UNE VILLE TRÈS ANIMÉE!

If this blog claims to be a chronicle of our lives in Paris, it’s been sorely lacking for some time now.  So I will attempt to cover some of the ground we’ve covered, and be forewarned: we haven’t really slowed down!

Le Vrais Paris, Montmartre

Tom’s narrative left you back on St. Patrick’s Day.  Yes, he did add a little blog entry about his Émile Goudeau translation, and there was a picture of Tom in Goudeau’s Square in Montmartre.  That photo was taken last Sunday afternoon when we went up to Montmartre to visit with our old friend Maggie Doherty who has lived in the 18^th arrondissement for almost 30 years. Maggie met us at the Abbesses Metro stop, not far from her apartment, and we went for lunch at a nearby restaurant, Le Vrais Paris. 

There was rain in the air, and it was pretty raw outside, so we warmed up there before hiking up the “Mont” of Montmartre to Sacré Coeur, the huge Basilica built between 1875 and 1914.  Although it’s an impressive structure, Sacré Coeur is somewhat “cold” compared to many of the beautiful cathedrals and churches in Paris.  But it is still a “destination.”  The rain was a little heavier as we left, so we headed to Maggie’s place for a cup of tea and a piece of tart, and then we managed to find, in her neighborhood, an Irish pub serving Guinness—after all, it was actually St. Patrick’s Day, and with names like Doherty, Conboy, and O’Grady, we knew this was also a “destination”!

Café!

Monday was a quiet day of reading and writing, and after my morning class, I finished up two brief articles I had owed to an editor.  On Tuesday, Tom and I met after my French class in Boul’ Mich’ (as Boulevard St. Michel is known to locals!) and went on together to the Marais—an area in the 3^rd and 4^th arrondissements that was home to French nobility during much of Paris’s history.  By the 19^th century, much of the nobility had moved to the St. Germain area, and Le Marais became a center of commerce.  It also became a Jewish quarter of Paris, where many Ashkenazi Jews from eastern Europe found their homes in this city.  It’s a very trendy area of Paris now, with lots of historic sites intermingled with good shopping and eating.  We just wandered and eventually stopped for our obligatory afternoon coffee.

On Wednesday, we worked in the morning and then thought we would go to the Chagall exhibit at the Musée du Luxembourg later in the afernoon.  We walked to the museum and found an incredibly long line.  So we decided to walk from there to Sainte Chapelle, (the chapel of King Louis IX, who later became Saint Louis).  But the line there was also excruciating.  So we just crossed over to the Île Saint Louis—the smaller of the two islands in the middle of the Seine—and passed some time reading in a café there before we went out for a quick meal and then on to a jazz guitar concert.

Frédéric Belinsky

The concert was a tribute to gypsy-jazz guitar legend Django Reinhardt, and the “manouche-style” guitarist was Frédéric Belinsky.  Accompanied by just a rhythm guitarist and a bassist, Belinsky gave a tour-de-force concert—seated on the altar of the Église Saint-Julien-le-Pauvre, a 12^th-century gothic church that now serves a Catholic Melkite community.  We had a wonderful evening there!

Mignon!

After my class on Thursday, I took a deep breath, polished up my best French phrases, and got my hair cut!  The air is damp here in Paris in March, and despite my best efforts to leave the house looking reasonably well-coiffed, I turn into a frizzy mess quite quickly.  So I decided I had better just go with nature and be a “curly Kate” for the time being.  That delighted the hairdressers at the Christine Keller salon who seemed mightily impressed with la tête bouclée (the curly head) I put in front of them.  And Tom says the haircut is mignon, so I guess everyone is happy.

Saint-Julien-Le-Pauvre with Notre Dame in background

Frédéric Belinsky Trio