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Paris, Part Three

October 26, 2018 at 10:29 am by Claudia

Good morning! It’s so cold here this morning! I had to run an errand yesterday and I noticed that the last time I was in the car before leaving on our trip, I had the A/C on. What a change in a little over two weeks!

We’re still coping with jet lag. Yesterday we fell asleep on the sofa at about 5:30 and slept as if we were drugged. We had to force ourselves awake to eat dinner, as well as not succumbing to sleep until at least 10 pm. Woke up at 5 am, just like yesterday.

I feel as if I am half in this world here at the cottage and half in the world we just left behind. I miss our trip. I miss the luxury of spending all day with my husband; exploring, learning, being. I miss seeing new places, chatting with those we met along the way, marveling at the beauty I saw everywhere. I’ll freely admit that I wish I was back there, much as I love our little cottage.

We’ve each said at different times that we feel transformed. We’re not the same.

Some more of Paris for you. (I have at least one more Paris post after this one.)

I’m in love with the Seine. Completely and utterly in love.

On the Right Bank.

The Place des Vosges. Gorgeous, with a little park in the center of the Place.

Notre Dame and the tip of the Ile de là Cité.

I think someone was moving, but I briefly considered stealing this table.

We went to Montmartre on our anniversary (more on that tomorrow) and the first place we sought out was this café, the Café des 2 Moulins. (Moulin means windmill and Montmartre is known for windmills.) This is the place where Amelie was filmed, her place of work. They now pay homage to their appearance in the movie, but it’s not over-the-top. We had lunch there. Absolutely charming.

There are obviously a lot of Amelie fans, as several people took the same photos we did!

In looking back at my photos this morning, I noticed that the street address in a couple of them is 21. Twenty-one is my favorite number, as it is the day I was born. I’m drawn to it – apparently, I’m drawn to it subconsciously, as well, as I had no idea that these numbers were there until today.

Another example:

Look familiar?

We went to the Marche aux Puces at Clingnacourt/St. Ouen on the weekend and I found a few things. This is a famous flea market and it’s HUGE. I had no idea! The antique/vintage section of it opened a bit later than the rest, so we had a bite to eat while we waited. Don bought a sweet watercolor, we bought a vintage lithograph (!!!) which will be sent to us. And I found a few little treasures – I went for “little” as I had to transport anything I bought home with us.

I found these two eggcups, which are darling. They’re not vintage, but they are so charming. And the morning glories just won me over. There were four of them, but I bought two.

Another egg cup – this one is indeed vintage. There’s a marking on the bottom that I can’t quite make out. I’ll have to study it further.

I bought this miniature pitcher for my collection. Isn’t it lovely?

And I finally found a vintage match striker. I’ve been wanting one for a long time. They were used in cafés and often served as advertising for a company. I really love them (oh no, another collection?) but I’d never found one stateside. There are some very high-end dealers there but that’s not what I was interested in. Finally, I found a wonderful warren of aisles that were just the ticket. That’s where I found the egg cups and pitcher and the match striker.

The name of the company that is advertising on this striker is Frémy Fils & Cie. (Frémy Sons and Company).

The other side: Eaux-de-vie et Liqueurs.

With matches:

And on the French bistro table:

I love it.

More tomorrow. I’m starting to feel a wee bit human again.

Even though we’ve been less attentive fans in the past couple of years, we’re thrilled that our Red Sox are in the World Series, so we’ll be watching tonight.

Happy Friday.

Seriously Jet Lagged, But We’re Home

October 25, 2018 at 10:22 am by Claudia

We’re back home. I wanted to stay there. Seriously.

But home we had to come.

Don took this photo of me in Hyde Park during our last night in London.

I’m still sorting out my emotions and my thoughts and feelings about our trip and everything I learned – about myself and about others. I’ll share some thoughts with you when I’m less jet lagged and slightly more coherent. I will say this: this trip was transformative and profound. And Don and I are closer than ever.

I apologize for falling off the face of the blogging earth but I just didn’t have the time to blog during the last week and a half of the trip. And I wanted to be in the moment as much as I could. I kept up with Instagram because it takes no time and if you follow me there, you’ll have a pretty good idea of what we were doing and seeing. IG is great for that.

I think that over the next week or so, I’ll share memories and photos with you but not necessarily in chronological order. Like today – I thought I’d share a bit about books and bookshops.

Because of the magic of IG, I was aware of two London bookshops that I really wanted to visit and I’m happy to say I got to both of them.

First up is Daunt Books. There are a few locations, I believe, but the one that was only a few blocks from our hotel was Daunt Books in Marylebone. (I chose a hotel in Marylebone because I stayed in a flat in that area when I was last in London – 17 years ago – and I was familiar with the area.) We visited the shop twice and, who am I kidding, I could have gone every day, and every time we visited it was full of book lovers.

Our first visit was in the evening and it did not disappoint. I was unable to explore every inch of the shop because there was a talk and signing scheduled for that evening in the back of the shop.

And in the daytime:

What more could you ask for? A knowledgeable staff, tons of books on all subjects, maps, children’s literature, literary magazines, beautiful wrapping papers. This shop has loyal customers and it’s easy to see why. Both Don and I bought books here and the second time I visited, they gave me a cloth bag with their logo. I was as excited as a little kid.

Then there is John Sandoe Books. A particular instagrammer visits this shop a lot and her photos of the interior made me swoon. So we hopped on the Circle Line and got off in Sloane Square and walked a few blocks to the shop.

I was already about to faint when I saw the outside.

Inside? Absolute heaven.

There’s a downstairs and two narrow winding staircases lead to the upstairs. There are books everywhere.

