Anna c'est ici!

Anna arrived on Friday for a ten-day visit, and we've been having a great time experiencing Paris together. I didn't go to work on Friday, and so we had a great three-day weekend together: another dinner with Catherine and Patrick at their beautiful Montmartre apartment, a picnic in the Luxembourg gardens, a sunset cruise on the Seine (surprisingly, not cheesy and really fun/beautiful/interesting), a DELICIOUS dinner at a Moroccan restaurant right near my apartment (Souk), a visit to the Marche D'Aligre for produce and French foodstuffs, the Orangerie museum (an impressionist collection at the end of the Tuileries, right near Place Concorde), and watching the Champs Elysses stage of the Tour de France. About that--we walked down Rue Rivoli from my apartment and joined a huge crowd on the loop where the riders were going to pass. It was really hot out, and after an hour of standing around in the baking sun near the Louvre, we decided to screw it and do something else instead, because nothing was happening. We walked around the Tuileries and spent about an hour in the Orangerie, and when we came out, the riders were on lap #5 (out of 8) and it was much less crowded--so we got to see the Tour after all. Pretty cool to watch, although they passed so quickly that in the time it took to take a few photos, they were gone!

On Monday while I was at work, Anna went to the Louvre and surrounding areas, and in the evening we met up at E. Dehillerin (the cooking supply store). She is similarly smitten with the store--seriously, it's my favorite store in Paris by a long shot. I think I may be paying them a third visit before I leave. Then we met up with a few friends that I have made here--we went to a reading at Shakespeare and Company (a famous Anglophone bookstore that's associated in some way with City Lights bookstore in San Francisco). The writer is Catherine Sanderson, who wrote the book "Petite Anglaise" that is a spinoff from her my-expat-life-in-Paris blog. Afterwards we went out for drinks (and got caught in a downpour on the way home!).

And yesterday we went up to Montmartre to look in the cute shops, get a great view of Paris, and meet up with Dana and her mom for dinner. We went to an adorable French restaurant on Rue Lepic called, appropriately, "L'Epicurien Bistrot" (this picture on the left courtesy of another blogger).

Chefs' Supply District Part II, and French toast for real

I woke up with a shock today at 6am. The apartment complex's stray cat was sticking his head through the sliding glass door in my bedroom (which I had opened about 4 inches to get some fresh air--no screens in France) and yowling--baying is more like it--while staring directly into my eyes. What a way to wake up. I think I shrieked a little--this cat is huge. Instead of falling completely back asleep, I started half-dreaming about Parisian cookware and the chefs' supply stores. So I decided to go to work early, leave early, and track down the dough whisk I learned about yesterday, and perhaps some little tartlet pans.

After a productive day at work, I felt completely justified in leaving at 4pm. I got the last dough whisk from the hardware store/cookware store on R. St. Augustine in "Japantown" (more like Japan-block), and for probably the first time since I got to Paris, I had reverse sticker shock (it was way less than I had believed was possible)! I then stopped in a little Japanese cookware/grocery/gourmet foodstuff store on R. St. Augustine, and as I was looking at the sake pitchers, the saleswoman came up to me and said (in French), "You can taste anything in the store that you want"--and I understood her!! I then said (in my toddler-level French), "le sake froid c'est bon ajourd'hui...il fait chaud" (Cold sake is good today, it's hot out--yeah, told you it was toddler-level) She led me to a refrigerator case in the back and picked out four bottles, then set them out on a counter with little tasting cups and told me (in English) how they're all different as I tasted them.

Then I found culinary heaven--E. Dehillerin. Seriously, the stores I saw yesterday paled in comparison to this. It's much more a restaurant supply store than the ones I saw previously--for example, you can buy at least twenty sizes of ladles (some the size of mixing bowls), and the bowls come separately from the stems so you can customize your ladle to exactly how you want it. The store has the industrial feel of Home Depot, has about ten times the breadth of products as Sur la Table, is jammed from floor to ceiling, and is very reasonably priced for the quality (you'd pay a whole lot more at Williams-Sonoma). After forty-five minutes of happily browsing and trying to figure out the uses of the tools--an endlessly entertaining activity, especially with the occasional help of the salesman working in the gadgets section--I bought a set of nonstick, fluted tartlet molds with removable bottoms.

