Fermeture Annuelle: photos

We all know by now, don't we, that Paris more or less shuts down in August.  Some of us revel in the peacefulness of a quiet Paris.  Others are challenged by the many, many boutique and local-shopkeeper closings.  Still others are away at vacation retreats and don't notice the difference.

But it is a rite of summer.  It is Paris.

A few years ago I commissioned some enterprising photographers to capture the signs posted in Paris shop windows announcing their summer closings. Even the convents post a "Fermeture Annuelle sign!

Here are a few of those signs. (Gentle reminder:  all copyright Polly-Vous Francais) 



Bonnes vacances!

Les Liaisons Dangereuses, signed Malkovich

 Wow.

Tonight was opening night of Les Liaisons Dangereuses, directed by John Malkovich, part of the Lincoln Center Festival.

Actors warming up on stage before the play begins

Wow.

I was all wound up in anticipation of this production, for many reasons.  I had studied the epistolary novel by Pierre Choderlos de Laclos as a French major in college, and later actually acted in a community theater production of Christopher Hampton's play wherein I played (ulp) the Marquise de Merteuil (aka Glenn Close).

None of my past experiences -- reading for literature, watching the film, acting in the play -- prepared me for this tour de force.  This is Liaisons Dangereuses as it was meant to be experienced.

Wow.

It was totally brilliant, which is a relief when expectations and ticket prices run high.

In the Director's Notes in the Playbill, John Malkovich says:  "Les Liaisons Dangereuses is a story for the ages.  It is here restored to its original language, and I think today's theatergoers will readily grasp it, even if they don't speak French. It is clear and clean and mean and fast.  It hurts as life invariably does.  It is snotty and decadent and sexy.  It is infantile, tragic, and amusing."

It is indeed all of the above.  The play is highly charged and erotic, and had many in the audience squirming in their seats.  (Some oldsters left at intermission.)  It is witty and superbly staged.  The acting is superlative (with the exception of a vaguely disappointing Mme de Rosemonde, who was just okay).

Highly recommended!

Post Cards from Paris: a Thought and a Kiss

Vintage post cards of Paris (or anywhere, for that matter) are delightful, and are easy and unique souvenirs to bring home.

This is a sweet one -- Une pensée de Paris, a play on words since pensée means both pansy and thought.  Say it with flowers:   Thinking of you from Paris.  With the requisite monuments, of course.

The correspondence on the reverse side of this post card was tame, a perfunctory "Tous mes remerciements, Joanne."  The card was addressed to Monsieur et Madame Giraud, 40 rue de la Station, Ermont, which is just north of Paris.  I did a little research:  here is rue de la Station at about that time.  Probably late 1800s.

It's innocent enough, tiptoeing into someone else's thank-you note.

It is another matter entirely to stumble upon an ancient post card containing a woman's bold and feverish declaration of love, which, I fear, may be unrequited. Reading a love letter meant for private eyes feels intrusive ... and yet it causes insatiable curiosity.

Un Baiser -- A Kiss.  The photo may be the woman herself. (To me it looks like a studio portrait turned into a carte postale.) What do you think?

The reverse:  no address.  I'm not sure how the post card was delivered, because it was stamped and metered on the photo side.  It was written probably about 1903.

The message?  I got so sad reading this.  (Translation at the bottom.)   The age old story.

Bien cher et tendre,
L’accueil que vous ferez à ma lettre me cause une inquiétude pénible. J’ai longtemps combattu avant de vous faire l’aveu de ma tendresse. J’ai vingt fois déchiré des lettres commencées enfin mon chéri mon cœur la emporte sur toutes mes craintes. C’est sans doute avoir de l’audace de vous faire un semblable aveu mais il est sincère et je n’exagère pas ma situation, si je vous dis que lorsque je vous ai vue[sic] la première fois j’ai senti un transport qui m’était inconnu. Je ne vous propose pas mon chéri de partager une affection passagère qui n’a rien de sincère ni de durable. Je désire m’unir a vous par les liens du mariage et tous mes vœux sont que.. liens nous unissent a jamais. J’espère que vous daignez répondre à mes sentiments. J’attends votre décision, je l’attends avec impatience et […] quelle ne soit pas désespérant. Je vous en supplie soyez sincère et franc n’ayez aucun détour, car voilà déjà de longs jours que je vous connais, vous avez du remarquer tout le bonheur que j’éprouve lorsque je suis près de vous. Je vous aime de toutes les forces de mon âme. O vous si charmant et si doux, auriez- vous la cruauté de repousser l’amour le plus vrai et le plus sincère. Si vous ne pouvez pas me donner des sentiments aussi affectueux que ceux que je me sens pour vous, laissez-moi au moins l’espérance un mot de grâce sinon, chéri dites-moi que je puis vous chérir et vous aimer. Veuillez agréer cher bien aime avec mon profond respect l’assurance de mon amitié et de mon dévouement. Votre amie qui vous aime. 28.16

