I just finished A Better Man by Louise Penny.
And now I have to write a post. And find another book to read. But my head is still back in Three Pines. I know those of you who read her understand. She is a superb writer.
Back to Paris.
Breakfast the next day:
Fresh squeezed orange juice, coffee (Don brought his own mug), pastries, bread, and jam. Yogurt, cheese, fresh fruit, etc., on the sideboard.
The room:
We walked to the Jardin du Luxembourg. We wanted to spend some time there before we had to leave for a 4:30 matinee way across the Seine.
We plopped down on some chairs and watched people walk by. We could see all the children running around in the playground, as well.
Don was changing the film in his Holga camera.
You can see the pétanque courts off to the rear.
Eventually, we headed over there to watch some games. But while we were waiting, Don noticed a stray ball or boule and decided to practice. I joined him, though I only have a photo of Don.
The boules are heavy. I did surprisingly well. We’d really like to learn some more and take a stab at playing. We almost have Rick and Doug talked into it. Stay tuned.
Don walked over to get some vegan hot dogs (with carmelized onions, so good!) and we ate lunch while watching some spirited games. It was Saturday and it was a busy day at the courts, with everyone grabbing whatever space they could.
Eventually, and reluctantly, we left. We had to trek to a theater way over on the right bank to the east of the Eiffel Tower to see some Molière – The Miser. It’s an old, old theater called Theatre Ranelagh. Don had researched the production and purchased tickets online. We arrived at the door and picked up our tickets. We were assured they were the best tickets for us because they were in the balcony where you could see the subtitles. Good idea. And it did help to read the subtitles.
We were even given an English language program, though I think I would have preferred one in French.
As Don went off to the toilettes, I stood in the lobby and noticed more and more parents arriving with children. An alarming amount of children if you were thinking (as we were) that it was a production for an adult audience. When Don returned, I gently mentioned that I thought this might be a production geared toward kids. He looked around and agreed.
Dang.
There had been nothing on the website or in the description of the show that indicated it was for children. Sighing, we made the best of it by saying that what we really wanted was to hear Molière spoken in French, that was the important thing. And we did.
As for the production, it was ultimately disappointing. It was low-budget. The costumes were just so-so. And, for me, the most maddening thing was that every line was delivered downstage (at the edge of the stage) facing outward. Didn’t matter if the characters were carrying on a conversation. They faced the audience. I wanted to scream. I suppose you could call it stylized, but it didn’t have enough style to call it stylized. Some of the actors were quite good and it was a delight to hear the text in French. That part was lovely. But it was badly directed, which wasn’t fair to the actors, who were doing their best – especially the lead actor playing the Miser.
I don’t think Molière is the best subject for kids as it’s satire. Satire that they didn’t get, as was obvious when there were built-in pauses for audience laughter, which didn’t happen. On the other hand, it’s lovely that parents are taking their children to see France’s greatest playwright, to see the theater.
A mixed blessing which only made us more determined to see the Comédie-Française next time we’re there.
But we got to see Molière in Paris and that’s neat.
After the show, we traveled back to the Left Bank and ate dinner at a café near the Musée D’Orsay.
This was the ceiling in the café. (We’re in Paris, after all!)
And then, as we had planned, we walked along the Seine at night. It’s magical any time of day, but at night? Oh my goodness.
A late-night bouquiniste.
We sat on a bench in the middle of one of the bridges and waited until the hour was struck so we could see The Eiffel Tower light up with twinkle lights for five minutes. It’s really glorious.
Looking down the river to the Île de la Cité.
Beautiful, isn’t it?
That night, the clocks were set back one hour.
Tomorrow: the flea market and our treasures.
Happy Thursday.
I would think that breakfast in that room….with all that ambience…would be the best way to start a day! With the fresh squeezed orange juice…those croissants….and that lamp…gah. Delightful. It’s like you were in a secret room, just the two of you.
Paris looks beautiful at night…there’s just something about twinkle lights…magical! I just love the reflections of the lights on the water.
I’m still waiting to enjoy Louise Penney’s latest. Enjoy your day! ;)
It is! I miss that room so much!