E. Dehillerin is in Les Halles (by the Louvre), and since it was gorgeous outside, I decided to walk home--down R. Rivoli and through the Marais area, which I love. On the way home, I ran across yet another kitchenware store--Le Vaissellerie--which sells discount china, ceramics, and other various and sundry kitchen goods. I started hearing the siren song of the amuse-bouche plates and mini mustard pots and cheese knives that I so valiantly resisted yesterday, and I'll go back when I am not so deeply in the mindset of "my life will be incomplete without a Camembert knife." (But speaking of which--cheese knives are brilliant! They have a blade like a normal knife, but the end of the knife is forked, so you can spear your piece of cheese after cutting it).

I finally got home around 8pm and decided that I would put the last stale five inches of yesterday's "pain au tradition" to good use (pain au tradition is, incidentally, my favorite kind of bread here--shorter and squatter than a normal baguette, with a springy inside, big holes perfect for catching jam, chewy-crunchy crust, and a light dusting of flour on the outside, AND usually still hot when I buy it). I had some organic eggs, milk, and honey....so I made pain perdu (French toast--literally, "lost bread") and ate it with some of the raspberry-peach compote that my housemate made last weekend. Using good bread and fresh eggs made a huge difference--the inside was like custard, and I think it actually helped that the bread was a little stale. Trés délicieux!

My spontaneous outing to the chefs'-supply district

Today was one of those days at work that just dragged on and on--by 4pm my brain was tapped out. So I started checking some of my favorite websites to pass the time, including Chocolate and Zucchini, my favorite food-and-Paris blog. The latest entry on the blog was about a whisk used to mix thick dough batters, and Clotilde, the writer, mentioned the store in Paris where she got it. I had this moment of "Whoa! I can actually just leave work and go there and check it out myself!" I then looked through the archives of the blog to see if there were any other cooking supply stores that I could find while I was out. As it turns out, there are about six within one block of each other--near the corner of R. Montmartre and R. Etienne-Marcel in the 2nd arrondissement--which is walking distance from the store with the whisk. By this point it was 5pm and I was guessing that most of the stores would close by 6 or 6:30, so I hightailed it from Villejuif (the suburb where I work) up to the 2nd. These stores were fantastic, if a little overwhelming. Geared towards somewhere between the enthusiastic home cook and a chef at a fine restaurant, they had rooms and rooms full of stuff that looked so enticing but that I knew would be less charming once I left Paris. Some examples: a choice of ten types of escargot plates (which come to think of it would make a great earring-holder), multiple sizes of gratin dishes, a three-inch-tall round ceramic pot with two handles (I have no idea what it was for--I tried to ask the salesperson in French, and it was sort of embarrassing how poorly I was able to express myself), two-inch-square plates for amuse-bouche, a set of 24 tartlet pans--and yes, I briefly toyed with the idea of purchasing all these adorable items. I then had an attack of buyers' hesitation, and the stores were closing so I felt kind of rushed and I didn't end up getting anything, and by the time I got to the store with the whisk (the whole impetus for this mission), it was closed. But through all this browsing, I did make a mental list of cooking supplies that I want to get while I'm here, since I'll have no choice but to make French things with them once I get home: tartlet molds (and maybe a big tart mold), a madeleine pan, the dough whisk, and hopefully some kind of antique/obscure kitchen tool at a flea market. The stores are a little expensive, but even I can tell how good the quality of the cookware is. I also heard about a few discount and overstock chefs' supply stores in the outer arrondissements, so I may go check those out now that I've gotten a good sense of what I want and what's out there.

Here are some really beautiful espresso cups I saw that all have a big wrinkle in them, as if the clay partly collapsed when the cup was being made (looking at them would make my mom carsick due to the asymmetry).

