Wednesday, December 12, 2007
Thursday 6 December 2007
Over breakfast last Wednesday morning, before setting off to drive to Saint-Denis we fell, as always, to discussing the inconvenience of the main gate, and whether or not it would be locked and the difficulties of having to go and park the car and walk back from the car park afterwards. N also mentioned again, as he often does, the very high service charges he pays for the apartment at Saint-Denis, because of its being a historical monument in need of repair, and somehow we arrived at the conclusion that perhaps the time had come to sell the apartment and buy something a little more modern, with lower charges and an integral parking space.
We continued the discussion on our car journey - the gate was unlocked but there was a car parked in front of it, and a van trying to gain access too. After lunch we walked round to the car park again, and drove to the big supermarket Auchan to stock up ready for the first of our three lots of guests, due the next day. We unloaded the shopping in three instalments, and I took it all in and up the stairs, and N took the car back to the car park again. By this time we were quite sure we wanted to start looking for something more convenient, and when he got home he had several house magazines for perusal plus an appointment with an agent to come and value the apartment at 2.00 the next day!
This meant that the cleaning and tidying I had planned before Madeleine's and Caroline's arrival on Thursday evening became even more thorough and necessary; I had done so much pre-house-viewing cleaning at Ainsworth Street that it still came very naturally to me, and I remembered the importance of flowers and made a special trip to the florist.
By the time our agent arrived - a nice efficient young woman called Audrey, who reminded N of Madeleine - all was clear and tidy; just as well as she took a good number of photographs. We remembered to give her a copy of our Lexique of English/French house-buying terms and N encouraged her to show all her colleagues! I said good bye as N took her down to show her the cellar; and said she would be in contact with a valuation in a few days.
Madeleine and Caroline were due at the gare du Nord just before 7.00, so we laid the table for supper before we left to meet them by car - yet another inconvenient trip to the car park!
On Friday morning M, C and I set off for the first item on their list - the decorated and animated Christmas shop windows at the Grands Magasins at Haussmann. (Ever since their first visit here two years ago these have become a firm annual favourite.) The windows were excellent this year; all white and silver and snowy with a Scandinavian theme, and I hoped that three-year-old Charlotte would be able to see them the week after. Afterwards we went into Printemps itself, also to C & A, Lafayette Maison and Casa, stopping for a traditional lunch on the first floor of a nearby café. We then went on to somewhere new for a change; a short walk to the Place de la Madeleine to visit the various departments of the wonderful food shop Fauchon, and the nearby Maille mustard shop. We were all fascinated by what Caroline called "draught mustard"; pots filled with different mustards the way mugs are filled with beer, and Madeleine said she would take the opportunity to bring her empty pot back for filling next time. We took a few photos of our Madeleine next to various signs with her name on, in both the street and the metro and then made our way home, stopping en route at the Carrefour supermarket in Saint-Denis.
M & C went out for dinner on Friday evening to meet up with some friends of Caroline's who were also visiting Paris, so on Saturday we got up a little later with the intention of visiting first of all an exhibition at the Louvre. N came with us on the RER as far as Châtelet and went on to the stamp album shop, and we took the metro on to the Louvre, stopping on the way to look at the platforms at Tuileries metro station.
The platforms of the Tuileries station were decorated with large posters in the year 2000 to celebrate 100 years of the metro, and are divided into decades with pictures, photos and writing of memorable people, events, transport, history, and music of each decade. I have looked at them from time to time while passing through, but never all at once. It took a while to see it all though, and we arrived at the Louvre somewhat later than planned. It was not long since I had been there last time - in September to see Souvenir de Mortefontaine - but Caroline had never been and was very impressed, especially with the great glass Pyramid and the huge area underneath, even better with sunlight shining through it.
Museum visiting made me feel as though I was back in Vienna again, getting tickets, leaving coats; especially as the exhibition we came to see consisted of Biedermeier furniture from Vienna and Prague; one I had heard advertised on the radio. It was a small exhibition - of furniture, textiles, porcelain and pictures, and was worth going to simply because I was able to find out yet more about the origin of Biedermeier! Apparently he was character in a Munich newspaper who liked living at home very quietly with no interest in politics or society, hence the homely cosy connotation. I wished I could have told the young man in the furniture depot museum in Vienna.
Caroline said, quite rightly, that having arrived at the Louvre and paid to get in we shouldn't leave it without having seen a few other things, particularly the Mona Lisa. This was easy to find, and displayed far more carefully and prominently than when I had first seen it on a school trip many years ago. We walked through a lot more Leonardo da Vinci and a lot of other Italian Renaissance paintings, and past the Winged Victory of Samothrace, and could have happily seen a lot more, but it was already 2.15 and we hadn't had lunch, and wanted to visit several other things in Paris. I said they should come and visit the Louvre again on another visit, but meanwhile told Caroline that she could find plenty more Italian Renaissance in the V & A in London.
