Tuesday, March 27, 2007
Sunday 18 March 2007
Since coming back to Saint-Denis last Tuesday, N has been very relieved to pass on the responsibility and upkeep of his little garden to the neighbours below. He took over the garden when he bought this apartment ten years ago, when the door opening out into it was attached to an empty flat; over the last year or so not only has he acquired a large garden with plenty to do in Normandy, but is here far less often and the flat is now rented by a nice young couple. They were very happy to take it over, and it also meant that N was able to pass on to them several boxes of fertiliser, snail pellets and other garden products which have been clogging up the dining room floor, and that he is now able to take the set of gardening clothes belonging here, back to LNL.
On Thursday evening we went to the ballet at Opéra Garnier; our long-awaited outing to see Roland Petit's ballet based on music associated with Proust, showing various tableaux from "A la Recherche du Temps Perdu." We arrived far too early, and walked down the Boulevard des Capucines which leads off the Avenue de l' Opéra, as far as the Square Edouard VII; very elegant streets where I had never been before. There was even time to come back via Boulevard Haussmann and look at Lafayette Maison, where I had been with M & C only ten days ago, and which N didn't know at all.
Eventually we went into the opera house - the second time I have been there - and once again I was amazed at the décor and elegance and colour, mirrors, fabrics and marble, and yet at the same time relieved that I was not descending the polished marble steps in a long gown from the 1890's. The effect was slightly spoiled by groups of American and Japanese girls talking loudly and flash photographing everything in sight, and the standard of dress was not as high as that at Opéra Bastille, and way below that of the opera house in Bonn! (Perhaps because it was ballet rather than opera; lots of informally dressed ballet types.)
We had excellent seats, right in the middle of the back row of the stalls. The performance was divided into two halves representing tableaux from Paradise and Hell, most of which I was able to recognise, certainly with the help of the programme. They varied enormously in length, and the one we both liked best represented "Les Jeunes Filles en Fleur"; girls with white dresses and white hair-ribbons blowing in the wind, dancing in a wave-like fashion against a backdrop of the seaside to Debussy's "La Mer". The choreography was very ingenious and creative, and Petit himself bounced onto the stage at the end of the performance looking very unlike his 83 years old.
On Friday morning we went to Musicora, a sort of annual trade fair for classical music and musicians, which I had been to once before on a previous visit. This year it was being held at the Carrousel du Louvre in the Rue de Rivoli just next to the Musée des Arts Décoratifs, again where I had been with M & C the week before last. We went through an arcade of shops and restaurants and eventually got to Musicora, which was taking place in three large rooms.
N was most interested in the stands of stringed instruments and bows, many of which had come from outside France, Italy in particular; but we also looked at wind instruments, pianos and organs, sheet music, instrument cases and books on music. There were several groups of young children being shown round, many musicians trying out various instruments and fascinating people to watch. My favourite was the "France Musique" stand, where I discovered that had we been there at the right moment, we could have witnessed the live broadcast of the programme I usually listen to between 12.00 and 1.00 while getting lunch - "A Portée de Mots"; a rather sophisticated sort of Desert Island Discs. We missed the broadcast because N had spotted a nice-looking little restaurant area open from 12.00, and had wisely decided it would get more crowded later on. We had an excellent lunch, beef for N and savoury tart and salad for me, while listening to a series of flutes being tried out on an adjoining stand. Afterwards N bought the music for a Mozart trio from the Bärenreiter music publisher stand, and we looked at pianos and violins which were the basis of an auction taking place the next day.
I left N to go round and look at few things again, and went back to explore the shops in the concourse; a very large Sephora, a store full of crafts and embroidery and another selling lingerie and bags, then went to the Monoprix in the Avenue de l'Opéra and eventually on to the Forum des Halles. I was looking for shoes, which I didn't find, and thought it best to wait until in I was in Milan (!), and also for a round cushion cover - something which doesn't seem to exist - for a wooden chair with arms which came from Italy and has been until recently at N's desk in his attic. Because it didn't support his back very well, and because it has a wobbly back leg, it has come to live quietly in our bedroom, and it has been agreed that the round pink and green chintz cushion on it needs a white cover. I have decided that perhaps I can - and should - find amongst all the white embroidered and lace-trimmed linens which came from the Italian house, something which I could make into a cushion cover, so that the late owner's chair will have something of her own work on it. Unfortunately, by the time I have gone back there and had a look, if I find nothing, it will be some time before I am back here in Paris near the shops again.
I have not seen the Saint-Denis market on this visit, nor been to the cinema, there was nothing exciting showing this week. I have however managed to go to the beauty salon and have my eyebrows done by a new and friendly beautician who, when I said yes I was English, replied that she found it extraordinary that "le pudding" could be kept months or even years before eating. I said yes that was quite right, Christmas puddings, and that I had two left over in my cupboard to eat up soon, and that they would be even better than at Christmas!
