We had quite a wait for our luggage, but it finally came, and we wheeled our cart past the idle Customs officers and out into the lobby. There were no real services offered, not even a bank machine. We wheeled the cart out the front door and down a pathway, through a tunnel under the highway, and to the RER station -- surprisingly, an improvement over arriving at the main terminal, from which you need to catch a bus. It was perhaps a little after nine in the morning.
We bought our tickets into the city with a credit card, putting off the money search. It was the first time that the kids had to push through a turnstile, and it took some explaining before they were willing to chance it. A train arrived shortly, and we got on for the long trip into the centre. There was enough room that I could put our large pack on one seat, the carry-on and day pack at our feet, with the kids sharing one seat (squabbling occasionally) and N and I on a seat each. I planned to hoist the pack onto my lap if necessary, but it never quite got crowded enough.
We took the RER as far as Denfert-Rochereau, where we changed to the metro (another turnstile to deal with, Z getting more balky as the realization that this was going to be a common occurrence hit her). Line 6 towards place d'Italie had a raised section affording us our first glimpses of the city. As we came out of the the metro station (almost losing Z at the automatic doors) we could see the Orion hotel sign on the side of a large modern building labelled Grand Ecran, fronting on the traffic circle of the place, and right in front of us.
It was only 10:30, and they said our apartment wasn't ready, so we repacked for the day (one guidebook, map, passport and money into the daypack, while the kids changed into shorts) but when I went to leave the luggage, they surprised us with the key. Our apartment was on the first floor (second floor to us, meaning we had to take the elevator, there being no stairs that were not fire-alarmed), and it proved to be similar in style though not identical in geometry to the three-person apartment we rented at Orion Les Halles in February 1996, when Z was less than a year old.
The apartment was perhaps five metres by six (approximately; I had only my paces to measure with). As we entered at one end, there was a single bunk above cupboards to the left, and a single bedroom straight ahead with a double bed and some closets. Moving past the bunk and turning right, there was a short hallway with a water closet and bathroom to the right side, and then a larger living room with a sofa and pull-out bed, a dining table, a TV table, and a kitchenette. The fridge was about the size of a two-drawer filing cabinet, and the dishwasher even smaller; I thought it was an oven, while N's first impression was that it was some sort of deep fryer, and she wondered what the hell it was doing there.
All this was costing us about 980F a night, about what we'd pay for two decent hotel rooms. The view out our window was of a brasserie and terrace fronting on place d'Italie, right by the metro entrance; we thought it might be noisy, but as it turned out, the windows rendered everything into a faint hum except for the occasional vigourous shout.
As we had next to no sleep and were jet-lagged, the rest of our day was pretty banal, but even a banal day in Paris may hold some interest for the reader.
We stripped down our daypack further, slathered on sunscreen, and headed out and into the Centre Commercial Italie 2 next door (a large shopping mall), where we found a bank machine and retrieved a thousand francs from our Canadian dollar account. We were to spend as little time as possible in this mall, but it did contain a Champion supermarket, a Flammarion bookstore, and an outlet of the high-quality baker chain Paul. There were also many stores we didn't plan to patronize, like the cafe-chain La Brioche Doree, the candy-chain Jeff de Bruges, a branch of the Printemps department store, and the ubiquitous McDonalds.
It was pleasant outside, sunny but not too hot, maybe 24 C. We walked up along rue Butte-aux-Cailles (it was a hill, but a pretty mild one as hills go) to Le Temps des Cerises for lunch. This was a worker's cooperative, listed in several books, and with a suitably casual attitude.
It was early, perhaps ten to twelve, and the place was deserted. We were given an inside table, near the bar. The place was decorated with posters for theatre and music shows (one said "Pixies, Smiths, Clash" in big letters, but the fine print translated as, "If you liked them, you'll love..."). There was also a handwritten sign stuck on a hat rack right at the entrance reading "Coupez vos portables, SVP" -- roughly, turn off your cell phones. This was the first indication we had of the cellular phone craze sweeping Paris; we would see people everywhere talking on them, announcing to someone at the other end which metro stop they were at, reading instruction manuals, or simply fondling them like some sort of fetish.
