was on the third floor – all connected by a lovely cast iron spiral staircase. We had the place to ourselves at that moment, and we both felt like it was a great idea to lie down on our shared sofa bed and breathe deeply for 20 minutes.
By 4:30 we headed back out into the Paris sunshine, with at least three objectives. First, we wanted to pick up our train tickets to Brugges from one of the SNCF train stations. Joanne had bought them online, and chosen the option to pick them up from a person in a station. I had made the same decision when I bought my tickets to Paris online. Unfortunately Joanne had not remembered to get the tickets while she was waiting for me at Gare de Lyon; based on my own experience picking up my tickets in a Nice SNCF storefront, we were in for a long wait in line (I had waited for almost 40 minutes!). And, in the Gare de L’Est, where we ended up, we in fact waited in line for 20 minutes to pick up the tickets. Next time, we both decided, using the automated option (meaning using the machines in the station to pick up a ticket) would be the better way to go!
The second objective, from me, was to sit in a Paris café and share a glass of wine with Joanne. She thought we should walk around a bit and find a good place, so we got back on the Métro, got off on the Chatelet stop and walked down the Rue de Rivoli – a long boulevard of department stores and familiar brand name storefronts. We walked off the main road and found a pedestrian way and an open square on Rue St. Martin. There were several cafés there on the square; we chose one and ordered up glasses of wine and spent the next 30 minutes catching up on our respective lives over the past several months.
Our third objective for the afternoon was to meet JY and Olivier in the Centre Georges Pompidou for dinner at one of their favorite restaurants, the Café Beau Bourg, at 8 p.m. (My French-English dictionary says that Beaubourg is “the name commonly used to refer to the Centre Pompidou.”) We finished our drinks in the Rue St. Martin around 6, so we decided to do some more walking around before heading in the direction of dinner. We walked to the Seine, and to the Cathédrale Notre Dame, where we took pictures with all the other tourists in the plaza in front of the cathedral. We walked back across the Seine toward the Hȏtel de Ville and wandered toward Centre Pompidou around 7:30, deciding to wait at the café and have another drink. It was quite chilly as the sun disappeared around the buildings, and we sat in the outside tables of the Beau Bourg only because there was a heater directly above us in under the awning!
Jean Yves appeared in the plaza in front of us on his bike shortly before 8; it turned out that Olivier had arrived early (must have been shortly before we did) and gone inside to have his apéritif. JY and I recognized each other immediately from our connection years ago, and we all went upstairs to meet Olivier for dinner. We had a lovely time; the food itself was not particularly memorable, but our time together was.
After dinner, JY biked back to the apartment; Olivier, Joanne and I took the Métro. It was nearly 11; but when we got back, Olivier offered up a little sip of champagne, which I accepted, and we shared the box of cookies I had brought from a patisserie in Nice. Joanne and I were going to get up at 6 to be able to get our 8 a.m train to Brugges the next morning; JY had to leave before us, at 5:30 for his 6:30 train to Grenoble for work.
Our plan was to return to Paris on Friday night, around 7 p.m.; JY would get back at 9 that same evening. I learned that another couple would be houseguests for the weekend, arriving on Friday, and that plans were for a home meal on Friday night, Olivier cooking. I had the feeling that this was something for which to look forward.
* * *
The trip back from Brugges on Friday afternoon had a moment of hypertension as we changed trains in Lille. We’d had a similar adrenalin-pumping experience on the way up, so we were somewhat prepared. We had discovered that the tickets Joanne had purchased online gave us about 6 minutes between trains. Given that Lille was a somewhat small train station, one would have thought that this would be at least “enough” time to make our “correspondance.” (Obviously the SNCF computer thought so.) But the trains were not exactly tout à l’heure, on time, that is. We were able to negotiate to our connection in Lille to Brugges with a little time to spare. But, given Joanne’s difficulty walking, it was close. On the way back, it looked like our train into Lille was going to give us enough time to make it across the voie (tracks) to the train to Paris. I kept giving updates to Joanne as we approached Lille, and we kept saying to each other, based on our experience the day before, whatever happens, happens. There were bound to be other trains to Paris if we missed ours.
