paris in two days

Paris. Day One

Spent my first day in Paris for the first time in 10 years, maybe more. Every moment was magnificent. Talk about being in the present and actively participating…

While so much has changed and some of the places I loved are no longer there, there are also a few places still there, waiting for me. One such place was Mai Do, my favorite Vietnamese restaurant on the Avenue du Montparnasse. Back in 2000, I must have eaten there at least 3 times a week and I brought EVERY friend in Paris and out of town visitor to eat there. To my surprise, the waitress was still there and recognized me – she even came to say goodbye to us before she left. It turns out she’s now the owner. And the Pho was still tasty.

I looked for the Vampyr chocolate shop and didn’t find it. Either I don’t remember where it is or I do know exactly where it was but it’s now gone. Sad face.

I found a store with the name the French seem to call organic food, Bio Naturelle. It was pretty badass, especially the gluten free section, which had a lot of varied baked goods and flours.

Since it was Friday morning, the farmer’s market was in full swing and I took incredible joy in walking through the stalls, eyeing the fruit, breathing in the smells and listening to the vendors calling out the beauty of their plums and cherries. I saw beautiful honey, cheeses, and fruits; great looking meats, patés en croutes and rotisserie chicken. I smiled at the little, bent over grannies walking with bichon frissées and canes. I stopped at the flower stall and fell in love with all the blooms, electric colours and incredible fragrances. Even the flower vendor was charming in the way only the French know how to be charming when they want to.

I took my café at the Café RuBis, sitting on the terrace, watching the traffic on the avenue. Dads pushing strollers, African grannies walking with bags on rice on their heads, and young, bright things swaggering with youthful beauty. It’s nice to know that there are hipsters everywhere wearing the best of the worst 80’s fashions, even in Paris, France.

I met up with my cousin Muriel, whom I’m very connected to despite not being very good at keeping in touch. We ate at Mai Do, drank tons of coffee, smoked cigarettes, wandered down Avenue du Montparnasse, smelled the roses in Rodin’s garden, contemplated the Gate of Hell, and watched the people around Rodin’s backyard. We talked the whole while without feeling the time fly by.

Dad, always the music junkie, planned an evening at the Jazz Club in the Meridian Hotel off the Etoile with the lovely Miss Candye Cane. A blues singer who seems to me like she could have been the original Suicide Girl, she’s voluptuously corpulent, reveling in her sexuality and loving her general badassery. This woman is so bold that she beat pancreatic cancer and despite her French being pretty rudiementary, wrote and performed songs in French. She sings the praises of fat-bottomed girls, super-sized queens and nice, strong healthy women. Her axeman is a girl who shreds some shit up on stage, Laura Chavez. Her piano player is Sue, whom Romain referred to as the “female Jerry Lee”. Watching three women on stage, play the blues, that’s fucking empowering to watch as a woman.

The only thing that made me sad was that I could not share it with Michael, my best friend.

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Paris. Day Two

My cousin, Severine, and her two sons Lucas and Theo came down to Paris with her mother Didi. It was so nice to see them after all these years, easily 15 years or more. We couldn’t remember the last time we saw each other at all but we enjoyed each other’s company, catching up and sharing everything that’s happened over the last decade.

Lucas is 14 and Theo is 12. Both are really good looking boys, very athletic and smart. They both were full of laughter and questions about music and what life is like in the US. Severine has done really well for herself and seems to be happy with the life she has built with her high school sweetheart, Xavier.

We had lunch at Hippotamus, a steak restaurant chain in France. We went to the Musee Grevin, a house of wax figures. Truth be told, the wax figures were weird and most of the figures were of French stars and celebrities that I didn’t know. Most of them were atrocious and pretty eerie.

We walked around the Avenue Haussman and went to Le Printemps, a French department store. Since it was Saturday, it was absolutely crowded to the point where I couldn’t really take it.

All in all, we spent the whole day together. I got home at about 8. As soon as I walked in the door, Romain told me we had to meet Martine and Laurent at Candelaria, a Mexican restaurant in the 11^th district, so I turned right back around to head out with him. The place was really small. I read the blog post Romain had sent me and it mentioned there weren’t many tables. What it failed to mention was that the restaurant only had ONE table.

The food was not to Romain’s liking. He wanted Tex Mex, which is beyond me, really. I hate TexMex, it’s a bastardization of Mexican food. To be fair, TexMex cuisine has it’s place for the right time – like when you’re in Texas at a family BBQ. Only white Texans eat Frito Pie and Rotel Dip, or deep fried burritos smothered in watered down red sauce and cream. I’ve never known a self respecting Texas Mexican to eat that kind of stuff. While I enjoyed the food at Candelaria and found it be “real” Mexican, complete with the pickled red cabbage and onions, Romain was disappointed. Also, I think we didn’t receive all the food I’d ordered.

On the way home, Romain drove me around Paris to see the Pantheon. I don’t think I’ve ever set foot near there, I didn’t even know what it was. Turns out all the French heroes - literary, political, academic, scientific, etc - are buried there. We drove through the Latin Quarter and I gaped at architecture. The best part of Paris is the architecture, an amalgam of every period and style hunched together. We passed a church, the St. Jacques, which Romain told me was built by and for the Templars. The myriads of gargoyles were mind-blowingly ugly and magnificent at the same time.

When I got home, despite being dirty, sweaty and uncomfortable, I couldn’t even think about showering. All I could think about was my bed. As I fell asleep, the rains came down, softly and then harder, cooling everything down and singing a wet song of nature.