Falling in Love All Over Again - with Paris Part Two

(Part Two)

    It’s Monday and we have enjoyed the weekend as we settle in for another 12 days and to reacquaint ourselves with Paris.

    After a lunch at home of leftovers (heating up Saturday’s pizza), we wandered out onto Boulevard St. Germain for some flâneurie at one of Angèle’s preferred cafes, Le Rocquet. The waiter smiled big when I asked for une coupe du Champagne.

    It’s fun to sit side by side and watch people pass by. Tourists, locals, kids, elderly, families, students, beggars.

    After, we strolled down the boulevard past Les Deux Magots, past the old church, until we landed at the Chartreuse museum. Sadly the bar in the back was closed for a private affair. We’ll return.

    An additional disappointment in the Tabac next door: according to the purveyor there, our neighbour, Chris’s favourite pipe tobacco is no longer available in France. (We were charged with buying his pipe tobacco in Europe because it's cheaper. While I'm not a fan of smoking, his reminds me of my Dad.)

    We wandered back down the boulevard toward home, crossed the street to another café for more flâneurie and, surprise! We’re actually on Rue du Four!

    Our table at Brasserie Lipp was for six p.m. so we had the old people’s lie-down before making our way to this historic eatery on the Bd St. Germain.

    I will preface this next story with our own personal history of Brasserie Lipp.

    In the 55 years I’ve been visiting Paris, I had never been to this most famous of brasseries. Firstly, having spent those first 30-years travelling mostly solo, it was an uncomfortable thought to dine there alone. There were stories of indifferent waiters, and indifferent food.  One could not (until recently) actually book a table in advance.  I imagine the locals don’t have that issue but it kept me from hazarding a visit.  

    Until two years ago.  We dined there with the daughter of our cousin, we call her our niece (she’s French). She arrived moments before we did but we were seated at the same time, in the back of the restaurant. We had a glorious time. The menu includes all the typical brasserie goodies one expects, but more important, they serve choucroute.  Simply translated, it’s sauerkraut.  But sauerkraut in the elegant manner of the French, in a steaming concoction of all sorts of pork (wieners, pork belly, chop, knuckle) and flavoured with whole juniper berries. Oh my!  Well, we all enjoyed ourselves and we had a lovely and engaging waiter. It was a wonderful experience.

    Last year, Scott and I dined there again just the two of us.  We were seated up front and we both ordered different choucroute.  Much too much for the two of us but still the experience was just fantastic.  

    Lipp is another one of those finely designed art nouveau interiors from the late 19th century. High ceilings, organic murals with exotic animals and plants on the walls, tiles adorning the wainscoting.  We were keen to take our friend Sally there when she arrives next week, but we couldn’t wait, so we booked an early table for this evening.

    Catastrophe!

    Apparently, tourists are all now seated up front in order to be avoided by the local clientele who comfortably sit in the back of the restaurant. Well, okay, and most of us were, after all, American tourists up front.

    Our first course (look away PETA people) was delicious: foie gras for me and snails for Scott. Generous portions for both.

    But the omen for things to come, and the contempt shown by our waiter: dirty wine glasses.

    Then comes the main course, and frankly, it was inedible, at least Scott’s was.

    He ordered the roast chicken supreme. What arrived was a darkened piece of leather trying to pass itself off as chicken.  Both tables next to us also ordered the chicken and, if it could be, it looked even worse than Scott’s.

    My sole was edible but dry.

    And the waiter forgot my wine! Catastrophe!

    When we asked for the bill, the waiter made it a point to tell us an extra tip would go to him.

    In France, it is the law that restaurants must include a 12- to 15- per cent service charge for their staff.

    The waiter asked again how much we were going to pay.  I pointed at the sum on the bill and said ‘this.’ He once again (three times in the end) reminded us that the extra tip would go to him.

    I paid the amount on the bill.

    We went home and cancelled the table with Sally for next week, and found another famous art nouveau restaurant down on Boulevard Montparnasse:  La Coupole.