Quickly translated:

"My tender darling,
Thinking about your potential reaction to this letter causes me painful worry.  I have been so anguished about expressing my feelings to you.  I have begun and then torn up letters to you twenty times, because, dear heart, therein lie my fears.  It is certainly bold to make such a pronouncement to you, but it is sincere and I am not exaggerating my current situation if I tell you that when I saw you the first time I felt transported in a way I'd never felt before.  I am not asking you to share with me a fleeting affection, which is neither sincere nor long-lasting.  I want to be united with you by the bonds of marriage and my only wishes are that we be united forever.  I hope that you will return the feelings.  I await your decision, I wait for it with impatience and [hope] that it will not be disappointing.  I beg of you, be sincere and honest, don't beat around the bush, because I have already known you for so many long days, and surely you must have noticed the joy that I experience when I am near you.  I love you with all the force of my soul.  O you so charming and so kind, would you be so cruel as to reject a love so sincere and so real?  If you cannot love me in the same way that I love you, please give me at least a kind word, dear one please tell me that at least I can love you and cherish you.

Please accept dear one with my profound respect the assurance of my friendship and my devotion.  Your friend who loves you."


Parting thoughts:

1.  What do you think the response was, if any?

2.  I am amazed that even love letters are closed with "Veuillez agreer....l'assurance de etc etc."  That formula is really, really ingrained in the culture!

3.  Was 28.16 a code name?

A lorgnette from Paris

My most chic acquisition during my Paris visit was a lorgnette.

Wandering the stalls of the Marche aux Puces at Vanves, I was enthralled at all the offerings but tiring of needing to take my reading glasses out of my purse every time I wanted to inspect an item. (I still refuse to put them on a chain around my neck.  I just can't.)

And then lo and behold, just what I didn't know I was looking for:  this vintage lorgnette! 10 euros is my kind of price.

I hadn't really ever seen anyone use a lorgnette in real life.  Perhaps in the comedy archives of my youth:  Marx Brothers' movies, or Saturday morning cartoons?

Surely I could create a new fashion statement for Boomers like me who have had it with peering through the glasses perched on the mid-bridge of the nose.

Besides, the totally cool part:  this lorgnette is compact.  It folds. I spent the rest of the morning inspecting objets through my new specs.

I suppose putting this on a pretty chain or lanyard wouldn't kill me.

Related post:  Men Seldom Make Passes.  I guess I do have a thing for folding eyeglasses.

A few iconic views of Paris

Most of this recent visit to Paris, I just wasn't interested in taking photos.  It seemed too clicheed, too... I don't know what to call it.  Everybody and their brother are taking photos of everything there is to see in Paris.  What could I document that wasn't already documented by a hundred thousand instagrams, Facebook photos, and more?

So I revisited Paris mostly with my eyes, ears, and heart. I absorbed Paris in my pores.  Wow, did it feel good.

My cautionary tale:

The summer I was 19 I returned to France to revisit the wonderful friends I had made the previous summer, which had been my first and tremendously pivotal experience in France.  That subsequent summer, I borrowed my mother's Zeiss Ikon 36 mm camera and took 6 rolls of film, to document all of the magic that I had lived the year before.  Returning home, I had the film processed -- only to discover that the camera's shutter had stuck after the second frame,  and I had zero pictures.  Zero.

On that awful day, I vowed never to live a moment through the lens of a camera... NEVER.  I understood that the moment lived is far more important than the documentation of it ... to me.

How could I have envisioned 2013, when not a moment goes undocumented and immediately shared with friends?  Sometimes I want to just chuck the camera (and everyone else's) and then some times I'm so grateful for those fleeting moments captured by camera.  It's a toss-up.

That said, I did take a few photos of recurring sights of Paris that I simply had to document for posterity. All from the vicinity of my rental apartment on the Esplanade des Invalides.  When you walk out the door and this is what you see every day, you simply have to take a quick snapshot, eventually.  Too breathtaking!