I think you’ll like the latest from Penny, Donna. I did!
Thank you!
I just finished A Better Man this week also! It was a great read that I couldn’t put down. I wonder what will happen next to this group. It is like I know these people of Three Pines and want to keep peeking into their lives. Sort of why I love to read blogs! Thanks for sharing Paris with us! Love your details.
Especially toward the end, right? Couldn’t stop reading! I love the characters, consider them friends, and I miss them already!
I’ve enjoyed your Paris posts so much! And I was wondering if you went to the flea market, so I will find out tomorrow.
Yes we did! We found some neat little treasures, Judy. Thank you!
sorry the matinee was a bit of a let-down, but glad you tried it … for moliere and yourselves.
breakfast in that room, walking along the seine, sitting on a bench on that bridge to see the lighting of the eiffel tower, the gardens and shakespeare and co. … so happy for you and don to be able to do that.
the photos are lovely (as usual). i do something similar when i go places, even here in town … i take photos of the big obvious things, yes, but also the smaller details, like leaves on the ground. i want to return to them again and again in my mind and with my eyes as they help tell the story. thank you for sharing them, your experiences and insights – and names of places, restaurants, etc. that i hope you soon get back to!
kathy in iowa
I like little details. I only wish I could have captured more of them. Thank you, Kathy!
It’s too many years for me to recall Paris at night but I think it’s wonderful you can wander/stroll around the city after the sun sets and not feel concerned about personal safety. Paris in recent years, just like some other international cities, had gotten so much bad press as not safe for Americans (don’t believe everything you read, right?!!). I’m not Big City/cosmopolitan like you and Don (NYC/Manhattan et al) so I’m not savvy/aware about certain things (I think I suffer from perpetual country-girl naivete; I almost got myself into some real trouble when walking by myself at night one time in New Orleans, separated from my travel party). How awful to think if a person couldn’t joyfully explore any city in any country at night without having to look over the shoulder, so it’s terrific you didn’t and instead embraced city lights and beauty in one of the most romantic places on earth.
I wish, especially as I’ve aged, that I wasn’t such a scaredy-cat when it comes to stuff like that! I do remember being in sort-of spooky/foggy Montmartre at night but I was with a good-sized group of people on a tour (SO not romantic; much more sterile).
Anyway, STUNNING photos as usual, Claudia; you really have the eye with photography. Night photography like that, according to my husband who does some of it himself, isn’t all that easy.
Quintessential Paris with the pigeons in the park; autumn with the turning leaves. Ahhhh. I can see why you wouldn’t want to leave anytime soon but instead just sit there and relax; let it all sink in, cloaked in contentment.
Appealing breakfast each morning; is that complimentary to your hotel stay? Wow. Lots of good carbs to get you started for a day of walking.
And how did you find these amazing cafes, like for lunch? Just stumbled onto them or did you have a guidebook of best little places to tuck into for a meal?
Here’s another really-naive question: Is it difficult to deal with euros? How does that work nowadays? Do you get to the country and exchange your U.S. dollars upon arrival? “In the olden days” when I’d do some globetrotting, I’d go to my U.S. bank before the trip and get an assortment of foreign cash to already have in my pocket. Do you in large part just use plastic? I suppose the days are over when travelers would purchase ‘traveler’s checks’ before going overseas or across a border. Back in the day, they were universally accepted. (Clearly, I haven’t been anywhere IN YEARS to not have answers to my own questions.)
You’ve had some really cool experiences on this second trip together; I especially liked the foray into the ancient cemetery (and the stray kitties). You and Don have made lots of new memories to get yourselves through a long winter ahead. (They’ll keep you warm!)
Thanks for another day’s tour of Paris; appreciate being taken along!
I haven’t heard anything about it being unsafe. It’s a major city and just like all major cities there are areas I wouldn’t traipse around at night. Pigalle, near Montmartre is one of them. The area near the flea market at Clingancourt is another. But that’s all I have experience of. The 6th arrondissement where we stayed is very safe, and the surrounding areas are also very safe. Paris is a lively city, there are people everywhere at night. I never felt unsafe. And I would walk down to the Seine by myself with no qualms. There are always people about. You have to be aware, of course, as you do in every city.
