Category Archives: Paris

Buskers in Paris and Prague

November 18, 2011 Rosemary Kneipp 4 Comments

When I came up out of an overcrowded metro the other day onto Place de Valois at 6.30 pm (now why didn’t I take the bus like a real Parisian? because there’s no direct bus to uni so I’d have to take two), there was this fellow playing the piano. Isn’t that amazing? A real piano! Not like Vienna, which I used to think was the music capital before I went there. Not a single busker the whole time we were there. Lots of expensive concerts, ALL playing medleys and there’s nothing I dislike more. I like to choose the music I’m going to listen to in a concert hall.

Prague on the other hand was full of musicians. Everywhere you turned there was a band or singers. It was wonderful! Prague remains one of my favourite destinations, despite the food, but the Italian restaurants saved the day. What I particularly like is being able to go right down to the river banks to have a drink or a meal. You can’t do that in Paris though they’re in the process of doing something about it. All sorts of things are in the making for the banks of the Seine.

Paris has a good share of buskers. You often find them in the metro, though the quality of their performance varies. Around our area there are a few regular musicians. Often on a Saturday afternoon around 3, a full orchestra comes to the Place Colette in front of the Comédie Française. They appear to be eastern European and probably students as they change from one year to the next. If you get there at the right time, you can sit and have a drink on the terrace of the Le Nemours. They have their favourites of course (medleys are fine outdoors) and cater to the tourists but they usually play pretty well. On Sunday there was a very enthusiastic brass band on Place du Palais Royal which made a change.

We used to have a very mournful saxophonist over the other side of the Palais Royal gardens. He always played the same thing and it used to drive me spare. So one day I went to see him to ask if he could play something else. He turned out to be a Pom and told me regretfully that he only knew one tune. Fortunately the weather improved and he took his saxophone somewhere else. Another regular on a Sunday afternoon is an opera singer down near the music box shop. She draws a huge crowd.

A long long time ago, when we lived in the suburbs (almost seems another lifetime now), Black Cat and I used to play the piano and Leonardo played the clarinette. I used to hold musical afternoons with the neighbours. We had a cello, a violin, another clarinette, some other pianists and a singer, plus a few triangles and other things of that ilk. But any ability to play has long since left me I’m afraid. I couldn’t even remember where middle C was recently when I had the piano tuned. But now that we have our Aussie exchange student, Brainy Pianist, we have our own private concert before dinner on a Thursday. I love it!

Paris, Restaurants

Game season at Le Mesturet Restaurant in Paris

November 17, 2011 Rosemary Kneipp 3 Comments

We first got to know Le Mesturet during a food and wine-tasting with our wine-tasting circle and have been back many times since particularly in winter. Since it’s very close to the stockmarket (Bourse), it’s a popular lunchtime venue.

The menu changes with the season so at the moment, it includes hare pâté with pear chutney, velouté of pumpkin with grilled black pig pieces, venison shepherd’s pie with wood hedgehog mushrooms and sweet potatoes, deer civet with celeriac purée and chestnuts and wild boar cutlets with Grand Veneur sauce, red cabbage with smoked bacon pieces and spiced apple sauce. All delicious!

mestruet_2 — Wild boar cutlet with Grand Veneur sauce

Average entrée price 8 euro, main course, 15.

Entrée + main course or main course + dessert : 22 euros

Entrée + main course + dessert = 28 euros.

Excellent selection of wine by the glass, carafe or bottle

Le Mestruet, 77 rue de Richelieu, 75002, Paris, Tel: 01 42 97 40 68

Restaurant open every day from 12 noon to 3 pm and 7 to 11 pm (last order).

Bar open Monday to Friday from 7.30 am to 4 pm and 6.30 pm to 11 pm

Saturday and Sunday all day from 9 am to 11 pm

Book on-line by clicking on “Réservez en un click” on www.lemesturet.com

Paris, Restaurants

Five Places to Lunch near the Louvre in Paris

November 15, 2011 Rosemary Kneipp 21 Comments

Visiting the Louvre can be tiring particularly when you try and take in too much at a time. When your feet are aching and you’re hungry, you want to find a place to relax that’s hassle-free and has friendly service. As a rule, it’s always best to have your main meal in France at midday because many of the restaurants offer excellent specials that are no longer on the menu in the evening as they cater to local businesses.