    The evening however, eventually turned rosier: the wine shop (Les Caves de la Mère Germaine) next door to Lipp had a very nice rosé Provençale and an excellent Pouilly Fumé from the Loire valley.

    So on we strolled down Rue du Dragon toward home, stopping at our little café for one last glass of wine.  This being the third visit at the Grand Café Dragon, the waiter and manager were happy to greet us and take much better care of us than the waiter at Lipp. They also didn’t ask for a larger tip. (But we gave them one anyway)

(end of Part Two)

Falling in Love All Over Again … with Paris

 

(Part One)

    We had the opportunity in October, to spend two weeks in an apartment on the fourth floor of a Hausmann building on the Left Bank.

    The modern-but-very-Parisian lift (three people max more comfortable with two) takes us up to the top floor-but-one, where we look out over the fashionable Sixth Arrondissement. 

    The entire floor is ours, the front three rooms retaining much of the glorious interiors of a more genteel age:  crown moulding one does not see today, lofty ceilings with floor to ceiling windows overlooking the street, balconies big enough on which to enjoy une coupe du Champagne, fireplace, chaise longue, herringbone wood floors (that creak).

    The rest of the flat is renovated in a modern but elegant style: Miele and Smeg appliances, airy and well-furnished.

    The quiet back bedroom has a large built-in wardrobe with plenty of drawers and hanging space. It’s also ensuite, with a walk-in shower.

    Since both of us are hip-challenged (I’m on the tail end of hip fracture surgery, Scott’s anticipating his second hip replacement early next year), the shower is a welcome addition. 

    Our favourite Italian eatery is just down the street; Place St. Sulpice and its excellent market are a five minute walk away, and cafes are plenty, where one can sit and watch humanity pass us by.  

    There was a time when we both had grown tired - even bored - with this city. Perhaps we’d gotten too familiar with it. Perhaps it was the beggars, maybe even the perceived snobbery of the locals.

    All of that is bull-shit of course.  One can live one’s entire life in Paris and never get too familiar with it. Beggars are everywhere in the big cities all over the world.  The locals are not snobs, they just cringe when they hear their beautiful language butchered. 

    This time around, we found everyone we encountered everywhere to be gracious, welcoming and patient with our bad French. All but one, that is. I’ll get to that later.

    We flew from Birmingham Int’l on AirFrance business class. The last time Scott flew out of BHX, it took him thirty minutes just to get inside the building to the lift that takes passengers up to security: heavy construction going on at that time.

    This time, there was no queue to get into the building let alone line up for the lifts. The same with security - no queues at all. We were seated in the AirFrance biz class lounge almost exactly two hours after leaving our flat in Ludlow. The road was clear and the airport was easy.

    Speaking of the AirFrance Lounge, they share it with their partner KLM, of course, and, if one is not in biz class, one can buy one’s way in if you want to pay £40 per person. 

    The lounge was not crowded. And it was an elegant way to spend the next two hours before our flight: I had a peach bellini (well, two). Scott had scrambled eggs and sausage with a spicy bloody Mary.

    The day was perfect.

    Yes, there’s a hitch.

    It seems the school mid-term break began yesterday. So today is the first day of a week off for all UK school children.

    It seemed as though all of those UK school children were on our plane to go to Disneyland Paris, with their parents.

    The plane was jam-packed with Disney-paraphernalia-wearing children and adults alike. I was terribly frightened.

    But.  We had a one row buffer between us and them.  We were in Row One Seats D & F and row two was empty. Turns out the flight was not chaotic with screaming children. They were all (mostly) well behaved.

    We have this ritual of buying a really nice box of chocolate for the crew, to thank them for their thankless jobs. Since we sit in Biz Class, they know we’re not seeking an upgrade.  And those lovely, chic French crew are always gracious and happy to be recognised.

    Since we were first off the flight and had only carry-on luggage, we were also close to first in a short queue for a taxi. Set fee to the Left Bank of €65.  The ride is not fast: traffic in and around Paris is still jammed. An hour after leaving CDG we were at the flat.

