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Post by lola on Apr 14, 2013 16:06:01 GMT
When we knew MC would be spending the school year in Gap, France, my husband and younger daughter H began talking up the idea of visiting her there over the holidays since they are a student and a teacher respectively and get that time off. Impossible for me, I said. I never get more than a couple of days off from my job during that time. You go on without me, or we'll just fly MC home. Then memories of Kerouac's Christmas in Paris photo spreads began to water that seed, and a vine of possibility began to twine around my mind. We had BA miles. By April I had my request in, made arrangements at work for time off, and began to plan. My husband Bob had only eleven days, MC had two full weeks, plus the weekends, and I had the same 23 days H did. So ten nights in Paris with all of us, then MC would come with H and me to London and stay as long as she could. I find online Paris apartment hunting recreational, and looked at hundreds of them. Eventually you get a sense for what the place is likely to be like, beyond the photos and descriptions. I'm leery of offerings where the owner posts photos of, say for Paris, the Arc de Triomphe, Notre Dame, and the Eiffel Tower. (In fact, I tend to steer clear of any apartment whose decor includes little Eiffel Towers.) Why would a prospective London apartment seeker need photos of the changing of the guard? What we need is to see whether it's possible to get into bed from either side, what the kitchen and bathroom look like, if there's any view, whether it's a sofa bed. I learned on VRBO.com and other sites that our exact dates in Paris were the most expensive of the year. Apparently the rest of the world has also been attracted by K's photos. Most Airbnb apartments tended to be more reasonable, and were less likely to rise with the season. The disadvantage was paying the entire amount up front to secure the place, and the possibility that an owner could change his mind with little notice. MC had stayed in the 11th a couple of years ago during her college semester, and I knew she and H would want to walk to Barrio Latino both Sunday evenings for salsa dancing. Bob had loved the Marais before, so we settled finally on this place by midsummer: (all photos by MC, unless H posts her lot) We loved the apartment, just a half block north of the Place des Vosges on the r.d. Foin, a quiet side street. The location was ideal for us, the price was very reasonable, and the decor and high ceilings soothed our souls. I'll post a link, if still available, when I get to our other computer. It was pleasant to have the Place des Vosges (or as Bob called it "that little courtyard") just around the corner and under an archway where almost every morning musicians would stand to take advantage of the acoustics and the tourists. We also had easy access to the happening Bastille area, the morning markets on Boul Richard Lenoir, bus and Metro lines, and an easy stroll to the river. Town was full of our fellow tourists, but few of them wandered as far north as our street. H considers graffiti, I mean street art. We sampled this cologne, and H wanted to go back and buy some, never could find the shop open. Hanging out and being cool.
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Post by lola on Apr 14, 2013 16:58:51 GMT
Street people of Paris: the southern colonnade of the Place des Vosges is lined at night with men in sleeping bags. The northern side, with all the art galleries and the fancy Hotel Pavillion de la Reine, stays clear. Must have hammered out some sort of an arrangement. Lots of people appear to be living on the streets, and silently solicit contributions. Others just seem to enjoy hanging out with friends and refreshment. on the Champs Elysees. Bad Santa on Boul Hausmann. Rue Saint-Antoine Some use the street as a shop.
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Post by mossie on Apr 14, 2013 18:06:23 GMT
Your daughter really knows how to use a camera, and she must have considerable charm to take pictures of the street people as she has. It distresses me to see so many people nowadays who have let themselves drop to that level, drinking out of the bottle as shown shows a total lack of self esteem.
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Post by mich64 on Apr 14, 2013 18:28:48 GMT
I think I many have mentioned this before (or definitely thought of it), of how impressed I am that she is able to capture complete facial expressions on everyone in group photos. She must be very patient while focusing a shot.
I would love to see the link for the apartment lola.
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Post by htmb on Apr 14, 2013 19:27:18 GMT
The apartment looks like a nice, open space with lots of interesting art, Lola. A really good location for you and your family, too.
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Post by lola on Apr 14, 2013 23:59:25 GMT
It was perfect for us, despite the few inevitable quirks. It might be a problem in summertime when you'd want ventilation, since it's on the ground floor. www.airbnb.com/rooms/218151 I see that Marine and Jones canceled someone's booking with 3 months' notice since the time we were there. That was sort of thing I considered in reviews. 3 months is a decent time to find something else, though, and they treated us fairly. Mossie, thank you. I think she looks non threatening and young, which probably helps. I have the impression that she mostly takes them on the fly, tells us to keep on walking and not stare. Thank you, mich. I suspect part of her trick is throwing most of them away, leaving the nicest ones.
