Paris: Big City Relaxation
Listening: But I'd rather not have seen. And I'll hide away for another day.
When we last left our hero, he was on his way to Paris...
So I'm on the train going to Paris. I have my first class seat reserved and when I get to the compartment, it looks as if there will be no one sitting with me. The train pulls out of the station and then a rail worker comes into my compartment. In broken English and my "oui" and "non," we establish that there is no one else sitting in the compartment. Now the compartment comprised of two sets of three seats facing each other. After a little bit more broken English and my "ouis" and "nons," he lays down on the three seats opposite me and goes to sleep.
This is what I looked like on the train.
This is what he looked like on the train.
When I finally get to Paris, I'm off the train before the dude's even awake. I have a places to be and people to meet up with!
Earlier in the week a girl that I had been e-mailing with and I had decided to meet at the Shakespeare and Company books store in the Latin Quarter between three and half past three in the afternoon on the day that I arrived. My train got in at noon and I had no clue how the Metro worked or where exactly my hostel was. I had pretty straight foreward directions, but I was still rather unsure of myself.
So I fumble through the Metro thoroughly confused. I still don't quite get the whole RER lines. And to make it even worse, Paris must have at least twenty some odd subway lines, plus busses and the RER. It's just a public transit mess.
After only a half an hour, I arrive at the Village Hostel. The first thing that I think is "ghetto." The station is at the foot of the Sacre Coere (which I never got around to going up to), but the neigborhood around it is severely ghetto. Put it to you this way, the red light district is about four blocks away or one metro station away. I didn't know this until my last day and had to be told because I always ended up going the other way to catch the Metro.
So I go into this ghetto hostel and the lobby is ghetto as well. Not a good sign. There's Portishead playing on the stereo and that's when I fall in love for the first time in Paris. The receptionist. Ghaaa... So pretty. Listening to Portishead. She's tall and her hair moves from blonde to brown depending on which way the light hits it. She reminds me of this girl I knew in college who was a few years older than me. I believe her name was Hillary Barnes, but I digress.
Since the lock out period at the hostel (yet another first for me at hostels) was from eleven in the morning until four in the afternoon, I drop off my bag in the luggage room and head off to the Latin Quarter.
It takes a lot less time for me to get to the French Quarter than I expect. I'm there a good two hours early. Since I finished Ethan Hawke's Ash Wednesday on the ride to Paris, I decided to browse the bookstore. They didn't have the book I wanted which was One Year in Provence, so I just left and walked around the Lating Quarter some more.
From the beginning something irked me about Paris. In all of the other cities that I had been to thus far, I had been able to walk everywhere if I wanted to. Maybe Vienna wasn't as walkable as the rest of them, but once I got from Westbanhof to the middle of town, everything was at my fingertips. Paris, on the other hand, felt like it was large, expansive, gigantic. I felt like the districts and the sights were all like floating on their own orbits around Les Halles and that I needed to shoot myself like a rocket from one sight to the next. I couldn't just walk it. The urbanity of Paris got to me quickly.
Before long, it was time to meet this girl at Shakespeare and Company. I was still a bit early, so I looked at more books. I ended up purchasing Susan Hermann Loomis' On Rue Tatin, which is about a woman and her family moving to a small town an hour outside of Paris. It's great because it includes recipes and such.
So I begin reading while waiting for this girl, Jenny, to meet me. After a few pages, she gets there and we begin walking. It turns out that she has already done everything in Paris that she wanted to do, and I hadn't really planned on doing much that day, so walking was perfectly fine.
She actually wanted to find a place to sit and relax, so we headed over to Le Pure Cafe, a filming location in the movie "Before Sunset." I explained to her that I was a fan boy and she was fine with going to see this cafe. But we sat, I drank a cafe creme and she had some form of a mocha. As we got to know each other, we found out the interesting fact that we have a common friend. She went to college with a guy that I trained and worked with at the Corporation, Kosuke! It was an amazing display of how small the world really is.
Me In Front Of Le Pure Cafe.
The Area Where Jessie And Celine Sat.
Before long, she's getting hungry and I'm always game for food. The thing was that it was probably five o'clock at that point and places don't really begin serving dinner until half past seven or so. Instead of going for a meal, we pop into a boulangerie or pastissier to pick up a snack. She has a chocolat pain and I get this amazing little cake.
The Amazing Cake.
It was a white cake with a raspberry mousse on the top and inside with a raspberry gelee coating and fresh berries on top. I was so surprised when the mousse went all of the way down into the cake. It was soooooo yummy.
Mousse Me, Baby.