The train pulled into the station and we disembarked, and the few minutes it looked like we might have had had dwindled to less than a minute! I quickly found the voie for our Paris connection on an overhead sign and encouraged Joanne to hoof it. I knew I could run and catch it; that wasn’t my concern. My concern was Joanne. And, of course, we were in a second class car, a little farther down the platform. By the time we were rushing to catch the train, there was no one left on the platform; it was about to leave. I found an open door, and found the conductor standing there inside the door; he asked me to make sure I was getting on the right train. I leaned out the door and called to Joanne; she was there, doing her best to run with her things to get onboard too. I really didn’t want to leave her behind! But it was to be, et violà, we both made the train, with literally seconds to spare. Back to Paris!
[Quick tangent – a minute is really a very long time. After several seasons of watching Alias, and the able CIA operatives in that television show dismantle bombs time after time with seconds to spare, I had done my own analysis of how long it takes to do different things. McGyver is also an instructional figure in this realm. Things like putting away one’s glasses after reading the newspaper on the Metro in the morning before needing to exit the train takes only about 5-7 seconds – about the time it takes the doors to open once the train has stopped in the station. I worked through this experiment several times in an ongoing effort to maximize my time reading the Washington Post and/or Wall St. Journal in the morning before arriving at the Tenleytown station.]
We arrived in Paris Gare de Nord on time, and resolved to take our time to getting back to the apartment, as we knew we were in no rush. We had another moment of confusion as we went through the gare, and used a Métro ticket to go through a set of turnstiles, and then several hundred yards later, found another turnstile to go through. Did we have to use another Métro ticket? This didn’t make sense! We stood there for a minute or so (it seemed much longer), watching streams of people going through the turnstiles (it was 6 p.m. on a Friday evening), before deciding to try the same cards we had just used. And they worked. Another “go figure!” moment.
Back at the apartment in Belleville, we found we were the first to arrive. Olivier returned to the house about 20 minutes later, and he had us join him in the front garden for some beverages, to catch the last rays of sun of what was a beautiful day. But as the sun disappeared, it began to get cold again, and we went back in, Joanne to pack for her trip home the next day, and Olivier and I went up to the kitchen to prepare for dinner. I had asked Olivier in the garden, Je t’aide? Could I help him with dinner? I had heard that Olivier had a reputation amongst his friends of not letting anyone do anything. But this evening he allowed that I might help him set the table. And so he did.
We set a table for six in the dining room, complete with four glasses at each setting, for water, red wine, champagne and aquavit. There were several pieces of silver at each setting as well. It was a table that Emily Post would have been proud of; in fact, I love dinner parties and enjoyed very much the preparation and the ability to help out. As he was busy setting up hors d’oeuvres, Olivier shared the “John” plan for their kitchen; I commiserated, as John had recently visited me and similarly had shared with me the perfect rebuilding plan for my kitchen. John is an interior designer, who is a central figure in the New Amsterdam Singers not only as a singer, but as the group’s Tour organizer for two decades and as its chef extraordinaire for all events requiring culinary expertise. This is a man who knows kitchens. (Short advert: John has recently put together a cookbook of his culinary creations in honor of and to benefit the group’s 40th anniversary year. Check out www.nasingers.org to buy one!)
It was nearly 9 p.m. by the time we had finished assembling appetizers and the meal preparation was complete. Olivier had us take the first course down to the sitting room to await the arrival of the new weekend guests and Jean Yves. Everyone had arrived by 9:45, Michel and Martin from another visit with friends in the city, and JY back from Grenoble. We celebrated the start of the evening with champagne, small wrapped cubes of chèvre cheese (found in French supermarkets, same as Laughing Cow cheeses), pistachio nuts, Pringles chips (really!) and a dip made with crème fraȋche, roe and chives (which reminded me of the cream cheese and chives my grandmother used to make and roll up in pieces of salami for appetizers on Sunday afternoon family gatherings).
By 10:30 or so we head upstairs to the dinner table. The second course was a wonderful homemade vegetable soup (Olivier’s creation), served with bread and white wine. This was followed by the “main course” of cold salmon, Finn Crisps (for the salmon), and Olivier’s homemade ratatouille (hot). And, of course, more baguettes. And aquavit. The Nordic fare (cold salmon, aquavit) was in honor our guests, Michel and Martin, who live in Helsinki. The conversation flowed easily as the courses continued.