N has played quartets and also played the piano quite a lot - when he was playing Gershwin just before dinner it sounded like a hotel bar. Before leaving LNL, I tried out a new Pilates DVD Madeleine had given me, only 25 minutes worth of exercises, so I brought it to do here, every other day of the five we have been here. I found an exercise mat in a local sports shop for only 3 euros 50 similar to the one I have at LNL; much better - and cleaner! - than lying on the carpet. I also bought a very lightweight sporty skipping rope; the aerobic exercise DVD I have been managing to do once a week at LNL has several skipping "intervals", and I am looking forward to trying it, which I don't think I'd better do here (could upset the neighbours underneath.)
We did go supermarket shopping to Auchan in the car yesterday, something we've not done here for some time. On the way to the car we took several carrier bags full of things to go back to Normandy, to make it easier when we load the car and go. (After four days in Milan next week, we shall have just two days here before we go back to Normandy again.) There are shops all around the Auchan supermarket and I looked in a shoe shop and found nothing I wanted, N meanwhile who only came in because I did, found and bought two pairs of shoes! We also went to Castorama next door and bought a set of wooden mouldings to spruce up the door to the boiler room, in the newly refurbished verandah. The wooden mouldings are to stick on the door to make it look panelled; I like the idea of having a Louis XV door to my boiler room. It took a very long time to drive home as the main road in Saint-Denis was closed to traffic - France was playing Scotland at rugby at the Stade de France and the street had become a "France-Scotland Village" with awnings and tables down both sides. This explained why we had seen men in kilts in central Paris the day before!
After an excellent today lunch prepared by N - it is a nice surprise not to know what's for lunch - we started reading "The Diary of Nobody", not quite the same as reading in front of the fire at LNL, and I don't think N thinks as much of my choice as of "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight", but it amuses me. But it is difficult not to begin writing in a Mr Pooter-ish way. I have also got well in to the novel by Moravia, far faster than when I read it for Part I Italian; sometimes I even forget it's in Italian.
Tomorrow morning we are getting up very early to get the 8.04 train to Milan which takes over 7 hours; N is anxious to know whether there will be anything to eat on the train; I should think there must be unless there are scheduled stops for the purpose. I hope we will have breakfast at the Gare de Lyon, which is conveniently on the same RER line as Saint-Denis.
Friday 23 March 2007
Last week the weather in northern France was dry and sunny with temperatures of about 16 degrees, so we assumed it would be at least as good if not better in northern Italy. Unfortunately our departure coincided with a severe drop in temperatures all over Europe, snow was forecast over eastern France on Monday and as we left the house just before 7.00 am it was barely 3 degrees! I had to wear my "emergency" gloves, kept at Saint-Denis. (Perhaps we shouldn't have been that surprised; the same week last year at LNL we had the heaviest fall of snow of the winter.)
Anyway, we got to the Gare de Lyon in good time for breakfast; there was a Restaurant du Train Bleu there, dating from when the Train Bleu left from the Gare de Lyon rather than the Gare d'Austerlitz, but a little grand for breakfast so we sat in the main concourse and had tea, coffee and croissants. The TGV train to Milan was very similar to Eurostar inside (with the same kind of buffet carriage where I bought sandwiches and drinks for our lunch) and after an hour or so passing through a bare unpopulated part of the middle of France we saw a lot of snow on fields and fir trees, just the sort of thing I had expected to see in Germany in January, conspicuous by its absence. After that came blue skies and sunshine, which we began to feel was "Italy" weather, but by the time we reached Milan in the afternoon having stopped at Chambéry and Turin, it was grey and cold. The station - undergoing extensive renovation - was a huge edifice completed by Mussolini (although N thought it looked Soviet in appearance) and the glass roofs over the railway lines made me think of Kings Cross. It is apparently the building with the largest surface area in Milan apart from the cathedral, of which more later.
N thought he had visited Milan before, but wasn't very sure when; I had driven through it twice in 1994 on the bus to and from Florence, when we had stopped each time for a half-hour break in a café, but remembered very well going past the vast cathedral. Later on two Italian girls lodging with me gave me a t-shirt with a print of the cathedral on it; as with many Italian t-shirts the design was better than the quality of the garment and sadly it didn't last long.
The first thing we did on arrival was acquaint ourselves with the Milan metro which we managed quite well for the most part of our stay, although never completely sure of the best way to get anywhere. There were three lines in different colours, which were fairly simple, but with very poor instructions on how to get from one to another. It all seemed very run down and dirty and, like the Rome and Barcelona metros, had nowhere near the colourful amount of advertising in the London and Paris systems.
N had booked our hotel by Internet, and was a little surprised to find it was run by a group of what appeared to be Chinese people, having expected an old Italian family hotel. Although fairly well situated, it was not ideal; it was not warm - neither the room, the bed nor the tea - and the breakfasts did not compare well with those we had enjoyed in Germany and Luxembourg. On the third night a very noisy group of guests arrived at about midnight, and I thought longingly of the silent hotel in Erbach.