    The flat’s manager was there to buzz us in and show us around. As I mentioned earlier, this is a really nice place to stay, both inside and outside in the neighbourhood.

    We get settled, put our clothes away then head out to a café to flâneur with a glass of wine in hand.

    Flâneur is (obviously) a French term that roughly translates to “watching people go by.” 

    Looking at Wikipedia: ‘from the 19th century, a flâneur is an urban male "stroller", "lounger", "saunterer", or "loafer", watching, detached from those he’s watching.’ Basically he’s a people watcher, a voyeur.

    We like doing that: watching tourists, locals, old, young, oftentimes making up stories about them and oftentimes criticising their clothing.  Kind of mean but lots of fun.

Illustration of a flâneur by Paul Gavarni

    Anyway, we while away the afternoon before stopping into the supermarket around the corner to stock up on (mostly) breakfast stuff and wine, before heading back out for a pre-dinner glass down the street from Pizza Chic.

    We love Pizza Chic because it is staffed by Italians. Scott speaks to them in Italian. Even I speak to them in what little Italian I know.  They also serve great pizza.

    The first time we came upon this wonderful eatery, we had just arrived at our hotel, the Hôtel de L’abbaye, which is next door to a pizza parlour. We were both hungry for lunch.

    I wore a bright red winter coat to Paris that time. One of the staff, a quite good looking young man, came right up to me and said something rather flattering, I think it was how beautiful I looked. In Italian. You bet your ass I was in love immediately. 

    We were so very pleasantly surprised at our discovery of both a great pizza joint and the opportunity for Scott to speak Italian. We have come back several times over the last couple of years. Sadly, I didn’t see Antonio again. 

    Until tonight. We had booked a table for 7pm. and as we were being seated, I saw him across the room, smiled and pointed: ‘I remember you!’  He came over all smiles and said, in his rare English, ‘I remember you too!’ and gave me a hug and kiss.

    I was home.

    Back in the flat, it was kind of comforting to hear the metro rumbling far below.  Reminded me of sleeping in our London Hotel. 

    The clocks fell back last night. After jumping forward from London to Paris time on Saturday after our flight, we were kind of right back to London time. Weird, but no time difference felt.

    Sunday morning was lazy and we were anticipating a stroll down Rue de Rennes to Boulevard Montparnasse for lunch at the famous Bouillon Chartier Montparnasse.

    This kind of eatery is a prototype of the classic brasserie, but with prices that don’t kill the wallet. The concept was created by a butcher to feed his workers at Les Halles, the famous market that was Paris’ central fresh food market until it closed in 1973.

    The concept caught on and Chartier built several around the city. They were designed at the height of the Art Nouveau movement and many of them retain their original interior designs and an elegant space where one can dine without breaking the bank account.

    Alas, when we arrived at the famous bouillon, there was a queue of what looked like hundreds of people waiting to get a seat inside. Interesting that their website claimed ‘no waiting, always a table.’

    We strolled back up Rue Racine to a little cafe we stopped into before lunch, Cafe Raspail. They had very good snails and steak frites.

    After an afternoon nap (I walked 6,000+ steps today, glad to have the cane) we made the very short walk to Taokan Chinese/Thai restaurant just around the corner.

Classy little joint. Excellent cocktails (I had a Kowloon made with Veuve Clicquot). But their kung pao chicken was some of the best I’ve ever had. Wow. 

    After dinner, we took a stroll around the corner and up to Rue du Dragon to see what else was nearby. 

    It seems we have so many restaurants and cafes to choose from, just around our corner! There’s a pretty Japanese restaurant next door to Taokan, a sort of chess club cum bar cum cafe next to that (sadly no backgammon).  Then up onto Rue du Dragon, there are several, very good looking places.  We will have tried four of them in addition to the Japanese place by the time we leave.

    We found a little cafe for a before- or after-dinner glass of wine where we visited many times during our stay. The staff at le Grand Cafe Dragon got to know us, and we were grateful to be recognised.

(end of part one)

If It's Tuesday, It Must Be Hereford

This past weekend was not planned.