Next was the cheese course. Olivier had purchased a selection of cheeses from the local fromagerie (see photo), of which I tried every single one. Delicious. Of course, with bread and now, red wine.
The fifth, and last course (as far as I can remember), was the sweets – homemade chocolate mousse and homemade fruit cake (more of Olivier’s creations), along with coffee and tea.. And everything was yummy.
No surprise, this culinary and social event went long into the night and into the next morning. We were all having a good time – except Martin, who, we later learned, was in the throes of a cold, and slept a good part of the next morning.
Joanne and I woke up around 8 a.m., as we heard JY leave for a dentist appointment. We were both feeling the effects of the late night and the endless eating and drinking, but she more than me, I believe. I had not gone to bed full, just pretty well intoxicated. But I had planned to run that morning, and had gotten from JY a few days before a suggested run. JY is training for the NYC Marathon, so I knew he would have a good running route. I dressed and stretched and went out into the Paris morning – it was about 13 degrees Celsius, just shy of 60 degrees Fahrenheit. But the sun was already well on its way up into the sky at 8:30 a.m. and I could tell it would be as nice this day as the previous day had been. I easily found my way down to the Parc des Buttes Chaumont that JY had directed me to, and found the park busy with runners and walkers on a Saturday morning.
Once inside the park’s gates and having found the road, I headed to the right. And downhill. And down more hill. Hmm, I thought, there’s going to be an uphill on the other side of this! And indeed, there was, but it was a lovely park, and the prize for my uphill climb was a beautiful view of Paris from the upper side of the Park. I looped the park another time, watched the firefighters doing their early morning exercises on the hill, and headed back to the apartment.
Joanne left that morning in a taxi at 10 a.m. from the apartment; I gave my goodbyes to Olivier and Michel (JY had not yet returned) about 10:30 and headed to the Gare de Lyon. I had decided to check my luggage there in the station while I wandered around Paris before my 1:40 train. Olivier had told me what to look for, “Consignes,” lockers where you could leave your things in the station. It didn’t take me too long to figure out the process in the Consignes, but I was indeed happy to have secured Euro coins from Olivier and Joanne, which were required for the locker payment. It was about 11:30 when I finally left the station and headed once more into the sunshine. I no longer needed the sweater under my leather jacket; it was a beautiful day. I started across the Seine to the south side, and up the Quai Saint Bernard, along which there was an outdoor art exhibit in the garden beside the river, toward the Ȋle de la Cité. I could see Notre Dame in the distance as I walked.
On the way I wandered into a familiar-looking event, a “bio” festival, with vendors lined up, offering their “organic” wares (olive oil, sausage, herbs, cheese, wine, etc.) to the folks crowding their booths. Already in France, I have been through at least two of these; organic products are increasingly popular and these open air markets are apparently common. As I walked along, I saw a long line of people waiting to receive their free bag of organic products; I decided I didn’t have the time (or inclination) to wait in line for this freebie.
I headed to the Notre Dame plaza again and across it back to the Rue de Rivoli, basically retracing the steps Joanne and I had taken a few nights before. But I forged new paths on my circular route back to the gare. I stayed on the rue St. Antoine and ended up at the Bastille (which is just a monument in a circle, kind of like Dupont Circle in DC, but the monument is a very high spire), which got me back to rue de Lyon and back to the gare. Along the way, I picked up some things for the five hour train ride back to Nice: a granny smith apple and some cheese at a local market, and then a small loaf at the next boulangerie I came across, which the young lady put through the slicer for me when I said yes to her question – another lesson (not fatal here) to make sure you know what is being asked of you before you say yes!
I retrieved my luggage from my locker in the station, and found my train with no problem, which was already boarding when I arrived – nearly thirty minutes ahead of time. That gave me time to find my seat, eat my lunch, and get ready for the ride home. Yes, now I can say that, Nice is home.
I’ll return to Paris before the year is out – this trip was short, sweet, and left me wanting to go back – to spend time with my new friends, to see the Eiffel Tower (it’s been almost thirty years since I last visited it) and maybe to see that Rodin Museum that I decided not to see on that trip with my family those many, many years ago. But I’m still certain I made the right decision; Paris was not the place I wanted to be living in France. I like Nice.