That first afternoon we made for the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II next to the cathedral; a wonderful sort of giant "Passage Couvert", but three times as high, built in 1864 with mosaic floors and elegant shops and restaurants. As if this wasn't enough, it led straight out into the road in front of La Scala, which we spent some time looking at, a rather plain and simple building in daylight, but beautifully floodlit after dark. I especially liked the old orange trams running up and down in front of it, nothing like the sleek modern ones we have in Saint-Denis, more like the very old red and green metro carriages I remember from my fist visit to Paris in 1963. (During the visit I spent some time trying to take a photo of a stationary orange tram in the sunlight, eventually succeed in the shade. And there were more modern trams, covered in advertising, one dark blue one entirely given over to Nivea.)
As we had only had a sandwich lunch on the train we were hungry and ready for an Italian apéritif in an elegant bar in the Galleria - comparable with Spanish tapas! - generous red Martinis and a whole plateful of little savouries, as well as olives and crisps. We watched people going up and down and then went and investigated the Ricordi music shop opposite where N bought piano music, mostly arrangements of pieces by Tchaikovsky. Afterwards we walked up and down many streets, looking at buildings and in shop windows (a popular occupation in Milan) and eventually had a large dinner in a friendly little restaurant before taking the metro back to our hotel.
On Tuesday morning we visited a large and fascinating market, where I was right in supposing I would find inexpensive shoes. There were so many stalls to choose from, and we walked all the way up and down both sides before I bought loafers in both gold and red, for a few euros each. N enjoyed it all too, and bought two shirts and a tie, and we discussed cushions for the verandah but didn't think we should attempt to get them back on the train. I also bought some little wooden spoons and a chopping board in the shape of a pig, because it reminded me of one I'd had from Germany many years ago, and a second-hand jacket for 10 euros, in red wool and cashmere which I hope will fit well. Just when we thought we'd got to the end of the market we found the really interesting part, the fruit and vegetables; full of wonderful choice and colours, all sorts of tomatoes and various types of artichokes. (Later we saw carved artichokes in a medieval church, so they must have been around a long time in this part of the world.) Much of the produce seemed to have come from Sicily, including asparagus; N said it wouldn't be long before it was ready in Normandy but perhaps I'd like to get the train down every week and do my shopping here instead? The only thing which was practical to buy was a mixture of dried beans and other things for making minestrone which hopefully will still be all right by the time we get back to Normandy.
We had to carry our shopping around for most of the rest of the day, first of all having lunch in an area called Brera where we found a cheap and cheerful restaurant seemingly favoured by office workers. I was looking forward to eating gnocchi at some time during my visit, but here only found gnocchini; little pasta shapes. However they were good and hot which was the main thing; outside it was really very cold - various digital displays on buildings showed 9 degrees, the kind of weather where you wanted to be indoors, more like winter and not what we had expected at all. It did stay dry though; we carried umbrellas around but didn't need to use them.
In the afternoon we visited the Pinacoteca di Brera, an art gallery attached to the art department of Milan University, where the corridors looked just like those at the Sorbonne (but scruffier) and were full of art students and notice boards, as N said, just like student notice boards anywhere. Fortunately there were little lockers in the art gallery where we could leave all our purchases. We saw many different interpretations of the Madonna and Child, plus a few other subjects, the head of John the Baptist was a popular one, together with Saint Sebastian and various crucifixion scenes. Many of the artists were not well known (at least by me!) but there were a few paintings by Leonardo da Vinci, Caravaggio, Titian and Raphael. The most famous picture in Milan - Leonardo’s fresco of The Last Supper - we didn’t attempt to see, as the guide book seemed to suggest it was more or less impossible. The nearest I got to it was a very poor reproduction on a t-shirt on sale in a kiosk, which I resisted. I rather think Leonardo would have done so too.
After having spent nearly all day on our feet, we went back to the hotel, where N had a very long rest watching television, and I had two shorter rests punctuated by a visit to a branch of UPIM (a department store we knew from Aulla) at the end of the street near the hotel. At least it seemed very near, but required crossing about six roads round a large roundabout in order to reach it. It was all extremely interesting, and after a lot of looking around I ended up buying only very small items in view of the morning's bulky shopping: a salt cellar, face cream I knew from Britain but unobtainable in France, and a lipstick. In the evening we went out on foot in search of a local restaurant; they were few and far between but we made a lucky discovery; a small and seemingly inhospitable trattoria with a locked door and a notice advising booking in advance. The waiter seemed pleased to see us however, and anxious that we should appreciate, understand and enjoy our meal, which was excellent, if copious. I had deep-fried courgette leaves for the first time ever, and Pasta Tyrolese which turned out to be rather like Carbonara, with bacon, cheese and cream. We had no room for dessert, but the waiter thoughtfully gave us some pieces of hard sticky almond brittle with N's coffee. As we left and said goodbye - the door had to be unlocked for us - the waiter asked N in English which part of Scandinavia he was from, and was surprised when N replied in Italian that he was an Englishman living in Paris. We found, both during this visit and in other places we have been, that although we order food quite competently in Italian, French or whatever, waiters who hear us talking to each other are very keen to try out their English on us.