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Post by lola on Apr 15, 2013 22:57:05 GMT
Some use the street as a dining room or reading room. Some think of it as an obstacle course. And others as a blank canvas. I didn't want to go to museums this trip. Since the weather was so fine, I wanted to be out on the streets as much as possible. The last time we were in Paris, I kept putting off H's request to go up the Eiffel Tower and said we would do that early this time. Christmas night we caught a bus that took us right down along the Champs de Mars. We still didn't go up, but H was fine with that. They're constructing some sort of inner structure on the second stage, with a glass floor I think, and scaffolding dominated underneath.
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Post by lola on Apr 16, 2013 2:56:19 GMT
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Post by bixaorellana on Apr 16, 2013 13:40:43 GMT
Wonderful "plot" to this thread & some great tips on choosing a vacation apartment. (makes sense that iconic landmark pictures are suspicious filler). Your commentary is succinctly interesting. The photos are just dazzlingly good. Each can stand alone or work perfectly in a silent essay. Wow -- she is really something! Re: how she does it ~~ I think she looks non threatening and young, which probably helps. I have the impression that she mostly takes them on the fly, tells us to keep on walking and not stare. Thank you, mich. I suspect part of her trick is throwing most of them away, leaving the nicest ones. I'd say she's got a brilliant eye for a good shot & has the sense to grab the shot before being noticed. Part of having a good eye is knowing what to throw away, but also which pictures can be made good by cropping. She obviously knows how to frame a photo, though, as it's obvious in all the pictures that she got what she was going for. You could always ask her! I feel I can learn a great deal about taking better pictures simply by looking at hers, but also that the girl inherited her mother's painterly eye.
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Post by Deleted on Apr 16, 2013 14:19:29 GMT
It is particularly wonderful to see these photos showing 'my' city in a way that I never manage to capture.
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Post by lola on Apr 16, 2013 15:39:01 GMT
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Post by bjd on Apr 16, 2013 16:37:29 GMT
Like for her Morocco pictures, I just have to compliment your daughter on her photographic skills. She's really got an eye, and it's nice that she uses it to take pictures of people.
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Post by mossie on Apr 16, 2013 18:19:02 GMT
Really excellent people pictures. Makes me want to ditch my camera Well done
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Post by lola on Apr 16, 2013 19:12:17 GMT
bjd, thank you!
Mossie, don't you dare do any such thing. I like it that there are so many ways to look at the world. (One per person.)
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Post by lola on Apr 16, 2013 23:43:54 GMT
Church
I haven't attended Midnight Mass in ages, but since we were more or less in the neighborhood I thought it might be fun to see how Notre Dame did it. As our trip got closer, I realized it was the cathedral's 850th anniversary year and that Christmas Eve Mass would be a televised big deal. Then I kind of forgot about it.
After we got back from looking at the department store windows (the tip for which my family thanked K very much), I realized it was after 10 PM and that Notre Dame couldn't be much more than 15 min walk or so. No one else was up for it, so I headed south towards the river -- my first glimpse of it -- and then east. Equal numbers of people seemed to be heading towards Ile St. Louis as away from it, but getting closer I could see what looked like many hundreds of people standing in each of two lines, snaking away farther than I could see. Obviously not possible for either the carol service or the mass, I climbed up the temporary grandstand, admired an unprecedented view of the facade, and listened to the choir projected on an immense screen to the side. The grandstand became packed and I surrendered my seat.
On my way back I stopped in at a candlelit church near our apartment, with creaky wooden chairs instead of pews, the air heavy with incense, solemn Bach on the organ, and a handful of the faithful.
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Post by lola on Apr 17, 2013 3:38:41 GMT
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Post by Deleted on Apr 17, 2013 11:14:02 GMT
I have been absorbing, savoring this report with a combination of admiration, gratitude, awe, and envy. Such wonderful photos and accompanying commentary. Any and everyone contemplating a holiday in Paris should experience this thread. You and your daughter are a dynamic duo!! I don't know where to begin but can tell you that you both captured a heart and soul/spirit of place and a feast for the eyes of what by all accounts was a most memorable chronicle of a splendid family holiday. Thank you both ever so much for sharing this with us Lola.
