Hungry, and foiled again

As I walked toward the pedestrian bridge that links the Ile de la Cité to the Ile Saint-Louis, I thought of a restaurant I knew and have enjoyed several times. It's the Brasserie de l'Isle Saint-Louis (notice the old spelling), and guess what. It was closed up tight. It just figured.

I was starting to wonder why I had passed up some of the tempting restaurants along my way. This one, for example, in the Latin Quarter. Can you read the menu?

French beef braised with carrots for only 13 euros. Or a sirloin steak of Salers beef from the Auvergne at 18.50€. A slice of quiche made with Reblochon cheese from the Alps for just 12 euros. Oh well. I had also had my chance at the Brasserie Balzar across the street.

Scallops (Saint-Jacques) with boletus mushrooms was one of their daily specials. A "gaspacho" of fruit and berries for dessert. And why not a bottle of champagne? Kind of pricey though.

I would certainly have found something tasty at the Danton, over at Odéon a few minutes earlier. But I had just ambled on by, not thinking clearly.

I had stopped and looked at the menu and facade of a restaurant where I've never eaten before: The Bouillon Racine a.k.a. Bouillon Camille Chartier. That braised veal with honey and lemongrass for 16 euros would have been succulent and tasty, I bet. With a choice of either a bowl of watercress soup or a creamy, caramelly dessert.

The Bouillon restaurant is on the Rue Racine just a few steps off the Boulevard Saint-Michel. Again, I had walked on by. Why? Should I go back?

Still walking through central Paris

I'm still walking through Paris, looking for a place to have lunch. I decided against the Brasserie Balzar because it was too early and I wanted to keep walking. I looked at the menus at the Bar à Huîtres Saint-Germain but decided against that too. I wasn't sure I wanted to eat oysters, because the weather seemed too warm. Then I walked by Le Reminet, down closer to the river, but it seemed a little expensive for a quick lunch alone.

Yesterday I posted a couple of photos of Notre-Dame cathedral that I took from along the river on the Left Bank. Right after taking the second one, I looked back over my shoulder and enjoyed the view above up the Rue de Bièvre. President François Mittérrand had an apartment on this narrow street back in the 1980s and 1990s, so it was often closed off to traffic. It's open again these days.

I crossed the Seine on the Pont de l'Archevêché onto the Ile de la Cité and walked behind the cathedral to the pedestrian bridge that crosses over the to Ile Saint-Louis. I was enjoying the weather, which improved steadily as the day and the walk continued. The sun started breaking through and the view of the Right Bank was pleasant. The tall tower in the photo above is the Tour Saint-Jacques, which I had the pleasure of climbing to the top of (300+ steps on a narrow spiral staircase) in July 2013, when it was open to the public for just about the first time ever. I posted a whole series of photos from up there in August  and September 2013.

Above is the Paris Hôtel de Ville, or city hall, which is on the right or north bank of the Seine. The neighborhood to the north and east of it is called Le Marais ("the swamp" because that's what it was centuries ago before the land was drained and built up). It's one of the trendiest areas of Paris these days, after being a Jewish ghetto up until the 1970s.

Here's one more view of the Tour Saint-Jacques and the area around the big square called La Place du Châtelet (there used to be a "little château" there that was used as prison for years before being torn down) on the Right Bank. The biggest building, with the cupola on top, is one of the theatres at Châtelet. I still hadn't decided on a place to have lunch before getting my 4 p.m. train back to Saint-Aignan.

Silent Sunday

Whose shoe is this?

This foot and this shoe belong to one of the greatest Renaissance writers that France produced. In other words, he lived more than 400 years ago. A statue of him stands in front of the main entrance to the Sorbonne in Paris. While rewarding and entertaining, his writing is hard to decipher, for two reasons: first, his French is the old French in spelling, grammar, and expressions. Also, he peppered his paragraphs with quotations from the classics in Latin and Greek. He is said to have influenced many other writers through the ages, from Shakespeare (who was 30 years his junior) to Pascal and Descartes to Proust.

In his memoirs, he says that his father arranged for him learn Latin up to the age of six, before he was allowed to learned French or his local dialect. In other words, Latin was his native language and he had a purely classical education. It has been said that he loved his father dearly but didn't care much for his mother. He went to law school and became a judge. Later, he was a member of parliament and mayor of the city of Bordeaux. The French king Henri IV, who was assassinated in 1610 after a twenty-year reign, was a personal friend of his — they were from approximately the same region in southwestern France.

