New Year, New Country

February 1st, 2008

Bonjour everyone!!

Yes I know this is a tad on the late side. This missive covers “month with mom.” It’s basically since our arrival on New Year’s up until now when I’ve moved in with my host family.

Happy New Year and Happy Holidays! I hope everyone had an enjoyable holiday season. Since there are so many of you on my list who’ve had birthdays recently, or are about to have them, I’ll add a ‘happy birthday’ salutation to the list of greetings ☺

Let me just start off saying that daily-baked bread and home-made jam are two of the most dangerous things to keep at home. Those along with thick, creamy pudding. French food is going to be the death of me. Although, contrary to popular belief, it is possible to find a bad meal in Paris, as you will see if you read onward. But, I’m getting ahead of myself. It’s always best to start at the beginning so that is what I’ll do. The beginning of this story so happens to be the beginning of 2008.

New Year’s Eve turns and January 1st comes along with a quick, last minute struggle to make sure we have everything before heading for the airport. When I came home from Spain we conveniently said we’d leave everything until after the holidays. Guess what? The Christmas, the holiday party, Hanukah, kwanza, etc passed and we were left with scant few days to get everything ready. Oops.

So we make it to the airport in one piece, although if you count our luggage, we made it to the airport in ten pieces. After a quick bite at the airport Legal Sea Foods with my dad, we said our good-byes, and we were off towards the east.

A quick hop and a skip later we’re in London. We have a nice long three-hour layover. After heading to the European departures terminal we sit to have a few butterscotch cookies and coffee. Coffee is key. The story plays out in the following steps. Mommy goes to use Internet. Kate plays Snood. Mother has more coffee. Kate tries to figure out the cappuccino machine. Kate settles on tea. Our flight begins boarding. Mom continues writing an email. Kate warns Mother. Kate packs up bags. Mom is nowhere to be seen. Fifteen minutes pass. Flight status changes to last call. Kate finally finds Mother. Kate and Bonny RUN towards gate 17 (the opposite end of the terminal.) Kate and Bonny stumble, panting onto the plane. The flight attendant warns in a tut-tut British accent that they were just about to remove Kate and Bonny’s luggage from the plane belly. One hour later Kate and Bonny disembark in lovely, foggy Paris.

So we got off the plane and began looking for customs. Silly us, we assumed, given that we hadn’t cleared customs in London, that landing in a foreign country we would have to have our passports stamped. We head towards baggage. We say to ourselves, customs must be through the next door. Well, I have no idea what we did that must have been illegal, but the next thing I know, we’re out on the street and there definitely wasn’t anyone who looked at my passport.

Shrugging off the possible illegality of the vacation we begin looking for a taxi. A man in a nice suit comes up to us and tells us to follow him. We do. He puts our suitcases in the trunk, tells us to get in, and asks for our address. Something tells me it wasn’t a real taxi but it got us to our apartment.

First thing first, we must get our myriad suitcases up to the fourth floor. This involves the classic European elevator. It is meant for maybe three people and has an unusually low weight limit. In the suitcases go, and with their lack of opposable thumbs for pressing buttons I get to go with them. Somewhere in between the second and third floors I realized the elevator bounced quite like a trampoline. Let’s just say that was one of my last elevators rides.

We finally get up to the apartment and the building manager lets us into the apartment. He teaches us how to work the phone, the television, the Internet, etc.

I’ll skip the imagined boringness of unpacking and get to the juicy stuff. For some reason mother had an unexplainable amount of energy that night while all I wanted to do was sleep. So, we went out. Originally the intent was to grocery shopping. We didn’t come back with any food, only wine. (Hey, we’re in France.) In fact, we barely came back at all. We got incredibly and awfully lost. A few days later we embarrassingly discovered that we had been basically circling our block.

So the wine was all fine and dandy except for when we woke up the next morning, after about seventeen hours of sleep, and we had no coffee or shampoo.

So we finally go grocery shopping at our neighborhood Monoprix (basically the French version of Target.) I don’t think I’ve laughed that hard in a very long time. We barely made it out alive. You see, while in the supermarket part of the store we had acquired a few (Spanish, not Corsican) clementines and while attempting to get out of the store, my mother was tapped on the shoulder my a little old French lady who pointed to a trail of clementines. We hadn’t properly tied the little plastic baggy and the clementines were rebelling against their new and incompetent owners. We would have created a good distraction for a robbery given that even the security guards were staring at us and smirking while our doubled-over figures grappled and stammered to catch the runaways all the meanwhile muttering, “un moment, un moment!”

After wrestling the groceries into the apartment we headed out to eat. I have no idea what they were shooting, but there was a film crew right outside our apartment and in front of the Sorbonne. After rubbernecking for a bit we headed for nourishment. It would be our first foray into soupe à l’oignon. My mom still claims that that soupe at La Bucherie has been the best we’ve had but I must disagree and say the soup we had up by Monmartre was more flavorful.

To say we’ve brought a library’s worth of guidebooks would be a sad understatement, despite my mother’s insistence that if she had had her way on Amazon we would have many more. So, mom finds what looks to be a wonderful little restaurant called Le Gorille Blanc. Around 6:30 or 7:00 we set off to find it with our new metro passes. After getting completely lost we find it, alas, it is not open. As we dragged our jetlagged selves back to somewhat familiar territory, we began to realize that previously darkened restaurants were beginning to open and more than one carried a sign in their window saying they didn’t open until eight o’clock. So much for our accustomed 5:30/6pm dinners.