The next day - Wednesday - there was a radical change in the weather, bright and sunny and several degrees warmer, and we decided the time was right for taking a lift to the top of the cathedral and looking at the view. Like the station the cathedral was undergoing renovation, and there were boards over most of the front façade, but high up above it was nice and clean and brighter than I remembered from 14 years ago. We walked over the roofs and looked all over the city, at the patterns on the square below and at the mountains on the horizon. We then made our way - via the Post Office and other wide avenues full of shops - to the Pinoteca Ambrosiana, a beautiful art gallery; quieter and better set out than the Brera the day before. This lasted all the rest of the morning, and we then walked on - still in the sunshine - to the canal, where we had a late lunch before setting out to explore. It was my favourite meal of the whole stay - lovely fresh gnocchi with generous tasty pesto, and a glass of soft red Sicilian wine.
The canal had originally been constructed to bring the marble for the cathedral in the fourteenth century, and at some stage Leonardo da Vinci had had a hand in it. According to the guide book, its was now the best place for bars and nightclubs, but in the afternoon sunshine there were just a few people having a drink outside, and when you looked into the distance it was even a little like Venice. The water had mostly been drained, and there was work going on to reinforce the base of the side walls. We walked from there to the Parco Sempione, where we had our first outdoor ice creams of the season, read the paper, and fed some very tame sparrows who came to eat crumbs of Cornetto out of our hands. Afterwards we continued across the park to the Arco di Pace, very similar to the Arc de Triomphe in Paris, and erected as a monument to Napoleon III for having liberated the city from Austrian rule.
By this time our feet were very tired, even more so than the day before, and the thought of going back to the hotel and then out for dinner again seemed even more tiring, so we made our way back to the Piazza del Duomo (the square around the cathedral) and went to see what was on at the cinema. We got tickets for « Diario di un Scandalo » a dubbed Italian version of a new English film I had read about, and was interested in, although I think N would rather have seen the Asterix film. There was about 40 minutes to go before it started, just time to go back to the Galleria for an apéritif, not quite up to the standard of the bar on our first day, but well made up for by the excitement of having to take a lift to go down to the basement to get to the toilets.
The film would definitely have been better in English, but it was nice to see parts of England and London houses on screen. Afterwards we had a late dinner in the downstair room of a very quiet bar, and went back to the hotel.
Thursday was our last day - the train left at 4.10, so the first thing to do was to take our bags to the station and leave them at the Left Luggage. After that the plan was to visit the Castello Sforzesco, a huge fortified castle covering a large area within the city, and containing no less than five museums and a bookshop, but no kind of café or restaurant. We started with a musical instrument museum - while looking at the pieces of stringed instruments I was glad I had seen the modern equivalents at Musicora the week before. There was an interesting collection of harpsichords and pianos, some being demonstrated to a group of schoolchildren. We then went on to the decorative arts museum, and looked at china, porcelain, cutlery, glass and wrought iron, and after a look round the bookshop decided it was time for lunch, and walked back to a little restaurant on the edge of the square we had seen on the way in. We both ate spaghetti carbonara, and I had an amusing encounter with two Scottish girls while queuing for the toilet; there were so many of these when I was in Florence in 1994, I wish now I had written them all down.
After lunch we lingered slowly in the sunshine window shopping, and looked round a wonderful food shop called Peck - a little like Lafayette Gourmet, La Grande Epicerie and Harrods Food Hall all rolled into one. It didn’t seem very practical to try and take anything home however. On a whim N wandered into a shop called Camiccissima (very, very shirt) and persuaded by a very efficient sales assistant, ended up buying four shirts - the minimum allowed! When she tried to sell him four ties to go with them, he refused firmly saying we had already got quite enough to carry on to the train and that anyway he had « tanti, tanti cravatti » (so many, many ties……..)
At the station I saw someone carrying a Panettone (large spicy traditional Italian cake) in a box, and realised that was what we should have bought, so quickly went into a station shop and got one, managing to find several rare varieties of Ritter chocolate at the same time. We really did have a lot to carry on to the train then but coped with it all and once organised sat down with relief.
As with the outward journey, we enjoyed looking at the Alps as the train passed through, though much of the time we were going through tunnels under the mountains. Towards the end of the journey it was more like being on a plane than a train; we were able to order dinner to eat in our places (one dinner between us, plus wine) and gradually as it got darker more and more people went to sleep - though unfortunately not all of the babies and children and noisy businessmen - and there was also a strange popping of the ears.
It was 11.15 by the time we arrived in Paris, and very cold on the platform. We were able to get the last RER train to Saint-Denis after waiting about 15 minutes, and were home not long after midnight.