After our snack, we walked back to the Seine from the Bastille area of town. Notre Dame was right there and it wouldn't be the last time that I saw that cathedral. The really funny thing was that I stopped by there a number of times, but never actually felt like going in. I think that was my theme in Paris. "Yeah, I walked by there and was right in front, but when I thought about going in, I was likem 'meh, I don't need to.'" I did that to a couple of sights.
From there, we walked out to the tip of the island where Notre Dame is in the middle of the Seine and watched the sun set. It wasn't nearly as romantic as it sounds. The girl's got a boyfriend who isn't me. It was nice nonetheless. Sunsets in that city are fantastic.
Sunset Over The Seine
Before long, it was time to get dinner, so we returned to a restaurant that was across from the pastissier where we got our snacks. For dinner I started with the Soup de Poissons.
Soup de Poissons
The soup wasn't exactly what I thought it would be. It was all broth and no real substance. It doesn't mean that it wasn't good, it just wasn't what I expected. I expected real pieces of fish to be in the soup as opposed to all broth. It was very fishy, like fume, but it had some elements of a light tomato broth to it as well. It came with croutons and some cheese as well. The croutons soaked up the soup nicely adding body and substance where I expected the fish to before. Still I would have liked to have had some fish in there.
Leg Of Lamb
For the plat, I got the roasted leg of lamb with white beans and jus. It was okay. Nothing really special. It wasn't all that I had hope, but then again, neither was Paris. It doesn't mean that I didn't enjoy the lamb or Paris, it just wasn't what I had expected.
For dessert (sorry, no pic), I had a rather mediocre Tart Tatin. It was lacking in sweetness and in acidity. It all of the flavors just seemed really flat. At the time I was okay with it, because I was still in shock that I was in Paris. Looking back, I have had much better desserts in many different places.
After dinner, I walked Jenny back to Bastille, since she had to get up early for a flight and we took a picture that we're going to send Kosuke when I get back to work.
Me and Jenny
It was an easy ride back to the Village Hostel from Bastille. By that time I had gotten a hang of the Metro for the most part. In my room was a crazy bag guy and a Korean guy who snored worse than anyone in my family ever did. There were other people in the room, but none of them were of any consequence at the time. Since I was the last one in, I had the shitty top bunk that was hell to get into with no ladder. Oh well. Life goes on. And that was my first day in Paris.
When we last left our hero, he was on his way to Paris...
So I'm on the train going to Paris. I have my first class seat reserved and when I get to the compartment, it looks as if there will be no one sitting with me. The train pulls out of the station and then a rail worker comes into my compartment. In broken English and my "oui" and "non," we establish that there is no one else sitting in the compartment. Now the compartment comprised of two sets of three seats facing each other. After a little bit more broken English and my "ouis" and "nons," he lays down on the three seats opposite me and goes to sleep.
This is what I looked like on the train.
This is what he looked like on the train.
When I finally get to Paris, I'm off the train before the dude's even awake. I have a places to be and people to meet up with!
Earlier in the week a girl that I had been e-mailing with and I had decided to meet at the Shakespeare and Company books store in the Latin Quarter between three and half past three in the afternoon on the day that I arrived. My train got in at noon and I had no clue how the Metro worked or where exactly my hostel was. I had pretty straight foreward directions, but I was still rather unsure of myself.
So I fumble through the Metro thoroughly confused. I still don't quite get the whole RER lines. And to make it even worse, Paris must have at least twenty some odd subway lines, plus busses and the RER. It's just a public transit mess.
After only a half an hour, I arrive at the Village Hostel. The first thing that I think is "ghetto." The station is at the foot of the Sacre Coere (which I never got around to going up to), but the neigborhood around it is severely ghetto. Put it to you this way, the red light district is about four blocks away or one metro station away. I didn't know this until my last day and had to be told because I always ended up going the other way to catch the Metro.
So I go into this ghetto hostel and the lobby is ghetto as well. Not a good sign. There's Portishead playing on the stereo and that's when I fall in love for the first time in Paris. The receptionist. Ghaaa... So pretty. Listening to Portishead. She's tall and her hair moves from blonde to brown depending on which way the light hits it. She reminds me of this girl I knew in college who was a few years older than me. I believe her name was Hillary Barnes, but I digress.
Since the lock out period at the hostel (yet another first for me at hostels) was from eleven in the morning until four in the afternoon, I drop off my bag in the luggage room and head off to the Latin Quarter.
It takes a lot less time for me to get to the French Quarter than I expect. I'm there a good two hours early. Since I finished Ethan Hawke's Ash Wednesday on the ride to Paris, I decided to browse the bookstore. They didn't have the book I wanted which was One Year in Provence, so I just left and walked around the Lating Quarter some more.
