Author: tom@thomaslong.net

Carcassonne’s massive Cité on the right bank of the Aude River dates back to the third century B.C. and over the last 2,500 years has been built, destroyed, enlarged and renovated by Romans, Visigoths, Crusaders and French kings. The view from our hotel balcony promised a grand adventure exploring the ancient citadel.

Carcassonne officially joined France in the 13th century as a bastion of defense against the Spanish House of Aragon. During those years, the old Roman walls were mostly demolished, and the fort was expanded with newly constructed outer walls and towers. But the 1659 Treaty of the Pyrenees effectively rendered the fortress strategically unnecessary, the citadel was abandoned and Carcassonne developed a thriving economy in the woolen textile industry.

Interestingly, the French government wanted to demolish the crumbling complex in the middle of the 19th century, but local citizens vehemently opposed the move. The work was assigned to none other than Eugene Viollet-le-Duc, the architect who also designed the spire of Notre Dame in Paris.

Today the Cité is one of the marvels of western European history. It is much more than a fort. In fact, the medieval citadel contains the Carcassonne Castle, Saint Nazaire Basilica, and as number of medieval houses that stand today. The Cité was also a site of the early Inquisition as the Cathar sect of the Catholic Church had taken root there, which generated a Crusade to seize Carcassonne from the heretics.

Today, tickets to tour the entire complex cost only 9.50, but be prepared to climb lots of steep staircases as you explore the castle and walk the ramparts among the 52 towers.

The Basilica of St. Nazaire is a separate but free admission.

We spent nearly two hours clambering around the castle and its ramparts that offer views almost all the way to Spain. Most of the major rooms and features of the complex offer explanatory boards in French, English and Spanish, so we Americans can understand the stories behind the walls and turrets. We could have stayed longer, but hunger drove us out.

We had grabbed only a single croissant on our way to the Cité in the morning, so we were famished by the time we had covered the fortress. We stopped at a little place called L’Ecu D’Or (The Golden Shield–everything in the village relates to the fort), where we each ordered a full salad, chèvre for Lynn (her favorite) and a decadent seared foie gras with sliced duck livers and prosciutto over lettuce and tomatoes for me. Both were splendid. Mine, in fact, was decadent.

It was all we could do to finish our salads, as we watched an elderly French couple sitting at the adjacent table put away a salad, main course and dessert–each. They exchanged some humorous comments with the waiter, I think at our expense, probably wondering how Americans who eat so little can make it through the day. We, on our part, were stuffed and wondering how we would make it down the hill, across the river and into our hotel for a nap.

But we managed.

While Lynn napped, I walked back out to the wine store to purchase provisions for the next two nights. Wouldn’t you know–the store was closed, as it had been the day before. I forgot they shut down in mid-afternoon.

I walked into the Verre D’Un restaurant, where our jolly proprietor assured me the store would open in less than 30 minutes and offered a glass of wine from their sophisticated tasting machine. I chose a Pic St. Loup, a pretty rare growth from a very small region around here. He awarded me the glass and said, “Free for the wait.”

I did not argue, but walked outside to enjoy the glass while listening to a table of four British tourists finishing their lunch. Soon enough, the wine store manager signaled to me that he was opening. He showed me four different bottles of Pic St. Loup, and I picked one, plus a local wine he had on display in his window.

Dinner was at Le Rideau Rouge (The Red Curtain) across the street from the theatre, where all the restaurants have names connected with the stage. I had been attracted to their board that advertised a steak–not an entrecôte–for 24 euros. I ordered that, and Lynn had the grilled pork medallions, both dishes served with frites as only the French know how to make them. Again, we were stuffed after just our main course.

We stand in awe of the French, who seem to eat prodigious amounts of food at every seating. Maybe they only eat one meal a day, but that one meal reaches the caloric level of an entire day of our existence. Vive la France if they can stay alive.

We were forced to eat breakfast at the hotel, despite the high cost (12 euros) and skimpy selection of sliced cold cuts, cheese, bread and a few hard boiled eggs. The reason we ate there, knowing how little value that represented, was because we simply couldn’t find anything open around the hotel down the street where we had seen so many restaurants the day before.

Of course, as soon as we walked out of the hotel in the other direction and turned right to see the Black Madonna at Notre Dame de Daurade, we came across a fine breakfast place.

This Black Virgin church displays a neo-classical facade that was obviously added to the original church, which dates back to at least the 6th century. The interior is beautiful, mostly from the 17th and 18th centuries.

Oddly, the Black Madonna does not stand over the main altar but on an elaborate side chapel. As in so many churches, the most interesting sections are the side chapels dedicated to various saints plus the crypt behind and below the main altar, which was relegated a half century ago to a brilliant piece of historic sculpture, as all of its kind were after Vatican II.