Oh, the actual weekend in London was, seeing family and friends.  And Scott playing backgammon in Prestbury.

But Sunday didn't turn out the way it should have, because of Storm Bert.  Yes, here in the UK we now name our storms.  We don’t have hurricanes or typhoons (yet) but we hate missing out on anthropomorphising our bad weather like the rest of the world.

Anyway, Storm Bert dumped a whole lot of rain on our part of the country.  So much so that the trains to Ludlow weren’t. There were no trains because of landslips (that’s the British term for landslide) and flooding.

I was dumped at Crewe.  Which is not a bad place to be dumped since it’s an excellent hub for many other routes.  But it kind of sucks to stay overnight there (apologies to the, I’m sure, very nice people who live there).

I briefly considered staying at the Hotel Ibis in Crewe and quickly realised ‘not’: Wilmslow was just one stop north of Crewe, and Scott was playing in a backgammon tournament nearby, not scheduled to return to Ludlow until Monday. 

I hopped on a train hoping he would finally see my messages so that I would know exactly where I was going.  He did and I cabbed it to Prestbury’s Bridge Hotel. Luckily, he was happy to see me (he won two of many matches) and we stayed the night.

Next morning, trains to Ludlow were still cancelled because of Bert, but they were going as far as Shrewsbury, an hour away from home, and a very nice place to spend a day and evening. We booked our favourite hotel, the Darwin Townhouse, small and eccentrically cosy with a staff who knows us. Two minutes after booking the hotel, the train driver came on and said that they were going to Ludlow after all.  We decided, however, to remain nomads for one more day.  So Shrewsbury it was: Italian lunch, French dinner - pretty good, actually. 

There’s an honour bar stocked very generously with both wines and spirits, so before bedtime we had a nightcap of Jack Daniels on the rocks.  Haven’t done that in a long time.

We sat in the front parlour across from one another, with a substantial chess board on the coffee table between us.  The bishops were like large salt shakers, that gives you an idea of the size of this chess board. Neither of us had played in a while.  (I haven’t played since Grand Rapids when my brothers beat the shit out of me every time. That was in the ‘60s.)

I remembered how each piece could move but that still didn’t save me from a stupid defeat. Clearly Scott had played more recently and successfully than I!

After a much better sleep on a much better mattress, we enjoyed a great Shropshire breakfast amidst an explosion of Christmas decorations throughout the public rooms. Everywhere you look there are Christmas trees, large and small. Christmas pillows on all the furniture. Holly wreaths on all the windows.  You know it’s Christmas time!

We made it home by train at 10:30 Tuesday morning, just in time to change clothes and ride to Hereford, about 45 minutes south of Ludlow for Scott’s pre-op appointment with the anaesthetist. (He's having a second hip replacement in January).

I came along because we were having fun being nomads, and one more night beckoned in another hotel we love, the Castle House, in Hereford. It is situated down the street from the magnificent Hereford Cathedral. An imposing monument both outside and in.  It is much more interesting inside, because it contains an original copy of the Magna Carta, with the seal of King John I (nasty piece of work I’m glad the lords cut him down to size! [although I think Claude Rains did an excellent job of portraying him in Errol Flynn’s Robin Hood])

The Magna Carta is not the only treasure here in the cathedral: one of the oldest maps of the world, the Mappa Mundi, is also on display here, an eccentric, circular piece of art which depicts the world as it was known in the early 14th century.

But wait!  There’s more!  

The cathedral was a repository for some very important, and rare, books, some pre-printing press and some after.  So valuable were these books, they were chained to the bookshelves where they resided.  Oh, you could take them down and read them (if you got special permission back in the day) but you could not check them out.  There they stayed, and there they stay today.

Such an easy stroll from the hotel, so we stopped on the way home for a late lunch, an excellent pizza, then a lie-down before cocktails in the hotel bar.  We decided a late, light bite was in order, and wandered down the other way to the bao and ramen fusion fast food joint.  Really pretty good!  It’s been awfully cold, so the hot sake warmed us up.  The chicken bites were spicy.  So spicy, in fact, that my lips were burning by the end of the meal.

