lexBlog

« Sadly, This Headline is Not a Joke | Main | Publicity! »

Mon, September 26

Back From Paris :(

It is 6.32 AM and normally I wouldn't need to wake up for another hour to go to work. But I have been tossing and turning since 1:00 AM and decided to do something constructive...BLOG!

Just got back last night from an absolutely perfect vacation in Paris and Provence. I'm a little sad to be back though--Paris makes me nostalgic and home sick for a life I don't have there. Every time I go it feels like home, and I can so imagine living there again (not as a student in study abroad, but as a working citizen!). It is always a bit of a downer to come home to the land of processed foods, New York accents, and dirty sidewalks.

I'll get over it!

So...We started out in Paris, where we were staying with friends of friends. Stephanie and Emric have an adorable top floor apartment with an amazing view of those Paris rooftops. It was a nice walk from most of our daily destinations, and believe me, you need the exercise with all that rich food eating. We did not visit a single museum during our Paris stay--when I go with J to Paris, it is more about the walking and breathing in the sights and smells and sounds of the city. We almost never take the metro--I never knew how small and walkabe Paris was when I was a student there (mostly because it was too cold NOT to take the subway at the time)! On the day we arrived we visited our favorite breakfast place, "Paul" on Rue de Seine for eggs au plat and quiche lorraine. Walked around some more, came home and rested, and before dinner, took a walk through the Luxembourg Gardens at sundown. We sat by the fountains and just admired how lovely everything looked in the late afternoon light, until the guards whistled for the garden's closing. It really seems like everyone in Paris is in love, or in a couple, and they all appeared to be at the gardens, sitting on these little chairs (you'd never see that in New York-someone would surely steal public chairs) as the sun set.

Dinner was at a place that one of my old professors recommended--it started out a bit stuffy, but the food was outrageous and once you've had a bottle of really good wine (for less than most bottles of wine here of course) any restaurant can seem like a party. I had a to die for roast duck ("caught at the peak of hunting season") in a fig sauce.

The next day we met my aunt Dot at her apartment near Les Halles. I knew Jess would love their place--they built it themselves and it is full of things like cool furniture from the Musee du Pompidou and an antique doll collection. My uncle is an artist, so the whole place is filled with whatever project he is working on at the moment. We had croissants that we brought from this great bakery, called "Kayser", and talked until it was nearing the afternoon. Dot brought us to this great big flea market at the end of a subway line, the Portle de Clignancourt. We spent hours walking through the 40 acres of stuff you could only dream of buying and of course, the usual flea market junk. Miraculously, she knew of a quiet indoor courtyard you could have lunch in, which is definitely off the Paris beaten track. It was there that we started drinking wine almost every afternoon with lunch. Talk about slowing things down a bit!

That night was my birthday surprise for J--I had reserved a cute hotel for us to stay in, since we both were not looking forward to sleeping on an uncomfortable couch that night. We were walking along complaining about an upcoming bad night's sleep when I said, "It's a good thing we have a hotel to stay in tonight." He was like, "What? No! Really?" I took him to our favorite dinner spot in Paris (which oddly enough, is British owned) called Fish, also on Rue de Seine. It is very young, fun, and unpretentious, with out of this world fish of course. But our favorite thing is the cucumbers and sesame seeds they put on the table when you sit down. The hotel we stayed in was small but adorable, and in the morning, this bright light was pouring through our French windows over a courtyard.

Did I mention the sky was bright blue and almost cloudless during our entire stay in Paris and Provence (until the last day or so)?

We gave in to the tourist thing and had breakfast at Les Deux Magots (an old Hemmingway haunt) to people watch along the Blvd. Saint Germain. We walked to the Louvre and took a nice little nap on a bench in the sun--that jet lag! The plan was to walk to Sacre Coeur. It took over two hours. We didn't take the usual route, where you find yourselves at the base of the church and you walk up a ton of stairs. No, we ended up taking the side route, up these insanely windy cobble stone streets. They are so windy and vertical, the houses seem on the verge of falling over. Yet, there's a bustling street life nonetheless--kids were playing in parcs as school had just let out, and parents were taking them to buy snacks at the patisseries. We rounded a corner on one of the steepest streets and heard classical music coming from one of the apartments above us. The sun was shining on a little stoop, and we sat there to listen for a while.

Sacre Coeur at the end of the day is well worth the trekking. The view is possibly the best in the city and at sundown the light filters through the stained glass and makes rainbow flecks of color on the church's walls.