We walked back to the hotel, checked out and took the short cab ride to Gare Toulouse to wait on our train. For France’s fourth largest city, Toulouse does not have much of an impressive train station. The waiting room is plain and mostly dingy with some of the leatherette seats worn and ripped away to reveal ancient foam beneath. They are cordoned off for sanitary reasons, but who would want to sit in these anyway?

We found suitable seats and waited for our train track to appear on the screen. While we sat there, a youngish woman bundled up to look like an old lady in a wheelchair with the requisite begging paper cup started wheeling through the waiting passengers. She was quickly confronted by no fewer than four SNCF railway guards and escorted firmly out the door. She flipped them off as she departed; it was pretty obviously this was not their first encounter.

To pass the time, I explored the other side of the station, Hall 2, which is simply–ready?–the other side of the station. But it was much more lively. A small crowd gathered around a live cooking demonstration, just like a home & garden show. And on the far end was a small MonoPrix, the Target of France.

Finally our track was posted on the screen, so we dragged our baggage to the elevator for the trip down beneath the tracks, only to discover that there was no corresponding elevator back up. And this is France’s fourth largest city.

We had first class tickets booked, luckily, since the train was pretty much full, even in first class. But it was an old inter-cities train with a heavy, manual door and steep steps. Lugging our heavy luggage through the door and stumbling up the steps, I could feel my back explode in a fiery stab of protesting nerves.

The ride was short, only about 45 minutes, and we alighted at the Carcassone rail station, which consisted of two sets of tracks and a tiny station. And no escalator or elevator.

Going down two flights of stairs was bad enough. After that we had to go up the same route to get into the station and the town of Carcassonne. My back continued to protest. It could wait for drugs later.

Our hotel turned out to be superb. It is located right on the Aude River looking out to the huge medieval Cite de Carcassonne castle. Our room was even tinier than the one in Toulouse, but extremely comfortable. We would later learn that not all the outlets work, so we would have to move the coffee maker to the tiny table at the foot of the bed.

But the bathroom has an overhead shower, the first we have seen since we left the U.S. We like that. And better than that, our room included a balcony looking right out to the castle across the river.

We had arrived too early to check in, and the desk clerk suggested walking over to the center square just a few minutes away. We were really hungry by then, and chickened out trying to find the square. Had we kept walking two more blocks, it would have jumped on us.

We had tried two promising looking restaurants just past Gambetta Square, but both had closed at 2 p.m. So we settled for a Middle Eastern take-out place and a six euro pita sandwich, when I thought I had ordered a plate. And they had no beer.

Fortified for at least a little while, we kept walking and there it was–the main square. lined with restaurants ready to take us right in. Instead, we ordered a couple of glasses of wine at three euros each to relax for just a little while.

On the way back to the hotel, we stopped at a wine store/restaurant named Verre d’Un on rue Verdun. (Get it? It took me two days.) They too had been closed when we first walked by, but now they were ready for business, and we were ready to buy.

We also made plans to dine there, considering their cassoulet was 19 and some of the other plats ranged from 14-16. We have noticed that dining and drinking gets cheaper the farther away we get from Paris, and we don’t think Paris is that expensive.

Our dinner turned out to be wonderful. Lynn had a lamb shank that was savory, tender and falling off the bone. (The word on the menu was “Souris,” which is French means mouse. Who knew?) My cassoulet was by far the best we had had in France, full of thick, rich beans cooked down with a piece of duck sausage and a duck leg confit.

Both of our dishes were accompanied by small hearts of romaine lettuce with balsamic vinegar drizzled over them, a perfect little salad to go with rich food. Dinner made us forget the travails of traveling by rail to small towns.

My back no longer hurt by the time we retired. Most of the cure had to be food and wine related.

We started our quick one day visit to Toulouse with the little tourist train we had spied the night before. It starts at Place du Capitole, a huge square lined with government buildings, two large hotels and several restaurants with a massive sundry market on the grounds. The market sold everything from clothes to leather goods to vinyl and CDs to electronic gadgets to housewares that defy description.

I bought a European USB adapter to see if I could get one that works, as the other ones we have do not with any consistency. I think it may have something to do with varying degrees of power to individual outlets, as the adapters work fine on certain walls and not at all on others in the same hotel room.

The little train sat waiting for the first departure of the morning. We were the second to board, as the conductor/driver motioned us to the second car for a better view. I made sure to sit in the middle of the car between the wheels to soften what is usually a pretty stiff ride.

As we waited for the departure hour, the train filled almost to capacity. The driver walked by collecting 7 euros each–cash, not credit cards–and off we went slowly, clogging traffic through the narrow, historic streets of Toulouse for the next 45 minutes.

Because it was still early enough in the day that the sun really was not shining down into the streets, we were cold, in fact freezing. Foolishly we had both determined the night before that socks were not needed. They were.

But the tour was most informative, telling us where to go as much as relating the history and main sights of the city. That’s why we take these things, as touristy as they seem and really are.

