Saturday Markets

This Shot's For You, Pops
Puff is here in Paris, she arrived yesterday. We woke up early today, caught the 1 train to the Franklin Roosevelt stop and walked over to the President Wilson Avenue market. Yep, apparently they like their American presidents over here (or at least some of them.) This is a shot of the cheese section of the market - it was fabulous, you woulda been in your element Dad. They also had an olive section that was about 20 feet long. We got a loaf of raisin bread, three kinds of clementines, some blood oranges, some roasted chicken drumlets and tea. We then came back home and put a small breakfast feast together.

Revenge of the Bug

My Mascot
I've been fighting some kind of flu bug for almost a week now. I had chills and fever last Thursday night but never quite caught the flu. I do feel pretty crappy though, as if the fight is now in the 11th round. Not to sound paranoid, but I believe everyone is sick over here in Paris due to the incessant hand-shaking that takes place when you arrive at work each day. Nice custom, I like it - just not in winter. I cut that practice out - I am the rude American now. At least I got a mascot - the perfect one - he pops up in the oddest places. I don't have a name for my bug mascot. Any suggestions?

A Tour of the 5th

Otherwise Known as the Latin Quarter
When I first got to Paris, I presumed the Latin Quarter to be the place where all the spanish-speakers would be. Call it a NY view of the world. Turns out, it's where many of the universities are and is so-named because schooling was done in latin way back when. Anyway, against the advice of my doctor (Dr. PingPing) I ventured out on Saturday while still recovering from a battle with the flu. I jumped on a bus and got off at the Blvd St. Germain and immediately saw a lovely view of the Pantheon looking south up rue Des Carmes.

I zigged and zagged my way towards the Sorbonne and as I got close I snapped a shot of what I believe is a faculty building. I am not 100% sure of it, but it sure looked like one. Not bad.

At the Sorbonne itself, tight security all around. There were guards at all the entries, checking ids. I slowed down to look through the doors but that's as close as I could get to the insides. Instead, I made my way to Place de la Sorbonne, shown below. I had a relaxing breakfast at a cafe there. The building in the distance is the Sorbonne itself - they're doing some kind of construction work on it.

As I made my way to the newsstand to buy a paper I caught site of a half-naked woman staring at me from the cover of a magazine ad. This is where the French are different from us Americans - nudity is no biggie here. Matter of fact, I've seen more pairs of tits here in three months than I've seen in my entire life. They're on magazines, tv, advertisements.....

As I rounded the corner onto rue Soufflot, the mother shot - the view of the Pantheon, looking east. It's a beautiful building , truly majestic. It is where many of France's beloved sons are buried: Voltaire, Rousseau, Victor Hugo, Emile Zola, Alexandre Dumas and many others. It's also the place where Foucault demonstrated the rotation of the earth by hanging a giant pendulum from the peak of the inner dome.

Continuing along, I found a nice plaza with many restaurants. I show the location of it on the map that follows, not sure of the name of it exactly. I will go back in future to try some of the food there.

Just off the plaza, there was a crowd waiting to get into a cafe for brunch. They were too sharply dressed for a Saturday so I figured they may have come from a wedding - I saw one letting out of a church near the Pantheon thirty minutes earlier.

The Jardin de Plantes was nearby so I took a walk through. It is a large botanical garden that has both walking gardens and indoor greenhouses. All the flower beds were empty - as you would expect this time of year. When spring arrives, this would be a nice place to visit.

As with most trees here in Paris, theirs were shorn geometrically to a precision that I find fascinating.

They make good photo fodder.

The Map

Working Hard - Ready to Crash!

But My Life is Easy by Comparison...
I've been working really hard lately, getting to the office at 7am and back home around 10pm. Today I have to deliver a big presentation and after it's over I am going to crash. It has me a bit stressed, to be honest. However, you sometimes need something to remind you how easy you have it. When I was changing from the 3 train to the RER at the Opera stop, I walked by some unfortunate souls sleeping next to the elevators. Most folks, when thinking of Paris, probably conjure up scenes of romance and adventure but it's a big city with all the attendant problems.

The Long Sunday Stroll

Have Shoes, Will Travel
I certainly didn't leave the house intending to walk five and a half miles, but that's what happened. I was on the way to top-up my metrocard at Les Halles and I took a right on rue St. Denis because it was blocked off from traffic - which I like. It was a beautiful, sunny day which made for good picture taking. This is a shot looking north up rue St. Denis at the Porte St. Denis.

