The Boy in the Blue Hat

Our last five days in France, we were back in Paris, this time in the Montparnasse district.

A couple of days before leaving California, I had learned that the hotel I had reserved on the right bank was in a redlight district. Panicking, I opted for more expensive and left bank Montparnasse, figuring that after 4.5 weeks we might want a bit less of La Boheme. It was a lot more expensive, but hotels were filling fast so I grabbed the cheapest room at the Villa Luxembourg while I could.

Montparnasse: The name stems from the nickname “Mount Parnassus" (in Greek mythology, home to the nine Greek goddesses – the Muses – of the arts and sciences) given to the hilly neighbourhood in the 17th century by students who came there to recite poetry [from Wikipedia].

Wait! I’m off track! I want to tell you about the Boy in the Blue Hat!

About ¾ mile from our hotel was Le Jardin du Luxembourg (gardens, playgrounds, palace, etc.). Every morning while Mary finished sleeping and making up, I would amble over there for an hour or more of blissful reflection. Up Blvd. Montparnasse I strolled, turning left on the street by the fountain at the Place Observatoire, going alongside the long narrow parks where children play and dogs are forbidden, past the College of Pharmacy, and finally entering the garden through the tall ornate metal gates. I wandered in a timeless world where tree-shaded, chair-lined, wide paths criss-crossed the immense palace grounds. It would be early enough for most Parisians to still be abed, having been up late the night before, so only gardeners and joggers joined me there. After meandering along various paths for awhile, I would usually end up at the area dominated by two sculptures, one of a deer family with buck rising majestically over doe and fawns, and the other of a male lion majestically rising over his kill, an ostrich. Every day I thought, “How odd. An ostrich.”

One morning I sat longer than usual, eventually closing my eyes so I could hear the songs of the birds more clearly. I probably dozed as the morning sunrise warmed the air, because I remember becoming aware of whistling in the distance. The tune was gay, like something from the romantic 19^th Century rather than our own prosaic one. Curious, but also reluctant to be disappointed, I slowly opened my eyes to search for the whistler.

Across the grass, farther than the next path, and just beyond the border of green trees, danced a young boy in a blue cap, twirling, leaping, pirouetting, flying in and out of the long morning shadows – while his unseen companion whistled and another contributed marvelous tinkling bubbly laughter that filled the air with bright sparkling light.

Watch them and don’t breathe!

I tried to imprint them on my eyes, in my ears, so as to have them forever in my heart.

Try to hold onto them a moment longer while I tell you another story about Luxembourg. When I got home, I was rushing through an online catalog of Impressionistic paintings from around 1900-1910. Suddenly my eyes stopped to stare at a singular one. When my brain detoured back to it, I saw my chair in the Luxembourg Gardens right where the Lion rises over the Ostrich! Someone was sitting in my chair, a lady from another century clothed in black, but otherwise the scene was exactly as it was for me in the mornings of my last five days in Paris.

Was there a Boy in a Blue Cap in the painting, just beyond the row of trees? I hope so. I hope boys will always feel free enough and happy enough to dance through the gardens, laughing and whistling while the world swirls around them.

[Unfortunately, hours of searching for that image to share with you have produced nothing. The best I could do was the one of the deer where the trees are still leafless - news-e.hoosta.com - not full of green like they were that early week in May.]

I know I promised more of St. Malo for this blog, but the boy in the blue hat wanted to be remembered. Next time, back to St. Malo!

On to St. Malo!

It’s time to stop writing about Paris for awhile, tempting though it is to reminisce about our wonderful times and adventures in that extraordinary city. I realized when I showed some slides to friends the other night, that to some people, Paris is France, and France is Paris, so on we go!

Today you get to meet St. Malo. It’s a small city on the English Channel a few hours east of Mont San Michel and enough over the border from Normandy to be in Brittany. I really wanted to go all the way out to the westernmost edge of France and see Brest, but we couldn’t do everything, so St. Malo (pronounced quickly as Sanmalo with the accent on the o) had to represent all of Brittany.

The train dropped us off on a Friday afternoon practically in front of the old city walls. There were very few people around, and no hustle and bustle, or tourist bureau, or map of the city that I could see. The google map of the hotel location was all I had. However, as always happened, a few questions to bystanders sent us to the right city bus which took us about five miles to Rochebonne (good rock). Odd name, eh?

We were a couple of blocks from the ocean. Following the address numbers, we walked almost all the way to the beach past a few sleepy restaurants, before finding the hotel. “Wow,” I thought, “Well done, me!”

The room on the first floor (first floor above street level) was tiny but had a balcony with a fine view (see the pix). Toilet and shower down the hall and quite lovely. At least if they are down the hall, you don’t have to cope with bathroom noises.