From the beginning something irked me about Paris. In all of the other cities that I had been to thus far, I had been able to walk everywhere if I wanted to. Maybe Vienna wasn't as walkable as the rest of them, but once I got from Westbanhof to the middle of town, everything was at my fingertips. Paris, on the other hand, felt like it was large, expansive, gigantic. I felt like the districts and the sights were all like floating on their own orbits around Les Halles and that I needed to shoot myself like a rocket from one sight to the next. I couldn't just walk it. The urbanity of Paris got to me quickly.
Before long, it was time to meet this girl at Shakespeare and Company. I was still a bit early, so I looked at more books. I ended up purchasing Susan Hermann Loomis' On Rue Tatin, which is about a woman and her family moving to a small town an hour outside of Paris. It's great because it includes recipes and such.
So I begin reading while waiting for this girl, Jenny, to meet me. After a few pages, she gets there and we begin walking. It turns out that she has already done everything in Paris that she wanted to do, and I hadn't really planned on doing much that day, so walking was perfectly fine.
She actually wanted to find a place to sit and relax, so we headed over to Le Pure Cafe, a filming location in the movie "Before Sunset." I explained to her that I was a fan boy and she was fine with going to see this cafe. But we sat, I drank a cafe creme and she had some form of a mocha. As we got to know each other, we found out the interesting fact that we have a common friend. She went to college with a guy that I trained and worked with at the Corporation, Kosuke! It was an amazing display of how small the world really is.
Me In Front Of Le Pure Cafe.
The Area Where Jessie And Celine Sat.
Before long, she's getting hungry and I'm always game for food. The thing was that it was probably five o'clock at that point and places don't really begin serving dinner until half past seven or so. Instead of going for a meal, we pop into a boulangerie or pastissier to pick up a snack. She has a chocolat pain and I get this amazing little cake.
The Amazing Cake.
It was a white cake with a raspberry mousse on the top and inside with a raspberry gelee coating and fresh berries on top. I was so surprised when the mousse went all of the way down into the cake. It was soooooo yummy.
Mousse Me, Baby.
After our snack, we walked back to the Seine from the Bastille area of town. Notre Dame was right there and it wouldn't be the last time that I saw that cathedral. The really funny thing was that I stopped by there a number of times, but never actually felt like going in. I think that was my theme in Paris. "Yeah, I walked by there and was right in front, but when I thought about going in, I was likem 'meh, I don't need to.'" I did that to a couple of sights.
From there, we walked out to the tip of the island where Notre Dame is in the middle of the Seine and watched the sun set. It wasn't nearly as romantic as it sounds. The girl's got a boyfriend who isn't me. It was nice nonetheless. Sunsets in that city are fantastic.
Sunset Over The Seine
Before long, it was time to get dinner, so we returned to a restaurant that was across from the pastissier where we got our snacks. For dinner I started with the Soup de Poissons.
Soup de Poissons
The soup wasn't exactly what I thought it would be. It was all broth and no real substance. It doesn't mean that it wasn't good, it just wasn't what I expected. I expected real pieces of fish to be in the soup as opposed to all broth. It was very fishy, like fume, but it had some elements of a light tomato broth to it as well. It came with croutons and some cheese as well. The croutons soaked up the soup nicely adding body and substance where I expected the fish to before. Still I would have liked to have had some fish in there.
Leg Of Lamb
For the plat, I got the roasted leg of lamb with white beans and jus. It was okay. Nothing really special. It wasn't all that I had hope, but then again, neither was Paris. It doesn't mean that I didn't enjoy the lamb or Paris, it just wasn't what I had expected.
For dessert (sorry, no pic), I had a rather mediocre Tart Tatin. It was lacking in sweetness and in acidity. It all of the flavors just seemed really flat. At the time I was okay with it, because I was still in shock that I was in Paris. Looking back, I have had much better desserts in many different places.
After dinner, I walked Jenny back to Bastille, since she had to get up early for a flight and we took a picture that we're going to send Kosuke when I get back to work.
Me and Jenny
It was an easy ride back to the Village Hostel from Bastille. By that time I had gotten a hang of the Metro for the most part. In my room was a crazy bag guy and a Korean guy who snored worse than anyone in my family ever did. There were other people in the room, but none of them were of any consequence at the time. Since I was the last one in, I had the shitty top bunk that was hell to get into with no ladder. Oh well. Life goes on. And that was my first day in Paris.
posted by ZEN!!! | 11:25
1 Comments:
LOL! jenny knows Kosuke... it's a small small world indeed. In the last 2 days, I've managed to bump into two people I haven't seen in at least 6 months. God, i hope that starts happening to me in LA too... one more day left until I head off into the West!
Miss you lots!
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