Sit tight, folks, you're in for a long one.
(82) is Monday, 29 March 2010
Mom, Dad, and I all made it back from Mont-St-Michel and St-Malo. Yes, we were all there, but no, we didn't meet meet up because, no, they didn't have a working cell phone.
Yes. Anyway.
This week saw me commuting a great deal, almost exclusively on the Metro Line 10 ("Aha, the title is explained!" I hear you cry). Mom and Dad were staying near Odeon, so like the week before, I would hop on the 10, go join them for dinner, and then go home for the night.
Monday's version involved me going to 'Reagir Sur la France d'Aujourd'hui', my "writing-intensive"* class at Reid Hall. I stuck around Reid Hall to make a few more reservations for Italy/Greece with Liz and Kirill. We're so close to finishing this one, and it's going to be epic. Also, I wound up the accountant for this endeavor, which is no small task when you have to do a round-robin of credit cards to make sure all four seats get booked together.
At any rate, I met up with Mom and Dad for dinner at Allard on Rue St-Andre-des-Arts. It's this little bistro with a rep for great food and American customers. They put us in the corner (unlike baby**), so we had a slightly tougher time than usual conversing. The restaurant also crammed in a lot of tables, so they had to move two or three other tables each time somebody had to get in or out. But ask yourself: would I really recommend the place in spite of these things if the food wasn't to die for? I had foie gras (of which I've become a great fan), a gorgeous cut of salmon that was perfectly prepared, and two beautiful profiteroles. This was all on a prix-fixe menu of something like 33 euros.
(83) is-- wait for it-- Tuesday, 30 March 2010.
Today, I didn't have class until 3:30 (on the count of 3-- 1, 2, 3: "Andy doesn't go to school.") today, so I met my folks for lunch at Fauchon, a rather haute-cuisine eatery at the Madeleine plaza and metro station. They had a variety of tasty-looking things on sale. I had a smoked salmon sandwich, which was great, but I held off on dessert in favor of getting macaroons (that's macarons-- with one 'o'-- in French) at Laduree a few doors down from lunch. These macaroons...
They sent Pierre Herme home to cry.***
We then walked a bit, stumbling onto a street with many well-to-do designer clothing stores. Not a bad walk, although I can't remember the street. We then came to Angelina at 224 Rue de Rivoli (east on the same street as the Louvre, away from Chatelet). This place is an old-fashioned tea room which also makes wonderful-looking macaroons and other pastries. The real draw, though, is the hot chocolate. As my father had explained it, it's "like being enveloped in a warm blanket of chocolate." It was just him being, well, my father.
Then I tried the stuff. With a dollop of whipped cream and parents who get too full to finish theirs... beautiful. That's the only word... that and "blanket-y".
So, I dashed off to class, my Reid Hall cinema one with the very detail-oriented, pause-every-frame film professor. Average class. Fortunately, it went by a little faster than 24 frames-per-hour.
Dinner this evening was at a great little place (in French, that's bistrot) called Le Bistro de Chez d'Henri on Rue de Princesse, which is tucked away near the Mabillon and Saint-Sulpice Metro stations. This place had the best scalloped potatoes I've ever had, with a prelude of tasty foie gras and accompaniment of a sizable, excellently prepared steak.
I then hopped on the 10 to go home.
How you doin', need to take a break? Why don't you take a break? I'll wait.
...
(84) is Wednesday, 31 March, 2010
After Hitchcock class at Paris VII, I met up with my friend Meredith from Vassar. Meredith, who is studying Art History this semester in Rome, came up for a few days of vacation with two friends from her program. I showed them around a little, including a visit to St-Chappelle, a gorgeous chapel tucked in with the Palais de Justice (Paris is big into tucking buildings, it seems). That other place is essentially the French Supreme Court, a few blocks from Notre Dame.
If you go to Saint Chappelle, make sure it's a very sunny day or, if it's alternating (as it was on Wednesday), stay in there until you get some sun. The walls composed almost entirely of absolutely spellbinding stained glass will reward your eyes most handsomely for the wait. You should also hope that they aren't renovating, because that big Saint-Chappelle themed tarpjust doesn't catch the sun as well. Although it's a good thing they're taking care of the place, because it does deserve it. You can also tell which windows haven't been restored yet, because those are much less clean and luminous. In any case, it was well worth the 5-euro student admission (I think it's 8 for adults).