From there, we explored some of the churches we had seen on the route, then walked back to the square to gather our bearings.

We walked around the square some more so Lynn could look for a lipstick holder to replace the one she bought a few years ago in Florence. By then, it was definitely time for lunch.

On our way to the square, we had passed a place called Aligot where the proprietress was stirring a huge pan of creamed potatoes with a four-foot paddle.

We saw nothing along the way that convinced us to eat elsewhere, so we stopped in for what turned out to be a spectacular lunch. Lynn ordered the cassoulet with a duck leg and sausage in the thick brew of white beans, and I by mistake ordered exactly the same thing I had the night before. But different, for sure.

Aligot, as the owners explained, consists of potatoes mashed and creamed with butter, cheese, creme fraiche and their secret ingredient–garlic. (Not Lynn’s, I might point out.) It was nothing short of decadently delicious. And the duck sausage on top of the aligot was much denser and flavorful than what I had had the night before. I realized then that Lynn’s judgment of “ordinary” at the brasserie the previous night had been correct.

As we finished our plates (11 euros(!) for Lynn’s cassoulet), we chatted with the owners in our common broken Franglish.

They explained that they had been shut down for seven months with two more months of restricted business. He explained that the locals are coming back, some of the tourists are showing up again, but very few Americans. Their biggest challenge right now is–surprise, surprise–getting help.

It was the same story in Paris, the same story in Toulouse and the same story in the U.S. Restaurants cannot find workers. He told us that he and his wife are working alone in the little restaurant every single day without a break because they simply can’t find anyone to staff the place.

So the trip to the U.S. that they had planned for last summer is off until hopefully next June. They plan to visit Miami, Key West, New Orleans (bienvenue!) and New York. We encouraged them to make the trip and contact us when they get to New Orleans. We’ll send them to our favorite restaurants, where perhaps they may find something as good as their aligot. Surely garlic is not a secret ingredient in New Orleans.

This had not been a light lunch, so we repaired to our room for a late nap before more cathedral explorations and the river boat tour we had discovered. The boat’s last tour started at 4 p.m., perfect for us, since it allowed time for one more cathedral visit.

There was a small line when we finally got down to the boat at the river bank, but we were close enough to the front to grab seats on the upper deck for a better view. Our one-hour trip would take us through a lock into the Canal de Brienne, which eventually links to the beginning of the Canal du Midi at a large turning basin.

The trip down the canal is frankly boring. It runs through a leafy, pretty section of Toulouse lined with very attractive buildings, some old and many new, but for the most part compatible. But the boat ride runs straight through, and the recorded commentary was strictly in French. It’s recorded for goodness sakes–they couldn’t have recorded English and Spanish versions like every other tour does?

They did offer a QR code that allowed me to open a web site with the narrative in English. But I had to go hunt for the crew with his one laminated card halfway through the trip to get the link, as they didn’t really offer it when boarding.

For 12 euros, the boat ride was not worth the price and offered no real information that we did not get for seven euros on the little train in the morning.

So for those of you who decide to visit Toulouse–take the train and leave the boat.

After the disappointing boat tour, we walked back looking for a suitable place for dinner, but nothing really attracted us. So we did what we do so well, that is, go net door to the Spanish bar for a couple of glasses of wine to discuss the situation. While we sat there, the power kept going out in the building due to some overload. They finally restored steady lights, so we looked at the menu and saw a lists of tapas that were somewhat interesting. Why not? We were already there.

But the tapas were ordinary, to be kind. The plate of grilled octopus was absoulutely not to Lynn’s liking and even though I myself am a big fan of octopus, this just wasn’t that flavorful at all. Her burrata cheese in an aubergine sauce was the best of the three we ordered, as the magret of duck was not all that flavorful either. In fact, none of it was really very good.

But then, what do you expect from bar food?

Our G7 taxi ordered online the day before arrived at precisely 9:30 a.m. to take us to Gare Montparnasse and our train to Toulouse. The 15-minute drive cost 25 euros, seven which were a surcharge for ordering the cab in advance. Had we simply ordered for immediate pick-up, the surcharge would have been four euros, and if I had walked down to the taxi stand on rue Monge, there would have been no surcharge at all.

Lesson learned.

The Montparnasse station has been renovated and resembles a clean, contemporary airport on the quiet departure side. We could see the crowded mall on the other end, and when our train arrived, it was obvious that we were swimming upstream, as the crowds boarding the train were coming from the busier mall side.

As always, our train ride was quiet, smooth and fast, sometimes topping 300 kph. The countryside flattened perceptibly as we made our way south through Bordeaux and the wine region. Fields of harvested grapes spread out both sides of our tracks as far as we could see, harbingers of bottles in the future.

