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Tuesday, July 13, 1999

The original plan this morning was to visit the market on rue Auguste-Blanqui to shop for food to eat during the Bastille Day holiday food, but many stalls were missing (probably as a result of the holiday), including the rotisserie where I had planned to pick up sausages and roast rabbit for dinner. The vegetables and salad did not look particularly exciting, either. We bought lots of fruit; the bill at one stand came to 180F, which seemed high to me, but N knew what she was doing, and the fruit later turned out to be exceptional, particularly the Charentais melons.

Into the subway for line 7, off at Jussieu and up to the patisserie Gerald Beaufort for breakfast. N and I got pain aux raisins, and we noticed that there seemed to be a considerable variation in this pastry. Some were very flaky, like croissants; some quite bready, and some, like this one, had more of a brioche dough as base, with an eggy filling and plumped raisins.

We ate while walking back to the metro, though Z couldn't finish her almond croissant, which was enormous and filled with a generous helping of almond paste. Line 10 to Gare d'Austerlitz and the RER around the Seine to the Pont de l'Alma stop. We walked across the bridge, past a replica of the Statue of Liberty flame whose base looked like an old hoarding with peeling bits of paper; had we asked one of the tourists peering curiously over the underpass, they would probably have been able to tell us that this was where Princess Di had her fatal car crash. Up the hill towards the Palais de Tokyo and Musee d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris.

Their permanent collection, which is decent if not outstanding, was all in storage; instead, they were showing a selection from the Beaubourg (the Centre George Pompidou). This started out well with a Matisse paper-cutout of dancers, doubly evocative to our kids who took dance and spent much of their leisure time cutting paper. They were having a great time as we walked through, trying to identify subjects, guessing titles. Z recognized a Dora Maar portrait by Picasso, though it wasn't labelled as such. "That's like the one in the other museum, the one where the eyes aren't in the right place."

Leger, Braque, Matisse bronzes. I took Z up to a Calder mobile and blew on it gently to animate it. "We've seen stuff by this artist before, somewhere." A, of course, identified it immediately (he's one of her favourite artists). We ended up at the Salon de Matisse with its large incomplete dancer painting and completed giant paper cutout, and spent some time talking about its history. There were pictures of the Barnes Foundation on the wall and we promised the kids to take them there the next time they visited their cousin in Pennsylvania. A brief browse in the excellent bookstore; I almost bought a book about Teshigahara, but even at half price it was more than the US cover price, and I was pretty sure I could get it at the Kinokuniya bookstore in San Francisco. Instead, at N"s suggestion I bought a French art magazine aimed at kids; we pried ours from their books and left.

We had planned lunch at the cafe at the museum as a backup, but it was early, and the neighbourhood not a good one to eat in. So it was up through place de l'Iena and a demonstration in front of Iranian embassy in sympathy of the protesting students back home, and to the Trocadero stop. Line 6 to La Motte Piquet, change to 10, off at Vaneau, and out into the smart western corner of the 6th arrondissement. The streets were busy, the shops upscale.

Our destination was Le Nemrod, a cafe at the corner of rue Cherche-Midi and rue St-Placide. For some reason, I had expected sleepy, cozy neighbourhood hangout, but I didn't know the neighbourhood well enough. It was a very busy corner, and the cafe was quite polished-looking, neon on the outside, velvet banquettes and polished wood inside, with a double row of tables and wicker chairs down both sides of the corner, taking up most of the sidewalk, and seemingly full of diners cheek-to-jowl. With relief we got an outside table (inside row) for four.

Our waiter was bluff, brisk, moustachioed; the menu had Auvergnat specialties and about ten plats du jour on a handwritten piece of paper clipped on. It was the quintessential Paris cafe experience, without any English being spoken. We had salads (about 60F, N's with smoked duck breast, mine with filet de canard, manchons, gesiers and, improbably enough for a Perigourdine salad, pine nuts) -- huge and tasty. Tbe kids shared saucisse d'Auvergne (78F), with mushroom gravy, and potato truffade on side (which neither cared for, so we ate most of it). I ordered a carafe of Thevenet Morgon to drink, a very nice accompaniment. Desserts were tarte aux pruneaux d'Armagnac shared between N and I and clafouti aux cerises for Z, both swimming in creme anglaise; creme brulee at A's request (Z confessed that she only wanted the "brulee" part, which A generously shared). The food was good but not great; the atmosphere made up for any culinary deficiencies.