Café Diane in the Tuileries Gardens

My all-time favourite in good weather is in the Tuileries Gardens. I used to imagine it would be expensive and full of tourists. Not so. There are tourists, of course, but a lot of business people and office workers as well. I prefer Café Diane, the first outdoor restaurant you come to on the right when you walk from the Louvre towards Concorde because the waiters are very friendly. On a hot day it’s wonderful to sit under the trees and take in the splendid and unrestricted view of the Louvre and gardens. There’s quite a big turnover so you never have a problem getting a table but you can still stay as long you want. There’s a choice of salads, quiches and a hot dish of the day all for around 11 to 13 euros. The food is cooked on-site and even when it’s very busy, the service is fast. Great too if you have a baby in a stroller or someone in a wheelchair. There are some sparkling clean public toilets (50 euro cents) over towards Rue de Rivoli. Open every day, same openings hours as the gardens.

Café Louise on Rue Croix de Petits Champs

However, if the weather isn’t too wonderful, you might prefer to be indoors or on a covered terrace. Put your back to the river and go towards the Palais Royal. Turn right into rue Saint Honoré and walk past the strange building on your left covered with a silver metal net (Minister of Culture) and then left into rue Croix des Petits Champs (not to be confused with rue des Petits Champs). On the next corner on your right, you’ll find Café Louise. This is a little restaurant mainly used by people working at the Ministry but Louise, her daughter Lilie and the Indian waiter all speak English and the service is warm and friendly. A bit more expensive than the Tuileries Gardens but good value for money and the food is always very fresh. We prefer the lobster salad and souris d’agneau (lamb shank). Excellent desserts made by Lilie. This is our local restaurant. Open from 12 to 10 pm weekdays. Closed in August. NOT TO BE CONFUSED WITH LOUISE JUST OPPOSITE THE LOUVRE.

Véro Dodat in the Galérie Véro Dodat

A little further down on your right is the Galerie Véro Dodat, one of the first galleries in Paris to have gas lighting. There is a little restaurant called the Véro Dodat about halfway down (not to be confused with the Belle Epoque at the entrance). It’s an excellent compromise if it’s raining or cold but you don’t want to eat indoors. They have a set menu at € 16.50 or € 13 for a main course. French cooking, fresh produce and good value for money. It’s worth going to the Ladies or Gents upstairs to have a closer look at the top of the arcade and the frescoes. Friendly service once again. Midday weekdays only. Closed in August.

Royal Valois in Rue de Valois

Another possibility is the Royal Valois, which also caters to people working at the Ministry. With your back to the Louvre and the Conseil Constitutionnel in front of you, you take the street on your right, Rue de Valois. The Royal Valois is on the next corner. It has a heated terrace and two rooms inside. Very fresh products and friendly service. Excellent value for money with the day’s special at 14 to 16 euros, salads at 14 to 15 euros and hot dishes at 15 and 16. Open from 7 am to midnight weekdays. They speak English. Closed in August.

Café de L’imprimerie, just off Rue du Louvre

If it’s the weekend, however, Louise, the Véro Dodat and the Royal Valois will be closed so you can try Café de l’Imprimerie. From the Véro Dodat gallery, you continue walking down Rue du Bouloi, then cross Colonel Driant ; Café de l’Imprimerie is on the left on the next corner. It has a heated partly-closed-in terrace on one side and an open terrace on the other. They have an interesting range of salads including a good stir-fry vegetable dish (wok de légumes) and vegetarian lasagna, both for about 13 euros. The food is good and the service is friendly and helpful. Very popular with the locals. Open from 12 to midnight on weekdays and weekends with brunch on weekends.

Café Diane, Jardins des Tuileries, 75001 Paris – every day, same opening hours as garden

Café Louise, 8 rue Croix des Petits Champs, 75001 Paris – weekdays, 12 noon to 10 pm

Royal Valois, 1 Place Valois, 75001 Paris – weekdays, 7 am to midnight

Véro Dodat, 19 galérie Véro Dodat, 75001 Paris – weekdays at lunchtime

Café de l’imprimerie, 29 Rue Coquillière, 75001 Paris – every day, midday to midnight

French customs, Paris

Buses in Paris

November 13, 2011 Rosemary Kneipp 5 Comments

Real Parisians don’t take the metro. They take the bus. Also, they don’t go out of their arrondissement unless they’re just going to the next one over. And they think the suburbs are the end of the earth. I have a friend who was born in the 17th, went to school in the 17th, went to uni in the 16th (there isn’t one in the 17th), bought a flat in the 17th and set up her business in the 17th. She moved recently – to another street in the 17th. One day, I talked her into coming to the 1st for lunch and she was surprised she survived the journey! Now she comes more often …

ile_de_la_cite — Ile-de-la-Cité with Notre Dame: am I looking upstream or downstream?