The Toulouse rail station is underwhelming for France’s fourth largest city. We could have simply walked off the train through a chain link fence and out to the street, but I wanted to see what the interior of the station looked like, so we dragged our bags through there. But there was nothing to see, other than ticket kiosks and the ubiquitous hand sanitizer stations.

The taxi line is not at all self-evident in its direction, but we finally got guidance to the head (which looks like the back end), and proceeded off to our hotel. Our surcharge for handling our two suitcases was five euros, not disclosed until the end of the ride.

Our Hotel des Beaux Arts is located at the foot of the Pont Neuf that overlooks the Garonne River and the massive historic Hotel Dieu. Our part of town is old, and we could readily see why Toulouse is called the “rose city” for the dusty color of the building bricks.

Our room is tiny and funky, but enjoys a great view of the river below. We watched the sun set over the river through our little window after taking a walkabout to explore the blocks surrounding the hotel.

We quickly found the Casino supermarket across the street and purchased a bottle of wine from among the scores of Bordeaux labels on the shelf. Toulouse is located at the junction of the Languedoc and the Bordeaux regions, so the latter dominate the store shelves.

We decided to slake our travel thirst with a couple of glasses of Spanish wine at Mucho!, the tapas bar next to the hotel. While sitting at our sidewalk table, we studied the surrounding architecture, and remarked that much of the ironwork resembled the Spanish style in the French Quarter more than the simpler French style in Paris. In addition, many of the people hustling around the streets looked vaguely Spanish, and the street signs were displayed in two languages.

I checked, and sure enough, Toulouse at one time was the northern reach of the Catalan empire when it was a separate country. They don’t hang Catalan flags from balconies here like they do in Barcelona, but you can see the influence if you look closely. Toulouse was also the center of the Cathars, a breakaway sect of Catholicism that actually spawned the original Inquisition.

Dinner was at the Brasserie des Beaux Arts, a pretty expensive place for seafood but offering a semi-reasonable 19 euro menu for entree and plat. We each ordered six oysters as our entree, as we noticed that the oysters ran upwards of four euros a piece a la carte. The oysters were tiny and flat but delicious and briny, accompanied by a pungent hogwash sauce.

Tragically, the restaurant was out of mussels, which disappointed Lynn, who then proclaimed the establishment “ordinary.” I thought somewhat more kindly, especially after eating those delicious oysters with a half-bottle of Gasgony wine that improved my mental review of the restaurant.

Three weeks in Paris are never enough. But we have been here enough times to give us more general impressions this time around.

Tourists

As anyone who has been reading this blog knows, Paris is all but empty of tourists right now. Some of that is timing, of course; October is not prime tourist season. But some is also pandemic fear. Our friends who were supposed to come over to meet us bailed out on the trip back in August because they were concerned about travel restrictions, etc.

That’s a reasonable concern. We have to show our pass sanitaire virtually every time we enter any sort of restaurant, bar, museum or even some shops. And masking is ubiquitous. More about that below.

But the bottom line is that if you can, come over soon. I suspect that Paris and all the major European destinations will be inundated with Americans next summer, assuming the pandemic continues to decline to endemic status sometime early next year.

Masking

Everywhere indoors. In Metro stations, stores, museums, trains, boats and technically even restaurants until you actually sit at your table. For that reason, most restaurants have expanded their outdoor seating capacity, which in Paris was already pretty extensive.

Wearing a mask for hours is tantamount to torture. I have a particular problem early in the day when the air is cool and my glasses fog up completely until they adjust to the outside temperature and humidity. More than once, I have been forced to take them off as we enter a Metro station in the morning so I don’t trip down the stairs.

Outside on the streets, most people do not wear masks, although perhaps 25% do. I don’t question their choice, but it’s pretty well established that the virus is not transmitted in open air.

As a related item, the French take testing very seriously. There is a testing tent outside virtually every corner pharmacy giving out tests, vaccines and resigtration for the pass sanitaire.

Traffic and walking the streets

The New York Times published an article a couple of weeks ago (while we were here) describing the chaos on major streets caused by Paris’s efforts to increase bike ridership all over town. To be kind, the story was overwrought and overstated.

Bicycle riders have the right of way in most major European cities, and Paris is no exception. Pedestrians need to stay out of bike lanes or you can get run over.

On the other hand, bicyclists here also follow traffic laws. In other words, they stop at red lights like any other vehicle and they ride in the direction of their lanes. Try that in the U.S.

The trottinettes, on the other hand, are another story. They ride on the sidewalks, in the streets, anywhere they can fit their two wheels. And they most decidedly do not follow traffic laws. They have been popular for years here in Paris, but they seem to have proliferated since we were here last, as they are lined up on virtually every major corner available for rent. The electric models move along at a good 20 mph, which is about as fast as any traffic goes in Paris.

