September 7th – On this, our last full day, we went first to the Musee D’Orsay to see the Impressionists and post- Impressionists. I like everybody but Gaugain, though some of his palettes were less muddy than others.
In their bookstore, I resisted the temptations in particular of a book about Metro stops and a French translation of ELOISE IN PARIS.
Lunch was across the street at a café called Les Deux Musees.
Then we went in search of two bookstores Bernard had noticed listed in a magazine about Paris: Tea & Tattered Pages, in what turned out to be Montparnasse, and W.H. Smith, a large English-language bookstore across from the ferris wheel we’d ridden the night before. The latter was more fun. T&TP was as cramped as our apartment, and didn’t have anything we particularly wanted.
After the bookstores, we went to the Marais district to see the Place des Vosges, the oldest residential neighborhood in Paris, and the surrounding Jewish establishments.
For dinner: the place where we’d had our arrival-night dinner: Le Bosquet. It gave us the illusion of beginning our stay, although all too soon we’d be flying back. We had the unexpected pleasure of being greeted as old friends by the chap who’d served us the first time, although he wasn’t our waiter the second time. The man who was our waiter then, upon hearing that another customer would be leaving Paris the next day, planted a loud smacking kiss on her forehead.
September 8, 2000 – On our flight home, a little boy who probably isn’t two yet kept coming over to Bernard, he being in the aisle seat, and giving him the cap of his bottle to hold. I was so relieved later, on landing, that the suitcase Bernard was getting down from the overhead compartment didn’t completely fall out of his hands and kill the kid! I shouted to him to watch out! One corner barely grazed his temple.
Already we’re homesick for Paris, if that isn’t too weird a thing to say of a place where I’d been for only one week. There wasn't an instant of culture shock going froml New York to Paris, only from there to here, and it’s a strain to remember the English for what had come so snappily in French.
In their bookstore, I resisted the temptations in particular of a book about Metro stops and a French translation of ELOISE IN PARIS.
Lunch was across the street at a café called Les Deux Musees.
Then we went in search of two bookstores Bernard had noticed listed in a magazine about Paris: Tea & Tattered Pages, in what turned out to be Montparnasse, and W.H. Smith, a large English-language bookstore across from the ferris wheel we’d ridden the night before. The latter was more fun. T&TP was as cramped as our apartment, and didn’t have anything we particularly wanted.
After the bookstores, we went to the Marais district to see the Place des Vosges, the oldest residential neighborhood in Paris, and the surrounding Jewish establishments.
For dinner: the place where we’d had our arrival-night dinner: Le Bosquet. It gave us the illusion of beginning our stay, although all too soon we’d be flying back. We had the unexpected pleasure of being greeted as old friends by the chap who’d served us the first time, although he wasn’t our waiter the second time. The man who was our waiter then, upon hearing that another customer would be leaving Paris the next day, planted a loud smacking kiss on her forehead.
September 8, 2000 – On our flight home, a little boy who probably isn’t two yet kept coming over to Bernard, he being in the aisle seat, and giving him the cap of his bottle to hold. I was so relieved later, on landing, that the suitcase Bernard was getting down from the overhead compartment didn’t completely fall out of his hands and kill the kid! I shouted to him to watch out! One corner barely grazed his temple.
Already we’re homesick for Paris, if that isn’t too weird a thing to say of a place where I’d been for only one week. There wasn't an instant of culture shock going froml New York to Paris, only from there to here, and it’s a strain to remember the English for what had come so snappily in French.
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