At this point, Mary collapsed on the bed and went to sleep for two and a half days. We don’t know what she had, but it involved sleep, lots of it, and (thank goodness) no throwing up. Since 2.5 days was all I had allotted for St. Malo, Mary didn’t get to see much of it.

The tides here are long because the beach is almost flat, and it’s at the right angle with the Channel and the Atlantic Ocean, which kind of collide here. The tide can be 12 meters high, some of the highest in the entire world! In the mornings, walking along the quai, I would see puddles showing that the waves had struck during the night, but I never saw it myself.

Sometimes the water goes far far out, exposing more rocky outcrops which must have been deterrents for boats chasing the old-time pirates who found haven here.

At low tide the sand is hard, easy to walk on, and the beach area is enormous. Pretty unbroken shells abound. I saved a number to bring home and give to friends. They take up little room and add almost no weight to my backpack.

I got talking to a woman with a small poodle who seemed to think I could understand all her French. Flattering, but I had to listen very closely to get about half. She suggested that Mary and I hitchhike over to Concale or Houle, which are famous towns for huitre and coquilles (oysters, scallops, etc.). Since that’s not our favorite food, though it is for people around here, and since Mary was sick, I didn’t try to go there.

Winter, my friend said, is cold in St. Malo, but otherwise the weather is temperate. Certainly that first weekend of April was warm and envigorating. Families played together on the sand, the water being too cold for most. A soccer ball was kicked my way so I kicked it back, finding that harder to do than I expected. They shouted their thanks. Fathers, especially, seemed to enjoy having fun with their children. They played with an air of unconstrained joy.

I walked for hours and miles each day, and got to discover for myself how to “do” a supermarket, a pharmacy, restaurants, and a health food store. It’s not as much fun alone as when you are with someone else.

On Saturday I walked four of the five miles to the old city where I hoped to find a wheeled suitcase for Mary, since perhaps her heavy backpack wasn’t helping her health. I took the bus the final mile, then walked through the city, disappointed to find it chock full of tourist shops and hot dog stands. And tourists. Well, of course, that’s how it makes its living, from tourists (like me, except I didn’t find anything to buy).

Waiting for the bus to take me and my weary feet back to the hotel, I met Olivier and Cecile, two delightful young people with beautiful names (see the photo). Olivier gave me my first French kiss, the two-cheek kind. Another young man who joined in our conversation was not quite so gentile. He claimed that British food was far superior to French food. Yes, he was French, poor fellow.

Next time I will write of the remarkable Bretons, including their resilience in rebuilding their city after World Wars II.

Joie de Vivre

Evenings in France are magical. Families, lovers, children, friends all go outside to stroll the boulevards until it’s time to eat around 20 h (8:00 p.m.) or even later. The street lights come on and it’s like a holiday party where everyone is invited.

After seeing Notre Dame and the Sainte Chapelle (do not miss the SC if you go to Paris), we found that the impressive Palais de Justice was next door and strolled over to have a look. On the marble steps stood a young man in a black avocat’s robe, his stylishly dressed mother at his side and a photographer taking his picture. He had just become a lawyer. Curious, I turned to a young woman, also in black avocat’s robe, relaxing on the steps nearby.

“Are you an avocat?” I asked in French. She was, and had been for only four months or so after serving a two-year apprenticeship. We talked of how hard it is for a young lawyer there, as here. Ingrid chose business law because, after serving a four-month internship in San Francisco working in Immigration Law, she decided that she wanted a field where she wouldn’t have to deal with the pain of families being separated from each other. At least in business you deal with a corporation, not a person.

“Anyone can do a bad thing,” she said, and I agreed. I know I have had moments where, but for the grace of God, I might have committed a big crime. A famous U.S. defense attorney whose clients included really sleazy people, even guilty ones, explained why: “Because everyone deserves to have one person on their side, to speak for them.”

Though Ingrid’s father initially didn’t want her to be a lawyer, he now sees that she can help people and is proud of her.

A clerk in the store where we bought camera batteries pointed us in the direction of some good, cheap restaurants (cheap for Paris, not for Barstow, CA). Relaxing after a full afternoon of touristing, we settled for a sidewalk table at La Baltarde. It was a early for Parisians to begin eating, only 6 p.m., but not for us. (Soon, our eating habits would switch to French time, but for now we were on a U.S. schedule.) A jaunty young couple took the table next to us and ordered wine. In a short while, Maria-Christina (for that was her name) asked Roussel to ask us if we minded if she smoked. (It seems to us that more French women than men smoke). Mary held up her finger, testing the wind, which brought a laugh, introductions, and a delightful hour of fun in Fren-glish.