N had the showcase 118F menu: rillettes de canard, saumon pave aux pates fraiches; I had the 78F menu with assiette de charcuterie and andouillette grillee, and a quart (I wish -- really only a quarter-litre) vin rose du maison. The kids had the same salmon dish as a standalone plat. They were enthusiastic about the bread & my dish (which included andouille fume [smoked pig's intestine sausage] and a liver mousse, neither of which fazed them), less impressed with N's rillettes though they love duck. They were impatient for their food (we had forgotten their special restaurant toys at the apartment, and so they had nothing to do, the ambience not being quite enough for them); we were almost full after the entree, as was the restaurant by that time. All of the customers seemed to be regulars; we were far from tourist territory.
The andouillette was nice, without the strong offal taste that they sometimes have (though perhaps in andouillette terms this is an inferior offering), and to my surprise both kids liked it. The three of them managed just barely to finish the salmon and left lots of pasta; I left lots of fries but polished off the sausage and salad. N, stuffed, had salade des fruits for dessert and I had clafoutis des cerises (again, the kids were impressed, quite forgetting that I made this sort of dessert regularly, though they always refused to try it).
After lunch, we went back down the street to the boulangerie on the corner. It was the first one we'd seen, but the kids had been talking of bakeries for months, and they could be denied no longer; fortunately, it was an artisanal baker and not one that imported factory-made breads. They settled on coffee eclairs, and I bought a "la flute Gana" (in the style of legendary baker Bernard Ganachaud) baguette for later.
We dropped the food off at the apartment and tried to decide what to do until K, N's father, arrived at four; he was catching a train from Strasbourg where he had spent the couple of days by which he preceded us (he flew from California on frequent-flyer points). K had for the first time the previous summer spent a few days travelling with us, or more accurately, staying in our Venice apartment and walking around with us. It seemed to not have been too traumatic, as he agreed to spend more than a week with us in Paris. Since we had to get a five-person apartment anyway (the next smallest sleeping three), he could decide without having to commit early.
The kids wanted a playground and, again, it was hard to deny them at this point; N consulted her sources and determined that there was one nearby. We proceeded down rue Auguste-Blanqui by the Corvisart metro station (the raised section we had seen earlier), through the remnants of the itinerant street market, and under the tracks to Square Rene Gall, which was a modest green space built above what had once been the river Bievre, mostly trees and paths, but with a small exposed playground, plastic climbers and riding toys above a concrete floor covered with sand. We sat on a marginally shaded bench and watched; it must have been 28 C by this time. When the kids came back, sweaty and thirsty, we climbed up a flight of stairs heading straight over the Butte-aux-Cailles on the way back.
I took a detour to check out a boulangerie and when I returned heard the following story: they had found a tiny playground at the top and decided to wait for me, but A had announced she didn't want to play there any more. It turned out that some small kid had asked her what her age was, in French, and she replied, and the kid didn't believe her, since she's small for her age. Just like at home. "The little kids here speak better French than the little kids speak English at home," she said, not taking her relative knowledge of English and French into account.
Continuing over the hill, we made it to the supermarket in the basement of the centre commercial. We knew the drill -- how to weigh and seal our vegetables ourselves, what sorts of foods to look for. Hauling back our supplies at 3:45, we found K in the lobby, and greeted him effusively; we had not seen each other since Christmas.
So, we were all together in Paris. What to do? Down into the metro station! We bought carnets (a pack of ten tickets) using a credit card in a machine. The machine didn't sell the half-price tickets for the kids, so I bought them at the counter, and discovered that the 100F notes I had left over from my 1997 trip were considered old money, negotiable only at a bank. Each kid got their own ticket, inserted it, and while N pulled it out again, pushed through the turnstile and the gate preventing jumpers. Z would screw her face up, almost shutting her eyes with the effort of pushing open the gate.