Since coming back to Saint-Denis last Tuesday, N has been very relieved to pass on the responsibility and upkeep of his little garden to the neighbours below. He took over the garden when he bought this apartment ten years ago, when the door opening out into it was attached to an empty flat; over the last year or so not only has he acquired a large garden with plenty to do in Normandy, but is here far less often and the flat is now rented by a nice young couple. They were very happy to take it over, and it also meant that N was able to pass on to them several boxes of fertiliser, snail pellets and other garden products which have been clogging up the dining room floor, and that he is now able to take the set of gardening clothes belonging here, back to LNL.
On Thursday evening we went to the ballet at Opéra Garnier; our long-awaited outing to see Roland Petit's ballet based on music associated with Proust, showing various tableaux from "A la Recherche du Temps Perdu." We arrived far too early, and walked down the Boulevard des Capucines which leads off the Avenue de l' Opéra, as far as the Square Edouard VII; very elegant streets where I had never been before. There was even time to come back via Boulevard Haussmann and look at Lafayette Maison, where I had been with M & C only ten days ago, and which N didn't know at all.
Eventually we went into the opera house - the second time I have been there - and once again I was amazed at the décor and elegance and colour, mirrors, fabrics and marble, and yet at the same time relieved that I was not descending the polished marble steps in a long gown from the 1890's. The effect was slightly spoiled by groups of American and Japanese girls talking loudly and flash photographing everything in sight, and the standard of dress was not as high as that at Opéra Bastille, and way below that of the opera house in Bonn! (Perhaps because it was ballet rather than opera; lots of informally dressed ballet types.)
We had excellent seats, right in the middle of the back row of the stalls. The performance was divided into two halves representing tableaux from Paradise and Hell, most of which I was able to recognise, certainly with the help of the programme. They varied enormously in length, and the one we both liked best represented "Les Jeunes Filles en Fleur"; girls with white dresses and white hair-ribbons blowing in the wind, dancing in a wave-like fashion against a backdrop of the seaside to Debussy's "La Mer". The choreography was very ingenious and creative, and Petit himself bounced onto the stage at the end of the performance looking very unlike his 83 years old.
On Friday morning we went to Musicora, a sort of annual trade fair for classical music and musicians, which I had been to once before on a previous visit. This year it was being held at the Carrousel du Louvre in the Rue de Rivoli just next to the Musée des Arts Décoratifs, again where I had been with M & C the week before last. We went through an arcade of shops and restaurants and eventually got to Musicora, which was taking place in three large rooms.
N was most interested in the stands of stringed instruments and bows, many of which had come from outside France, Italy in particular; but we also looked at wind instruments, pianos and organs, sheet music, instrument cases and books on music. There were several groups of young children being shown round, many musicians trying out various instruments and fascinating people to watch. My favourite was the "France Musique" stand, where I discovered that had we been there at the right moment, we could have witnessed the live broadcast of the programme I usually listen to between 12.00 and 1.00 while getting lunch - "A Portée de Mots"; a rather sophisticated sort of Desert Island Discs. We missed the broadcast because N had spotted a nice-looking little restaurant area open from 12.00, and had wisely decided it would get more crowded later on. We had an excellent lunch, beef for N and savoury tart and salad for me, while listening to a series of flutes being tried out on an adjoining stand. Afterwards N bought the music for a Mozart trio from the Bärenreiter music publisher stand, and we looked at pianos and violins which were the basis of an auction taking place the next day.
I left N to go round and look at few things again, and went back to explore the shops in the concourse; a very large Sephora, a store full of crafts and embroidery and another selling lingerie and bags, then went to the Monoprix in the Avenue de l'Opéra and eventually on to the Forum des Halles. I was looking for shoes, which I didn't find, and thought it best to wait until in I was in Milan (!), and also for a round cushion cover - something which doesn't seem to exist - for a wooden chair with arms which came from Italy and has been until recently at N's desk in his attic. Because it didn't support his back very well, and because it has a wobbly back leg, it has come to live quietly in our bedroom, and it has been agreed that the round pink and green chintz cushion on it needs a white cover. I have decided that perhaps I can - and should - find amongst all the white embroidered and lace-trimmed linens which came from the Italian house, something which I could make into a cushion cover, so that the late owner's chair will have something of her own work on it. Unfortunately, by the time I have gone back there and had a look, if I find nothing, it will be some time before I am back here in Paris near the shops again.
I have not seen the Saint-Denis market on this visit, nor been to the cinema, there was nothing exciting showing this week. I have however managed to go to the beauty salon and have my eyebrows done by a new and friendly beautician who, when I said yes I was English, replied that she found it extraordinary that "le pudding" could be kept months or even years before eating. I said yes that was quite right, Christmas puddings, and that I had two left over in my cupboard to eat up soon, and that they would be even better than at Christmas!