Because they are silent and they follow no lanes or laws, they are dangerous to pedestrians, and you have to be on guard at all times, even on the sidewalk. (Motorcycles are known to ride on the sidewalk in Paris too, just adding to the sensory element of adventure walking the streets of Paris.)

Green, so green

France wants so bad to be green. Easy for them–they generate most of their electricity by nuclear, the cheapest method in the world. Unfortunately for French residents, the country exports a lot of that cheap power to neighboring countries, preferring to gouge its residents with much more expensive “renewable” power from wind and sun. Except the sun doesn’t shine that much in northern France, and the wind only blows during storms. The result is that electricity is hideously expensive by U.S. standards. Not to mention the cost of gas for your little tiny car.

The climate change movement is apparent everywhere. You can’t get away from it, even in Metro stations.

Clean your plate! It helps the planet when food scraps don’t make it to the waste cycle.

But the garbage and recycling is picked up at least three times per week. Hmmmm…….

Traffic reports on TV give commute times by bike, e-bike, auto and transit. E-bikes are usually fastest, followed by transit. And private autos are always last and longest. Subtle message there.

Shops and restaurants

France has been called a nation of shopkeepers, and the streets of Paris confirm that. You are never more than a block or two from seafood, meat, vegetables, bread, sweets and of course wine.

Electronic repair stores are in every neighborhood, mostly owned and operated by South Asians, for whom English is their first language.

The battery in my phone was failing fast, so I popped into Mr. Phony around the corner on rue Monge, where the proprietor installed a new one in less than an hour. Cost was 70 euros, perhaps a bit more than in the States, but certainly not outrageous.

Dining in Paris

How can Uber Eats exist much less succeed in a place like France and Paris? There is a restaurant, patisserie, tabac, traiteur on every block and usually more than one. We generally split a baguette sandwich for lunch, and that’s plenty to hold us until cheese and pate with wine in the evening before dinner. The French chow down on an entire pizza or plat with dessert and cafe for dejeuner.

How they all don’t weigh 300 pounds or more is a mystery to us. But most French women are slender and beautiful, and it’s pretty rare to see fat French anywhere.

Perhaps they eat a big lunch and a small dinner, but you couldn’t tell by the looks of restaurants still open and busy at 10 p.m. We eat at the so-American time of 7:30 or so, usually all but alone until the French roll in about the time we leave the restaurant at 9 p.m.

This may have something too with the light of day. Paris is pretty far north at 49 degrees latitude. By comparison, New York is 41 degrees, and New Orleans is 30. Even in early autumn, the sun does not rise in Paris until about 8 a.m. By the first of winter, it will not rise until after 9 a.m.

So the streets of Paris are dark and all but deserted until at least 9 a.m. The patisserie and the markets don’t open until 8 and they are by far the first. Most stores don’t open until 10 a.m. but stay open until 9 or 10 p.m. Same with restaurants, except later.

We Americans don’t follow that schedule.

And the last lunch, the last dinner, the last of Paris.

For our last walk, we chose–what else?–the Tuileries, our favorite stroll in all of Paris. We took the Metro 7 to Palais Royale and the Louvre stop, crossed the street and walked right into the middle of the museum’s courtyard at the pyramid.

It’s open to the public and makes the perfect starting point for a glorious walk through the heart of Paris.

From the Louvre courtyard we crossed under the huge memorial arc honoring one of France’s other wars and into the Tuileries, where the late season flowers are still blooming. The lavender is also out in full display for another few weeks. It is the featured plant in the Tuileries gardens.

For us, the Tuileries tells the story of Paris. You walk out from the Louvre into a public park lined with flowers, manicured trees and statuary; four restaurants with outdoor seating; two large fountains ringed by chairs to watch the water and the people go by; and two major museums flanking the far end. It was designed by one of the Medici queens and Louis XIV had a palace there until he moved into his larger quarters next door.

The Tuileries is not a long walk and we emerged from the park to take a tour around Place de la Concorde, the traffic circle to end all traffic circles. The huge job fair tent that spanned the width of the Tuileries was already being disassembled, so the streets were accessible again. We crossed to take a close-up view of the Egyptian obelisk that had been carted across the Med in the 19th century and erected in the center of the Place with gilded illustrations of how it was all engineered onto the boat and erected in place.

Then we crossed again to the huge buildings that flank the Place de la Concorde, the Hotel du Carillon and the Hotel de la Marine, both legendary five-star establishments that we will never be able to afford. The U.S. Embassy is just to the left of those buildings, impressive in its own right.

Then it was back to rue de Rivoli, where the blocks alternate between highest end hotels like the Meurice and the uber expensive clothing and art stores with other blocks devoted to cheap Parisian souvenirs.

At that point we could have taken the Metro at the Concorde station or continued our walk down rue de Rivoli. We chose the latter, as we made a quick detour to Place Vendome and the Ritz Hotel of Paris, home of Hemingway’s bar and the most expensive Bloody Mary in the world.