One of the authors snappiest quotes: « Sur le plus beau trône du monde, on n’est jamais assis que sur son cul ! » — "On the most beautiful throne in the world, one is still only seated on one's own rear end!"

His greatest friendship (it became legendary in France) was with a learned humanist and writer who was a member of the parliament in Bordeaux and who died at the age of 32, probably of plague. He wrote that if pressed to explain why they became such close friends, he realized he couldn't put it into words. Later, he wrote this about why they were friends: it was "because he was who he was, and because I was who I was." (In French, « parce que c’était lui, parce que c’était moi ».

Here's an example of French from the late 1500s. It's the author's preface to his most famous book:

C'EST icy un livre de bonne foy, lecteur. Il t'advertit dés l'entree, que je ne m'y suis proposé aucune fin, que domestique et privee : je n'y ay eu nulle consideration de ton service, ny de ma gloire : mes forces ne sont pas capables d'un tel dessein. Je l'ay voüé à la commodité particuliere de mes parens et amis : à ce que m'ayans perdu (ce qu'ils ont à faire bien tost) ils y puissent retrouver aucuns traicts de mes conditions et humeurs, et que par ce moyen ils nourrissent plus entiere et plus vifve, la connoissance qu'ils ont eu de moy.

Si c'eust esté pour rechercher la faveur du monde, je me fusse paré de beautez empruntees. Je veux qu'on m'y voye en ma façon simple, naturelle et ordinaire, sans estude et artifice : car c'est moy que je peins. Mes defauts s'y liront au vif, mes imperfections et ma forme naïfve, autant que la reverence publique me l'a permis. Que si j'eusse esté parmy ces nations qu'on dit vivre encore souz la douce liberté des premieres loix de nature, je t'asseure que je m'y fusse tres-volontiers peint tout entier, Et tout nud.

Ainsi, Lecteur, je suis moy-mesme la matiere de mon livre : ce n'est pas raison que tu employes ton loisir en un subject si frivole et si vain. A Dieu donq. De Montaigne, ce 12 de juin 1580.

And here's my translation, FWIW:

Dear reader, I give you this book as an act of good faith. Be forewarned at the outset that I had no motives other than the familial and personal in writing it. I had no preconceived idea about it being useful to you, or flattering to myself. I am not capable of such designs. I dedicate the book especially to my relatives and friends, so that after my passing (which will happen soon), they might gain a better understanding of my ideas and moods, and thus better and more fully preserve their knowledge of who I was.

If I had wanted to curry favor with the world at large, I would have focused the book on what I considered my best qualities, real or imagined. Instead, what I want is to portray myself at my simplest, plainest, and most ordinary, without forethought or artifice. This book is my self-portrait. My flaws will be apparent, along with my imperfections and naïveté, as much as public decency allows. If I had been born in one of those countries where people supposedly live in sweet liberty under the primary laws of nature, I assuure you that I would gladly have presented myself more completely, and completely naked.

So, dear reader, I am myself the subject of this book. There's no reason for you to spend your valuable time and energy on a subject so frivolous and vain. Farewell. From Montaigne, this 12th of June 1580.

Moving on up

This is one of those mornings when I've sat for an hour in front of the computer just gazing at my set of Paris photos. Well, not just gazing, but cropping and otherwise editing a lot of photos. I think this blog will stay in Paris a while longer.

When you walk up to the top of the Rue de l'Ecole de Médecine, you arrive at this big intersection.

Here's another view. Do you recognize the grand building or the restaurant?

A lot of professors supposedly are this restaurant's regulars.

Walt and I had lunch here once, years ago (not the only time). A well-dressed, very Parisian woman came in and took the table next to us. When the waiter came to take her order, she asked for just one thing: a big plate of creamed spinach. Then she started talking to us. « Je reviens d'un séjour de quelques jours en Espagne, » she told us, « et qu'est-ce qu'on y mange mal ! » She said she was just dying to eat some good vegetables again. I would never have dared order just a plate of vegetables in such a restaurant. Maybe she was a professor and a Brasserie Balzar regular.

Brasserie means "brewery" and brasseries are restaurants that are essentially or originally Alsatian. You can also order wine, of course, and the food often includes Alsatian specialties like choucroute garnie.

Yes, the big building is the Sorbonne.

It was in this building that I took masters-level classes on teaching French as a foreign language in the mid-1970s, and I also consulted as a native-speaker informant with Sorbonne professors who were teaching courses in American language, culture, and history. Later, I taught such classes myself in a different university building in the Latin Quarter.