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Post by lola on Apr 17, 2013 14:52:20 GMT
Aw, thank you Casimira! Dear to hear! MC emails me: 'definitely appreciate the photo comments! It's nice to hear some real comments, because my friends on Facebook may "like" the pictures, but don't really give any meaningful feedback.' Christmas Day The holidays are a huge deal for Bob, who though mentally scarred by his parochial school education makes certain exceptions in his anti-religion policy. We have our own way of celebrating the holidays, like getting a free or cheap tree on the 24th and decorating it that evening, the "Bob Cratchit" dinner loosely based on the Dickens' characters' -- where sometimes the "goose" is a duck or cornish hens -- and announcing in advance that this year we're really not going to have many presents. Christmas Day, after a stab at our traditional home breakfast for the day, we all walked back past Notre Dame -- still enormous queues -- across to the Left Bank. Bob the anti-Catholic wanted to tour some churches. All of them had a large manger scene, often in the style of the church, set up inside, and all of them were well worth a visit. First we saw St.-Paul-St.-Louis, the old Jesuit church in the Marais I'd stopped in the previous night. I think MC took the candle photos there. (from the internet) St.Gervais stands on a medieval street that was MC's favorite shortcut from the Seine to our neighborhood. Gothic architecture and Flemish paintings. Also St-Sulpice, where the famous Delacroix murals were unlit, too gloomy to see well, and partly obscured by restoration scaffolding. St-Séverin, just beautiful, ancient. (On other days, my favorite church turned out to be the Basilica St-Denis, where we had taken the T1 tram also on Kerouac tip. Almost every king or queen is entombed under the soaring roof. Awe-inspiring. My least favorite was Sacré-Coeur, despite its beauty from outside, because it was mobbed with shuffling masses.) We were surprised by how many people were out on the streets, not just tourists (though H spotted Halle Berry), and how many shops were open. The Paul Boulangerie at rue de Seine and rue de Buci became one of our rendezvous spots for the visit, where we could sit outside with a pretzel roll and hot chocolate, sketch, and wait for others to arrive.
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Post by Deleted on Apr 17, 2013 16:44:06 GMT
Don't get me started on Paul! In any case, you will never see the name "boulangerie" on any of the locations, because all of its baked products come from suburban factories. However, don't get me wrong -- Paul sells excellent very good products, but people need to know the difference between a boulangerie and a 'baked goods' shop. You can only use the name boulangerie if the items are made on site by real artisanal bakers -- and it is a word I always look for on the establishment before setting foot in the place. As for Paul, I am not worried about him at all. It's even becoming difficult to find an autoroute rest stop without a Paul, and Gare du Nord, for example, has no fewer than 5 Paul outlets. Ironically, Paul in the United States has a better chance of being a boulangerie because there is no big central factory from which to deliver the products. However, since most of the locations at the moment are in Florida and Washington D.C., there might already be two Paul factories on American soil.
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Post by lola on Apr 17, 2013 17:07:10 GMT
Ha! Love it. I'm glad to get you started on Paul. My feelings for patronizing a chain were extremely mixed. But: I had been getting up before anyone else in the family and going out for a walk and baked goods, usually returning to a dark apartment and still-sleeping forms. I started lingering somewhere over coffee, and went several times to Miss Manon at rue St-Antoine and rue St.-Paul. They have a wood- and window-lined seating area, very pleasant, and it was not part of a chain. Instead of being increasingly friendly as had been my previous experience in neighborhood Paris bakeries, though, they seemed more supercilious every time. I don't need that. There's a Paul next door, and so by the end of our trip I went there for some most tasty bread if there wasn't a street market open. My favorite coffee spot by the end was Café Hugo, on the corner of rue du Pas de la Mule at the Place des Vosges. I'd avoided it thinking it would be expensive, but it turned out in the early morning to have a pleasant neighborhood-regulars feeling and reasonable prices. One morning I eavesdropped on a couple of tables full of men gossiping about the news of the day. Hugo has tango dancing on Tuesdays. This man has "regular" written all over him. A server on Christmas Day, across r.d. Seine and r.d. Buci. Man entertains Christmas Day crowds.