Along the way, we spotted the clothing store where Lynn had bought a sweater a few years ago, so naturally we had to stop in again and she found another sweater to buy. It was hard to complain about the price at 29 euros and it fit, so it was an easy decision.

By the time we arrived back at the Palais Royale Metro station, our legs were giving out and our stomachs were telling us it was lunch time. So we jumped back on the M 7 to Place Monge and walked down to La Commedia, an Italian restaurant on rue Monge where we ordered a long-awaited pizza. As I studied the menu, I noticed they offered osso buco for 14 euros and I saw the dish came out to a table near ours. For that price, they also give you pasta. We will visit this place again next time we are in Paris.

We always find it remarkable that Europeans can eat an entire pizza on their own, and we can barely finish one to split. But Lynn marveled at French women downing an entire pie then ordering dessert to finish off a late lunch. Not these two Americans; we split the pizza, finished our beers and waddled back to the apartment for a quick afternoon nap and packing to leave the next day.

For dinner, what else but TourNbride, the restaurant on rue Mouffetard where we ate our first meal on this visit to Paris and our first the last time we visited. Without a reservation, they squeezed us into a tiny table between the front window and the bar, which was just fine for us. Lynn had her favorite crispy chicken and I ordered the duck confit, both delicious as always with a pichet of Bordeaux.

We had ended our Paris stay where we began. It was time to leave.

Our stays in our favorite cities like Paris, Nice, Florence and Barcelona follow a fairly predictable pattern. For the first couple of days we reacquaint ourselves with the neighborhoods and our old haunts. Then we plunge into the sights, experiences and places that we have missed for so long.

As the end of our stay approaches, we start on the glide path to departure by re-visiting some of our favorite spots. For Paris, that means the Eiffel Tower, the BatoBus, Pomme d’Eve and a walk through the Tuileries, weather permitting.

Sunday took care of the first three.

But first the most important stuff–Bloody Marys at Le Petit around the corner from our first apartment. The young bartender knew what to do and served our drinks with bottles of Worcestershire, Tabasco and celery salt on the side so we could flavor them to our taste. Very perceptive. As Le Petit filled with Sunday morning patrons sitting outside drinking coffee and enjoying petit dejeuner, we sat inside sipping our favorite breakfast beverage.

From Montagne St. Genevieve, it was closer to walk down to the Seine to catch the BatoBus at Notre Dame, so we indulged in another favorite walk down toward the river and through the Maubert-Mutualite market. The Sunday market there was normally teeming with food, clothing and household goods, but on this day, it was strictly a flea market. The permanent food shops lining the corner were busy with customers, but the market itself was mostly used clothing and “stuff” aka junk.

We walked on. The river and BatoBus beckoned.

Although the BatoBus stop opposite Notre Dame is very well marked, somehow I turned in the wrong direction until Lynn pointed to the sign behind us. Luckily we had not marched more than 50 yards or so and turned around quickly to buy our tickets and get on the boat. Tickets at the desk cost 19 euros for a day, when you can get them online for the same price for two days. Whatever, we knew this would be our last ride.

We disembarked at the Eiffel Tower to find the square, the bridge and the surrounding streets completely blocked off. It seemed that there was some festival with a road race that had taken over the area. We picked our way around the fencing, down the side street along the festival grounds and finally found the tower entrance. The line was only slightly longer on a Sunday than it had been earlier in our trip.

Once inside, we lunched at the little cafe and had our last gaze at the engineering marvel of M. Eiffel. If you look closely, you can see a frieze along the first upper level that lists the names of 72 prominent scientists, engineers and thinkers of Eiffel’s time. They all have three things in common: they are French, they are men and no one’s name is longer than 12 letters. More than that would not fit in the spaces.

By the time we walked around the park and bade our farewell to Eiffel, most of the fencing had been removed, so we walked unimpeded to catch the BatoBus just as it was leaving the dock. The boat this time was much more crowded, and I could hear a lot of Spanish spoken. The ride took nearly an hour to go from Eiffel Tower to the Jardin des Plantes, but on a beautiful Sunday, we couldn’t think of anything better to do than see Paris from the river.

We grabbed an early dinner of leftover tortellinis, sausage and peppers, duck breast and blue cheese to clean out the refrigerator and be ready for the walk to Pomme d’Eve where we would be able to watch the Saints game.

George was kind enough to pull up the Saints game while the big screes showed the France-Spains European soccer championship at the same time. Very kind of him. He explained that the game was being played in Milan and sponsored by Gazprom of Russia. Doesn’t get much more international than that.

Soccer to us is unfathomable, but I twisted my head between the American NFL football and the “real” football for the evening. Spain went ahead briefly, then France scored a goal within seconds and surged ahead as we walked out of the bar with the comfort of both our home teams winning. We bade farewell to George and promised to return next year, hopefully in time for the rugby championships in the spring.