N has played quartets and also played the piano quite a lot - when he was playing Gershwin just before dinner it sounded like a hotel bar. Before leaving LNL, I tried out a new Pilates DVD Madeleine had given me, only 25 minutes worth of exercises, so I brought it to do here, every other day of the five we have been here. I found an exercise mat in a local sports shop for only 3 euros 50 similar to the one I have at LNL; much better - and cleaner! - than lying on the carpet. I also bought a very lightweight sporty skipping rope; the aerobic exercise DVD I have been managing to do once a week at LNL has several skipping "intervals", and I am looking forward to trying it, which I don't think I'd better do here (could upset the neighbours underneath.)
We did go supermarket shopping to Auchan in the car yesterday, something we've not done here for some time. On the way to the car we took several carrier bags full of things to go back to Normandy, to make it easier when we load the car and go. (After four days in Milan next week, we shall have just two days here before we go back to Normandy again.) There are shops all around the Auchan supermarket and I looked in a shoe shop and found nothing I wanted, N meanwhile who only came in because I did, found and bought two pairs of shoes! We also went to Castorama next door and bought a set of wooden mouldings to spruce up the door to the boiler room, in the newly refurbished verandah. The wooden mouldings are to stick on the door to make it look panelled; I like the idea of having a Louis XV door to my boiler room. It took a very long time to drive home as the main road in Saint-Denis was closed to traffic - France was playing Scotland at rugby at the Stade de France and the street had become a "France-Scotland Village" with awnings and tables down both sides. This explained why we had seen men in kilts in central Paris the day before!
After an excellent today lunch prepared by N - it is a nice surprise not to know what's for lunch - we started reading "The Diary of Nobody", not quite the same as reading in front of the fire at LNL, and I don't think N thinks as much of my choice as of "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight", but it amuses me. But it is difficult not to begin writing in a Mr Pooter-ish way. I have also got well in to the novel by Moravia, far faster than when I read it for Part I Italian; sometimes I even forget it's in Italian.
Tomorrow morning we are getting up very early to get the 8.04 train to Milan which takes over 7 hours; N is anxious to know whether there will be anything to eat on the train; I should think there must be unless there are scheduled stops for the purpose. I hope we will have breakfast at the Gare de Lyon, which is conveniently on the same RER line as Saint-Denis.
Friday 23 March 2007
Last week the weather in northern France was dry and sunny with temperatures of about 16 degrees, so we assumed it would be at least as good if not better in northern Italy. Unfortunately our departure coincided with a severe drop in temperatures all over Europe, snow was forecast over eastern France on Monday and as we left the house just before 7.00 am it was barely 3 degrees! I had to wear my "emergency" gloves, kept at Saint-Denis. (Perhaps we shouldn't have been that surprised; the same week last year at LNL we had the heaviest fall of snow of the winter.)
Anyway, we got to the Gare de Lyon in good time for breakfast; there was a Restaurant du Train Bleu there, dating from when the Train Bleu left from the Gare de Lyon rather than the Gare d'Austerlitz, but a little grand for breakfast so we sat in the main concourse and had tea, coffee and croissants. The TGV train to Milan was very similar to Eurostar inside (with the same kind of buffet carriage where I bought sandwiches and drinks for our lunch) and after an hour or so passing through a bare unpopulated part of the middle of France we saw a lot of snow on fields and fir trees, just the sort of thing I had expected to see in Germany in January, conspicuous by its absence. After that came blue skies and sunshine, which we began to feel was "Italy" weather, but by the time we reached Milan in the afternoon having stopped at Chambéry and Turin, it was grey and cold. The station - undergoing extensive renovation - was a huge edifice completed by Mussolini (although N thought it looked Soviet in appearance) and the glass roofs over the railway lines made me think of Kings Cross. It is apparently the building with the largest surface area in Milan apart from the cathedral, of which more later.
N thought he had visited Milan before, but wasn't very sure when; I had driven through it twice in 1994 on the bus to and from Florence, when we had stopped each time for a half-hour break in a café, but remembered very well going past the vast cathedral. Later on two Italian girls lodging with me gave me a t-shirt with a print of the cathedral on it; as with many Italian t-shirts the design was better than the quality of the garment and sadly it didn't last long.
The first thing we did on arrival was acquaint ourselves with the Milan metro which we managed quite well for the most part of our stay, although never completely sure of the best way to get anywhere. There were three lines in different colours, which were fairly simple, but with very poor instructions on how to get from one to another. It all seemed very run down and dirty and, like the Rome and Barcelona metros, had nowhere near the colourful amount of advertising in the London and Paris systems.
N had booked our hotel by Internet, and was a little surprised to find it was run by a group of what appeared to be Chinese people, having expected an old Italian family hotel. Although fairly well situated, it was not ideal; it was not warm - neither the room, the bed nor the tea - and the breakfasts did not compare well with those we had enjoyed in Germany and Luxembourg. On the third night a very noisy group of guests arrived at about midnight, and I thought longingly of the silent hotel in Erbach.