I doubt that many people use traveler’s checks anymore, though I certainly did years ago. Euros aren’t at all hard to deal with. When we arrived in Paris, we used our ATM/bank card to withdraw a few hundred euros. You can pay for most things with plastic and we did our share of that on our bankcard. Cash for the flea market, although some dealers take plastic. All you have to do is walk to a bank and withdraw a certain amount in euros. Easy as pie.
We paid for a package that includes breakfast. We did that in both Paris and Edinburgh last year. The last thing I want to do is have to get up and get out on the street to find a place to eat in the morning. I’m a slow mover. This gives us a leisurely breakfast in a charming room. Worth it.
We find cafes by walking around and encountering them, or asking at the hotel, or asking on the street. But mostly, just by walking and discovering which is our favorite way to find things.
Well, it just all sounds…perfect.
Lots of good info, Claudia. Thanks. If things changed and a Paris trip could ever happen for me again, I think I could do it!
Hope you and Don can go every year for awhile yet. You have each year, eleven months, to save up for it; you’ve learned how to cut a few corners on expenses while in Paris, no differently than when I was on U.S. road trips with my folks when I was a kid, and we’d eat breakfast in the motel room with a carton of milk in the motel’s ice bucket, groceries bought the night before at a local market; those little boxed cereals that opened in the middle and you’d pour the milk directly into the box. Eat lunch out at a roadside ‘rest stop’, right out of the cooler in the trunk of the car, using more motel ice (it was free in those days!); things like peanut butter, a loaf of bread, some cheese, etc. Then a dinner out at an affordable restaurant each evening at the end of the travel day; but, like you’re saying, no restaurant for every meal throughout a day, which is also time-consuming when you’d rather be out and about.
(That hotel breakfast of yours is drool-worthy, especially the ambiance; and a vegan hot dog with onions, in a park? Completely picnic-worthy! Yum.)
Really something for you both to look forward to each October, your annual trip to Paris; like going home. Familiarity. Aren’t you glad this happened for you and Don?!! This discovery? It’s a gift. Why go anywhere else if you’ve been lucky enough to find your special go-to place in the world; no need to reinvent the wheel. You’ve already been to a lot of other travel destinations. As you said, you’ve by now really gotten to know your ‘neighborhood’ in the part of Paris where you stay. How many people can say that? I think it’s really special. Some people go to a lake house every year; others to a favorite beach hotel, but you’ve got PARIS. (And we NEED our traditions and rituals.)
Before the fire here (and all its distraction), I was trying to read more about Paris (due to you being there!) and its twenty arrondissements. The 6th is said to be one of the prettiest; nice shopping, cafes and parks as you’ve shown us. You chose well.
We really feel it’s our home away from home. We both feel a sense of peace there. And I said to Don, “I feel like I find myself here. I find ME here.” – if that makes any sense at all.
I’m very lucky that Don feels the same way.
BTW, it’s pure luck that I ended up at that hotel last year. We were looking at another but they were booked and somehow I found this one. Talk about luck!
xo
Well, more than luck, I think it was just meant to be. I believe in that sort of thing. Some call it pre-destined; others, serendipitous…
To feel peace and connectedness in Paris, deep in your soul? I totally get that and, man, I’d run with it. There’s enough in life that DISconnects us!
I’ve been ‘visited’ with that feeling of going to a new place and sensing I’ve already been there before. Like, “Okay, I’m not a stranger here.” Weird, but I don’t question it, because it feels good, not bad. Hasn’t happened often but I think it’s more than a vivid imagination.
She died when I was a baby, so I can only guess as there’s not much of a paper trail, but I’ll always be convinced my grandmother’s parents had some kind of roots in Acadiana; I’m thinking her family lived for a time in Louisiana coming from further east before they landed for good in Texas. She’d make up a herb-y, smelly, hot poultice to put on his chest when my much-older cousin was a little boy suffering from asthma in the late 1930s (he’s well into his 80s now). He told me Grandma said, “This will help you breathe. It’s an old Indian remedy taught to me by my French mamaw when I was a girl out on the farm and we had no other medicines.” (Cajuns were/are a more rural people; agriculture; it’s so different than the Creole culture which, wrong or right, I always feel is more citified. [By the way, I mean to cause no offense by inaccurately describing a native people as ‘Indian’ rather than Native American {or in the case of true Cajuns, Native Canadian}; in the 30s, they used different descriptions than we would today. And my cousin said Grandma seemed proud of her past; like she had a reverence about it, or at least that was his childhood impression.])