We then walked in the sunnier weather a ways. They wanted coffee. "No," I told them:
"You want hot chocolate."
So, of course, at the height of my culinary decadence, I went back to Angelina for a second day in a row. The upswing of this one, though, was that I got to sample two pastries that Meredith's friends couldn't finish. One was a larger-than-bite-sized raspberry macaroon (I usually eat smaller ones). They're big on raspberries over here, but I'm generally not. I make exception for two things: one is raspberry-flavored vodka (especially mixed into a cup of lemonade) and the other is the raspberries in this macaroon, which were hands-down the freshest and sweetest I've ever had.
The other dessert was a pastry that looked like a ball of light-colored chocolate mousse that had been squeezed out of a Play-Doh mold (one of the ones that gives you a long, textured string of the stuff). It was relatively firm, though, and hid a core of creme. I can't remember what it was called, but I feel confident that the Play-doh description will lead you right to it.
After our little tea-time, I met up with Mom and Dad at their hotel to get dinner for their last night in Paris. We took the metro to Le Temps au Temps on 13 Rue Paul Bert. I hesitated to put that one in bold because I honestly didn't like it nearly as much as the other places. I'm given to understand that the owner/chef has left the establishment in the last 6-12 months. Every part of the experience just barely missed somehow. There wasn't much on the menu that really captured my imagination, the wine we had was fine except for a weird aftertaste, the asparagus soup I had was good but not great... the steak I got was actually very good-- that's what saved this meal from mediocrity-- although they never asked how I wanted it prepared. The dessert, which is now escaping my memory, was good, but it came with a scoop of ice cream that was already melting by the time it arrived.
Oh, well. Can't win 'em all.
So, I went back to the hotel with Mom and Dad, we said our goodbyes, and I took the 10 back home.
(85) is Thursday, 1 Octember 2010. Ha. April Fool's.
I went to Music in Cinema today, which was normal. When I was almost home, I got a message from Izzy, a friend of mine also in the VWPP, who wanted me to join her and some of our other pals at a bar and then a club that night. I was already making plans to hang out with Allix Wright and Christina Allen, two friends from Sidwell, so I skipped out on the bar.
Christina was visiting from her JYA music program in Florence (now there are two people I can visit when I get to Italy!), so we all caught up. We went to Le Volcan on Rue de Mouffetard, since Allix and I hadn't been there in almost three months (I hadn't been to Mouffetard in a while, myself). We knew, however, that dinner would be quite good, down to that same delicious Charlotte au Chocolat that I ordered last time.
I then met up with Izzy and the others at Mix Club directly behind the Tour Montparnasse at the Montparnasse-Bienvenue metro station on line 6. This place was pricey-- 15 euro to get in and 2 more for the obligatory coat check. But they gave you a free beer (which I gave to my friend Max for a few euros) and... you remember in the beginning of The Matrix Revolutions (I know it's the worst one, but go with me for a minute) where Morpheus, Trinity, and (I think) Niobe go talk to the Merovingian in that ridiculously awesome-looking club?
This was kinda' like that.
It was worth the price of admission to come out to that balcony and meet the visual of the crazy strobe and colored lights over hundreds of ERASUMUS students dancing a story below (some on elevated blocks and other platforms). I stayed and danced with my pals a while before taking the Noctilien home.
No duets on the bus this time, though.
There, you made it! Well done!
-Andy
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Footnotes
* "Reacting to France Today," whose exercises are all based on our experiences and other current events and stuff. Supposedly. In reality, we do about a page worth of writing per week, with our only big papers about 3-4 pages. One was reacting to a really simple article, and the other was a personal reaction to a French film of our choosing. Our mid-class breaks (which most French professors do) last anywhere from 15-25 minutes. Like I always say: I don't go to school.
** Nor Swayze, who is instead, regrettably, in the coroner's.
*** The vanilla ones were especially rich. I've realized that one of the things I like about Paris is that I am in a place where people appreciate vanilla as much as I do. It's no small thing-- in America, most people think vanilla is the boring flavor, the one you need to make interesting or add chocolate to or whatever (even though I really don't like chocolate ice cream). But not here. Here, they know that vanilla is not simple, but rather subtle. It is something that can stand on its own if you take the time to do it well, and that is exactly what people do. I think this also speaks to how people care more about putting time and care into finer tastes, not just chocolate ice cream because more people will buy it.
