07.11.08
Posted in Paris Life, Travel at 9:15 pm by rachel
In the window of our first Paris apartment. Taken by Lily on our last day in Paris, June 14, 2008.
We left Paris in mid-June and I haven’t had the chance to update my blog until now. My apologies! Despite the heat, New York has been treating us well. The internet is hooked up, we have a bed as of this morning, and the a/c is installed and working. Whew! What more does one need?
Saying goodbye to Paris was bittersweet. We are excited about starting a new chapter in New York and with a baby, but it was hard to leave our old life – and especially our dear friends – behind. Getting a sofa bed is a top priority so that we can have plenty of visitors in the coming months!
The following is my farewell ode to Paris, in pictures.
Eiffel Tower, View from Montmartre
Typical Candy Stand
Art Deco Fountain in the Latin Quarter
Our Apartment (the windows facing the viewer)
Successful Flowerbox Geranium Revival
The Ile de la Cité, view from the Right Bank
Luxembourg Gardens
The Métro
Flower Shop on Rue Monge, just around the corner from our apartment
Place de la Contrescarpe
Luxembourg Gardens Statue
Honorary French Supporter duirng the Rugby World Cup
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04.17.08
Posted in Art, Paris Life at 1:26 pm by rachel
My good friend Corry likes to photograph and keep track of various kinds of graffiti throughout the city. She’s drawn my attention to certain artists, like the Invader (check out this photo set on flickr for more) and other trends, such as paper graffiti. Over these many months of living in Paris, I’ve captured a few examples of graffiti in various forms.
This is a stenciled image - a common technique for creating repeated images throughout the city (or the world).
This paper découpage-style graffiti seems to be gaining popularity in Paris.
Another example of découpage. Note also the Invader mosaic to the left.
I saw this marker drawing on a post near my bus stop at the Bibliothèque Nationale.
My favorite: knit graffiti. The appearance of this example was part of an exhibition in Paris by Knitta Please, and was on rue Vieille du Temple - a street we frequent several times a week, since it’s between our apartment and Corry’s.
Another mosaic, with one of our favorite video game characters.
And just in case you thought graffiti was a recent phenomenon, here’s an example from 1879, in no other place than the Pantheon!
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02.19.08
Posted in Paris Life at 1:19 pm by rachel
Richard Nahem of the excellent Eye Prefer Paris blog hosted the second annual Paris Blogger Party on Saturday night. Richard has an amazing apartment with 2-story windows and design elements resembling things I’d only seen in Soho window displays. We had a wonderful time, but forgot a camera, so check out his post about it and the roll call of the fun Paris bloggers that attended.
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01.11.08
Posted in Cuisine, Paris Life at 5:38 pm by rachel
The holidays last and last when you’re living in France: here, they celebrate Epiphany with a kings’ cake, usually a layered cake flavored with almonds. Inside is a hidden bean (or now, usually a porcelain figurine). If you find it in your slice, you’re the king. The glory of wearing a metallic cardboard crown is surely worth a chipped tooth, n’est-ce-pas?
With Epiphany already almost a week over, we were happy to still find these galettes des rois sold in pastry shops and grocery stores. But if you’re not living in a place that sells galettes, or if you’d simply like to try to make one yourself, check out Richard Nahem’s recipe over at Eye Prefer Paris. By the way, if you’re looking for an entertaining, knowledgeable custom tour of Paris, Richard’s talents as a guide are as awesome as his cooking ability.
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12.05.07
Posted in Family, Paris Life at 10:15 am by rachel
I know I promised mouth-watering latke photos today, but I have something perhaps even more exciting to share: a Parisian festival of lights! Seth still has the latke pics on his computer, so we’ll get to those, but we had so much fun during our impromptu tour of Paris lights I just had to post this first…
Yesterday at dusk I met Seth in front of his office (which is conveniently located on Place de la Concorde) and walked over to the huge Ferris wheel (grande roue, or “big wheel” in French). For the low price of just 8€ a person (sarcasm), you can ride the Ferris wheel around about four times (that’s 2€ per rotation…hmmm…).
But it is worth it! The 360-degree views were spectacular. I couldn’t look down, but looking out was wonderful. I highly recommend going once the sun is down. Had we been there just a little before 5pm instead of after, we would have caught the Eiffel Tower glittering (which happens every hour on the hour). We weren’t disappointed, though.
The Ferris Wheel from Below
The View from the Ferris Wheel: Eiffel Tower, Concorde Obelisk, and the Avenue des Champs-Elysées
Note the Eiffel Tower in the background with its strange search light.
You’d think it’d be fun to operate a giant Ferris wheel, but apparently not:
We decided to walk all the way back home to the Latin Quarter, enjoying many lights on the way:
A festive street near the Madeleine church
Street decorations and the Place Vendôme
Chandeliers lined the street leading from the Place Vendôme
Watching the Ice Skaters in front of Hôtel de Ville
The Christmas Tree in front of Notre Dame
Once we got home, we lit the menorah (a gift from Seth’s parents), which I think looks very pretty:
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11.23.07
Posted in Paris Life at 4:47 pm by rachel
Do not pass go: the blocked Boulevard St. Michel
The rail workers’ strike seems to be dying down, but yesterday was a big day for the student protest of President Sarkozy’s proposed university reforms. Between stuffing- and pumpkin soup-related errands, I managed to catch some pictures of the preparations.
