Paris
Saturday, September 16
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This time when we went by the fountain at Place
Ernest Denis in the Jardin Marco Polo (in the avenue de l’Observatoire
extension of the
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The Place Saint Sulpice is now the site of a Thai fair that will continue
through this next week and weekend.
So, from 11AM to 8PM every day, eerie Thai music drifts into the
apartment from the outdoor speakers on the square, around the corner. It is not bad, just a little strange. We walked through the fair yesterday and were mildly interested in all
the goods on display, but frankly we’ve seen all these things before, and
we’ve seen them at much more reasonable prices. There is a stage set up, and if there is
going to be some Thai dancing, I think we’ll go back. But otherwise, we’re done with the fair. When we were out walking a couple days ago, we stumbled upon a place that
Tom vaguely recalled and has been trying to find ever since. He normally relies upon my sense of
geography to remember where places are, but I didn’t have this location
logged away in my geographic brain.
Suddenly, when we were looking at places where Hemingway and Joyce
lived on rue Cardinal Lemoine in the 5th arrondissement, there it
was: the Hotel des Grandes Ecoles! It is like a country estate in the middle of Even though it is a
three-star hotel, prices are very reasonable – from 105 to 130 euros per room
per night. If you are crazy enough to
drive a car into Something we’ve been meaning to do for some time is visit BHV, the home
store in a Haussmannian building right across rue de Rivoli from Paris’s city
hall, the Hotel de Ville. Finally, we
did it, a couple days ago. First we explored the legendary basement.
This is Tom’s idea of heaven.
All the power tools a man could want are there, as well as everything
from plywood to fancy shower fixtures.
It is a Lowes right in the middle of The upper floors have all the nicer things for the home. There were all kinds of dishes, bathroom
accessories, small kitchen appliances, etc., of the very latest design. Really cool. The furniture floor was disappointing – mostly cheap modern stuff made
out of particle board with veneer on top. On the whole, prices were high.
But not in the cafeteria! The cafeteria, on the
5th floor, was very good.
We each had tortellini Bolognaise that was assembled and cooked to
order for us as we waited. I was lucky
enough to get a table for us by the window, with a spectacular, sweeping view
of the beautiful Hotel de Ville, the The apartment where we are staying has a wonderful espresso machine that
uses the Nespresso system. Maybe
you’ve seen the George Clooney ads for Nespresso? If not, here’s the Nespresso web
site. Tom has become an expert in the use of this machine. He makes me a cappucino every morning! He also makes himself two or three cups of
espresso every day. So we visited the
Nespresso store across the street from Bon Marché (7th
arrondissement) to buy more Nespresso cartridges. We thought they would probably be rather expensive, but there were so
many people in the shop when we arrived, I knew that was not the case. Eventually we figured out which kinds of
cartridges we wanted to order, and Tom bought several boxes of them. It works out to around 30 cents a
cartridge. Not bad for really
top-notch coffee. It looked like they
were offering free sample cups of espresso down at one end of the store. We didn’t attempt to get through that
little mob since we already knew we liked the goods. But it is a lively little shop. By the way, I wanted to let you know that Bridget Bardot has spoken out
publicly in defense of the horses of the Republican Guard. It seems that she thinks it would be cruel
to make them wear sacks on their rumps to collect the “crottin” as they tromp
through the streets of Paris. Here is Bridget’s
web site for her foundation for the welfare and protection of
animals. Did you know Bridget was
fined in 2000 for making anti-Muslim remarks?
Click here for more. |