Rue de l'Ecole de Médecine in Paris

Yesterday my friend Evelyn asked me in a comment if I had seen or knew the Rue Dupuytren near the Ecole de Médecine, the medical school, in Paris. I didn't really know the name, but it turned out that I had taken a photo up that little street last week. Here it is. Maybe Evelyn will recognize it.

The Ecole de Médecine is on the street of the same name. The street starts at the Boulevard Saint-Germain near the Odéon metro station and runs diagonally up to the Boulevard Saint-Michel near the Sorbonne. Here's what you see when you enter the street from Odéon.

The other day, the light was very nice as it shone on this elaborate frieze on the façade of the medical school building. Here is a full view followed by a closeup of the center portion of the frieze.

The Rue de l'Ecole de Médecine is one that I know well because, well, I also worked there back in the mid-1970s. About halfway up the street, at number 5, is this doorway. The building, an old school from the days of Louis XIV, has for years been taken over by the Université de la Sorbonne-Nouvelle (Paris III) where I taught classes way back then.

Right across the street from the Sorbonne-Nouvelle building is this old Pâtisserie Viennoise — a Viennese-style bakery — that is more than 85 years old.

I was known to pop into this place for a croissant or some other sweet treat from time to time — before, between, or after classes. This photo is mine; you can even see me reflected in the window as I took it.

Cafés and restaurants on the Boulevard Saint-Germain

I walked from the Pont de la Concorde on the Boulevard Saint-Germain all the way to the Place de l'Odéon. Saint-Germain and Odéon were my stomping grounds back in the 1970s, when I was working in Paris as a teacher.

The whole area has changed, but in Paris, the more things change the more they remain the same. The old Drugstore  is gone, as is the Pub Saint-Germain. But Flore, Les Deux Magots, and the Brasserie Lipp are still there. Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir are gone too, obviously. Juliette Gréco is 87 years old, but she still sings once in a while.

I like the way the place below describes itself on the little sign over the orange awning: Bistro-Resto-Café-Bar. There are many nuances covered by all those terms. Notice that Lipp is a brasserie, and the Auberge Saint-Germain in the first photo here is a bar, a restaurant, and a brasserie that also serves grillades or grilled meats.

I've never had a meal chez Lipp, which specializes in choucroute and other Alsatian dishes. It always seemed to upscale and expensive for my budget. Maybe one day. It looks like the awning needs replacing.

The Danton is at the Odéon metro stop, and I've eaten there several times over the years. I worked just up the street at the Sorbonne in 1974-76. None of these places, except Lipp, would be considered particularly fancy or expensive. I wouldn't mind trying them all one day.

Getting around in Paris

It is easy to get around in Paris. The fastest way to get from one place to another in the city is usually the metro. Problem is, you don't see much that way. On a nice day like last Wednesday, walking is always a good option — if you have time.

Other good options are the bus or the bicycle. Buses are good because you can sightsee as you go — but you need to know the routes. The bike is good exercise but you really have to pay attention to what you are doing. Still, next to walking, cycling is probably the best way to get a real feel for the city. There are many more bicycles in Paris now than back when I lived there.

Back in the early 1970s, when I first went to Paris and spent a few years there, people rode little motorized bikes called Vélos Solex or Mobylettes. You don't see those any more. But you do see a lot of bigger motorbikes and motorcycles. Lately, you see more and more of the bikes like the one above that has two wheels in the front and just one in the back.

Another thing about riding the buses is that you do have to wait for them. They don't run as frequently as the underground metro trains. Waiting gives you time to study the maps and learn the routes. Or just to sit and watch and wait.

I used to work in the neighborhood where I took these pictures. For a year or two I worked on the Rue des Saints-Pères, just off the Boulevard Saint-Germain. I remember having coffee or lunch many times in the café called Le Rouquet that you see above. But I never had a motorcycle.

I did a lot of walking. The guy in the photo above could have been me 40 years ago. I was skinny like that, from all the walking and stair-climbing. It was a healthy life. Last Wednesday I was retracing some of those 40-year-old steps as I made my way on foot from the Place de la Concorde over to the Gare d'Austerlitz.

Le Pont et la Gare d'Austerlitz

Until last week, I don't think I had ever walked across the Pont d'Austerlitz in Paris. The views of Notre-Dame and the buildings along the river on the Ile Saint-Louis were spectacular, as you can see.

I'm not being chronological here. This was the last part of my walk through Paris, and I was on the other side of the city from the Place de la Concorde. My train back to Saint-Aignan would be leaving from Austerlitz station at about 4 p.m.

Before going into the train station, I took a little detour through the corner of the Jardin des Plantes — the botanical garden in Paris — near the natural history museum.

