We Become Tourists

 After several short trips and stopovers in Paris, we decided to do the city right and spent a couple of weeks there. It was a lazy trip in late Spring. On a previous trip we had discovered a new place to stay, Hotel Floridor. It’s located near Place Denfert Rochereau in the neighborhood where we had stayed previously. By this time, we had already stayed at the Floridor several times and became regular customers there. On one trip to Paris, I called from the airport to secure a room and was told that no rooms were available. I asked, “Même pour un client assidu?” (Even for a regular patron?). I was flattered that they found a room for us. The hotel is right across the street from the catacombs but for some reason we never visited the catacombs.

 

We spent a lot of time just wandering streets in various parts of Paris. We watched street artists in Montmartre as they sketched Sacré Coeur and picturesque street scenes.

 

Blvd Montparnasse is in the neighborhood of the Floridor, just one Métro stop away. The street is home to many bistros and brasseries made famous by the “Lost Generation” of American expats like Fitzgerld and Hemingway. 

La Coupole is one we enjoyed.. The restaurant is divided into two ections separated by a short divider wall. The tables in one half are adorned with linen tablecloths while the tables in the other half are covered with paper and both sides boast art deco straight out of the 1920s The menu and prices are the same in both sides of the restaurant. The food is excellent and people often go there to be seen. I had steack tartare there for the first time.

 

Wandering the streets of Paris is always interesting. The campy shops on Île de la Cité offer some of the most colorful products. 

                Fresh flowers are important to Parisiennes and flower markets are easy to find.

There's hardly a street in Paris that doesn't have at least one sidewalk café where you can rest your legs and sip a refreshing brew and maybe write a few postcards to your jealous friends back home.

Even if you’ve been to Paris many times, Notre Dame cathedral is a must do. Back in the 1970s you could actually visit without throngs of other tourists crowding the scene.

While the roof line of the cathedral has rows of marching saints, gargoyles festoon the eaves and gables. They are there to shed rainwater and to remind believers of the perils of sin. It was also believed that they would serve to discourage visits from Satan and bad spirits.

I had to take Claudia to the Palais de Chaillot to see the magnificent fountains.   

 

A short walk over the Pont St Michel from Île de la Cité brings you to Blvd St Michel and the Latin Quarter, home to riverside book venders, tony shops and restaurants galore where a prix fixe lunch is affordable to the most frugal tourist. It’s a busy part of Paris day and night.

Déjà Vu

 

A month later, we returned to France for our mensiversary. We went for supper. We arrived at 9 AM at Orly, checked into the Grand Hôtel St Michel and made reservations for dinner at La Tour d’Argent.

The restaurant was not far from the hotel, but it was drizzling rain so we hailed a taxi. The driver dropped us at the restaurant minutes after picking us up. I asked him, What’s the fare?” He said, “Rien, monsieur, c’est un cadeau;" nothing m'sieur, it's a gift. Who says, "Parisiens are rude?" We were in the city of love. La tour d’argent has been one of the premier restaurants in Paris for many years. It sports a magnificent view of Notre Dame Cathedral. In fact, the restaurant paid for the lights that illuminate the jewel of Gothic architecture at night. 

Naturally, we ordered the specialty of the house, “Caneton Tour d’Argent”, pressed duck. A viselike press is used to press the blood from a duck carcass. The blood is then combined with duck consommé, Madeira and cognac to make a sublime sauce. We shared a bottle of Mumm’s Cordon Rouge and enjoyed a delicious soufflé à l'orange for dessert. The next morning, we hopped a plane back to Chicago. Thanks to the incredible discount we enjoyed on Air France, our $75 meal cost more than our airfare.

A month after our mensiversary dinner, Air France sent me to a training class in Paris. Rather than stay at a hotel at the airport where the class took place, I opted to go into the city. I found the Bijou, a tiny, no-star hotel in the rue Daguerre. The view from the window was not especially inspiring.

The hotel was just around the corner from Place Denfert-Rochereau, the terminus for the bus from the airport.

Claudia joined me for the weekend. We enjoyed the street market in the rue Daguerre and spent time in sidewalk cafés watching the world go by.

We did go to Versailles and had lunch where Claudia ordered Julia Child’s first and most favorite meal in France, sole meunière. Claudia was a bit intimidated because the fish wasn’t fileted. The waiter showed her how to filet the fish with a spoon. Our Métro ride out to Versailles took us past Pont Alexandre bridge. This bridge connects the Champs-Élysées section of Paris to the Invalides, Eiffel Tower district. It is considered the most ornate bridge in Paris and connects the Champs-Élysées section of Paris to the Invalides-Eiffel Tower district. 

Paris is for honeymoons

 

Shortly after returning home I was living in Chicago where I went to graduate school. Eventually I answered a want ad for an international airline looking for personnel. It turned out to be Air France, the national airline of France. I was hired. Two years later, Claudia  (my first wife, now deceased) and I were married and we honeymooned in Paris. We spent one night at the opulent hotel George V which we couldn’t afford under normal circumstances but my Dad paid for one night (for which I hesitantly asked a discount for Air France employees!). The room was very large and overlooked a classic courtyard.

We moved to the Méridien, a more modern but less expensive hotel, for the rest of our trip. Our room there also looked out on a courtyard; a decidedly less classic courtyard. 

Enjoying the City of Light with another person made the city even more enjoyable. The sights and sounds took on new excitement.

A memorable moment occurred when we dined at a small restaurant. We ordered “Lapin à la style mon grand-père”, apparently a dish the chef enjoyed when his grandfather made it. It was very good but I was flattered beyond all measure when the waiter asked, “What part of France are you from, monsieur?” I can imagine him going back to the kitchen saying to the chef, “Eh Jacques, I ‘ave zees américain who sink ‘e speak français. So I ask heem, “weesh part of la France you come from?” Ha-ha, Jacques I get beeg teep, oui?”