The best purchase we made by far the entire month was the metro pass, better known as the Carte Orange. They have these little places on the card where you are supposed to stick a photo of yourself. Mom and I attempted the photo machines but they had the wrong sizes and overcharged so we just blew it off thinking, who is actually going to look at these things? Of course the next day we get sent back to the photo machines with some very disapproving looks.

One of the many things we brought with us was a stack of cards called “Paris: City Walks.” They’re these little cards that have maps and directions for interesting walks in the different parts of the city. In theory, they’re great. In practice, not so much. The problem is that they give directions in north, south, east, etc. We did see some cool stuff while attempting to follow the cards, but a lot of it came from being lost. As a parting token my mom gave me a compass ☺ I’ve already used it multiple times.

One of the places we went to on the walks was the Centre Pompidou. This place is seriously cool. The car called it the one place in Paris you could find whimsy. There is a giant gold flowerpot on a pedestal outside…is that considered whimsy? There are a ton of interesting exhibits, which include mostly modern and pop art. There is also an elevator that goes up the outside of the building and provides an amazing view of the city.

Rue Moufftard has become, I think, our favorite rue in la ville. There are cheese shops, wine shops, bread shops, crepe stands, and a wonderful little movie theatre that shows English language films. Although, I’m not going to lie, the crepes we got there weren’t the best. I’ve had better. ☺

The whole rumor that the French are rude and refuse to help is totally not true. Everyone we’ve asked has been more than willing to help our lost selves find what we’re looking for and they even speak English! There was even one woman who, when she was unable to help us, took us into a nearby restaurant and got their map and helped us find where we needed to go.

Speaking of restaurants, there is definitely some delicious food in this town. Our favorite bubbly water can be found at a Corsican restaurant called Le Cosí. The best steak tartar is as Balzar. (Despite the incredible wait staff that seems to have a strong dislike towards us.) The best cesar salad is at the Bar Anglais. The best bread is from Paul. The best frozen anything comes from Picard. The best cheese is from Alléosse. The best ice cream is on Ilê de Saint Louis. The best couscous is from Mansouria. And of course, the best hot chocolate is from Angelina.

This is a serious matter. If you’re ever in Paris, even if only for a few hours during layover at Charles de Gaulle airport, you must, must, must travel into Paris and go to Angelina for hot cocoa. It is the most delectable river of creamy heaven that will ever pass your lips.

I have somehow managed to ingrain my sleeping habits into my mother. She is now capable of staying up until 2am and sleeping until the afternoon. Oops.

Along with all the delicious food that can be had at restaurants, my mom can cook. Yay for mommy. Cooking in France includes one extra step: translating the directions and then attempting to coerce our French appliances into cooperating. In my opinion it all turned out quite good. Even when Kate Krosschell came over for dinner she seemed to agree.

I only have one advice when it comes to food here: beware the mustard.

Over the month we took two cooking classes. The first one was an all day affair. We met this woman, Samira, early in the morning. She took us around the markets to buy all the supplies and then we went back to her apartment and she taught us how to make all the dishes. We started with artichoke soup, followed by a savory veal dish, a salad, a pear tart, and crème brulée! Yummy. I’m quite good with a blowtorch but I’m awful at pealing pears.

The other cooking class was taught in the basement of the Ritz Hotel. We learned how to make Napoleons. I ate three of them. But boy, were they good. After that rather filling evening, we decided to walk the two miles home instead of hopping on the metro. We walked away from the Ritz and down to the Tuileries Gardens and down the street to Place de Concorde. For January the weather was wonderful and it was a clear night. On a whim we took a ride on the Ferris wheel in Concorde. It was perfect. The entire city was lit up. From the wheel we could look straight down Champs Élysées to the Arc de Triomphe. With the red and white lights on the cars and the blue lights on the trees lining the boulevard it looked like a giant lit up French flag. We also happened to go up in the Ferris wheel at exactly 9pm and every hour on the hour the lights on the Eiffel Tower flash for ten minutes. It was the perfect evening.

Another thing I love about this city? Everyone seems to have Cavaliers. (i.e. the same type of dog as Sophie and Louie.) I seriously see about three or four a day it seems.

Our trip out to Versailles did one thing for me: it convinced me that royals were crazy people. Seriously, from the furniture they sat on made of solid silver to public bedrooms where people came to watch the king go to sleep. Don’t get me wrong, the place was absolutely gorgeous and I’m definitely going back in the spring to see the gardens, but they were nuts.

One of our last days together my mom and I headed for lunch at Jules Vern on the second floor of the Eiffel Tower. Mother made the reservations over the phone, and let’s just say that “Bonny” sounds, to the French ear, like anything but what it actually is. When we arrived for our reservations the doorman says, “are you sure it’s not the other restaurant you’re looking for.” Everything we’ve heard has said that the service at this restaurant is just over the top awful. I thought the service was great. The only rudeness came from the doorman at the bottom of the elevator. But he was so snooty and stereotypical that it was just plain amusing. The views were great, the food was great, and the guy that kept bringing the bread was really great. However, despite mom’s insistence, he’s too old for me. ;-)

So I’ve finally written and posted this, no matter how late. And I will now get into a routine of writing these things. I’m off to a retrospective of Michelangelo Antonioni films, which starts at midnight and includes breakfast tomorrow morning. It should be fun. Back at the beginning of December I adopted a child in Malawi named Elina. It’s her birthday in a couple of days and I’ve been learning a bit of Chichewa (a Bantu language) off the Internet. So, Ndi ku topa. Which means, I’m getting tired. So if I’m going to make it to this movie thing I better go get a café, non?

Until next week,

Kate

Quote of the month:

Waitress at Christophe trying to translate venison from a menu: “You know Bambi?”