You are only Parisian, of course, if you live inside the ring road that contains all the arrondissements, which, as you may have noticed, are arranged in a clockwise spiral, starting with 1 at Palais Royal and ending with 20 over near Père Lachaise cemetery. What you may not know is that the street numbers always start at the Seine. Take rue du Louvre, for instance, which runs perpendicular to the Seine. N° 1 is next to the river and the numbers climb as you move north. Now what happens, you may ask, if the street is parallel to the Seine? Ah, ha! It’s in the direction of the current no less. If I stand on the Pont des Arts, Notre Dame is upstream and the Eiffel Tower is downstream. On Quai de la Mégisserie (you know, the street on the Right Bank where all the pet shops and plant shops are), the higher numbers are at Pont Neuf and the lower numbers at Châtelet. I won’t even pretend that I remember that. I have to get Relationnel to explain it to me all over again each time.

There’s a logic behind the bus numbers too would you believe. In most cases, if they start with 2, they go to Gare Saint Lazare, if they start with 3, they go to Gare de l’Est and if they start with 4 they go to Gare du Nord. Most of the 6’s go to Gare de Lyon, the 7’s go to Hôtel de Ville and the 9’s go to Gare Montparnasse. Guess why I prefer to use my RATP iPhone app? Now that I have it, I can be a real Parisian too. In the metro, everyone ignores everyone else, whereas in the bus, you’re allowed to make comments to your neighbours, particularly when it’s not rush hour, without being considered a freak. It’s even encouraged.

The articulated buses are fun and can obviously contain more people. We take one from Palais Royal (27) that goes past the Glass Pyramid at the Louvre (great view with the Louvre on one side and the Tuileries Gardens and Arc of Triumph on the other) and across Pont Neuf into the Latin Quarter. I can take the 72 in front of the Louvre and go down to Place de la Concorde, then right along the river to the Eiffel Tower, for example. Sometimes, though, when there’s not much traffic, the drivers go tearing along at the most incredible pace and everyone holds on for dear life. It’s a wonder they don’t hit someone.

Leonardo, who’s now been in Sydney for 3 weeks, is NOT impressed with the public transport there. Apart from its chronic unreliability, he says that the bus seats are too close together and that he can’t actually fit his legs in front of him. He’s fairly tall – 1 m 86 – but so are a lot of other Australians! I asked our Aussie exchange student about it (he’s tall too) and he said it’s because there is a lot more standing room in Parisian buses and not so many seats so they can give you more room for your legs!

The biggest advantage of buses compared with the metro of course is that you get to see where you’re going and I think I could safely say that Paris has one of the highest numbers of monuments per square kilometers in the world. The downside is that despite the many bus lanes you’re never sure you’ll be on time because of the traffic, not to mention an (occasional) demonstration that sends the bus on an unexpected route!

Paris

Miss Bibi and the Palais Royal in Paris

November 3, 2011 Rosemary Kneipp 10 Comments

Ow! that was loud! I always forget. At 12 noon every Wednesday, the time cannon in the Palais Royal gardens goes off. Initially installed in 1786 on the Paris meridian by a clockmaker called Rousseau who had a shop on one side of the gardens, it would go off at exactly midday on sunny days. The simple mechanism was ingenious. A fuse under a small magnifying glass was sparked by the sun’s rays. At the time, it was used to adjust all the clocks in Paris. It was stolen in 1998 but was eventually replaced and has been working again since the beginning of the year. Sadly, it doesn’t have the magnifying glass system anymore and doesn’t depend on the weather.

There are lots of other surprising things in the Palais Royal galeries. All sorts of interesting boutiques. One day I even saw a fur coat made of teddy bears! Today, the shops are very chic, with Stella McCartney and La Petite Robe Noire (but where would I wear a little black dress ?), Delage and Corto Moltedo, all way over my price range of course.

In the galerie Beaujolais, there’s a shop that sells ribbons for medals. You know, decorative medals like the legion of honour. It’s next to another speciality shop called Le Magasin à l’Oriental, opened in 1818, a real Ali Baba’s cave that sells pipes and other things of that ilk. In the Galerie Montpensier on the other side, there’s a beautiful toy shop with the most wonderful collection of dolls and wooden toys. And just opposite, a shop called Anna Joliet that sells hand-painted music boxes. You can pick your box and pick your music. Mine plays the theme from Doctor Zhivago. L’Escalier d’Argent, run by madame Danou Jacquard, possesses a unique collection of over a hundred men’s vests made out of 18th century-inspired fabric and tailored according to the period of Louis XVI. It also sells silver jewellery.