Aperitifs and nibblies

One thing I always appreciate about ordering an aperitif at a cafe in France:  no drinking on an empty stomach!     Invariably, one is served a dish of olives or peanuts, or if you're even luckier, some other zakouskis of the chef.

Here, lovely standard fare with a glass of Sancerre at le Bar du Central, rue St. Dominique, in the 7e.

French cafe furniture for all!

When the raindrops stop and there is time for meandering around Paris, life just doesn't get any better.  On boulevard Beaumarchais, I was heading over to a jewellery vente privee (trunk show) when I saw a store filled with French café chairs. Floor to ceiling, literally.

The art, as always in Paris, is to stop in your tracks, head in the door, and check it out.

So, of course I went in.  Of course I had to find out all about it.

I know many people who have longed to have French café-style chairs and tables on a patio, and I agree.  Not that I would want to re-create an entire Café de Flore chez moi (though that is possible), but just would enjoy adding a bit of panache, a little je ne sais quoi to a typical outdoor gathering space.

Well, Grock France is the place that supplies the furniture and furnishings to the cafés and restaurants of France.  The real deal!  There were chairs in every imaginable café style, color and chair weave.  Plus tables, menu holders, the whole shebang.  The genuine article.

I hope they deliver worldwide.

Do You Love Paris Street Signs?

Tell me.

Do you really love Paris street signs and French metal signs in general?

If you are like me and adore all of them -- not just the classic plaques émaillées with the street names, but also the house numbers, the Pietons signs, the Sens Interdit signs, well.  Have I got a treat for you.

On rue des Tournelles today I came across the Gallery Art Jingle and an exhibit of a fabulous artist, Fernando Costa, now know just as Costa.  If you haven't heard of him already (he is quite famous, at least in France), his medium is reclaimed metal, mostly signage.

All inspirational and on top of that, just perfect for any francophile.

To top it off, it turns out that he is also designing this year's Art Car for the 90th anniversary of the renowned Le Mans race, and the car will be unveiled tonight!

If all this creative art is too hi-falutin' for you, and if  you just want some street-sign memorabilia to take back home... well, let me see.  You can always, ummm, buy this men's shirt, seen shortly thereafter on rue de Turenne.

Menu translation du jour

Lunch today at l'Entracte de l'Opera, a pleasant and bustling café and brasserie. As I was finishing my delicious poulet fermier, a kindly older British couple was seated near me at a corner table.

Getting straight away to business, they ordered, in high-school French, a bouteille de rosé.  The waiter departed to fetch their wine, and they began to scan the food part of the menu.  They looked quizzically at the specialty of the day:  Souris d'agneau.

"Un souris? What's a souris? Isn't that a smile? A smile of lamb? Whatever could that be?"

"Just ask the waiter, dear."

The waiter returned with their rosé, ceremoniously had monsieur taste the wine.  Then retrieving his pad, "Vous avez décidé?"

The gent looked up through his glasses and asked, "C'est quoi un souris, s'il vous plait?"

"Euuhh, une souris, c'est un petit animal," replied the waited, scrambling his fingers across the tabletop to illustrate a little mouse running.  He searched for a translation.  "Euuh, a moose?"

"A mouse???"  They looked at each other with the-French-are-serving-WHAT? startled expressions.

Never able to mind my  own business, I intervened.

Une souris is indeed a mouse,  une souris d'agneau is a lamb shank.

Old French post cards

A favorite Paris pastime is browsing through the Marché aux timbres on avenue Gabriel.  In my mind, it is one of the best shopping places for authentic bits of France that are almost impossible to find outside of the Hexagon -- at least in terms of selection.  And which you can take home without weighing down the luggage.

For about an hour I took shelter (kind of) from the dripping rain under a number of tents of stamp and postcard merchants.  If my nice leather flat shoes hadn't been soaked, I would have stayed longer.  Yes, some of us must suffer: caught in the Paris downpour!

This postcard, from around 1910, caught my eye:  a manif!  "Place de la Concorde (Manifestation)."  With the Eiffel Tower in the background.

There are so many comments and complaints from expats and tourists about "oh those @#%*& demonstrations in Paris."  And I share the frustrations.  Kind of.  Because, as this points out, really, they are just a part of Paris tradition.  Well before 1910.

As regular as rain.

But I have no idea what the manifestation was about.  Any ideas to help solve the mystery?