Mon Weekend dans Belgique

I spent this past weekend in Bruges, Belgium with Dana and her cousin Jaimie. We had a fantastic time and it felt like much longer than two days. Bruges is vaguely like Venice in that it's constructed around three canals, but it's very small and picturesque--the architecture is beautiful, and most of the streets look straight out of a movie set or a storybook. When we got there, we wandered around for awhile and eventually we found an inexepensive bed and breakfast where the three of us could share one room. This was one of the strangest establishments I've ever stayed in, but at that point, it was a place to crash, which was exactly what we were looking for (we got 4 hours of sleep the night before and had caught an 8am train). It was completely filled with teddy bears on every available surface-- including a grouping on a windowsill in the stairwell that was strapped in with a bungee cord--and the whole place looked like it had been painted solely with the remnants of assorted cans of paint (the extremely large, shared bathroom was four shades of purple and had three kinds of carpet).

We went out, walked around a bit, got lunch, and went back to the b&b in an exhausted daze, where we took a nice long nap with the teddy bears watching (it was raining outside anyway). After sleep and showers, we all felt much better, but coffee was highly necessary. We found a little cafe/hotel with outdoor seating on the edge of one of the canals, just outside the center of the city, and we sat right next to the canals and got cafe au laits (I took this picture from my seat at the table). We were expecting your average cups of coffee, and instead each of us got a china tray with a pot of cafe au lait, a little bowl of butter cookies, and a piece of Belgian chocolate. It turns out we had found one of the "leading small luxury hotels of the world," and it lived up to its billing (for instance, it was sort of chilly, so we each got a soft blanket to wrap around ourselves). And it was 5 euros each...such a change from Paris!

We wandered around the center of the city for awhile, admiring the architecture, sampling chocolates from the many chocolatiers, and vaguely listening to a terrible public concert in the main square (Dana described the guy as a Flemish Neil Diamond). At this point, it was high time to sample the local brews (Belgium is famous for white beer, which I really like), so we found a bar in a youth hostel where we had a Bruges blond beer. Then we went to a square with lots of pubs and restaurants (in other words, great people watching--we saw a guy in a tux shirt and tails, shiny patent leather shoes, and no pants to speak of except his white underwear) where we could sit outside under heat lamps--it was really cold out. Dana and I ordered medium Hoegaardens, which were so big that my hands couldn't fit around the glass. We got some dinner, toasted my birthday at midnight, and had a great rest of the evening.

The next morning, we went on a bike tour of the area around Bruges. It was really beautiful, and so nice to be on bikes. We saw a working windmill that uses the generated power to mill flour, and we could climb all the way up to the top of the windmill and see the mechanisms that make the windmill actually work. We rode along canals, stopped for Belgian waffles at a small restaurant, and saw some beautiful scenery.

When we got back, we went to a brewpub for lunch, where I got Flemish onion soup made with house-made beer, local cheese, and fresh bread. It was delicious (and beautiful). After browsing through the shops, we came back to Paris and watched the sunset from a cafe at the top of Montmartre. It was exactly the kind of birthday I wanted--just a really great day, with nothing overwhelmingly birthday-ish about it except that it was fun and relaxed.

Three nights, three dinner parties

I've had a great last couple days (more specifically, a great couple evenings). On Tuesday night my advisor Lisa had me and a few people from work over for dinner. One of her closest friends is my former statistics professor Judy, who has been visiting Lisa for the past week, so she was there too. Altogether there were ten people--about half French, half American--and it was so much fun. The last time I saw Judy, I was all stressed out about a final project for class, and then two months later here we were, drinking champagne and eating caviar in Paris. Lisa is staying in a gorgeous apartment right near the Luxembourg gardens, and we had a really great dinner and conversation.