After that, we could visit the nearby food hall of the Au Bon Marche department store without going overboard. "Le Grande Epicerie" looked surreal, since renovations were underway and the whole ceiling had been torn out, but it was interesting to walk through. Not quite a bargain -- de Cecco pasta was 20F, whereas at home it would be about 5F. But the selection was good, if a bit odd, especially when it came to foreign foods. We bought some chocolate, wines, and a box of Amaretti di Saronno.

Then it was time for the pilgrimage up rue Cherche-Midi to Poilane, temple of bread, which we had not visited since 92, though the bread is available elsewhere in town, and many cafes advertise that their sandwiches are made with Poilane bread. I bought half an enormous round of pain au levain, and some pastries for the kids.

We headed for the Sevres-Babylone metro stop but came across a store called Chantelivre on rue de Sevres, which N had read about in a book called Le Paris de Tout-Petits which the mother of one of Z's classmates had lent us. We spent quite a while browsing, as it turned out to be an excellent store for children's books; N picked up a Gallimard visual dictionary and a book put out by the Mairie de Paris of good books for children to be found in the city's libraries. Since everyone else was fruitfully occupied, I went up the street and had a 2F piss in one of the automated bathrooms that have replaced the ancient pissoirs of Paris.

To the metro, change at Gare d'Austerlitz, and home. N and I lay down to rest and ended up dozing, a rarity, while the kids made forts out of sofa cushions, though they were not fighting, but "camping".

Since they had, for the most part, let us rest, we took them to parc de Choisy for some playground time around six; I bought a copy of Le Monde and read about the Iranian situation, since we'd walked through it earlier. Back to the apartment for a light but high-quality dinner of Poilane bread and Alleosse cheese. The kids were both impressed with the bread; both had unadorned portions near the end of the meal.

There were street parties planned that evening in anticipation of Bastille Day; one was supposed to start in place de la Bastille at nine, and we didn't know if the kids (especially Z) could stay up, but we thought we'd try. We took the metro to Bastille around 8:30. Nothing much was happening; people were starting to congregate, but there was only a light check going on at the stage set up on the north sidewalk, and traffic moved normally through the circle, which is to say in manic fits and starts; driving through it in 93 on the way to return a car I'd been driving around France for a month was one of the major traumatic experiences of my life.

Walked down Boulevard Henri IV to the Seine, then back again. 9:30, and we stood at the western edge of place de la Bastille watching people run across traffic to take up positions on the pavement around the column. The steps of the Bastille Opera were full of people sitting down; on stage a DJ and a lone conga drummer were putting out a good mix of music. Firecrackers and small fireworks were going off periodically and men circulated through the crowd furtively offering them for sale; A was terrified and clung to us for quite a while, but Z asked if we could get some.

9:45: the traffic dwindled to a sprinkling of scooters, and we stepped out into the road, strolling past the column to stand in front of the stage. A very mixed crowd; mostly young people in groups, but some quite old people, strolling slowly, and tourists of all ages, including some other children. The music too loud for A and she wanted to go home, but Z was dancing around and kept asking to be hoisted up to look over the crowd. People started to scale the base of the column to dance on ledges.

The band finally came out about 10:15 and we put the kids on our shoulders. It was led by Ticky Delgado, billed as an actor/singer (someone walked through handing out postcards advertising a movie of his opening that week). The music was an odd pastiche of American musical influences, rock, funk, blues, more like a French impression of cool America than anything that America would find really cool. Bikini-clad go-go dancers ran on partway through the extended first number, after the band was introduced instrument by instrument (Z asked why their hair was down, when everyone she'd ever seen dance, including at her dance school's recital, had their hair up and netted). The crowd was pretty quiet and sedate by North American standards, tapping their feet or swaying slightly. We watched for about half an hour, at which point Z seemed about to fall asleep, so we hopped into the subway.

She stayed awake for the five-stop ride home, though I carried her out of the metro. Coming up the steps in front of the Grand Ecran, she sighed and said, "Oh, it's beautiful", referring to the lights of the city at night, which she had never seen. The brasserie on the corner, the one visible from our room, was in full swing, with "entertainment" being provided by a blonde singer playing electric piano; the small funfair ride right in front was going around, smoke was floating down the street from an outdoor grill pavilion. It was a little slice of neighbourhood night life, like petits-four with coffee after a good meal. We went inside and put two very tired kids to bed.

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