We had to run off to the Louvre then because I’d promised my daughter that I’d take pictures of the ancient Roman and Greek exhibits, but most were closed for renovation. Fifty years ago, we got lost in the Louvre and it happened again. Mary was desperate to find a restroom (a Loo in the Louvre), but directions from guards and maps led us into confusion. Finally, when we were weary and cranky, we found success, relief, and escape.

It was a joyful escape because we discovered the Pont des Arts, or, as we named it, The Bridge of Love. On this, one of the first warm evenings of spring, the footbridge was crowded with young people sitting on the ground, eating, drinking, talking, filled with joie de vivre. Locks of all sizes and shapes hung from the fence along the edge. “Pourquoi?” I asked one couple. “Amour,” we were told. The lock is a seal to their love.

It must have been 9:30 by the time we grabbed a table at the very popular Le Paradis des Fruits, ordered elegant ice cream creations and watched the crowds of people passing by.

Here’s the thing – at a café, you can order just a simple thing and you “own” that table for as long as you care to stay. No tip-hungry waiter will rush you. because there are usually no tips. Waiters are paid a wage, and prices are high enough to cover the loss of having fewer (but happier) customers.

Last night I watched the documentary, “Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room.” That’s a scary movie. It uses clips from interviews with Enron execs and employees to show how deregulation of the energy business caused (and is causing) economic upheaval, especially for California where Enron “stole” $35 billion of electricity and sold it to other states.

A comparison might be of Paris cafes, small and friendly, where waiters are not dependent on a high turnover of customers (wages are set, as in regulation), to U.S. restaurants where customers are hurried in and out because waiters need (or want) more tips (no set wage, as in deregulation).

It’s just a thought.

Medievalists Wore Prada

Looking through my photos, I found an inordinate number of shots of men’s shoes! Odd, eh? Unless you’re a shoe salesman. However, when Mary and I landed at Heathrow for a long layover, our flight from L.A. being hours late in leaving, we had nothing better to do than walk around (with our heavy backpacks) and look at the shop windows.

Note: At least Heathrow has shops, lots of them. L.A.’s Bradley International terminal is the dullest place you’d ever want to be delayed for four hours – or, as happened to the boys from Scotland, nine hours! There’s nothing to see, nothing to buy, nothing to eat, nothing, period.

Prada’s windows looked elegant. I took pix and we went inside to see up close these wonders for the richly heeled. It wasn’t hard to notice an oddity – the toes seemed at least an inch or more too long for whatever foot would enter that shoe. But, oh, the leather was elegant, the soles thin as paper, the saleslady indulgent of us.

Later, as we sat watching the crowds and resting our packs on the floor, I was startled to see picture number two repeated many times! Look! The toes are so long they curl up, almost as extreme as in medieval paintings where the man’s shoe is so long that the toe has to be tied up to the knee with ribbons.

Honestly, we were astonished that men would wear such silly looking shoes. At Notre Dame the next day, we met several Italian boys, students, and asked them if it was the fashion in Italy. They laughed and denied it. They, of course, wore the European version of Nikes.

As we went around France, however, we saw that long toes were definitely in, especially for those who looked like businessmen or maybe lawyers.

Note the gladiator sandal. Then note the number of women’s shoes in the same style 2000 years later, both the heeled and flat versions.

The athletic shoes for men are much more stylish than our “pillow” shoes, though the thin soles must be harder on the feet, I reckon, if you’re walking miles over cobblestones. The term “Pillow shoe” comes from a book about a mass murderer in Florence, Italy. The author and his co-author friend sat at the outdoor café identifying as Americans everyone who sported a thick, soft-soled, puffy-top, huge pillowy shoe (L.A. Gear, Reebok, Nike, Sketchers, you name it).

Look at the variety of athletic shoes available in all colors! The young men wear them in vibrant pinks, reds, blues, greens, yellows. Lots more color than in the U.S. While we’re at it, I’m including a picture of men’s shirts – color here, too. And laces for dress shoes in neon-brights.

The women of Paris are being courted to buy ruffles – dresses, blouses all ruffled up, down, and around. Outside of Paris, not so much, and in Germany, not at all. So if you want ruffles, you can have them or not.

As fun as it was to look in the shop windows, the prices are horrible, especially with the weak dollar. Prices are nicely printed on cards below the display. As a Ross and Marshall's shopper, I have a low idea of what things should cost. Want to guess what European prices are like? Multiply by three or five or more, whatever your latest purchase was.

To recover, buy a hot chocolate or milk at the nearby cafe, sit at an outdoor table, and enjoy watching the crowds pass by for hours. No waiter will shoo you away.