Then last night (Wednesday), I met up with Dana. She's staying in a refurbished former servant's apartment above the apartment of a couple that is friends with her family, and Patrick, the husband, is a photographer. He had an exhibit opening, so we went to celebrate the opening with them (with champagne of course) and see the photos, and then Catherine and Patrick invited us back to their apartment for dinner. They live in a very cool area of Montmartre, they are avid travelers, and he is an artist, and the confluence of those three factors means that their apartment is spectacular--not in an ostentatious way, just in a really effortless and eclectic-yet-classic way. But the best part is the view of Montmartre--Sacre-Coeur is basically framed by their living room window. They had several of their friends over--a very intellectual, artistic group--and we had a Lebanese feast (along with half a case of Burgundy). Their friends were so interesting, and we had a great time. But it's not a lie that Parisians eat late--they put out dessert at midnight--and the Metro closes at 12:30ish. People here are so relaxed about time, though. I was planning on walking to the Metro with a couple I met at the party, and at 12:10 the woman (I forget her name) was pouring herself another glass of wine and laughing and talking. I was really nervous that I would miss the train and have to take a cab back, but decided that it was their city and they knew better than I did how the Metro worked. We left the apartment at 12:20 and I had to switch trains--but of course I made it back fine, I wasn't even on the last train, and it was a great lesson in just relaxing and trusting that things will work out. Everyone at the party, this one couple in particular, just seemed to love and relish life, and I could have talked with them all night.

Then, since I haven't been home before midnight since Sunday (today is Thursday), I decided that tonight I would come home and have a quiet night. I didn't really have any plans beyond that, and I had completely forgotten that my housemate's mother was visiting from Bordeaux and her niece--who is my age--from Toulouse (grandmother and granddaughter are about to take a trip through Sardinia together). Muriel invited me to join them for dinner, so I had another fabulous meal and great conversation. Her mother brought a bottle of 1996 Bordeaux along with her, which even I could tell was excellent, and it must have been something about the combination of her Bordeaux accent and speaking slowly, but I could understand about 40% of what her mother was saying (this is a vast improvement over my usual 10-15%)--it was enough so that I could get the gist of the conversation without Muriel needing to translate. For dessert Muriel made homemade yogurt, which was really excellent and which I'm going to try and make when I get home.

And I'm officially exhausted from all this merriment (and from a busy week at work)! I'm planning on going to Bruges, Belgium for the weekend with Dana and her cousin who's visiting from New York--chocolate, beer, and waffles, here I come!

14 de Juillet

Yesterday was Bastille Day, so Paris was in rare form. Parades, plane formations, every conceivable form of military personnel, WWII-era helicopters--you name it. I slept in and missed the military parade down the Champs-Elysses and most of the plane formations, but I did catch the horses at the end of the parade as they went past the Bastille opera house.

I then met up with Dana, my friend and traveling buddy from Madagascar and Tanzania, and we went to a picnic at the Hotel des Invalides that was hosted by my friends from the Fourth of July. It was wonderful to see Dana and have a good catch-up--and since she's staying in Paris for the next four weeks, we'll have lots of time to hang out. When I think about where we were almost exactly a year ago--climbing Kilimanjaro--it's hard to imagine a setting of sharper contrast. Anyway, there was a whole military display going on at Invalides, and every so often a group of paratroopers would come raining out of the sky (oddly enough, the plane itself wasn't visible). At the end of the day, we witnessed the exit of the helicopters that had been chilling on the lawn, and the launch provided fantastic photo ops of Hotel des Invalides and the Pont des Invalides. When you see the quantity of gold involved in the Invalides building and bridge, it isn't hard to believe that it's the place that Napoleon built to house himself for eternity. Apparently he is entombed in seven caskets, one inside the other like Russian dolls (I'm sure he would really appreciate that metaphor, too).

We stayed Invalides all evening, and around 11pm the fireworks started. We could see the ones that were high up in the sky (they formed a pretty contrast with the Eiffel Tower), but we were a little too far to see everything. I was more than okay with this, considering that the alternative was a gigantic crowd at the base of the Eiffel Tower. Instead, we got to sit on our picnic blankets, drink some wine, and watch at our leisure. The fireworks were done in classic French style--set off a few, take a break for a few minutes to have a cigarette or something, set off a whole bunch more, take another break...There were several really amazing bursts followed by long pauses, but somehow everyone knew when the show was actually over because they started applauding. I must say that the ones on the National Mall in DC are more impressive, or at least better-executed, but watching fireworks over the Eiffel Tower is pretty unbeatable (especially when the tower lights up on the hour). Overall it was a really nice weekend...and now it's back to work!

An afternoon for all senses

Happy Bastille Day!