We met our hosts and another Parisian friend for dinner that night just outside the Jardins du Palais Royale, where I later learned was the site where Emric had proposed to Stephanie. She had urged us to walk through the gardens on our way to the restaurant. There was a canopy of trees lining the parc vertically, creating a cozy passageway of shadows. A big bright fountain was lit up and bubbling on our right as we walked.

The next day we left via TGV for a teeny tiny village in Provence near Uzes, called St. Siffret where J's aunt had been living for the past three weeks (with her boyfriend). The boyfriend, R., was a major middle east correspondant, and he had unbelievable pictures hanging up of the figures he'd interviewed from Arafat to Dali. His house was one among a handful of 13th century ruins that had been restored into a number of breathtakingly beautiful mansions. Technically, his house was a stable that supported the chateau up on the hill but J and I called it "the chateau" nonetheless. We had a guest room that you accessed by going up stairs in the main house, going through a little gated door with windchimes, and a pathway that overlooked a courtyard. Our room was bigger than most NY apartments and overlooked the pool with two big french windows. Of course at night, I was spooked because the house was so old and the walls were made of thick concrete--who could hear you scream? There was actually a lot of talk about thieves in the area (J and I pictures those characatures of french thieves, with a little moustache and striped shirt), so we had to lock our doors every time we left the room.

J's aunt took us on a 16 mile bike ride through all these little towns. We biked through vineyard after vineyard and impossibly small streets (cars and bikes had to take turns). We visited the Pond du Gard, which I believe is the largest remaining Roman aqueduct in the world. Definitely a highlight of the trip. We stopped in Uzes for jambon et gruyere (with butter!) sandwiches, and admired the town square with all its little cafes and shops. This countryside is why biking was invented.

We had possibly one of the best dinner of our lives in a chateau in a neighboring town. It looked like something out of the show "The Bachelor." Does that make sense? There was an interior garden that was lit up just so, and these huge leather chairs that you sit in at dinner. Course after course came but it was more Jean Georges than french bistro. Each dish had tiny tiny tastes on the plate, so you didn't walk out feeling overstuffed but more super enriched by all the tastes and smells and sensations on each dish. I thought the cheese course was dessert--a small cup of hazelnuts in syrop accompanied with a slice of brie, and a little salad with apples and nuts. Even a perfect round dried apple chip. But no! There was more, a tray that held three different takes on banana and pineapple: A yogurt flavored creme fraiche with banana, a chocolate ganache with fresh pineapple on top and a banana flavored ice cream with flecks of pineapple inside and a dried banana chip on top. Heaven!!!

We visited the tiny towns about an hour to an hour and a half away, over the next two days: Baux de Provence, which was like a castle overlooking a valley. St Remis, which was the perfect provincial town and the site of an arch built in the time of Constantine. And all the while, the lavender fields, and countless wineries everywhere. On our last full day there, we woke up and threw on jeans with the idea of going to the local market before it closed, and ended up road tripping the whole day. We went to Nimes which is where there is the best preserved ampitheatre, where bull fights still take place. Everywhere you go are T-shirts with bulls on them or torreadors. We had lunch in a place we read about in a book where the specialty were these potato tarts. Very yummy and also very heavy! It was kind of like a mini Paris.

We almost died on our way back--we took a windy road that had a small stone fence along the side--the kind you see in car commercials (and later, on TV in our hotel, it actually WAS in a commercial), and avoided speeding cars the best we could. This one car passed us and tried to pass a van and they ended up getting in a minor accident. On the side of a cliff! I was praying the whole time and J was laughing. By the way, he only sort of knew how to drive stick until this trip!

Our last night, his aunt and her boyfriend had a fancy dinner party at the house. All the guests were separated at different tables so I had to fend for myself with a bunch of mainly superich American expats, but thankfully found one or two that were nice to talk to. Thank goodness for the generous amount of wine at dinner.

Finally, back to Paris for one more day. We shopped at the Grand Epicerie in the Bon Marche and nearly cried because we couldn't take home cheese and ham and all these good vegetables since they would never survive the flight. We had dinner at La Coupole, which I had passed countless times as a student but never had dared go inside because of the anticipated prices. When you wait for your table they give each guest a different fake business card, so when they call your name they say Victor Hugo instead of Alexis. Funny. I surprised myself and ordered steak tartare.

So now we are back. I didn't take ambien last night because when I took it on the plane on the way there I literally tripped. J witnessed the whole thing--I was going out of my mind. It was like dreaming but I had been awake the whole time. And it wasn't really fun! Call me a good girl, whatever.

Ok, time to go to work. Bleh. I'll write more if more comes to me....

Posted by lexzog at September 26, 2005 06:52 AM

Comments

Post a comment