Photos of authors are everywhere. This is a stairway wall and that’s Sir Ralph Richardson.

Just to the right are shelves of Persephone Books, an imprint that is re-publishing twentieth century female authors. They have their own bookshop, as well, but I didn’t have the time to get there.

Just below the gray Persephones are past editions of Slightly Foxed, a literary quarterly that I follow on Instagram. I’m thinking of subscribing but I wanted to read an edition first. I bought an edition from 2015 here at John Sandoe and I bought the current Fall edition at Daunt Books.

You can see from this photo that I decided on Number 43.

Upstairs.

View from the window seat.

Don took this of me reading. Sitting on the window seat, of course.

I would move to London just to be near these bookshops. I’m not kidding, I’m deadly serious. I love them both, but John Sandoe is the fulfillment of all my bookshop dreams.

Sigh.

I bought these:

Two editions of Slightly Foxed, the literary quarterly, a Persephone edition of Cheerful Weather for the Wedding by Julia Strachey, Edward St. Aubyn’s latest, Dunbar, and Parisians by Graham Robb. Don bought a compendium of Orwell’s writings on Truth.

Two more buys, but I must give you a brief back story. I’ve always wanted to collect editions of To Kill a Mockingbird that are written in different languages – actually, I got the idea from Don. If you remember, back when Don was shooting that movie for PBS in Prague, he searched everywhere for an edition in Czech, but couldn’t find one. So I went to Paris hoping to find one in French. But I ended up in a lot of English language bookshops, like Shakespeare and Company, so that didn’t help. Finally, one day on the Right Bank, I walked into a tiny little shop and found it. Huzzah! Then I found a 50th Anniversary edition issued by a London publisher at Daunt Books.

I love them both.

Okay. That’s it for today. We are seriously jet lagged and right now I feel like I’m wading through muck. I have to rest. Our muscles are aching from so much walking, much of it on cobblestones. I can’t even begin to estimate how many miles we walked. And I have to do some coaching on Anastasia Broadway in a few days, so I need to be kind to myself and give myself time to recover and to re-enter.

I missed you.

Happy Thursday.

Paris, Part 2

October 14, 2018 at 12:07 pm by Claudia

Hold onto your hats – lots of photos ahead.

To be perfectly honest, I get overwhelmed when it’s time to write a post as I have taken thousands of photos. Thousands. Many on the big girl camera, many on the iPhone. It depends on whether I want to lug around the heavier camera on any given day. Trying to sort through them in some sort of coherent way can be daunting!

Short and sweet: We have had the most glorious week here in Paris. I cannot express how deeply I have fallen in love with this city. If we could swing it, Don and I would move here in a flash. I’m perfectly serious. I love the people, I love the energy, the beauty, the everything. We’re already planning a return trip for next year. We’ve been going constantly, though, and we’re tired. Today is the first day we’ve pulled back and deliberately taken it easy because we know we’re traveling to London tomorrow and we wanted to recover a bit before crossing the Channel.

I’ll share some of what we’ve seen here – there’s more to share in a couple of days and, frankly, if I wanted to, a month’s worth of posts to write when I get back. I so want to share my thoughts, what I’ve learned, what I’ve discovered about myself, what we’ve discovered together…

We’re very, very sad to be leaving here. We don’t want to. Not one bit. But London beckons.

Here we go:

First our hotel – which will always be our hotel in the future. It is a little gem; warm, intimate, lovely.

Our room.

You know that I love little lamps. They are everywhere here. On the dresser, on the desk, in the breakfast room.

If I could spirit this one away with me, I would. I really love it.

This is the breakfast room, which is in an old wine cellar. (Best lighting in the world for photos of aging us, by the way. It’s very kind. I’ll share more later.)

Every morning, we come down and Nora serves us café au lait and fresh croissants and a baguette with butter and jam and yogurt and compote. Heavenly. We had Nora take a picture of us on our anniversary and she must have passed that information on to Veronique and the staff because when we entered our room later in the day, this was waiting for us:

Don doesn’t drink and I rarely do, but I had a sip or two in honor of our 20th. We were so touched by this generous gesture. (The empty bottle is going home with me, as well as the card.)

Part of the Louvre. If only my boxwood looked this good,

More of the Louvre and the famous glass pyramid. Inside:

There she is. She’s stunning. Photos simply cannot do her justice. I stared and stared and stared. Yes, she’s smaller than you might think, but not as small as this picture seems to indicate.

Venus de Milo.

Winged Victory. I took a picture up close, as well, but I love this one.

A discussion for another time: Why does everyone think they have to immediately take a selfie next to the Mona Lisa, or the Venus de Milo, or Winged Victory? It’s incredibly annoying. How about just looking and pondering the art itself?

So much more; Da Vincis, Raphaels, stunning works everywhere.

From the Musée d’Orsay, so many gorgeous Impressionist paintings, but these stood out for me:

Monet.

And this large Renoir. I love this painting with all my heart. I love Renoir. (We visited the place he lived in Montmartre which is now a museum – more on that later.)

Fantasy: We live in a apartment in one of the buildings along the Seine. We walk along the Seine every morning and evening. That’s not asking too much is it?

We visited Shakespeare and Company, the famous English language bookstore that was founded by Sylvia Beach in 1919. In its first location, it was a home-away-from-home for Gertrude Stein, Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ezra Pound and and James Joyce. It was closed in 1941 when the Germans occupied France. It was reopened in its current location in 1951 by George Whitman, who ran it for years. It is now run by his daughter.

There are beds among the stacks for those in need, especially writers who don’t have much money. They stay there and help out in the shop.

It’s just across the river from this: