A Thing for Paris . . .



Quintessential Paris = A mime who sang nonsense operatic arias beneath the Eiffel Tower.

 I seem to have a thing for Paris.  This summer I'll go again, for a week.  I'm accompanying my friend Barbara and her daughter Debby and granddaughter Ashley.  The trip is a reward to Ashley who's just finishing high school and has been accepted to a good college.  This will be interesting.  I'm virtually a stranger to two of us, and a good friend to their relative.  But the three of them have such close ties.  I may well be just a kind of tour guide/translator. 

But it's time to be spent in Paris - a place I've come to really really enjoy.  To me the city is not one of glamour but of grace.  Architecturally, with its wide boulevards and mid-size 19th-century buildings,

and its many parks, both large and handkerchief size, and trees that line so many streets, it is calming and graceful.  Despite the awful traffic. 

Nearly rush hours on the Champs Elysees (viewed from the top of the Arc de Triomphe).

And the many cafe tables and chairs lining the sidewalks make the city seem so much more friendly - - seeing folks enjoying conversation and drinks, or perusing a newspaper, or just watching the passing scene.  Taking possession of one of those tables for a long afternoon, sipping at a glass of lemonade.

La Rotonde is a famous cafe a few blocks from our favorite hotel.

One afternoon several years ago, Joe and I met his internet friend Per Thomas and Per's wife Elodie at a cafe near our hotel.  We sat outside for perhaps two hours.


Rachel and Per in conversation

 When the waiter began putting tablecloths and dinnerware out, we moved to an inside table for several hours more, dining and talking and having a wonderful evening.  No waiter hovered over us urging us to have more to drink or eat or asking if we wished to have the check.  That might be customary in the USA but we did not experience that in any of the cafes.  Of course, we don't dine in expensive places favored by gourmands - - not our style or preference.

The first time I went to Paris was sometime in the 1980s, in February - - because Air France offered a fare so cheap that one would be foolish to refuse it.  Off I went, on my own.  My seatmate was a female employee of the US federal government of business travel.  We compared ticket prices - because her visit was on business for the USA, she was obligated to fly on US flag carriers - - in her case it was Delta Airlines.  Same plane, same flight, two radically different prices.  Mine was under $300; her's was over $800.  What a strange world.  The airline I will take this summer is again Air France, but the round-trip fare is $1,702!  But the return flight is on the gigantic A380 airplane - so big that boarding is done from two gates (it's a double-decked plane).

Reflection of a massive A-380 at Charles DeGaulle Airport

I stayed in a hotel recommended by Sam, the travel agent at Universal Travel.  It was near the Arc de Triomphe in a quiet residential neighborhood.  In the breakfast room, I heard spoken English, German, Spanish, French, and Italian.  The breakfast choices were equally varied:  Croissants and pastries, yes; but also eggs soft- and hard-boiled; cold cuts and sliced cheese; coffee, tea, milk, juices; muesli and oatmeal; and no American cereals.  I recall that after eating a variety of things, I made myself a sandwich and wrapped it in my bandanna scarf for lunch.  Was there also fresh fruit?  Probably.  And probably also yogurt - it's been available in every breakfast room I've visited.

A more modest breakfast at Hotel Atelier Montparnasse.

On that first visit, I was introduced to the underground Metro and the RATP buses that criss-cross Paris.  The Metro might be quick, but the buses gave me windows for watching the passing scene.  Of course, I visited the big attractions in my brief time:  the massive and confusing Louvre (trying to find Mona Lisa and certain paintings was daunting); the astoundingly huge (to me) and impressive Notre Dame (I had researched French gothic church architecture for my high school term paper); the Musee de Cluny, which celebrated medieval art and, surprising to me, featured Roman antiquities as well.   I also learned that Parisian restaurants (not cafes) open for dinner around 7:30 pm - - I probably showed up before 7 and remember wandering around in the cold and dark February evening for a while.

Best of all, I discovered French parks, especially the large, tree-filled Luxembourg Gardens, with its many and varied parts.  There are quiet paths lined with chairs.