We did find my grandmother in the tribal censuses at age 8 but who knows if it’s Cajun ancestry or not. All I know is, while they were all still alive, the old folks would tell me I looked just like her. I do have her nose and cheekbones. After the pure-Cajun guy I worked for in Houston told me where to go on a short vacay I took in Louisiana when I was living on the Gulf Coast, especially his hometown of Lafayette but also places like New Iberia and even Avery Island, I felt like I already knew the area once I got there (when it makes the back of your neck tingle). I know the mind can play tricks; still…
Reminds me of how ‘they say’ that somewhere in the world, all of us have a twin. Just as somewhere in the world is the place we should be in our heart of hearts.
xoxo
A whole day from breakfast in the cave to midnight on the Seine! Paradise! It’s disappointing especially for artists to see a production that is subpar. I remember the joy of seeing La Boheme with my husband, an opera aficionado, at the Met. He lives for the last note of Mimi’s solo in one act as she exists the atelier. The singer, tho very good, did not hit it. I didn’t notice, but it grated on him and was the one memory he has of that night. I’m kind of glad I didn’t know enough for it to bother me. You’ll laugh at me, but the one place near me where I’ve found really really good croissants is the Barnes and Noble cafe just down the street from us!! They are the closest to a French croissant I have found in the US, not that I’ve done any extensive research. Seeing your breakfast photos made me think of them. I don’t usually indulge because the ambience is far from your cosy Pairs breakfast nook, but I just might have to bring a couple home for the weekend. With real butter and jam of course. Merci for the inspiration!
Croissants are worth it, especially when you find good ones, Nora. Enjoy!
So sorry about the Moliere — but you’re right, seeing Moliere in Paris and in French is pretty cool, despite the interpretation and audience! And what a glorious fall day. You certainly can’t beat that! Lovely in every way.
It as a beautiful sunny day amidst lots of gray days. Perfect. Thanks, Jeanie.
Your photos are just superb! You are a very talented photographer!
I want to thank you for steering me to Louise Penny! She is absolutely the best writer.
I too have fallen in love with Three Pines. Just started reading A Better Man. Hard to put down
but chores do have to be done. Darn.
Darn, indeed! Enjoy, Lyn.
I am in the middle of “A Better Man”. I loved the first 12 books in this series, but this is my least favorite. It took me to page 90 before I got fully committed. It is going very slow for me. Taking me ages to read.
It’s always good to remember that Penny’s plots are character driven, therefore they move more slowly than a standard mystery or detective story. Yes, there’s a mystery to be solved, but with Penny, the characters are more important – their growth, their problems, their relationships to others.
I really loved it. With Penny, you need to revel in the small details. xoxo
I loved A better man… One of my favorites
It’s wonderful! Thanks, Brenda.
That breakfast room is so cozy and magical! I would want to sip coffee in there all morning.
Beautiful nighttime photography of the Seine.
I introduced Brian to Louise Penny after reading about her on your blog awhile ago (he loves thrillers and mysteries) but he has only read one of her books, so far. He’d probably like picking up more of her books. Is there somewhere to start – are they in any kind of order? I’m not familiar with this author since I don’t read this genre. Thanks for any help!
You should absolutely read them in order because there is essential character development throughout the series. Start with Still Life and work your way through.
xo
When I go back (not if) I think I will try to stay at that hotel. You seem to love it and the dining room is amazing. Beautiful photos of Paris and the Seine at night. Its a shame the play was a disappointment but still you saw a play in Paris.
It’s a wonderful hotel, Linda.
The play was disappointing, but we got to hear it spoken in French and that was amazing.
Lovely. Thank you.
You’re welcome, Kay.