We went next door to the shopping centre, the Galeries du Louvre, where Madeleine wanted to see the shop where I had bought her birthday present, Fragonard. First of all though we had lunch in a large gallery of restaurants where I hadn't been before; a central area of tables with little kiosks all round serving food of different nationalities. M & C ate Mexican, and I had French, where there was no queue! After visiting the afore-mentioned Fragonard, and a large Sephora, a big hobbies shop and the two Louvre museum shops, we caught a bus outside in the road going though the Louvre gardens and went on to the Bon Marché store in the south of Paris. We had hoped for a sit-down and some nice views on the bus, but it was very crowded with steamed-up windows.
Once at Bon Marché we all three bought Christmas cards in the basement, which required a lot of queuing in the over-heated store. After looking at toys and haberdashery - in the haberdashery I found myself queuing up behind the same family as in the basement, like some bad dream - we went to the Grande Epicerie next door, where Caroline spent a lot of time shopping and M and I sat down and had tea, joining in briefly with the shopping at the end. Finally at about 6.00 we phoned N and told him we were on our way home by metro from Sèvres-Babylone, a fairly direct journey.
He had prepared foie gras, confit de canard (out of a tin, delicious) and potatoes, and at M's request added a jar of peas and carrots, plus fruit tarts from the freezer. This was all very welcome after our long day. After dinner M, C and I played Scrabble - a luxury French set of N's, but we played in English. M won fairly decisively; I decided the only way I am going to get better at Scrabble is to play often, but with better luck I hope; I had first of all a Q, then a Z and an X, followed by a whole "hand" of vowels!
Next day the plan was to go the the Marché aux Puces (Flea Market) at Saint-Ouen, but the weather forecast for Sunday had not been looking good for several days. We set off for the bus in the rain, and spent the first half an hour or so looking at damp stalls and trying to keep dry. N went ahead and booked a table for lunch at the only restaurant in the market, where he had taken me years ago, and where the entertainment consists of a (fairly good) singer of Edith Piaf songs. The same singer was still there, although now looking considerably older than her picture outside the restaurant (don't we all?) and M was pleased as she had recently seen the new film of Piaf's life - I am still trying to catch up with it - and has subsequently bought several CDs.
The food was warm and filling, and was served quickly, and the place soon filled up. C said if you described it to friends at home they would not believe it, and M said she had never before been in a restaurant where the staff shouted at each other so much. We managed to string out our stay by having desserts and tea and coffee and by the time we left the place was packed and another singer had taken over, whom M, N and I thought looked very like Marie-Antoinette, our neighbour in Normandy.
Eventually we had to go out again into the wind and the rain, but managed to find parts of the market under cover, and spent some time looking at buttons, jewellery, cinema memorabilia, old clothes and books. Both C and I bought a book each in English and M bought some cinema postcards. N tried to persuade me to buy a book containing amongst other things writings by Proust not contained in A la recherche du Temps Perdu, called La Jalousie and dealing with the same characters, but it was 60 euros, which I though was too much.
By the time we got back to Saint-Denis the wind was very strong and the rain very wet, and after taking a detour to find a boulangerie still open we were very pleased to get home and stay home for the rest of the day. Over tea we all took it in turns to read one of the short stories from my new book; an English translation of The Necklace by Guy de Maupassant, a story I first read many years ago, with a clever twist at the end. (This was a sort of continuation of our Sunday afternoon reading; we had finished The Wind in the Willows the week before, and are waiting to start N's next choice when we get back next week.)
M & C's train back to London was due to leave early on Monday afternoon, so we spent the morning in Saint-Denis; including the Virgin Megastore, where they loved the toys and the stationery, the local C & A and some last minute shopping in Carrefour. After a speedy lunch, and saying goodbye to N, I went with them to the Gare du Nord, and waved them off.
It seemed a waste of time and a train ticket to go straight back home again, so I went one station further on to the Forum des Halles shopping centre, to Habitat where I bought two red plastic Tam-Tam stools to go under the kitchen table at LNL. I have been looking at these for some time, and wondering how to get them to LNL; but they weren't that difficult to carry in a very large plastic bag, awkward, but not heavy. It was a good opportunity as I wasn't carrying anything else, and after having been 10 euros each whenever I have looked before, they had gone up to 12 euros.