A leisurely night and late-ish morning saw us boarding the train about 10:30, passing miles and miles of flooded fields and overrun rivers. 

So: London to Crewe, to Wilmslow, to Shrewsbury, to Hereford, to Ludlow. We’ve become more familiar with our part of England.  But it’s nice to be home.

One Small Step, One Fractured Hip

This past Sunday Roast at the Boyne Arms was a celebratory affair. It marks one month since my little mishap in the Boyne Arms Ladies Loo. The friends around the table are a celebratory bunch after all.

It all began on a lovely Saturday afternoon in the country, at the Boyne Arms with my friend Lucretia and her whippet Rosie for a pleasant lunch in the bar.

At the end of our meal I left to go to the loo.  Pushing the door open I strode into … air.  What I didn’t see as I pushed through the door is an elegant but small sign that says ‘Watch Your Step.’ There is indeed, immediately inside the door, a proper step down. So, I stepped into air, and crashed right down onto my right hip.

That hurt.

Boy that hurt.  

I still needed to pee so I managed to get onto the toilet, then managed somehow to get back out and into the car, hobble home from the car, get a glass of wine and sit on the couch, where I sat through a couple of episodes of NCIS.

When I realised I was going to have to get up to pee again, I couldn’t.

I just couldn’t get up.

I couldn’t get up to open the door to let anyone in. Thank goodness our next door neighbours have a key. They were at their local but returned immediately to let Lucretia in. 

She called another wonderful neighbour, Chris, a retired foot surgeon, who came and had a look while Lucretia called the ambulance.  Chris announced it was probably a fracture in my hip.

He was right.

I was advised that I really had to let Scott know even though it meant he had to leave the UK Open, the biggest backgammon tournament in the country, down in Leamington Spa. Lucretia immediately volunteered to fetch him and meet us at the hospital.  

When given the choice between Hereford and Shrewsbury hospitals, Chris, our surgeon neighbour, said ‘definitely Hereford.’ (he practised there).

Another neighbour and good friend, Carmel, came along with me in the ambulance and kept spirits up for both me and the EMTs along the way.

We arrived at the hospital and had a relatively short wait before being admitted into A&E (ER in the U.S.).

There were characters in the PitStop (as the staff called their A&E) all being triaged before sending us on. One, a bleached blonde wearing off-the-shoulder black top and sunglasses with some sort of painful rash on her legs. I’d call her a floozy except I don’t know her well enough. She was rolled out before the rest of my posse arrived (Scott & Lucretia).  

In her place came a raving man on another gurney - old, not ancient - but raving. Talking to himself, constantly repeating the same thing over and over again.

I navigated the bedpan for the first time in a very long time (1965).

It was just before midnight when I said goodbye to Carmel, Scott and Lucretia; as they rolled me into the hallway to wait for a free bed.  I was among at least a dozen others on gurneys parked head to toe, waiting for a free bed.

Prone on my back, I found my pink Viennese handkerchief and used it as a makeshift mask to block the bright overhead lights.  I actually fell asleep.

Until the raving man was rolled into his parking place at my feet. His raving hadn’t stopped, nor did it for the rest of the seven hours I spent next to him in the hallway. His wife and daughter would stand by him on occasion and quietly talk him down from his ravings.  But as soon as they went for a break, he began again.  ‘Help! Help! Won’t somebody help me. Won’t somebody help me why won’t somebody help me please oh god please won’t somebody help me.’  And on and on and on.  No more sleep for me. (Or anyone else in the corridor)

‘Round about late morning, I was rolled into a quieter place - a side ward with six cubicles around the corner from where I spent the night with the raver.  I could still hear him, though it was much fainter.

Until they rolled him into the same ward two cubicles away. The chant became “Jesus wept Jesus wept Jesus wept Jesus wept,” between cries of pain.

It’s all a bit of a blur, those first 18 hours, but I found myself in a bed in a ward called Dinmore up on the second floor of this vast NHS county hospital, along with four other elderly women, all who were in some stage of recovering from hip surgery. I think I was the youngest.