Porte St. Denis was built by Louis the 14th in the 1670's to celebrate his various victories. It's the model upon which the more famous Arc de Triomphe was based. It's also the model for the arches that support the Manhattan bridge in New York, believe it or not. I wish you'd been there with me as I walked rue St. Denis - what I didn't know is that it's some kind of "ladies of the night" alley. Even on a sunny Sunday morning, a few were still out showing their stuff. Looked to be the 3rd or 4th shift - these ladies weren't the most attractive. If you click on this photo, you can see the birds flying through the arch.

Funny enough, I keep running into Sainte Foy. On Armand's behalf (Foy is his last name) I finally looked it up. It means "Saint Faith" or "Holy Faith" as in Christianity. It's the same thing as Santa Fe, the Spanish equivalent.

St. Denis leads to a "grand boulevard", in this case Bonne Nouvelle, which turns into Boulevard Haussman as it nears the Arc de Triomphe, miles away. I liked how this super-skinny apartment looked against the sky.

I turned off Bonne Nouvelle onto a smaller street because I liked the building in the distance.

It turned out to be the Eglise St. Vincent de Paul. I crossed rue Lafayette, walked up the stairs and sat in the sun for a bit. A woman was training her sheep dog on the stairs, as strange as that sounds. The dog wouldn't stay still long enough for me to get a good shot.

Further along, near Gard du Nord - the immense train station, I found an unexpected neighborhood. The writing looked familiar to me from Singapore - I was now in a Tamil neighborhood. There were all kinds of restaurants and stores specializing in southern Indian and Sri Lankan fare. I made a mental note - I will come back for some food here.

The neighborhood is known as "La Chappelle." Puffin, you can guess why I took this shot... No idea what a Singapore Silk Point store is, do you? I continued west to Sacre Coeur, and then south on rue Des Martyrs, one of my favorite food blocks. I bought a baguette at a famous patisserie and some Spanish clementines before heading home.

I made a map out of my walk. If you click on the various icons, you will get more info. The starting point is the man in the lower right corner of the map. Enjoy.

Not the Paris You'd Expect

Hockey at Hotel de Ville
There's a skating rink next to Hotel de Ville for the winter. I went to check it out and found an ice hockey game in full bloom. Not a pro game or anything - some kind of youth league. I am guessing the kids were in the 8-12 age range, but I'm not sure. As is typical at that age, they weren't spread out at all - the whole lot of them crowded the puck.

There was some good checking going on though. They came my way full blast, causing me to jump back as a pile of them crashed into the wall. Click on this photo and check out the kid on the right - he is swimming inside a jersey that is way too big for him.

This is more of a scene I would expect to see in Paris, I guess. This is a shot from the Luxembourg Gardens from the fall.

Back in the City of Light

Walking off the Jetlag
My new approach to the overnight flight is to drop the bags off at the apartment and start walking. Paris cooperated today - it was a beautiful sunny day. I started my walk as if I were going to work - heading towards the subway and stumbled into a beautiful park on the other side of Les Halles.

Eglise St Eustache, yet another large gothic church, was perched on the northern side of the park. It's hard to tell from this shot but I was standing on the top rim of an ampitheater built into the grounds.

A better shot of the church, looking west. That sharp object in the foreground, on the left, is a sun dial.

Further west are some interesting pyramid-shaped greenhouses that rise up from a sunken garden. I walked across one of the many small footbridges that spanned that garden and looked down into the greenhouses. They were filled with tropical plants of various types.

I found myself on rue du Rivoli when I exited the far corner of the park and walked west along it until I reached the Louvre. There is a food court underneath the Louvre, which has a giant inverted pyramid to let in light. I got a hot chocolate and people-watched - check that out here.

A Walk in the 10th

There is a Canal Here!
I knew there was a canal in Paris, but when I finally took a stroll over to see it, I was taken aback by its scale. It carves a deep, wide path through the 10th and even has functioning locks. Every 100 yards or so are footbridges that arc over to allow crossings.

I climbed one of the footbridges to take a shot of the canal from above. Note how wide it is. I didn't find much about it online - Wikipedia was sadly lacking in details. It was created by Napoleon during the late 1800s and from looking at the map it creates a shortcut in the Seine from an upper branch to a lower branch.