These riot police are ready on rue Monge, just around the corner from our apartment.
Police vehicles as far as the eye can see on the Quai St. Michel.
Cable Station Canal Plus Reported from our local pub, the Bombardier, which hasn’t seen this much action since the Rugby World Cup. Notice the entire rue Mt. Sainte-Geneviève is filled with police vans.
The blockade continues behind the church of St. Etienne du Mont. That fence is attached to the front of the van. For what?
The big protest finally happened, and….
I heard a couple drums, and a couple students randomly shouted things like “pouvoir d’achat!” (buying power!) and sort of harassed the policemen. But nothing too huge.
Gendarmes on guard on rue du Cardinal Lemoine.
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11.19.07
Posted in Cuisine, Paris Life at 8:23 pm by rachel
So when you have hamburger night in France….
The cheese is Swiss, from Gruyère.
The mustard is French, Maille brand.
The beef comes from Charolais cows.
The avocados are Spanish.
The bacon is not bacon at all but strips of pork breast (”poitrine”).
The “bun” is cut from a loaf of whole grain bread.
The beer is Belgian (or Dutch).
But is a break from tradition such a bad thing?
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11.16.07
Posted in Paris Life at 9:55 am by rachel
Chaos! Image from a BBC slideshow
As you may have heard, the nation-wide transportation strike continues. I haven’t been affected since I am writing from our apartment in the Latin Quarter, but Seth has had a 20-minute walk to the 1 line, which is the only one running at a semi-normal rate (1 train every 5 minutes). That is, apart from the 14 line, which is automatic and is running normally.
What creative solutions have people found to get to work? I have seen the following on my own little block:
~ a grown man about 50 years old on a kid’s scooter
~ twice the bikes I normally see
~ a rollerblader using a traffic lane, barreling downhill at about 25mph
~ cars lined up as far as the eye can see, blocking our intersection and causing more traffic (it took my neighbor 2.5 hours to get home from work last night)
Even the neighborhood grocery store was affected: because of road conditions, they stopped grocery delivery service.
Labor issues aside, I suppose this is excellent proof that public transportation systems make life easier, less crowded, and less polluted. Hope everything is back to normal by Monday, because the weather is now below freezing and it’s getting too cold to walk very far!
Check out RATP’s website for hourly updates on metro traffic. As of 9:15 this morning:
The university students are on strike, too, and not to think we were anything special here in France, there is also a rail strike in Germany. The civil servants go on strike next Tuesday. ‘Tis the season!
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11.11.07
Posted in Paris Life at 4:04 pm by rachel
Place de la Concorde, November 11, 1918
November 11 is a national holiday in France; it’s just too bad it falls on a Sunday this year, so no day off! It is the commemoration of the end of World War I (or the Great War as it was called before there were two), when Germany signed the armistice and the war ended at the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month. In the U.S., today is Veterans’ Day, which honors veterans from all wars.
Poster announcing the Armistice. Vive la République!
I had noticed over the last few days that new blue, white, and red flowers had been placed near the many plaques around the city honoring Parisians who fell at that particular spot (most of them during World War II). Our neighborhood monument, the Pantheon, was particularly decorated today, with French flags adorning the front pillars.
The Pantheon, November 11, 2007
On this day in 1920 an unknown soldier was laid to rest at the Pantheon. There is also a tomb of an unknown soldier at the Arc de Triomphe.
Unknown Soldier laid to rest at the Pantheon, November 11, 1920
The parades of veterans commemorating Armistice Day were the largest France had ever seen: the reach of the war was far, and drew in more sons, fathers, and brothers as trench warfare for years virtually halted any military advancement on either side. Today, only three known World War I veterans are still alive in France (22 in the whole world). But the legacy of the world’s first modern war lives on, as the Great War was a major turning point in cultural and political history; the end of the long nineteenth-century. The French Third Republic survived, but the conflict laid the groundwork for the twentieth-century conflicts to come.
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10.03.07
Posted in Paris Life at 9:36 am by rachel
What is now the Pantheon, a secular monument to the “great men” (and now one woman, Marie Curie) of France that are buried in its crypt, was originally built in the mid-18th-century as the Sainte Genviève church. The Revolutionaries turned it into the monument it is today, but it hasn’t been a continuous trajectory: each new regime (First Empire, Restoration, Second Republic, Second Empire, Third Republic…) gave it a different meaning, at times turning it back into a church and finally in the 1880s reassembled what it is today.
I’ve found some pictures of the Pantheon from the late 19th century to the present day, which I thought were interesting. The more things change…
circa 1880, photo taken from the Luxembourg Gardens side. This little round-about and fountain are no longer at the end of rue Soufflot, which has since been widened.
1910
1944, German soldiers posed in front of the Pantheon during the Occupation.
Fall 2007
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