While the experience at that restaurant was memorable it was eclipsed by another restaurant. Years earlier, when I was a Peace Corps volunteer, I read a short article about La Colombe in National Geographic. I was taken away by the photos of this picturesque restaurant. It rested on foundations laid when Paris was called Lutetia by the Romans who occupied the site on Île de la cité. In 1225, a dilapidated house rested on the site. A sculptor lived there and he had 2 pet doves which he fed. At some point, the house fell into complete ruin and the doves were trapped beneath the rubble. The male dove managed to escape and he kept his mate alive with seeds and water from the nearby Seine. His loyalty attracted the aid of people in the neighborhood who managed to remove the debris from the trapped bird. 

In time a new structure was built on the old foundations and in the 16^th century and a bistro was established there, one of the oldest bistros in Paris. The doves were memorialized in a frieze above the door.

This bistro became known as La Colombe and was a quaint little restaurant. It’s outdoor seating , shaded by vines and greenery was a visual delight and was what I fell in love with. Inside was tiny and very dark and romantic. We had "Truite Amandine" for what was our first and last meal at La Colombe.

A couple of years later the restaurant closed and the establishment was turned into a wine shop. Anyway, the honeymoon, like all honeymoons, I guess, was way too short. So we flew back to Chicago and began planning our next trip to Paris.

A French Love Affair Begins in Paris

 

I am an unabashed Francophile. Thanks a wonderful professor at Brescia College, Sr Maureen Brown, I fell in love with all things French when I was an undergraduate. In 1969 I made my first trip to France as I was returning from the Peace Corps in Sénégal.  I did all the usual tourist things. I visited the Louvre, gazed at the Mona Lisa and the Winged Victory, went up in the Eiffel tower and ate at a myriad of restaurants. It was the first of many trips.

 

Paris seems to have been designed for walking.

There are interesting things to see everywhere, from streets with

 odd names, street of the headless woman 

and hotels identified by colorful signs.

There are peaceful parks everywhere in this fast paced city.

The Seine, like waterways everywhere attracts children playing in the water and others simply relaxing.

 

Across the Seine from the Eiffel tower is the magnificent Trocadero fountain of the Palais de Chaillot. The fountain is the largest fountain in Paris consisting of 20 water cannons aimed at the Eiffel tower with a range of 150 feet and numerous other sprays of water. It is truly a water wonder. It replaced the original Trocadero fountain and was built for an International Expo in 1937. Walking beneath and among the various sprays of water is an experience.

 

 

Like all big cities, there are many suburbs outside the city proper. The most famous is probably Versailles about 12 miles from Paris. Louis the XIII went hunting with his father Henry IV on the forested marshland there. He later built a hunting lodge there and as he spent more and more time there and he soon found the humble hunting lodge insufficient and in 1631 began the construction of the palace that stands there now. Louis XIV, the Sun King, added to the palace and moved the de facto seat of government to Versailles.

 

Other banlieues are not so splendid. I took the Métro to the end of the line and roamed around Cheville a busy neighborhood ,  

                                                              with nice homes

                                                                modest homes

                                                                and the usual bistros.

The many churches in the city attest to the history of Catholicism in France-from Notre Dame 

Festooned with gargoyles to shed water, ward off evil and to remind the faithful of the perils of sin

   

                                                                                           and images of saints. 

I was fortunate to have visited Notre Dame Cathedral before the huge throngs of tourists typical of years later and before the disastrous fire in 2019.

                                                          

to the wedding cake that is Sacré Coeur. 

         

 

 

 

 

 

                                                                                                                                                                                                        and the jewel box that is Ste-Chapelle

A CAPITOL EXPERIENCE

Guatemala City became the capitol of Guatemala following the disastrous earthquake of 1773 that destroyed much of Antigua.  It is home to nearly three million people, all of whom seem to be in the streets at the same time.

Traffic in the city is horrible regardless of the time of day.  The streets are filled with crowded buses, taxis and private cars, hand carts and the occasional goatherder. 

Traffic is so bad that intercity buses are not allowed in the city center.  Such buses disgorge their passengers several miles from the city center.  There they board minibuses that take them to the main bus terminal. 

 

Everyone seems to be in a hurry. Walking down a sidewalk, I always felt there was someone behind me urging me to move along.

Of course, Guatemala City is a modern city.  Fine high rise buildings share space with older, less lofty buildings. 

The American Empire is very present in the form of fast fooderies, big box stores and upscale shops.  McDonald’s offers the usual Big Mac and such but also offers a Chapin desayuno, a traditional breakfast with tortillas, sausage, egg and black beans.  Can’t get to the restaurant?  No problem, Micky Ds delivers. 

Amid all the hustle bustle of modernity, people still find time to relax and feed the pigeons in the Parque Central. 

A typical Spanish plaza, the park is anchored at one end with a fine cathedral and government buildings on another side. 

In addition, the city is dotted with small parks where the walkways are kept clean, the fountains kept running.  They are filled with a variety of flowers.  I was especially impressed with the Hydrangeas that had blooms nearly a foot in diameter!

Guatemala City is not exactly a tourist mecca.  By and large, it is busy and loud and a bit dirty.  There are jewels in the rough.  Many older buildings in the old part of town are worth a visit.  Then there are several worthwhile museums dedicated to history and one in particular dedicated to the history of Guatemalan textiles.

All in all, we thoroughly enjoyed our stay in Guatemala.  The people are friendly, open and proud of their heritage.  The music is great, the art is beautiful and the food is delicious.