Over breakfast last Wednesday morning, before setting off to drive to Saint-Denis we fell, as always, to discussing the inconvenience of the main gate, and whether or not it would be locked and the difficulties of having to go and park the car and walk back from the car park afterwards. N also mentioned again, as he often does, the very high service charges he pays for the apartment at Saint-Denis, because of its being a historical monument in need of repair, and somehow we arrived at the conclusion that perhaps the time had come to sell the apartment and buy something a little more modern, with lower charges and an integral parking space.
We continued the discussion on our car journey - the gate was unlocked but there was a car parked in front of it, and a van trying to gain access too. After lunch we walked round to the car park again, and drove to the big supermarket Auchan to stock up ready for the first of our three lots of guests, due the next day. We unloaded the shopping in three instalments, and I took it all in and up the stairs, and N took the car back to the car park again. By this time we were quite sure we wanted to start looking for something more convenient, and when he got home he had several house magazines for perusal plus an appointment with an agent to come and value the apartment at 2.00 the next day!
This meant that the cleaning and tidying I had planned before Madeleine's and Caroline's arrival on Thursday evening became even more thorough and necessary; I had done so much pre-house-viewing cleaning at Ainsworth Street that it still came very naturally to me, and I remembered the importance of flowers and made a special trip to the florist.
By the time our agent arrived - a nice efficient young woman called Audrey, who reminded N of Madeleine - all was clear and tidy; just as well as she took a good number of photographs. We remembered to give her a copy of our Lexique of English/French house-buying terms and N encouraged her to show all her colleagues! I said good bye as N took her down to show her the cellar; and said she would be in contact with a valuation in a few days.
Madeleine and Caroline were due at the gare du Nord just before 7.00, so we laid the table for supper before we left to meet them by car - yet another inconvenient trip to the car park!
On Friday morning M, C and I set off for the first item on their list - the decorated and animated Christmas shop windows at the Grands Magasins at Haussmann. (Ever since their first visit here two years ago these have become a firm annual favourite.) The windows were excellent this year; all white and silver and snowy with a Scandinavian theme, and I hoped that three-year-old Charlotte would be able to see them the week after. Afterwards we went into Printemps itself, also to C & A, Lafayette Maison and Casa, stopping for a traditional lunch on the first floor of a nearby café. We then went on to somewhere new for a change; a short walk to the Place de la Madeleine to visit the various departments of the wonderful food shop Fauchon, and the nearby Maille mustard shop. We were all fascinated by what Caroline called "draught mustard"; pots filled with different mustards the way mugs are filled with beer, and Madeleine said she would take the opportunity to bring her empty pot back for filling next time. We took a few photos of our Madeleine next to various signs with her name on, in both the street and the metro and then made our way home, stopping en route at the Carrefour supermarket in Saint-Denis.
M & C went out for dinner on Friday evening to meet up with some friends of Caroline's who were also visiting Paris, so on Saturday we got up a little later with the intention of visiting first of all an exhibition at the Louvre. N came with us on the RER as far as Châtelet and went on to the stamp album shop, and we took the metro on to the Louvre, stopping on the way to look at the platforms at Tuileries metro station.
The platforms of the Tuileries station were decorated with large posters in the year 2000 to celebrate 100 years of the metro, and are divided into decades with pictures, photos and writing of memorable people, events, transport, history, and music of each decade. I have looked at them from time to time while passing through, but never all at once. It took a while to see it all though, and we arrived at the Louvre somewhat later than planned. It was not long since I had been there last time - in September to see Souvenir de Mortefontaine - but Caroline had never been and was very impressed, especially with the great glass Pyramid and the huge area underneath, even better with sunlight shining through it.
Museum visiting made me feel as though I was back in Vienna again, getting tickets, leaving coats; especially as the exhibition we came to see consisted of Biedermeier furniture from Vienna and Prague; one I had heard advertised on the radio. It was a small exhibition - of furniture, textiles, porcelain and pictures, and was worth going to simply because I was able to find out yet more about the origin of Biedermeier! Apparently he was character in a Munich newspaper who liked living at home very quietly with no interest in politics or society, hence the homely cosy connotation. I wished I could have told the young man in the furniture depot museum in Vienna.
Caroline said, quite rightly, that having arrived at the Louvre and paid to get in we shouldn't leave it without having seen a few other things, particularly the Mona Lisa. This was easy to find, and displayed far more carefully and prominently than when I had first seen it on a school trip many years ago. We walked through a lot more Leonardo da Vinci and a lot of other Italian Renaissance paintings, and past the Winged Victory of Samothrace, and could have happily seen a lot more, but it was already 2.15 and we hadn't had lunch, and wanted to visit several other things in Paris. I said they should come and visit the Louvre again on another visit, but meanwhile told Caroline that she could find plenty more Italian Renaissance in the V & A in London.