Yesterday I spent a lazy afternoon reading at home. Around 2pm my housemate came home with a backpack and a bucket full of produce. She had gone to the Marche d'Aligre right before it closed and gotten a ton of fruit (2 kinds of peaches, raspberries, pears, white and orange melons, pineapples) at steep discounts, since the market is closed today and the vendors want to get rid of it. She made 14 jars of jam--a big batch of white peach-raspberry and a smaller batch of yellow peach-pear (both are really delicious!). While she was doing this, the concert pianist who lives across the courtyard was playing, and then the opera singers started to practice as well.

I had heard about a 4-km stretch of train tracks over a viaduct that was converted into a narrow park--the Promenade des Plantes--so I decided to take a walk. It starts right behind the Bastille opera house (in my general neighborhood), and it is high above the streets in many parts, so you have a great view of eastern Paris. Plus, the various architectural elements along the path are really interesting--tunnels, bridges, overpasses-- and of course it's great landscaping. I walked to the end and back, and it was some of the best people-watching I have done so far. Here are a few photos of some things I saw--a series of larger-than-life Greek god statues perched on the side of a building (yeah, I have no idea what they are doing there) and a picnic-perfect park under a suspension bridge on the promenade.

Pasages de Paris

Yesterday morning over breakfast, my housemate told me about a series of passages in the area between the 2nd and 9th arrondissements. She had a hand-drawn map from one of her friends, and I wasn't quite sure what constituted a "passage" (I had an image of an alley in my head), so I set out towards that neighborhood, figuring I would find them sooner or later. When I eventually got there (of course I took a few wrong turns and came across this really cool fork in the road), I was standing right where the map said--the corner of Rue du Fauberg Monmartre and Blvd. Poissoniere, but I couldn't find any cute-looking streets.


Then I noticed what looked like an open gate, so I walked through, and I was in a magnificent passage that runs through the spaces between the buildings--it was like a really, really beautiful and official covered market, filled with boutiques and galleries and a few little cafes. I spent awhile browsing around an antiquarian bookstore, and I found a boutique consisting entirely of flowers made of paper (where I took this picture).

Then I met up with my friend Pascale from work and a couple of her friends, and we went to the Gallerie National du Jeu de Paume, which is at the far end of the Tuileries, right near Pl. Concorde. We saw an exhibit of the photos of Richard Avedon, who was a fashion photographer in Paris/New York in the forties and has continued his work to the present day (in the eighties, he took a series of photos about people of the American west). It was really wonderful. After seeing the exhibit, we went to Angelina, which is a fancy pinkies-in-the-air type tearoom/patisserie by the Louvre. We got French hot chocolate, which is essentially melted dark chocolate with cream, and it was out-of-this-world amazing. And along with a madeleine, it was filling enough to serve as dinner.

This morning I went back to the Marche d'Aligre to do my fruit and vegetable shopping, and of course I couldn't resist stopping to gaze at the fromagerie (this is a small part of the case devoted to solely to French goat cheese) in the covered part of the market. Earlier this week I discovered the glories of unpasteurized (cru or raw-milk) cheese at a fromagerie on Rue St. Antoine, and it's pretty much a different product than pasteurized cheese. The flavor is really unique and when I first tasted it, I almost couldn't decide if I liked it (the owner of the St. Antoine fromagerie gave me ten or twelve cheeses to sample, after which I decided that I do like it, a lot)--it's much more assertive and has a different flavor than I am used to, even for milder cheeses. Raw cheese is actually illegal in the US (ironically, due to public health concerns), so I better eat up while I have the chance! I also decided that in order to find the best baguette at the market I would go to the bakery with the longest line (it happened to be the organic bakery), and it was a good strategy. It's really hilarious to stand outside a bakery and watch people leave--they pay, pick up their bread, walk out, and like a reflex they break off the part of the baguette sticking out from the bag and eat it. I do it, too--it's absolutely irresistible, especially when the baguette is still hot.