As we walked back to the apartment thorough the familiar streets and plazas, all the bars and bistros were filled with customers and we could tell the outcome of the match by the cheers. By the time we arrived home, France had won the match and the championship and the singing of the Marseillaise ensued all along the streets.

Overall, a fitting way to spend our last night at Pomme d’Eve for a while.

Our cousins Mel and Irene returned from their genealogy trip to Normandy, so we made arrangements to meet for lunch again before we all depart Paris for points in the south of France. This time, we chose La Forge, our favorite restaurant in Paris across rue Claude Bernard from the end of rue Mouffetard.

We had some time to kill after a quick trip to the wine shop on rue Mouffetard after we deposited the bottles of juice back home, so we walked down Monge to the apartment I had found, then back up rue Mouffetard again before heading down the street to La Forge, where Mel and Irene had just sat down.

Over entrecote for them and canard confit for us (plus a pichet of Bergerac for each of us), they related the news of the trip. Irene reported she was able to trace our family ties all the way back to Rollo, a Viking who was one of the precursors of William the Conqueror in his successful invasion of Britain.

Mel and Irene expanded on the adventures of their trip by bus through rain for 35 people, none of whom (except for them) had ever been in Europe before. Apparently some members of the group complained about the food in France. Go figure.

After bidding our au revoirs to our gracious host at La Forge, we walked up to rue Mouffetard to show the street to Mel and Irene, who were amazed at the scene. The crowds filled the street lined with shops and markets of every kind. It was our third trip there this same day but their first ever. They were appropriately impressed.

The afternoon was beautiful, so we parted ways with the cousins so they could return to their hotel and prepare for their trip to Provence and Nice. We returned to our apartment for a short nap followed by a walk to Arenes de Lutece.

Constructed in the first century A.D. by the Romans, Arenes de Lutece once sat 15,000 spectators to watch gladiatorial battles. It is the most important Roman ruin in Paris, along with Cluny, which is not far away on blvd St. Germaine. Lutetia was the Roman name for the city of Paris, which even two thousand years ago was a major metropolis in the empire.

Today the arena is a park for Parisians, and on a gorgeous autumn day, they turned out in throngs. No fewer than four boules games were being played on the ground level, as a group of younger kids kicked the ubiquitous soccer ball all over. On the upper decks, people young and old were catching the last rays of the setting sun, knowing that cold, gray Parisian winter is not that far away.

An hour later, we retired home as the sun set to enjoy a Saturday night dinner of escargot from Picard and authentic Peruvian empanadas from PicaFlor next door. Certainly not the gourmet lunch we had enjoyed earlier at La Forge, but tasty in its own right for a quiet Saturday evening.

This is a crusade of mine. Pere Lachaise is the greatest cemetery in the world, and for those who follow this little commentary, cemeteries are some of my favorite places.

We chickened out earlier in the week at Pere Lachaise because we spied a dark ominous cloud coming over and we had no rain gear. This time there was not a cloud in the sky and we took a long, circuitous Metro route to the fabled city of the dead. This time, for a particular reason.

My Spring Hill College class of ’71 is hosting our Golden Reunion in about a week, and we will miss it. No one’s fault. It should have been in April but was postponed due to Covid. We were supposed to be in Europe in spring but were forced to postpone that too for the same reason.

Someone on the Spring Hill Google list made a comment about Jim Morrison dying the same year we graduated, so the least I could contribute is a photo of his burial spot in Pere Lachaise. We have been there enough times to have a good idea of where it is–just follow the American accents.

Sure enough, there we were. With a bunch of American and English-speaking French who were fans. Most had not even been conceived of being conceived when Jim Morrison met his tragic alcohol and drug induced end. But there we were, contemporaries to take a photo for our Spring Hill Class of ’71.

The sacrifices I make for posterity and my Class of ’71.

Unlike most times we visit Pere Lachaise, the weather this particular day was nothing short of Paris early fall spectacular. We could have spent the entire day climbing up and down the hills of Pere Lachaise, but my work was done. Edith Piaf and the others will wait for another visit.

We walked out past the block looking for a place to have lunch and decided on Aux Tables de Pere Lachaise. What better place to eat than a bistro named after the cemetery?

It turned out to be just fine. Lynn had a small tartine of goat cheese, and I had a generous boeuf confit, aka a debris burger. They now call them smash burgers. With a bit of gravy and some French bread, we could have been at Domilese’s. But it wasn’t that good. Dom’s has nothing to fear.

Then it was back home, this time on a somewhat different route on the Metro, quicker and more direct. I’m not sure why we went to Pere Lachaise the way we did, but the Maps app sometimes sends you on strange routes.

Once back to the apartment, we took a walk through the Jardin to the paleontology museum to buy a dinosaur game for our faithful mail attendant, Gabriel, who lives upstairs and loves his prehistoric animals. He is more dependable than the USPS and lots more personable, especially at the advanced age of seven.