That first afternoon we made for the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II next to the cathedral; a wonderful sort of giant "Passage Couvert", but three times as high, built in 1864 with mosaic floors and elegant shops and restaurants. As if this wasn't enough, it led straight out into the road in front of La Scala, which we spent some time looking at, a rather plain and simple building in daylight, but beautifully floodlit after dark. I especially liked the old orange trams running up and down in front of it, nothing like the sleek modern ones we have in Saint-Denis, more like the very old red and green metro carriages I remember from my fist visit to Paris in 1963. (During the visit I spent some time trying to take a photo of a stationary orange tram in the sunlight, eventually succeed in the shade. And there were more modern trams, covered in advertising, one dark blue one entirely given over to Nivea.)
As we had only had a sandwich lunch on the train we were hungry and ready for an Italian apéritif in an elegant bar in the Galleria - comparable with Spanish tapas! - generous red Martinis and a whole plateful of little savouries, as well as olives and crisps. We watched people going up and down and then went and investigated the Ricordi music shop opposite where N bought piano music, mostly arrangements of pieces by Tchaikovsky. Afterwards we walked up and down many streets, looking at buildings and in shop windows (a popular occupation in Milan) and eventually had a large dinner in a friendly little restaurant before taking the metro back to our hotel.
On Tuesday morning we visited a large and fascinating market, where I was right in supposing I would find inexpensive shoes. There were so many stalls to choose from, and we walked all the way up and down both sides before I bought loafers in both gold and red, for a few euros each. N enjoyed it all too, and bought two shirts and a tie, and we discussed cushions for the verandah but didn't think we should attempt to get them back on the train. I also bought some little wooden spoons and a chopping board in the shape of a pig, because it reminded me of one I'd had from Germany many years ago, and a second-hand jacket for 10 euros, in red wool and cashmere which I hope will fit well. Just when we thought we'd got to the end of the market we found the really interesting part, the fruit and vegetables; full of wonderful choice and colours, all sorts of tomatoes and various types of artichokes. (Later we saw carved artichokes in a medieval church, so they must have been around a long time in this part of the world.) Much of the produce seemed to have come from Sicily, including asparagus; N said it wouldn't be long before it was ready in Normandy but perhaps I'd like to get the train down every week and do my shopping here instead? The only thing which was practical to buy was a mixture of dried beans and other things for making minestrone which hopefully will still be all right by the time we get back to Normandy.
We had to carry our shopping around for most of the rest of the day, first of all having lunch in an area called Brera where we found a cheap and cheerful restaurant seemingly favoured by office workers. I was looking forward to eating gnocchi at some time during my visit, but here only found gnocchini; little pasta shapes. However they were good and hot which was the main thing; outside it was really very cold - various digital displays on buildings showed 9 degrees, the kind of weather where you wanted to be indoors, more like winter and not what we had expected at all. It did stay dry though; we carried umbrellas around but didn't need to use them.
In the afternoon we visited the Pinacoteca di Brera, an art gallery attached to the art department of Milan University, where the corridors looked just like those at the Sorbonne (but scruffier) and were full of art students and notice boards, as N said, just like student notice boards anywhere. Fortunately there were little lockers in the art gallery where we could leave all our purchases. We saw many different interpretations of the Madonna and Child, plus a few other subjects, the head of John the Baptist was a popular one, together with Saint Sebastian and various crucifixion scenes. Many of the artists were not well known (at least by me!) but there were a few paintings by Leonardo da Vinci, Caravaggio, Titian and Raphael. The most famous picture in Milan - Leonardo’s fresco of The Last Supper - we didn’t attempt to see, as the guide book seemed to suggest it was more or less impossible. The nearest I got to it was a very poor reproduction on a t-shirt on sale in a kiosk, which I resisted. I rather think Leonardo would have done so too.
After having spent nearly all day on our feet, we went back to the hotel, where N had a very long rest watching television, and I had two shorter rests punctuated by a visit to a branch of UPIM (a department store we knew from Aulla) at the end of the street near the hotel. At least it seemed very near, but required crossing about six roads round a large roundabout in order to reach it. It was all extremely interesting, and after a lot of looking around I ended up buying only very small items in view of the morning's bulky shopping: a salt cellar, face cream I knew from Britain but unobtainable in France, and a lipstick. In the evening we went out on foot in search of a local restaurant; they were few and far between but we made a lucky discovery; a small and seemingly inhospitable trattoria with a locked door and a notice advising booking in advance. The waiter seemed pleased to see us however, and anxious that we should appreciate, understand and enjoy our meal, which was excellent, if copious. I had deep-fried courgette leaves for the first time ever, and Pasta Tyrolese which turned out to be rather like Carbonara, with bacon, cheese and cream. We had no room for dessert, but the waiter thoughtfully gave us some pieces of hard sticky almond brittle with N's coffee. As we left and said goodbye - the door had to be unlocked for us - the waiter asked N in English which part of Scandinavia he was from, and was surprised when N replied in Italian that he was an Englishman living in Paris. We found, both during this visit and in other places we have been, that although we order food quite competently in Italian, French or whatever, waiters who hear us talking to each other are very keen to try out their English on us.