I was the fifth wheel in this ward designed for four people.  Not too bad though. Two loos (one with shower) for the five of us.

X-ray and C Scan later, it was confirmed that there was a hairline fracture at the top of the femur. Chris called it.

So surgery it would be.

During that first afternoon in the Dinmore Ward Number One, one of the patients was rolled out and another took her place.

Guess what?  Another raver! This time an 80-year-old Alzheimer’s patient who didn’t so much rave as scream. Any time a staff member tried to touch her, she would scream. 

This was especially annoying at 5:30 when morning rounds began.

Other than the screaming, all but one of the other patients were quiet and calm.

And the staff were good at keeping me informed.  The consultant on my case came to visit, thereafter referring to me as the Oyster Lady (when asked if I had any allergies - and I was asked often and by many - I said ‘oysters’. It stayed with him.) 

Off to surgery I went, met the nice too young anaesthetist who put a mask on me - breathing in pure oxygen.  When he said, ‘here it comes’ (or something like it) I said goodnight and that is the last I remembered until I was being wheeled back to my corner place in Dinmore Ward One.

I was out before being rolled into the theatre so I never saw the team working on the hip. I was told to stay in bed the rest of the day.

But boy was I rarin’ to go the next day, with the walker.  Day Four graduation to the crutches and taking to the stairs. 

Unlike the old (95) woman who has been here for two weeks, she still won’t even try to get out of bed.  Even though she was on a catheter, she started to need to have a bowel movement but wouldn’t get out of bed even for that. She was carried into the loo but that didn’t go much good.

Again in the middle of the night (3 a.m.) the place really seemed deserted. The absence of staff was deafening. The old bat started calling out ‘help help I have to use the loo.  Help help won’t somebody help me.’ When no one came she started pounding on her table.  (She’s also deaf) and she’d lost her call button down the floor.  I hobbled over to the doorway and shouted down the corridor for someone to come.

As for the day shift, the staff were efficient and friendly, all but one: Angie. Yes, I’m calling her out.  She is a nurse’s assistant but from what I witnessed very light on the assisting bit.  Whenever someone was looking for her, she couldn’t be found. ‘I was fetching coffee for a patient.’ 'I was helping someone else down the hall.'  She is one of those blustery creatures who thinks everyone is so glad to see her.

Not. 

The night staff stripped my bed just before the day staff came on. I was glad to sit in my special chair - better than hanging out in bed all day. But when I asked the (real) nurse to get Angie to make up my bed, Angie was put out. The pillow case was put on and the bottom sheet was put on but, ‘we’ll finish your bed when you’re in it.’ 

I wasn’t about to ‘be tucked in’ by this manipulator, so I ended up making up my own bed, Angie having left without doing it. 

She’s one of those people who insert themselves into the conversation between patients and their visitors. Even sitting down with them as if she’s part of the party. Doing little of her real work in the meantime. 

When I said I want to take a shower she said, ‘we’ll have to go with you.’  She didn’t and I was quite fine all by myself.

After another night in the fourth circle of hell, Day Five arrived and I was moved into a private room.  YAY.  I have a window that looks out onto a nice corner of Hereford.

I could still hear the screamer, but she was down the hall far enough that it didn’t bother me.

Coming home on Friday was a relief.

On Monday, hobbling over to the local GP for a B12 jab and a change of bandage was tiring. 

The following Monday (two weeks after surgery) the staples came off.

Mine is a real girly scar - barely two inches long. Compared to Scott’s which is almost a foot long.  Okay, I only had a couple of screws inserted - what they called a ‘cannulated screw fixation.’

‘Toe-step only for the next six weeks, Ms. Oyster Lady,’ said my consultant.

I’m one and one-half weeks away from the six weeks, on one crutch, and still wearing the damn compression socks. I did acquire a half dozen colourful pairs so I look a little less like a patient.

Scott has learned how to do my shit here at home and I’m grateful.

At the Sunday Roast, I snapped a photo of the offending step:

Gonna get a cane when we’re down in London next week. I want a statement cane.