We took line 7 up to the Pont-Marie stop on the Right Bank. Emerging from the subway, the kids had their first glimpse of the SeÁne, and of the bouqinistes lining the walkways by the waterway. We crossed the Pont Marie and walked into Ile St-Louis. N spotted the lineup for Berthillon ice cream and convinced me the kids needed a snack. I wasn't really convinced -- I think Berthillon is the best in Paris but nowhere near the quality of Italian gelato, or, for that matter, some of the best American ice creams -- but yielded for everyone else's sake. They had a nice selection (a strong rum raisin for A, mures for Z, framboises for N, poire for K). I waited on the opposite corner and watched the tourist crush, which was considerable, much more than during our previous off-season visits, which were a vanished luxury now that the kids were in school instead of daycares. It was perhaps exaggerated by the narrow streets of the Ile St-Louis.
We walked down the main street and along the bridge to Ile de la Cite. with the expected great view of the back of Notre-Dame (I have always preferred this view to the facade, and was vindicated this time, as the front was mostly covered for restoration). The kids wanted to go in, so in we went; unfortunately, mass was just beginning, and we infidels were crowded into the side aisles without a clear view of the rose windows or choir.
On our 92 trip N and I had focussed on Gothic cathedrals, and I distinctly remember the different impressions of Notre-Dame I had at the beginning and at the end. Now, with all that study faded, I was somewhere in the middle, and muddleheadedly tried to remember what I once knew about clerestories, vaults, alternating capitals, and transepts.
We went up the right aisle. A wanted to study the art (wasn't that what we had come to Paris for?); we tried to put aside our prejudices, but the stained glass was mostly unremarkable (much of it 19th C copies, or fill-ins in a faux-medieval style) and the paintings and polychrome sculpture more designed for inspiring faith than for secular study. At one point the organ started playing; while virtually everyone else in the place was delighted, A put her hands over her ears and said, "How do they expect me to concentrate on the art with all this noise?"
Z was more impressed by the music, but since we could no longer explain things, we convinced them it was time to go, and that we would return. We walked partway across the square to see what parts of the facade we could. Z was flagging, so we promised a surprise, and then walked north past Hotel de Ville to the back of the Beaubourg (Centre Georges Pompidou) to see the Stravinsky Fountain, with its spitting, whizzing Yves Tanguey machines, and colourful Niki de Saint Phalle sculptures. The kids walked around, admiring the quirky creations, and laughing as they got sprayed.
Youngsters were just out of school, and they were congregated here, though visible all over the city. One advantage of this is that our shorts and T-shirts did not stand out as much; though the only people our age wearing them were tourists, there were plenty of indigenous college-age and high-school-age kids, both boys and girls, in shorts, carrying daypacks.
The nearest metro stop that afforded a one-line trip home was Chatelet, so we walked across the pedestrian area to the Fontaine des Innocents, flowing with water as it wasn't during our February stay in the nearby Orion Les Halles, but also thronged with skateboarders and people carrying blaring boom boxes. This confirmed our decision to stay out of the centre for a summer trip. We walked a little further south to a Chatelet metro entrance. Unfortunately, this station sprawls all over the Forum area, and finding our line required a long walk, with the horizontal people mover adding more stress than it subtracted time.
Dinner, back at our apartment, was baguette, crottin de chauvignol (tangy goat cheese, from a surprisingly decent selection at the supermarket), cherry tomatoes, and Monbazillac (a Sauternes wannabe, perhaps inappropriate for dinner, but one of N's favourites). We were all flagging by this point. The kids went to bed; K & I made a vain effort to get more water, which was desperately needed (vain because even though the supermarket closed at nine, they blocked the doors with carts by the time we arrived at 8:50). So it was home to bed, by about 9:30.