Joanne had just spent a week in Wales at a business conference and was extending her visit to London and Paris. When she emailed me at the beginning of September, we made plans for me to join her in Paris in mid-week of her stay there with her friends Jean Yves and Olivier. She also asked if I would be interested in joining her for a visit to Brugges, Belgium for a few days. I wasn’t exactly sure why she was motivated to make that trip, but I was game to follow her. I’d never been to Belgium (that I remembered), and, hey, I was on vacation, no reason not to!
I’ll write about the Brugges trip separately, but in a quick summary, the medieval town that we visited appealed to the historian in me and was also the site of much activity in the Niccolo historical novel series by Dorothy Dunnett that Joanne was reading while we were there, and that I have read, thanks to Jan Seymour (and now, need to reread!).
Jean Yves is a former singer with the New Amsterdam Singers, a choral group in New York City with whom I have sung on and off for the past twenty-four years. He had lived in NYC in the early 90’s, a time during which I did not sing with the chorus. We had travelled together on a NAS tour to England and Wales back in 1993, but he didn’t really remember me and I had a passing remembrance of him. However, when I was visiting the conductor of the chorus, earlier this year, and told her about my plans to move to France, she gave me the Paris address and email of Jean Yves and Olivier. She and her husband had been in Paris recently and visited with them, and she encouraged me to get in touch when I was there. Since I decided to move to Nice (not Paris), I had just filed the address information for future reference.
When Joanne told me she would be staying with JY, I felt like somehow the NAS connection would be a door opener, but did not want to assume, and asked Joanne to make a formal request for me to join her in their apartment during her visit. The word back was, Of course.
So, there I was, on the TGV shooting toward Paris. I think everyone has heard about the superiority of train travel overseas, but for those of you who take Amtrak’s Acela between Washington and New York, even the best Amtrak has to offer cannot compare to the French high speed trains. First of all, the French trains are clean. Second, people are polite, and actually use the designated seats outside of the seating carriages to use their cell phones. I can’t tell you how many times I have listened to Americans carry on very personal conversations right next to me on their cell phones (in August, on a train between Richmond and Washington, a 20-something spent an hour explaining to a friend why she had posted sexy photos on herself on her Facebook site). Third, it is smooth and quiet. No shaking back and forth on the rails, no din over which you need to pump up the volume on your iPod. Fourth, the café is really nice and sells good food that people line up to eat – and, given that the café is on the second floor (en haut) of the train, you have a lovely lounge from which to watch the scenery speed by (and you don’t have to keep watch to make sure your beer doesn’t slide across the table – which I know the Brits, returning from Liverpool’s football match against Marseille, appreciated).
I didn’t hang out in the café, however, as I had brought my own cheese, bread and apple slices for the trip. We left a little late from Marseille (I took a local train from Nice to Marseille), so we were 20 minutes delayed into Paris’ Gare de Lyon. Joanne had said that she would meet me at the station, and I texted her ahead to let her know that we’d be late. (Americans my age are still quite a bit unfamiliar and uncomfortable texting, but our European contemporaries are frequent users of the medium. It’s quite a bit cheaper to text than it is to call on your cell phone here – you are only charged when you send a text, not both sides of a conversation, as in the US – which may explain the high usage. That being said, I’ve found that Americans who travel overseas are quite comfortable communicating with text messages, happily.)
We met easily on the train platform, and Joanne steered me toward the Métro – a fantastic subway system in Paris that is rivaled by the NYC Subway (but Washington’s Metro beats them all for its cleanliness, from my view). We were going to head to JY and Olivier’s apartment in the 20th arrondissement (on the 11 line, for those of you familiar with the subway system) to drop off my luggage and then do some exploring in Paris. We navigated a few different lines to get to the Jourdain stop, and then had a 10 minute walk to the apartment. I always remember Paris in grey tones, and this time, even in the bright sun of an autumn day, it still seemed grey to me. But the neighborhood of Belleville was bustling at 3 in the afternoon, and we dodged cars and people on the small sidewalks on our way past the cheese shop, the boulangerie, and the fruit and vegetable stands to our destination.