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Post by lola on Apr 17, 2013 17:15:04 GMT
I can understand the feelng towards English-speaking tourists, though, believe me. At another small bakery down rue St-Paul I was waiting my turn behind some elderly American women attempting to order entirely in English when an American man came in and asked the closing time, again in English without so much as a s'il vous plaît. That was farther into the tourist zone.
I stuck to French at all times with Francophones, except when I had to call the Vélib people to ask about the damaged bike I had returned, which was beyond my linguistic scope. I was grateful when people let us continue in French, as they usually patiently did. Generally almost everyone I encountered was a delight to deal with.
As a tip for the future, if I can ever afford to go to France again, does it work if I get even more supercilious, and just out-sneer the clerk when she -- always she -- starts being More French than Thou?
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Post by Deleted on Apr 17, 2013 17:26:16 GMT
No, I don't think that there is any cure -- or useful punishment -- for those people.
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Post by bjd on Apr 17, 2013 18:49:03 GMT
It hasn't happened to me for a very long time, and not really in France, but my usual response to sneering salesclerks or waiters was to think, "You are a salesclerk/waiter, working for a miserable salary. You are in no position to sneer at a customer."
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Post by htmb on Apr 18, 2013 1:00:35 GMT
Lola, I am really enjoying your delightful report along with MC's inspiring photographs. Absolutely lovely!
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Post by fumobici on Apr 18, 2013 3:41:30 GMT
Haha. I steadfastly refuse to budge from Italian or French when faced with service workers who want to show off their English with me. They can address me in English all they please, all replies will be in their language.
I don't know when I'll make it back to Paris but this thread is making me wish it were sooner rather than later. Maybe next year?
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Post by lola on Apr 18, 2013 17:31:51 GMT
For sure, bjd. Thank you, htmb! Yes, fumo, and thanks. We went twice on Sunday evenings after the girls' salsa dancing to Les Associés, a little restaurant just off the Place de la Bastille. The first time was our first evening in Paris, and I was a little annoyed when the waiter spoke English in reply to our French and offered us the English menu. The second time he confessed that he needed a place to study English during the daytime, since he worked every evening, and he was eager to practice and improve. Tout comprendre c'est tout pardonner. Speaking of Place de la Bastille. The dear and golden Spirit of Liberty rises above it all, in the act of discarding his chains. This from an earlier trip: He was surrounded by carnival rides during our time there, screams of delighted fear and human legs whipping through the air. We spent a lot of time in and around that hub, going to jazz clubs and to dinner at the Fée Verte, shopping at the Richard Lenoir market, catching a Métro. One time I noticed a group of Japanese tourists photographing a nondescript building, and read its plaque to realize this was the site of THE Bastille, this one, formerly with different kinds of screaming.
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Post by nycgirl on Apr 19, 2013 15:00:23 GMT
Your daughter is very talented. I especially admire her eye for people. I absolutely love all the portraits.
That's a great apartment you picked out. The books and the soft lighting give it lots of character.
You did indeed luck out with the weather. Everyone seems to be comfortable and not excessively bundled up. I never gave serious thought to going to Paris in the winter, but now I can see that I shouldn't write it off.
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Post by lagatta on Apr 20, 2013 0:00:21 GMT
NYC girl, it can often be milder in Paris than in NYC in wintertime. Since I live almost due north of you, it is almost always much milder in Paris than here in Mtl then - I don't have to wear horrid boots or a heavy coat. Conversely, we often have splendid summer weather and I find Paris can often be cool and grey.
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Post by lola on Apr 20, 2013 3:42:06 GMT
Thanks so much, nycg. Yes, we liked the apartment lighting a lot. Most of those books are about art or design. If anyone should stay at that apartment or vicinity, there were two nearby bakeries closed for holiday our exact dates that I'd love to try another time. One was just up at the end of the block on r.d. Turenne, and the other was on Bd. Beaumarchais. There were shops nearby for cheese and greengrocers, a Monoprix, pharmacies. Just around the corner is one of those small stores that sells a little of everything, open every day from 0800 till 2200 manned by the same polite clerk. I was comfortable with a light tweed jacket and gloves, and a fine cashmere scarf I bought at Richard Lenoir market. It rained just a little. The City of Light. I used to think that meant "lights", but there's something about the quality of natural light. l'heure bleue.
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Post by htmb on Apr 20, 2013 3:53:59 GMT
There's a bakery on a corner at r.d. Turenne where I've gone a few times to purchase meringues. Wonder if it's the same bakery you saw.
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