Un Commute Magnifique

(interestingly, I can't find a French noun that means "commute." Which may be a larger commentary on the relationship between language and culture)

This was an evening of realizing just how lucky I am to be living in such a magical place. After a good day at work, I was ready for a long walk, and I set off to find an English language bookstore to trade in the incredibly weird John Irving book I finished last night (Until I Find You). Before I left work, I had figured out the approximate location of San Francisco Book Co--in the 6th arrondissement, Left Bank, the heart of Paris bookstore heaven. I got off the Metro at Place d'Italie (in the 13th) and decided to walk north from there. But it wouldn't have been an Erika walk if I didn't take several wrong turns and end up in a different place than I'd intended. This usually turns out pretty well for me, as it did today--I walked along Blvd Port Royal instead of R. Monge, and I ended up at the foot of Blvd St-Michel in the 5th. I saw a huge fountain and realized that I was at a string of small parks that meet the southern edge of the Luxembourg Gardens.

Rather than walking up St-Michel (a major shopping street that runs parallel to the gardens), I decided to walk through the middle of the gardens. I am continually struck by how truly beautiful it is--you can't believe that you're in the middle of a huge city, and it's so well-maintained and well-landscaped. There was a huge thunderhead looming, but it didn't rain, and just as I was about to exit by the Palais de Luxembourg, I looked to my right and saw the dome of the Pantheon through a hedge. It was one of those "do-I-seriously-live-here?" moments.

The bookstore was great--one of those warren-like tiny spaces with floor-to-ceiling bookshelves--and I traded in my book for The Corrections (which has been on my list for years). Then I decided that rather than walk home through the St. Germain area, I would meander back on the quays. The quays are a string of pedestrian-only sidewalks on the banks of the Seine; they are well below street level so it's really quiet, and you can see all of Paris along the length of the river (but very few crowds or commercialism).

I had walked the quays of the Left Bank in the 5th/6th before, but in the other direction, and I hadn't realized just what a perfect view I would have of the Notre-Dame cathedral. It just sort of popped into view, and it was about 7:30 pm so the light was really nice (it gets dark around 10pm now). Again, I couldn't believe that this was my commute home from work.

I crossed to the Right Bank on Pont Sully, which just grazes the southeastern tip of Ile St. Louis (where I was the other night) before becoming Ave. Henri IV. This flower shop is right outside my usual Metro stop (Sully-Morland), and while a photo can't capture the heavenly smell of the flowers, you can only imagine how wonderful it is to see and smell these flowers every day when I get in and out of the Metro.

To top it all off, I got a perfectly ripe avocado at the vegetable stand next to my apartment complex by asking the guy behind the counter for "an avocado ready to eat tonight" in French (and if the guy couldn't understand my French, he understood the pinching motion I made). I cut it in half, sprinkled it with sea salt, smeared it on a piece of fresh baguette--perfect dinner (with a lovely glass of Bordeaux. And some cheese, of course).

Mon travail

Several people have asked what I'm actually doing in France (besides eating cheese and taking walks), so I thought I'd clear that up. I am working at the French equivalent of the NIH--the Institut National de la Santé et de la Recherche Medicale (National Institute of Health and Medical Research), or INSERM. For 15 or 20 years, the French government has collected data on the health of 20,000 federally employed gas and electric workers. The name of the gas/electric company is Gaz de France/Electricite de France, so the cohort is called GAZEL (Gaz/Electricite). Every few years, they send out a survey to the workers, who answer about 300 questions about their lives, health, and demographics. Those surveys are linked with their medical records and are collected in a huge data set, which is housed at INSERM. My advisor has been working with GAZEL data since about 1993, specifically with questions about the workers' social networks, mental health, and exposure to stress at work. She has come here every summer since, and has co-published many papers about the GAZEL data (a few examples are here and here). We are now working on a paper about work-family conflict--conflicting demands from work and home--and sickness absence from work, to see whether high levels of work-family conflict are related to certain kinds of sickness absence (psychiatric, infectious disease, etc, as well as number of short- and long-term absences). I'm currently swimming in data, and the analysis is much harder than anything I've done before (not to mention that the data is in French). It's a lot harder than analyzing data for a class assignment, where the professor is asking specific questions and has cleaned the data nicely. Plus, the study uses different programming commands than I'm used to (for SAS nerds, we use proc genmod instead of proc glm, since it's a Poisson distribution with a categorical outcome). So I spend every morning working on the data, and usually by lunch I'm totally frustrated. Then I take a nice long lunch and do my paid job in the afternoon. The hardest part is that sometimes I feel like I work on it for hours and have absolutely nothing to show for it. I'm learning a lot, though, and my stats (and French!) skills will definitely be better by the end of the summer.