And conversation over something to drink or eat or both, in the cafe next to the Senate building.

comfortable chair, umbrella for shade, quiet & efficient waiter







And, who could ignore the summertime joy of a small sailboat on the pond behind the palace.

 

Rent the little boat, put it in the water, give it a push with the long stick, hope for a good wind, and run around the pond for another push, to continue the sailing fun.   As a mother, I wonder how many children fall in.


I'll end with a recent (2007) photo of my husband enjoying the sun's warmth on a June afternoon in the beautiful Luxembourg Gardens.




Pen Mar Revisited

Once in a great while I get to visit the past.  Last Tuesday's hike was on the AppalachianTrail in Maryland.  And it started at the Mason-Dixon Line (the ancient border between Maryland and Pennsylvania) at a tiny community called "Pen Mar".  Now long ago, when I was a small child, I and my two brothers (Jonnie and Charlie) would spend a week or two there.  Aunt Corona and her husband, Benny, owned a small vacation house with a great screened porch (another family connection:  my parents' wedding reception was at that little house).

Now the porch has been walled in and apparently is an integral part of the house.  The porch is on the West side of the house, and had a half-wall that was fully enclosed with screening from there to the ceiling.  It had wood-slat blinds that rolled up in the day and down at night.  We children slept out there with all the strange nighttime noises that we didn't hear in our suburban Bethesda bedrooms:  cricketsand buzzing insects, owls hooting, dogs barking.

Next to my aunt's home was the house of Benny's brother Charlie and his wife, Cecile.  This one is just as I remembered it.  Even the blue paint.  And there were also Elsa and Sam, our cousins; and their cousins, Linda, Louise and Richard - tho I'm not sure of the boy's name. 

Next door to Charlie and Cecile's house was a tennis court.  It was old and ragged even then; the net had holes in it. The grownups didn't play tennis.  But we children really liked having an enclosed place to run around in and to whack balls to each other - having absolutely no knowledge of the rules of tennis.

I have little memory of the rest of the community, except for three very different places. 

One place was the large old building across the road - the Pen Rock Hotel.  The great thing about the hotel is that it had a pool room - not a room with a pool but with a pool table.  Now, the hotel manager didn't like having children in that room.  After all, I was barely able to see over the edge of the table.  But it was deliciously daring to sneak into that room and knock the balls around.

After the 2nd or 3rd summer, the hotel was gone - I recall that it burned down; or perhaps it simply closed its doors.  Most of its visitors, I recall, drove out from Baltimore and many stayed for the summer.  But no longer - - I guess air conditioning kept them at home.

The second place was a little store where we children could spend our pennies deciding which of the great many penny candies to purchase and savor. . . something that I could hold in my mouth and enjoy for a long long time, or something that was to be chewed with a great burst of wonderful sweetness.  According to a recently posted sign, the store was called "Jim's" - selling popcorn, ice cream, sandwiches.  And not just to the local residents.  Pen Mar had been the site of a late-19th century amusement park; trolley lines brought visitors from nearby towns like Waynesboro, PA (where my mother and Aunt Corona had been born and raised).

The last thing I recall about Pen Mar was the spring on the mountainside.  Aunt Corona really liked the taste of the spring water (I didn't - it tasted too much of iron), and so we'd walk there with buckets to carry back to the house.  What I really liked was the walk:  short distance down the curving road to the railroad track, then along the track to a footpath that went down the mountain to the spring.  I was always fascinated that water came from other than a spigot - why was there water inside the mountain?  what forced it out? and how come it was so heavy in those buckets when you could see clear through it? 

I don't know whether the spring is still there.  However, in talking with Charles Trite, a long-time Pen Mar resident who stopped to chat with us, he confirmed my memory of it and other things.  The spring is called Glen Afton.  Driving to Pen Mar we passed the lake at Fort Ritchie - I've great memories of the lake and the pier but had forgotten all about the large, elegant bathhouse next to it.  We passed Camp Louise which is still in operation.  We passed signs leading to the town of Blue Ridge Summit, where we'd go to church on Sunday.  The very short visit revived good memories with people I loved so much but who are long gone. 

It was a very nice morning, and a very lovely day for a long walk in the woods.