We finally arrived at the apartment, and Joanne let me in the front gate, which opened into a lovely small enclosed garden, where a table and chairs were set up in the small courtyard. The four story townhouse was a few short strides away – we walked in the front door into the sitting room; our guest bedroom was downstairs, the kitchen and eating area was on the second floor, and the bedroom was on the third floor – all connected by a lovely cast iron spiral staircase. We had the place to ourselves at that moment, and we both felt like it was a great idea to lie down on our shared sofa bed and breathe deeply for 20 minutes.
By 4:30 we headed back out into the Paris sunshine, with at least three objectives. First, we wanted to pick up our train tickets to Brugges from one of the SNCF train stations. Joanne had bought them online, and chosen the option to pick them up from a person in a station. I had made the same decision when I bought my tickets to Paris online. Unfortunately Joanne had not remembered to get the tickets while she was waiting for me at Gare de Lyon; based on my own experience picking up my tickets in a Nice SNCF storefront, we were in for a long wait in line (I had waited for almost 40 minutes!). And, in the Gare de L’Est, where we ended up, we in fact waited in line for 20 minutes to pick up the tickets. Next time, we both decided, using the automated option (meaning using the machines in the station to pick up a ticket) would be the better way to go!
The second objective, from me, was to sit in a Paris café and share a glass of wine with Joanne. She thought we should walk around a bit and find a good place, so we got back on the Métro, got off on the Chatelet stop and walked down the Rue de Rivoli – a long boulevard of department stores and familiar brand name storefronts. We walked off the main road and found a pedestrian way and an open square on Rue St. Martin. There were several cafés there on the square; we chose one and ordered up glasses of wine and spent the next 30 minutes catching up on our respective lives over the past several months.
Our third objective for the afternoon was to meet JY and Olivier in the Centre Georges Pompidou for dinner at one of their favorite restaurants, the Café Beau Bourg, at 8 p.m. (My French-English dictionary says that Beaubourg is “the name commonly used to refer to the Centre Pompidou.”) We finished our drinks in the Rue St. Martin around 6, so we decided to do some more walking around before heading in the direction of dinner. We walked to the Seine, and to the Cathédrale Notre Dame, where we took pictures with all the other tourists in the plaza in front of the cathedral. We walked back across the Seine toward the Hȏtel de Ville and wandered toward Centre Pompidou around 7:30, deciding to wait at the café and have another drink. It was quite chilly as the sun disappeared around the buildings, and we sat in the outside tables of the Beau Bourg only because there was a heater directly above us in under the awning!
Jean Yves appeared in the plaza in front of us on his bike shortly before 8; it turned out that Olivier had arrived early (must have been shortly before we did) and gone inside to have his apéritif. JY and I recognized each other immediately from our connection years ago, and we all went upstairs to meet Olivier for dinner. We had a lovely time; the food itself was not particularly memorable, but our time together was.
After dinner, JY biked back to the apartment; Olivier, Joanne and I took the Métro. It was nearly 11; but when we got back, Olivier offered up a little sip of champagne, which I accepted, and we shared the box of cookies I had brought from a patisserie in Nice. Joanne and I were going to get up at 6 to be able to get our 8 a.m train to Brugges the next morning; JY had to leave before us, at 5:30 for his 6:30 train to Grenoble for work.
Our plan was to return to Paris on Friday night, around 7 p.m.; JY would get back at 9 that same evening. I learned that another couple would be houseguests for the weekend, arriving on Friday, and that plans were for a home meal on Friday night, Olivier cooking. I had the feeling that this was something for which to look forward.
* * *
The trip back from Brugges on Friday afternoon had a moment of hypertension as we changed trains in Lille. We’d had a similar adrenalin-pumping experience on the way up, so we were somewhat prepared. We had discovered that the tickets Joanne had purchased online gave us about 6 minutes between trains. Given that Lille was a somewhat small train station, one would have thought that this would be at least “enough” time to make our “correspondance.” (Obviously the SNCF computer thought so.) But the trains were not exactly tout à l’heure, on time, that is. We were able to negotiate to our connection in Lille to Brugges with a little time to spare. But, given Joanne’s difficulty walking, it was close. On the way back, it looked like our train into Lille was going to give us enough time to make it across the voie (tracks) to the train to Paris. I kept giving updates to Joanne as we approached Lille, and we kept saying to each other, based on our experience the day before, whatever happens, happens. There were bound to be other trains to Paris if we missed ours.