The next day - Wednesday - there was a radical change in the weather, bright and sunny and several degrees warmer, and we decided the time was right for taking a lift to the top of the cathedral and looking at the view. Like the station the cathedral was undergoing renovation, and there were boards over most of the front façade, but high up above it was nice and clean and brighter than I remembered from 14 years ago. We walked over the roofs and looked all over the city, at the patterns on the square below and at the mountains on the horizon. We then made our way - via the Post Office and other wide avenues full of shops - to the Pinoteca Ambrosiana, a beautiful art gallery; quieter and better set out than the Brera the day before. This lasted all the rest of the morning, and we then walked on - still in the sunshine - to the canal, where we had a late lunch before setting out to explore. It was my favourite meal of the whole stay - lovely fresh gnocchi with generous tasty pesto, and a glass of soft red Sicilian wine.
The canal had originally been constructed to bring the marble for the cathedral in the fourteenth century, and at some stage Leonardo da Vinci had had a hand in it. According to the guide book, its was now the best place for bars and nightclubs, but in the afternoon sunshine there were just a few people having a drink outside, and when you looked into the distance it was even a little like Venice. The water had mostly been drained, and there was work going on to reinforce the base of the side walls. We walked from there to the Parco Sempione, where we had our first outdoor ice creams of the season, read the paper, and fed some very tame sparrows who came to eat crumbs of Cornetto out of our hands. Afterwards we continued across the park to the Arco di Pace, very similar to the Arc de Triomphe in Paris, and erected as a monument to Napoleon III for having liberated the city from Austrian rule.
By this time our feet were very tired, even more so than the day before, and the thought of going back to the hotel and then out for dinner again seemed even more tiring, so we made our way back to the Piazza del Duomo (the square around the cathedral) and went to see what was on at the cinema. We got tickets for « Diario di un Scandalo » a dubbed Italian version of a new English film I had read about, and was interested in, although I think N would rather have seen the Asterix film. There was about 40 minutes to go before it started, just time to go back to the Galleria for an apéritif, not quite up to the standard of the bar on our first day, but well made up for by the excitement of having to take a lift to go down to the basement to get to the toilets.
The film would definitely have been better in English, but it was nice to see parts of England and London houses on screen. Afterwards we had a late dinner in the downstair room of a very quiet bar, and went back to the hotel.
Thursday was our last day - the train left at 4.10, so the first thing to do was to take our bags to the station and leave them at the Left Luggage. After that the plan was to visit the Castello Sforzesco, a huge fortified castle covering a large area within the city, and containing no less than five museums and a bookshop, but no kind of café or restaurant. We started with a musical instrument museum - while looking at the pieces of stringed instruments I was glad I had seen the modern equivalents at Musicora the week before. There was an interesting collection of harpsichords and pianos, some being demonstrated to a group of schoolchildren. We then went on to the decorative arts museum, and looked at china, porcelain, cutlery, glass and wrought iron, and after a look round the bookshop decided it was time for lunch, and walked back to a little restaurant on the edge of the square we had seen on the way in. We both ate spaghetti carbonara, and I had an amusing encounter with two Scottish girls while queuing for the toilet; there were so many of these when I was in Florence in 1994, I wish now I had written them all down.
After lunch we lingered slowly in the sunshine window shopping, and looked round a wonderful food shop called Peck - a little like Lafayette Gourmet, La Grande Epicerie and Harrods Food Hall all rolled into one. It didn’t seem very practical to try and take anything home however. On a whim N wandered into a shop called Camiccissima (very, very shirt) and persuaded by a very efficient sales assistant, ended up buying four shirts - the minimum allowed! When she tried to sell him four ties to go with them, he refused firmly saying we had already got quite enough to carry on to the train and that anyway he had « tanti, tanti cravatti » (so many, many ties……..)
At the station I saw someone carrying a Panettone (large spicy traditional Italian cake) in a box, and realised that was what we should have bought, so quickly went into a station shop and got one, managing to find several rare varieties of Ritter chocolate at the same time. We really did have a lot to carry on to the train then but coped with it all and once organised sat down with relief.
As with the outward journey, we enjoyed looking at the Alps as the train passed through, though much of the time we were going through tunnels under the mountains. Towards the end of the journey it was more like being on a plane than a train; we were able to order dinner to eat in our places (one dinner between us, plus wine) and gradually as it got darker more and more people went to sleep - though unfortunately not all of the babies and children and noisy businessmen - and there was also a strange popping of the ears.
It was 11.15 by the time we arrived in Paris, and very cold on the platform. We were able to get the last RER train to Saint-Denis after waiting about 15 minutes, and were home not long after midnight.
# posted by Chez Katherine @ 6:15 AM 