As you can see, a lot of other people had had the same idea. It was the Toussaint (All Saints Day) vacation, so schools were out. There were a lot of children in the park with their parents.

Lunching on linguine and lavagnons

We are lucky here in Saint Aignan to have a seafood vendor at the Saturday market who comes here from the coastal town of Marennes-d'Oléron, an area where oysters and other mollusks are fished and farmed. Yesterday, we had a lunch of little clam-like coquillages (shellfish) called, in the local language of the French Atlantic coast, des lavagnons.

Les coquillages appelés « lavagnons » ou « lavignons » sur les côtes atlantiques françaises

As is often the case with little-known fish and shellfish, no one name has come to be used for this mollusk in all regions of France. In some places, apparently, the term used is lavagnon, in others lavignon. There is also a bivalve called the donace des canards (Donax trunculus) which some web sites describe as a lavagnon, but the photos I've seen of the shells make me think it's not really the same clam we bought yesterday. I think what we bought is Scrobicularia plana, known in the United Kingdom as the Peppery Furrow Shell.

I like to purge or « faire dégorger » bivalves like clams and cockles in salted water with a little cornmeal added. After a couple of hours in the water, they will have ingested the cornmeal and excreted any sand they might have had in their digestive tract.

We first discovered and devoured lavagnons when we spent a week on the Ile d'Oléron in May 2008. We had the bad fortune that year to arrive on the island (by bridge) during a general strike by the area's commercial fisherman. The port towns and fishing villages were closed down, and all the fish markets and supermarkets on the island had no fish to sell. It seemed silly to be on an island known for it's fishing industry and be reduced to eating meat and vegetables.

Just a minute or two in a hot pan with some olive oil, onion, garlic, and white wine is enough to cook the lavagnons.

The positive side of the situation turned out to be that only the fishermen and boats that go out into open waters to exercise their trade and skills were involved in the strike. On the local markets, the shellfish that could be gathered or grown along the coast were plentiful. We spent the week gorging ourselves on oysters and clams. And we discovered the little bivalves called lavagnons. They were less expensive than the other local clams, called praires and palourdes, and they are sweeter and more delicate.

Serve the quick-cooked bivalves with linguine or spaghetti...

Walt first noticed lavagnons on sale at the market in Saint-Aignan months ago, but we never had a chance to buy and cook any until yesterday. The fish and seafood vendor doesn't have lavagnons for sale every week, so you have to hit it just right. This time, by luck, we were ready and the fish vendor had a basket full of the little mollusks to sell. Walt was down there shopping and picked up 600 grams of lavagnons for seven or so euros.

...and sprinkle on a generous amount of chopped parsley at the last minute.

The photos here sort of speak for themselves. What we made was linguine with what is called white clam sauce (in other words, no tomato). Olive oil, sliced onion and garlic, salt and pepper, a pinch of hot red pepper flakes, some white wine, and some parsley. It takes eight or ten minutes to cook the linguine, two or three minutes to cook the onion and garlic, and then two or three minutes to open the lavagnons or clams in a hot skillet or wok. You don't want to overcook them. The whole meal comes together in less that a quarter of an hour.

Gilded Paris

These are just a few examples of Paris gold. The first photo is a long shot of the gilded figures decorating the end of the Pont Alexandre III that links the Grand and the Petit Palais to the Hôtel des Invalides across the Seine. I took the photo a ways upriver, from the Pont de la Concorde.

The Alexandre III bridge was built for the Universal Exposition that took place in 1900. It's the bridge in the first photo I published in yesterday's post.

Not too far from the Place de la Concorde on the Rue de Rivoli, near the Louvre, stands the golden statue of French national hero Joan of Arc, depicted on horseback. It's also a 19th century creation. Here are two photos I took on Wednesday morning.

Joan of Arc on horseback at the Place des Pyramides

Joan was the young girl who was instrumental in throwing the invading English out of France in the 15th century, at the end of the 100 Years War. Unfortunately, she and this statue have become a symbol and rallying point for the 21st century's far-right Front National, whose members would probably be happy to see all today's invading foreigners tossed out of the country.

Finally, this is probably the most striking example of gilding in Paris. It is just visible behind the Assemblée Nationale building (that's the French parliament) from the Place and the Pont de la Concorde.

L'Eglise du Dôme at the Hôtel des Invalides

The domed church is much older than the Joan of Arc statue or the Pont Alexandre III — it dates back to Louis XIV, who was France's "Sun King" from 1643 until 1715. Today, the remains of the Emperor Napoléon Bonaparte lie in a massive marble tomb inside this church.