But my favourite is Miss Bibi. L’Escalier d’Argent used to have a tiny showroom in the Galerie Valois with a dusty collection of bow ties. One day, we saw they had taken everything out and were redoing it. The sign came down and after a while we saw them putting in a sort of shadow box. It was hard to imagine what sort of shop it could be, it’s literally about two metres square. But it’s turned into an increasingly popular jewellery store called Miss Bibi. “Bibi” is short for “bibelot” or knick-knack. But it’s the clever window dressing that attracts the customers. The shadow box with its tiny shelves fills up almost the entire window and the jewellery, “inspired by the world of childhood and nostalgia”, is displayed on miniature items of furniture and little houses and other original items. I didn’t believe for one minute it could work but it’s always full. At 50 to 200 euros apiece, maybe it’s the only shop in the Palais Royal that’s affordable for most people.

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Paris

Padlocks on the Pont des Arts in Paris

October 26, 2011 Rosemary Kneipp 9 Comments

The view from the Pont des Arts footbridge is one of best in Paris, according to Relationnel. Difficult to beat, I must admit. If you stand in the middle and look towards the Left Bank, you have the Institut de France containing the Académie Française with its famous dome in front of you. Behind you, on the Right Bank, is the Louvre. On your left, looking downstream, Ile de la Cité with Notre Dame and Sainte Chapelle. On your right, the Eiffel Tower which shimmers and shines for 10 minutes every hour, at its best at midnight on 31st December where we join with what seems like half of Paris, champagne bottle and glasses in hand, to welcome in the New Year.

But what I like best are the cadenas. The railings on either side of the bridge are being gradually covered with padlocks of every shape and size. Although the collection was started a few years ago, most are recent. At the beginning of May last year, there were about 1,600, but only about forty of the most resistant were left on 16th May. No one knows who took them off. Neither the town hall nor the police knows anything about it. I didn’t count them but both sides of each railing are now covered in new padlocks!

There are big ones and little ones, old ones and new, square locks and round ones, key locks, combination locks and even bike locks. On some, the inscriptions are written with felt pens, others are beautifully engraved. The names come from everywhere – Ana y Pablo , Lus & Carlos, Monset & Leila, Sacha et Serge, Ruth and Michael, Pedro & McJosé, Fio & Angel, Eliot and Madeleine, Princess Titti & Magic Benoo, Christ & Natasha, poopy pants & becky, J. Vilorio & L. Villaverde, the list goes on. Some of the messages are mundane – a heart or “loves” between the names, “1 an de bonheur” (a year of happiness), “forever” or “Thirty years of wedded bliss”; some are inventive : “Mikaël & Vanessa : une évidence” (perfectly obvious); while others are hopeful of things to come: “Christina Joe Maybe One day cos”.

The enormous “50 mm sécurité” and “Triangle 75 mm” padlocks left me somewhat bemused. They hardly seem appropriate for a long-term relationship. There’s a little yellow star (on a bridge in Paris?), a bottle opener with “I love Paris”, lots of big red hearts and some smaller ones, a lovely embossed padlock that looks as though it came off a trunk, and one with 3 little coloured hearts glued on. Some are handpainted miniatures and I love the one with the two flags, one red and yellow and the other blue and white with a star on one side, even though I can’t identify the countries. There’s even a plaque with Mona Lisa on it. The most elaborate has three little buttons sewn on. Sometimes, there are two padlocks together, with a name on each. Very economical. Nothing like allowing for a change of partner!

So where do they all come from? Some are obviously prepared in advance while others are more spontaneous. I noticed that some of the nearby bouquinistes are selling the plainer variety. The basement of the BHV department store on the corner of Place de l’Hôtel de Ville further along the right bank no doubt has quite a selection, but I don’t know where you get those heart-shaped ones. They seem made for meaure! Likes like a thriving business in any case.

Has anyone seen padlocks in other places on their travels?

For more information on the subject in French: http://tempsreel.nouvelobs.com/societe/20100512.OBS3875/qui-a-fracture-les-cadenas-d-amour-du-pont-des-arts.html

Aussie in France