We felt lucky upon arriving that we were only a short walk from the subway, and goodness--we could walk to the Eiffel Tower from our place! We caught the owner of the apartment just finishing a drink and so we waited while he paid, and one by one, took the tiniest elevator up to the fifth, and walked up to the sixth to our cubby hole of a place. You look right, and you see four feet of floor and a sofa bed in sofa form; you look ahead, and the whole of the kitchen is about three feet across, and the bathroom is to the left. Marc gave us some info on the area, and when we asked, he recommended the place just to the left once you exit the apartment building.
We were welcomed by a middle-aged woman whose favourite word was clearly 'magnefique' and were told that the wine list was very important. The tables are small square ones, all in a row by a bench that runs the length of the wall, therefore the waitress pulled a table out for me to sit on the bench, and then put it back in the row. We ate some delicious home-cooked style French food (duck breast, potatoes, lamb, vegetables, wine).
Closer to the end of our meal, two gentlemen were seated immediately beside us. We recommended the things we were eating, in French, after which they asked if we spoke English. Why yes! How could you tell? J/k. They were two Australians, one has lived in Paris for 7 years, and the other lives in London but visits often. As the evening progressed, we learned a lot about them. They met through a mutual friend who is a Catholic priest, and have travelled together often. They weren't particularly happy with their first bottle of wine, and so they spoke to the sommelier, whom they knew by name, and decanted it. There was this strange demure argument between them as to whether they had killed it or not. The Parisian was dissatisfied, while the Englishman thought it was not great, but serviceable. They shared their next bottle with us, as well as their cheese plate. They were both on holiday, and so they invited us to join them for a cocktail at Harry's Bar, where true cocktails were invented. It is one of a few American bars left from the 1920's. The waiter in such an establishment does this work as a career, and obviously loves it. He wears his white apron with pride, and knows his regular clientele. The cocktails are, as one of our new friends commented, 'nuclear strength' with very little in them that is not alcohol. At one point, Andrew went downstairs to the washroom, and we noticed eventually that he had been gone a while. Our British friend went to check on him, and found him lost in the music of a jazz trio. The piano in the basement was the one where Gershwin wrote American in Paris. We talked about moving downstairs, but the music was finished. So we paid our bill and wandered down the street, and found a place with some excellent fusion of all sorts of music, some old r&b. Throughout the evening, Sam had been pining over the coast of France--a place called St. Malo, and they were playing with the idea of going, and invited us to join them. We danced around many different topics of conversation, but eventually I decided that it was a little outside of our budget to book a place to stay there, and so we let them know, with apologies, that we wouldn't be able to make that work. They decided that if we couldn't come, they wouldn't go either, but offered to take us for a picnic outside of Paris. We agreed to meet on Sunday in the late morning for a little drive. By this time, it was about 4am, and we made our way back to our rabbit hole for the night.
Saturday began with a slow start. We made it to Palais Garnier, the old opera house, for a late afternoon tour. Gold! Marble! Mosaic! Charles Garnier was in charge of building this place. For starters, he had to be pretty smart to figure out how to build on top of a pond--they found a water table on the location, so there is a pool underneath the stage area--they have fish in it. The marble columns were not approved in the budget, but over the course of a number of years, he snuck money towards them, and brought them in from Italy. The colours of the marble in the grand entrance match the colours in the painting on the ceiling.
Charles Garnier paid a lot of attention to detail like that. I don't have any pictures of the mosaics, but they brought artists from Italy to create them.
The ceiling in the actual opera hall has been given a new life. The old painting was peeling and so in 1960, Marc Chagall was asked to paint this one. The original still exists above this painting. Chagall depicts Carmen by Bizet in the red area, Verdi in the yellow, Beethoven's Fidelio in the blue and green, and Orpheus and Eurydice in the green. The bright colours are in contrast with the rest of the building, so it seems awkward to me. You can read more about it here.
Palais Garnier, though it usually only hosts ballets now (which I find interesting, because the stage is slanted toward the audience a difference of a meter from front to back!), houses the scores collection of the operas. It's a huge room with many books! There were also dioramas of various sets, which were beautiful!
Napoleon had his own box from which he could watch the stage, and the public could see him (a loge, I suppose). He had his own private entrance built, but he died before the finishing of the opera house, and so never ended up using it. The entrance is largely undecorated because it was never finished. Napoleon commissioned the building in 1860, but it was not opened until 1875. Charles ended up featuring himself and his wife in many statues and pictures--kind of snuck in, but not very sneakily!
We hurried home to change because, well, now it was time to make our way to the modern opera house (Opera Bastille) to go see La Boheme! We ended up taking a taxi, at which point we realized how close the Eiffel Tower, Louvre, Notre Dame, were to our place. We sat in the very back row of the theatre and felt like kings and queens.
Sunday morning greeted us with a downpour. I finally got good use out of my new spiffy rain jacket... well... I'm sure the weather in Toronto will make it well worth my money. We found our way to an Anglican church service in English, which was not quite what we are used to (imagine lengthy introductions to each section of the liturgy), and then met with the guys for some croque monsieur at 'Le Moulin' across the street from our apartment--that is the real grilled cheese, if I can be so bold. We had to take the metro to pick up Ashley's car, and Andrew literally gasped when we exited the metro station. "Mr. Bean!" ... we were at Le Defense, which is a sort of business park with a huge glass arch which lines up clearly with the Arche de Triomphe.
Andrew, in his best Mr. Bean, asks, 'where is the train?' Off in the distance, the Arche de Triomphe stands. Much of Paris was rebuilt at some point, because it was important to them to clear sight lines in the city to the major monuments, and this is one example of those sorts of long-range sight lines.
We jumped into the company car, drove throught a tunnel under the suburbs of Paris, out to the beautiful countryside, listening to British house music all the way, Bonobo, C2C, Nova Nova, The Doobie Brothers, Morcheeba, Boz Scaggs...
We saw the village where Monet lived, and saw how the poppies appear to float on the seas of grass.
We stopped at a castle from the early second century.
At this point, our friends asked if we were willing to ride in the car for an hour more, and if so, they would take us to Normandy. Normandy! We learned that this area is important to Canada for more than one reason. In the beautiful town of Honfleur, there is a plaque showing that this is the port from which Champlain left France to settle Quebec.
After all that exploring, we agreed to sit down on the boardwalk, looking across the harbour at buildings that look like Copenhagen, for some truly fresh seafood. I had magnificent oysters for the second time in my life--I've been spoiled!