Finding a rental apartment in Paris

My Paris rental apartment

I made plans a while ago to come to Paris for 10 days.  With the loftiest of intentions, I investigated apartment rentals early on.  There are so many excellent websites to choose from, and having lived here and not been in the position of looking for a rental, I was... a bit overwhelmed.  How to choose the right place?

Somehow, I have good apartment karma -- mostly.  This one is no exception.

My criteria:  the 7e arrondissement, if possible.  But I immediately dismissed any apartment ad that  boomed "near Eiffel Tower!" or "proximity to Champs-Elysees!"  I just wasn't interested in staying in (or paying for) a place that added a premium for being in a tourist area.

First stop:  VRBO and a few other websites of locally-driven apartment rentals.  I found that they were almost all over-priced, and more than one used bait-and-switch "That apartment isn't available but we have this really great one in the 18e."  Don't get me wrong -- I love the 18e -- but for this trip I really wanted a place in central Paris where I could get around with a quick bus ride or a brisk walk.

Next, I moved to my two other favorite sites, abritel.fr and homelidays.com.  No middle-man, direct from the owner, and the prices are about what I would expect. It helps to speak or understand French in some cases.

(By the way, there are many 2-star hotels in Paris which I also really love, which end up being about the same budget -- but for 10 days, I wanted a place where I could fix my own coffee in the morning and relax in my jammies before heading out to embrace the adrenaline-laced Parisian hustle and bustle.)

So I found what seemed to be just the right place -- a studio near the Invalides, just my budget.  A few email exchanges with the owner and I was ready to roll. (An important step is making sure that if needed, there was an elevator.  Totally key when renting a Paris apartment.  In this case, the apartment is on the ground floor, so elevator wasn't an issue.)  The only early challenge was doing the wire transfer of funds -- it would have been so nice to have been able to use PayPal.

Then, the following email from the owner:

Dear Polly,
I am so delighted that you will be renting the apartment. Also, you will have a large modern bathroom with bathtub and shower, and a large modern kitchen which are all delightful to be in. Plus the beautiful Haussmannian building... and room to live.
You'll have something to eat upon arrival, and I offer you some fruit, ham, a baguette, butter, sugar, coffee, a bottle of good wine (do you want tea?) so that you don't have to do shopping when you first arrive. If you want something special, don't hesitate to ask me.
Your bed will be ready. All you'll have to do is to fall into it to recuperate from jet lag; and I won't bother you you too much the first day except for a few essential questions. I'll come back the next day to go over the details.
Vivement la semaine prochaine!

Is that a dream, or what?  And I arrived, and here is what I found:

The table set for me.  Wine, baguette, jambon.  Everything I could need for day one.  I felt so welcomed and in such a fabulous setting.    1000 channels of French TV (I may never leave!)  

I am happy happy happy in this little nest!  Happy in Paris.  Not much sleep -- too busy! -- but who said sleep was an important part of being in Paris?

Paris and the demonstrations

Only a few days in Paris, and life is never dull.  Today was filled with many incredible moments, but what stopped Paris in its tracks was the massive protest for "Le Mariage pour Tous."

It brought much of the city to a standstill.  No taxis, no buses.

Here, at the place de l'Alma, where one group in the parade began.  They were singing La Marseillaise:

The groups of protesters continued pouring from three different directions into the Esplanade des Invalides (where I am staying) until the early evening.  As far as I know, no major problems arose.  I arrived home a few minutes ago and the police were still out in full force, blocking the street:

Bloggiversary

Wow.  Have I really been writing this blog for seven years?  Did I really first arrive in Paris in 2006, that long ago?  The digi-world, the blogger world, was so different then.   Click here for the very first Polly-Vous Francais? post.

Seven??  I feel ancient.  I feel humbled by all the wonderful readers and their snarky comments enlightening feedback.

Thanks, everyone!

And I'm heading to Paris in 10 days, so please stay tuned for timely updates about planning for and returning to Paris.

Can you really go home again?  

We'll see.

Mystery Photo du Jour: French technology

Okay, well, this isn't a mystery photo for anyone who lives or has lived in France; and you know who you are.

So, no fair guessing in the comments section!

But I came across these two devices yesterday in my embarrassingly outdated, overflowing-with-ancient-bits "technology cords and accessories" bag, and they automatically struck fear in my expat heart.  I still can never figure out how they were supposed to work in France.

 Two or three coupled together at times. Maybe let's add more!?  Never, it seems with the desired results.

And I sure don't need them in the U.S.  Anyone want them?