The train pulled into the station and we disembarked, and the few minutes it looked like we might have had had dwindled to less than a minute! I quickly found the voie for our Paris connection on an overhead sign and encouraged Joanne to hoof it. I knew I could run and catch it; that wasn’t my concern. My concern was Joanne. And, of course, we were in a second class car, a little farther down the platform. By the time we were rushing to catch the train, there was no one left on the platform; it was about to leave. I found an open door, and found the conductor standing there inside the door; he asked me to make sure I was getting on the right train. I leaned out the door and called to Joanne; she was there, doing her best to run with her things to get onboard too. I really didn’t want to leave her behind! But it was to be, et violà, we both made the train, with literally seconds to spare. Back to Paris!
[Quick tangent – a minute is really a very long time. After several seasons of watching Alias, and the able CIA operatives in that television show dismantle bombs time after time with seconds to spare, I had done my own analysis of how long it takes to do different things. McGyver is also an instructional figure in this realm. Things like putting away one’s glasses after reading the newspaper on the Metro in the morning before needing to exit the train takes only about 5-7 seconds – about the time it takes the doors to open once the train has stopped in the station. I worked through this experiment several times in an ongoing effort to maximize my time reading the Washington Post and/or Wall St. Journal in the morning before arriving at the Tenleytown station.]
We arrived in Paris Gare de Nord on time, and resolved to take our time to getting back to the apartment, as we knew we were in no rush. We had another moment of confusion as we went through the gare, and used a Métro ticket to go through a set of turnstiles, and then several hundred yards later, found another turnstile to go through. Did we have to use another Métro ticket? This didn’t make sense! We stood there for a minute or so (it seemed much longer), watching streams of people going through the turnstiles (it was 6 p.m. on a Friday evening), before deciding to try the same cards we had just used. And they worked. Another “go figure!” moment.
Back at the apartment in Belleville, we found we were the first to arrive. Olivier returned to the house about 20 minutes later, and he had us join him in the front garden for some beverages, to catch the last rays of sun of what was a beautiful day. But as the sun disappeared, it began to get cold again, and we went back in, Joanne to pack for her trip home the next day, and Olivier and I went up to the kitchen to prepare for dinner. I had asked Olivier in the garden, Je t’aide? Could I help him with dinner? I had heard that Olivier had a reputation amongst his friends of not letting anyone do anything. But this evening he allowed that I might help him set the table. And so he did.
We set a table for six in the dining room, complete with four glasses at each setting, for water, red wine, champagne and aquavit. There were several pieces of silver at each setting as well. It was a table that Emily Post would have been proud of; in fact, I love dinner parties and enjoyed very much the preparation and the ability to help out. As he was busy setting up hors d’oeuvres, Olivier shared the “John” plan for their kitchen; I commiserated, as John had recently visited me and similarly had shared with me the perfect rebuilding plan for my kitchen. John is an interior designer, who is a central figure in the New Amsterdam Singers not only as a singer, but as the group’s Tour organizer for two decades and as its chef extraordinaire for all events requiring culinary expertise. This is a man who knows kitchens. (Short advert: John has recently put together a cookbook of his culinary creations in honor of and to benefit the group’s 40th anniversary year. Check out www.nasingers.org to buy one!)
It was nearly 9 p.m. by the time we had finished assembling appetizers and the meal preparation was complete. Olivier had us take the first course down to the sitting room to await the arrival of the new weekend guests and Jean Yves. Everyone had arrived by 9:45, Michel and Martin from another visit with friends in the city, and JY back from Grenoble. We celebrated the start of the evening with champagne, small wrapped cubes of chèvre cheese (found in French supermarkets, same as Laughing Cow cheeses), pistachio nuts, Pringles chips (really!) and a dip made with crème fraȋche, roe and chives (which reminded me of the cream cheese and chives my grandmother used to make and roll up in pieces of salami for appetizers on Sunday afternoon family gatherings).
By 10:30 or so we head upstairs to the dinner table. The second course was a wonderful homemade vegetable soup (Olivier’s creation), served with bread and white wine. This was followed by the “main course” of cold salmon, Finn Crisps (for the salmon), and Olivier’s homemade ratatouille (hot). And, of course, more baguettes. And aquavit. The Nordic fare (cold salmon, aquavit) was in honor our guests, Michel and Martin, who live in Helsinki. The conversation flowed easily as the courses continued.