We went next door to the shopping centre, the Galeries du Louvre, where Madeleine wanted to see the shop where I had bought her birthday present, Fragonard. First of all though we had lunch in a large gallery of restaurants where I hadn't been before; a central area of tables with little kiosks all round serving food of different nationalities. M & C ate Mexican, and I had French, where there was no queue! After visiting the afore-mentioned Fragonard, and a large Sephora, a big hobbies shop and the two Louvre museum shops, we caught a bus outside in the road going though the Louvre gardens and went on to the Bon Marché store in the south of Paris. We had hoped for a sit-down and some nice views on the bus, but it was very crowded with steamed-up windows.
Once at Bon Marché we all three bought Christmas cards in the basement, which required a lot of queuing in the over-heated store. After looking at toys and haberdashery - in the haberdashery I found myself queuing up behind the same family as in the basement, like some bad dream - we went to the Grande Epicerie next door, where Caroline spent a lot of time shopping and M and I sat down and had tea, joining in briefly with the shopping at the end. Finally at about 6.00 we phoned N and told him we were on our way home by metro from Sèvres-Babylone, a fairly direct journey.
He had prepared foie gras, confit de canard (out of a tin, delicious) and potatoes, and at M's request added a jar of peas and carrots, plus fruit tarts from the freezer. This was all very welcome after our long day. After dinner M, C and I played Scrabble - a luxury French set of N's, but we played in English. M won fairly decisively; I decided the only way I am going to get better at Scrabble is to play often, but with better luck I hope; I had first of all a Q, then a Z and an X, followed by a whole "hand" of vowels!
Next day the plan was to go the the Marché aux Puces (Flea Market) at Saint-Ouen, but the weather forecast for Sunday had not been looking good for several days. We set off for the bus in the rain, and spent the first half an hour or so looking at damp stalls and trying to keep dry. N went ahead and booked a table for lunch at the only restaurant in the market, where he had taken me years ago, and where the entertainment consists of a (fairly good) singer of Edith Piaf songs. The same singer was still there, although now looking considerably older than her picture outside the restaurant (don't we all?) and M was pleased as she had recently seen the new film of Piaf's life - I am still trying to catch up with it - and has subsequently bought several CDs.
The food was warm and filling, and was served quickly, and the place soon filled up. C said if you described it to friends at home they would not believe it, and M said she had never before been in a restaurant where the staff shouted at each other so much. We managed to string out our stay by having desserts and tea and coffee and by the time we left the place was packed and another singer had taken over, whom M, N and I thought looked very like Marie-Antoinette, our neighbour in Normandy.
Eventually we had to go out again into the wind and the rain, but managed to find parts of the market under cover, and spent some time looking at buttons, jewellery, cinema memorabilia, old clothes and books. Both C and I bought a book each in English and M bought some cinema postcards. N tried to persuade me to buy a book containing amongst other things writings by Proust not contained in A la recherche du Temps Perdu, called La Jalousie and dealing with the same characters, but it was 60 euros, which I though was too much.
By the time we got back to Saint-Denis the wind was very strong and the rain very wet, and after taking a detour to find a boulangerie still open we were very pleased to get home and stay home for the rest of the day. Over tea we all took it in turns to read one of the short stories from my new book; an English translation of The Necklace by Guy de Maupassant, a story I first read many years ago, with a clever twist at the end. (This was a sort of continuation of our Sunday afternoon reading; we had finished The Wind in the Willows the week before, and are waiting to start N's next choice when we get back next week.)
M & C's train back to London was due to leave early on Monday afternoon, so we spent the morning in Saint-Denis; including the Virgin Megastore, where they loved the toys and the stationery, the local C & A and some last minute shopping in Carrefour. After a speedy lunch, and saying goodbye to N, I went with them to the Gare du Nord, and waved them off.
It seemed a waste of time and a train ticket to go straight back home again, so I went one station further on to the Forum des Halles shopping centre, to Habitat where I bought two red plastic Tam-Tam stools to go under the kitchen table at LNL. I have been looking at these for some time, and wondering how to get them to LNL; but they weren't that difficult to carry in a very large plastic bag, awkward, but not heavy. It was a good opportunity as I wasn't carrying anything else, and after having been 10 euros each whenever I have looked before, they had gone up to 12 euros.
# posted by Chez Katherine @ 6:46 AM 