As I continued my stroll around the 10th, I saw another cool piece of street art. This one is a cow made from small tiles placed high on the cornerstone of a building.

Putting Mandarin Lessons to Use....

...to Fill the Stomach

After my disastrous French lesson last night, I put things right, in a way, this morning. I was walking down my block by one of the many Chinese restaurants and saw something familiar in the window. I popped in and asked the Chinese lady behind the counter in French if she spoke English. She shook her head "no" in a way that seemed to say "no, stupid, why would I?". What the heck, I held up two fingers and took a shot:

Wo yao er char siew bao. (I want two barbecue pork buns.)

"Bao?" She smiled, turned to the steamer and snagged two of the buns and began to wrap them up. I couldn't believe it worked, I was kinda shocked. There was a grizzled, shrunken man sitting off to the side who looked just as surprised. After paying, I thanked her in Mandarin: "tsieh-tsieh", took my buns straight home and devoured em. They weren't as well-made as the ones in Singapore, but they were sweet nonetheless. Later, I talked to Ping-Ping and learned that the sentence is wrong - there are two number systems - one for counting and one for requesting quantities. I'd used the counting one I learned playing Mahjong. Good thing I had two fingers up when I ordered.

The First French Lesson

Got Some Good News and Some Bad...
Which news you want first? The good? Ok, fine. The good news is that my teacher showed up. We arranged in advance to meet at the cafe inside the Centre Pompidou. She described herself in email as "red and curly" which I took to mean red-headed and curly-haired. As I made my way around the cafe, I noted an older lady, kinda sour, with red hair, but not too curly. Can't be her, I told myself and kept walking. Two trips around, not a single person with red hair other than the librarian I saw when I first came in.

Ok, what the heck - I walk up to her "Excusez-moi, etes-vous Florence?" I asked. What came back at me was a torrent of French. It was indeed her. She never spoke one word to me in English for the hour, I don't even know if she knows English. She spent the next hour trying to place my level. She gave me a written test, sort of a fill-in-the-blank deal to see if I could conjugate verbs, which I failed with flair. I assumed the tense to be present when in fact there were a variety, including present, past, future and imperfect. Man, I felt stupid. She mostly spoke and asked me questions that I wanted to answer but didn't know how to. I am at that stage where I can understand a lot and say nothing. I really felt like crying, I know how two year olds feel now.

Getting in Tune

Some Subway Music, Please.
These folks were playing Mozart in my train station this morning. They were pretty good, put me in a good mood. I listened for a while and snapped a few shots. I had a little package under my arm - a Praluline for my friends at work. Go here for details on the Praluline. We shared it over cafe au lait - it was a big hit!

I am getting in tune with Paris, it feels more and more comfortable by the day. Today (fingers crossed) I will begin my French classes and then POW, I should really be rolling.

We're Talkin Bout Practice....

Not A Game, Practice....
My Mandarin teacher just emailed me a recording of the first lesson. She pronounced everything so I could listen and practice prior to the second lesson on Saturday. Add to that the "supposed" first French lesson tomorrow and I'm rolling!! I tried to find a way to attach the recording here, but I don't think it's possible. If you heard it, you'd see what I'm up against! The characters below mean something like "Chinese language talent."

Tired of the Same Old Pics?

Another Sunrise From La Defense
Yes, I am tired of taking the same old pictures too. Sorry, but work is very busy these days. When I arrived at La Defense this morning, there was a nice sunrise taking place and I snapped off a shot. This is looking east towards the Arc de Triomphe in the distance. As you can see, the traffic is pretty heavy. On the new news front, I supposedly have a French tutor now. My first lesson is Friday, assuming she doesn't cancel. I have had no luck with French tutors, so I have my fingers crossed.

Sundays Really Are Slow Here

So, A Nice Walk Was in the Cards
I took a long, long walk to the left bank and ended up in St. Sulpice, which is a plaza with a cool fountain loaded with lions. I always forget that Sundays are pretty dead here in Paris - many neighborhoods are completely quiet. Mine is one of the few where there is a flurry of activity, so it seems that a lot of Parisians visit on Sundays. Lately, I've been discovering a lot of new food places. See the link on the right of the page to get over to the Puff List.