Dinner was at home. Lynn cooked up the four-cheese tortellinis she had bought at the Monge market in the morning. Cooked down with a rich tomato sauce, they were wonderful. We enjoyed some stinky blue cheese for appetizers in advance, polished off our last bottle of wine and enjoyed a fine French-Italian dinner. What could be better?

For us, no trip to Paris is complete without a visit to Giverny, Monet’s home and gardens where he lived and painted for the last 40 years of his life.

Visiting Giverny is no small undertaking. It is located some 40 miles northwest of Paris in the first part of Normandy. It takes just about the entire day and more than $100 for tickets on the train to get there and back, tickets for the garden, tickets for the little tram that transports visitors from the Vernon station to the Giverny village, and of course lunch. All this for about an hour in the garden and another hour in the house and shop. But it’s worth it.

This is the end of the year for Giverny. The gardens will close November 1. And you can see why. The riot of color is gone for the most part. Some of the lush greenery has turned brown already.

The lily pads on the Japanese ponds are flat, lifeless and turning brown. You can sense that the place is about to hibernate for the winter.

But even at this time, it was well worth seeing. For one thing, as usual these days, there were no lines or crowds. When we once stood for hours in May to get a ticket, we walked right up to the counter with our pre-arranged tickets, showed our pass sanitaire and marched right in. Just for once, we were able to enjoy the stroll through the village on the way to Monet’s gardens without feeling like we were on St. Charles Avenue on Mardi Gras.

Inside the gardens, we walked uninhibited through the paths, which still show a lot of color, just not the full display of the spring and summer. When normally we would take one small step at the time to move with the teeming crowds, on this day we could walk at our own pace, stop, start, stare, photograph and walk again at will. That’s one reason we were able to get through the gardens so quickly.

Monet’s house was the same. The last time we visited, the line stretched so long and the crowds were so thick in the house that we skipped it entirely after suffering through the snaking lines in the garden. This time, we walked in by ourselves and were able to spend time in the empty rooms to gaze at the paintings (reproductions–otherwise, the home would be Musee d’Orsay); examine the utensils and dinnerware in the dining room; marvel at the expansive kitchen (if you look at photos of Monet late in life, you can see he was an enthusiastic diner); and remark at the small beds in the chambers.

Even the shop was wide open and expansive, so we availed ourselves of a 2022 Monet wall calendar for home and walked out for lunch.

We had discovered during our last visit that the little take-out place offers a mighty fine hot dog.

They have since improved the breed considerably–the dog now consists of a crusty, crunchy baguette at least 15 inches long stuffed with two nearly-as-long franks with a slice of cheese and some spicy mustard. It was all we could do to share the monstrous thing. And it cost all of 5.60 euros.

Full of a Giverny dog and a Kronenburg beer, we wandered back to the bus and tram lot with an hour to kill. While we were waiting there, we walked over to Monet’s bust, which for some reason is stuck out by itself in a muddy field behind the bus and tram parking lot. Why it is not on the grounds or at least in the village is a mystery. If it weren’t for Monet, no one would give Giverny the slightest bit of attention.

The tram and train schedules are coordinated. Unfortunately, there is no 3 p.m. train back to Paris. The trains run more or less every hour except at 3. So the choice is 2 p.m. (too early) or 4 p.m. (the commuter special). I had booked the 4 p.m. to make sure we had enough time. As it turned out, we had plenty of that, so we walked around Vernon a few blocks in the quiet center of the little historic town.

The train only makes one stop between Vernon and Paris, but that one stop in Mantes la Jolie loaded up the cars with workers returning to Paris in the evening. We quickly went from nearly empty to all but full, but after taking the Metro for the last couple of weeks, that was no big deal.

Gare St. Lazare was a madhouse of commuters hustling in and out of town both ways. It was a struggle to get through the crowds to the Metro stations beneath the legendary train station made famous in some of Monet’s most renowned masterpieces.

After Gare St. Lazare, the Metro stations and cars were quiet. When we finally reached our Place Monge stop, it was well after the beginning of cocktail hour. We walked around the corner to make a reservation at Lilane, the decidedly anti-Parisian bistro we had discovered a week ago.

We are able to make a reservation after a momentary delay, and when we showed up, we understood the reason for the hesitation. The restaurant was nearly full, with a table of four incredibly pretentious Americans sitting nearest our little two-top.

I had the skate, which is fairly common around these parts, and Lynn had the duck breast with a canneloni. We found an absolutely delicious cabernet franc from Loire and enjoyed every last drop. Lilane, as I said, is not your average Parisian bistro, and the prices reflect that. For the first time in Paris, our bill exceeded 100 euros. Thankfully, the euro has depreciated against the dollar. Gotta love world economics.