On a more fun note, my housemate had one of her closest friends, Anna, in town--Anna is Italian and is a professor of French literature. She was here for a conference, and she's a fabulous cook, so last night she made dinner for all of us. She made "melanzane parmagiana"--eggplant Parmesan--and it was really delicious. She made two kinds--one was "traditionelle" and one was "nouvelle." She originally meant to make two of the same, but we ran out of almost all the ingredients for the second one, so she improvised and made it with a little bit of tomato sauce, baked eggplant pieces, chevre (goat cheese), pine nuts, and golden raisins. It was incredibly good. She spoke about as much English as I speak French, so our conversations were really funny--a lot of pointing and laughing. Here, she was making the "traditionelle" dish.

Marche d'Aligre, Musee D'Orsay, et Picard

I had a wonderful end to my weekend. I spent the morning at the biggest outdoor market in Paris, the Marche d'Aligre, which is a ten minute walk from my apartment. It's about five blocks full of vegetable and fruit stands, and most of the stores behind the stands are boulangeries, charcuteries, fromageries, etc. It was so much fun to see all the vendors and the huge variety of fresh fruits and vegetables, most of which are arranged beautifully. Also, every item is labeled with its place of origin, so it is really easy to tell if you are eating peaches that are grown in France or peaches that are imported from Algeria and probably sat around for awhile before getting to the market. Not to mention that it's about ten times cheaper than the grocery store--I got half a kilo of cherries, half a kilo of haricots verts, half a kilo of mushrooms, five nectarines, and a bunch of green grapes--all for about 3 euros. And I couldn't get over how many vegetables people were buying. Almost everyone had a "bubbe cart" and filled it with fresh produce. The mushrooms and haricots verts were amazing--unfortunately, the cherries were sort of soft.

Then I met up with Annie and Marc, who were passing through Paris again. We went to the Musee D'Orsay, which is an incredible Impressionist museum in an old train station, and when we first got there the line looked way too long to be worth waiting in. But it was moving really fast, so we just got in line, and while we were standing there we learned that the museum is free on the first Sunday of the month--which was yesterday! So we waited about 15 minutes and got to see some amazing paintings (even though it was really crowded), and the building itself is a work of art (this picture was taken in the museum cafe).

I had been hearing a lot about Picard, which is a gourmet frozen food store, so I checked it out at lunch--there's one right near my office and another across the street from my apartment. Amazing! I have never seen anything like this place. It's basically what would happen if you crossed Harris Teeter with Trader Joe's and made it all frozen food. The food all looked really good, and seemed pretty healthy (you can read all the ingredients on the label, or at least you can if you speak French). There was no gluey macaroni and cheese--just really good-looking food with preparation instructions that aim to make the food taste like you actually made it (for example, they mostly recommend using an oven or skillet, rather than a microwave, to defrost things). I've met several people for whom Picard forms the majority of their diet. I got Moroccan fish tagine with apricots and couscous. For less than 2 euro. How did it take me a week and a half to find this place? Lunch is forever changed.

I have made several friends at my office, and everyone eats lunch together in the canteen area. After sitting there for about an hour at lunch today, I said that I should go back to work. One of my new friends worked in the US for 10 years, and she told me that in France, the culture around work is completely different. It's highly discouraged to eat at your desk (apparently someone at our office comes around to patrol once in a while), lunch is at least a full hour, and everyone makes espresso/tea afterwards and just chats. Nobody is in too big of a hurry to get back to work--their work will still be there when they're done eating. What a change from my previous office jobs!