Next was the cheese course. Olivier had purchased a selection of cheeses from the local fromagerie (see photo), of which I tried every single one. Delicious. Of course, with bread and now, red wine.
The fifth, and last course (as far as I can remember), was the sweets – homemade chocolate mousse and homemade fruit cake (more of Olivier’s creations), along with coffee and tea.. And everything was yummy.
No surprise, this culinary and social event went long into the night and into the next morning. We were all having a good time – except Martin, who, we later learned, was in the throes of a cold, and slept a good part of the next morning.
Joanne and I woke up around 8 a.m., as we heard JY leave for a dentist appointment. We were both feeling the effects of the late night and the endless eating and drinking, but she more than me, I believe. I had not gone to bed full, just pretty well intoxicated. But I had planned to run that morning, and had gotten from JY a few days before a suggested run. JY is training for the NYC Marathon, so I knew he would have a good running route. I dressed and stretched and went out into the Paris morning – it was about 13 degrees Celsius, just shy of 60 degrees Fahrenheit. But the sun was already well on its way up into the sky at 8:30 a.m. and I could tell it would be as nice this day as the previous day had been. I easily found my way down to the Parc des Buttes Chaumont that JY had directed me to, and found the park busy with runners and walkers on a Saturday morning.
Once inside the park’s gates and having found the road, I headed to the right. And downhill. And down more hill. Hmm, I thought, there’s going to be an uphill on the other side of this! And indeed, there was, but it was a lovely park, and the prize for my uphill climb was a beautiful view of Paris from the upper side of the Park. I looped the park another time, watched the firefighters doing their early morning exercises on the hill, and headed back to the apartment.
Joanne left that morning in a taxi at 10 a.m. from the apartment; I gave my goodbyes to Olivier and Michel (JY had not yet returned) about 10:30 and headed to the Gare de Lyon. I had decided to check my luggage there in the station while I wandered around Paris before my 1:40 train. Olivier had told me what to look for, “Consignes,” lockers where you could leave your things in the station. It didn’t take me too long to figure out the process in the Consignes, but I was indeed happy to have secured Euro coins from Olivier and Joanne, which were required for the locker payment. It was about 11:30 when I finally left the station and headed once more into the sunshine. I no longer needed the sweater under my leather jacket; it was a beautiful day. I started across the Seine to the south side, and up the Quai Saint Bernard, along which there was an outdoor art exhibit in the garden beside the river, toward the Ȋle de la Cité. I could see Notre Dame in the distance as I walked.
On the way I wandered into a familiar-looking event, a “bio” festival, with vendors lined up, offering their “organic” wares (olive oil, sausage, herbs, cheese, wine, etc.) to the folks crowding their booths. Already in France, I have been through at least two of these; organic products are increasingly popular and these open air markets are apparently common. As I walked along, I saw a long line of people waiting to receive their free bag of organic products; I decided I didn’t have the time (or inclination) to wait in line for this freebie.
I headed to the Notre Dame plaza again and across it back to the Rue de Rivoli, basically retracing the steps Joanne and I had taken a few nights before. But I forged new paths on my circular route back to the gare. I stayed on the rue St. Antoine and ended up at the Bastille (which is just a monument in a circle, kind of like Dupont Circle in DC, but the monument is a very high spire), which got me back to rue de Lyon and back to the gare. Along the way, I picked up some things for the five hour train ride back to Nice: a granny smith apple and some cheese at a local market, and then a small loaf at the next boulangerie I came across, which the young lady put through the slicer for me when I said yes to her question – another lesson (not fatal here) to make sure you know what is being asked of you before you say yes!
I retrieved my luggage from my locker in the station, and found my train with no problem, which was already boarding when I arrived – nearly thirty minutes ahead of time. That gave me time to find my seat, eat my lunch, and get ready for the ride home. Yes, now I can say that, Nice is home.
I’ll return to Paris before the year is out – this trip was short, sweet, and left me wanting to go back – to spend time with my new friends, to see the Eiffel Tower (it’s been almost thirty years since I last visited it) and maybe to see that Rodin Museum that I decided not to see on that trip with my family those many, many years ago. But I’m still certain I made the right decision; Paris was not the place I wanted to be living in France. I like Nice.
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