Un cafe parfait

I ended up spending the day wandering around two neighborhoods I hadn't visited yet--Ile Saint-Louis and Montparnasse. Ile St-Louis was really cute and I went into lots of nice stores and galleries on the main road. I then made my way to Montparnasse, where I found (and had a late lunch in) the most picturesque cafe--Mamie Gateaux Salon de The--on the corner of R. Cherche-Midi and R. de l'Abbe Gregorie. It's exactly what you would picture a Parisian cafe to look like--lace curtain in the window, cafe area decorated with lots of antiquey kitchen stuff, chalkboard menu--yet not kitschy or overdone, just genuinely its charming self. It's on a quiet street, away from the crowded shopping areas, which was nice. I had a slice of smoked salmon and olive tart, and I'm definitely going back at some point for afternoon coffee and pastries (it's only open from 11:30am to 6pm).

I couldn't get over the number of cute little boutiques in the Montparnasse area. I must have passed 10 or 15 candy and chocolate stores today. And yes, I went into most of them. It's just amazing to me how each store really imparts its personality into its chocolates--the store's decor and ambiance is usually reflective of the way they make their candy, and I wouldn't have thought that there could be so many ways to make, display, and package a product that is essentially similar across the stores. There was the minimalist shop painted in warm colors and bright lighting, and the emphasis was on the origin of the cocoa beans in each product; those candies have un-froofy shapes and were displayed geometrically. Then there was the store that felt almost bridal, and those chocolates were all made in really intricate molds and packaged like jewelry. And speaking of food as art, I went into the Gran Epicerie at Bon Marche department store (it's like Harrod's or Sak's). Even though it's totally overpriced and touristy, the food was really beautifully prepared and displayed, and I loved walking around.

Il pleut

Happy (somewhat belated) 4th of July!

I had a good first week at work--it's going to be really hard, but I think I'll learn a lot. The data set I'm analyzing is in French (and most of the French words are abbreviated), which is definitely challenging my language skills in addition to my statistics skills.

Last night I thought it would be fun to do something for the 4th of July, so on a whim I went to an American expat Meetup group on the southeastern tip of Ile Saint-Louis, one of the two islands in the middle of the Seine. We sat on the actual point of the island, about two feet above the water--it was really pretty. I had a great time and met some wonderful people, plus I sampled lots of different kinds of wine (do I remember what they were or which was which? Of course not!).

It's pouring today, which means that the museums will probably be mobbed. I'm feeling a little guilty that I haven't been to a museum yet (well, truth: i'm feeling guilty that i'm not feeling guilty), so I'm debating whether to fight the crowds at a museum, go hang out at a bookstore, read my book in a cafe, or just stay home and watch the rain and listen to French radio in an attempt to learn the language. Tough life!

Mon ami

I have spent the past few days wandering around, getting lost, and in the process getting acquainted with the city (I haven't even taken out my guidebook yet). Even though it is very crowded with tourists right now, it is still so much fun to walk around (and we all know how much i love to walk, so this is heaven). I have also gotten the opportunity to see some truly hilarious tourists--Hawaiian shirts, fanny packs, and all. They have been my favorite photo subjects so far. This picture is of a Segway tour outside Hotel des Invalides.

I have also gotten to meet up with many friends from home and meet lots of new people, which has been great. Annie L. and her boyfriend Marc are traveling in Europe now and ended up in Paris for the night due to a train mix-up, so we met up yesterday morning for a croissant and a cafe crème.

Then I met up with Anna's friend Jenine in the afternoon; Jenine lived in Paris for a semester and showed me many of her favorite spots, including the best gelato EVER (the place is called Amorino, near the Luxembourg Gardens). On a whim I got pistachio and lemon, and the pistachio was mind-blowingly good. I would never have guessed that pistachio ice cream could be so amazing. Plus, they make it look like a rose in the cone. Then we hung out in the Luxembourg Gardens, had dinner in the Latin Quarter, and went to the Trocadero to watch the Eiffel Tower light show. It was really fun.

I started work today, and I am really excited about the things I will hopefully be doing. Also, a couple who sings in one of the Paris operas lives in my complex, and as I write this they are rehearsing together. Pretty cool!

A tout a l'heure!

Bag has arrived!

I got my bag on Monday--what a relief! It's been through quite a lot...check out all the tags on it. And please ignore the "HEAVY" tag....it was only 22 kilos, I swear!