[Back |Index| Next]

Wednesday, July 7, 1999

In the morning, all of us walked down to Le Grenier a Pain to breakfast on various pastries. Back to place d' Italie and line 5 all the way up to the Stalingrad stop, to the northeast. It was sunny and cool, with occasional clouds. We crossed the Bassin de la Villette on a footbridge and walked along the Canal de l'Ourcq. Adolescents were learning to row in the water; an instructor shouted through a megaphone and gesticulated madly. Thanks to the armies of cleaners with bright green brooms, the streets of Paris were much cleaner than on previous visits (cleaner, in fact, than in Venice the year before, where dogs were newly-fashionable) but this area was clearly prime dog-walking territory, and A stepped right in a large deposit and had to scrape her feet all the way up to La Villette.

K had not been here before, and the area was only partly finished the last time we went through it. It was warm by this time, but the covered walkway with the undulating roof cutting across the park provided some shade. The rest of the park was pretty open, offering unobstructed views of the bright red "folie" buildings scattered here and there, and glimpses of the huge steel marble of the Geode theatre and the ominous bulk of the science museum behind it.

The kids enjoyed the unusual activities in the playground at the Jardin des Vents (including large stretches of wavy trampoline), after which we walked around the grounds discovering interesting areas: a garden of mirrors, a garden of sound.

Lunch was at Cafe de la Musique, reportedly one of the places to be seen at the time (though probably not that early on a weekday morning). The terrace was sparsely occupied, since it was in direct sun; we sat inside. The interior was stylish with a touch of retro; the best feature was hidden away in the men's bathroom, a stainless-steel pissoir extending up and across an entire wall, with water cascading down from the top when one stepped up to it.

The food was good also. N had salmon tartare a la poele (a cake of chopped salmon seared on both sides), I a "belle tranche" of foie de veau (calves' liver) aux raisins with potato puree. Plats were about 90F. Eating more cheaply, the kids split penne aux quatre fromages, and K, eating lightly, had a croque monsieur classique. It seemed too warm to drink much wine, so I just had a glass of Brouilly.

After lunch, we went into the Musee de la Musique, under construction on our last visit to the site. The building was quite nice, with a curved atrium, but the collection was even better. We were issued wireless infrared headsets, and when we stood in front of a case of antique instruments, they offered period music and commentary.

I could have done without some of the talking, and there was, as usual, an unnecessary emphasis on French composers, but even this had its advantages, as A got to see portraits of Lully and Gossec, whose pieces she had played on the violin in the past year. We were impressed by no fewer than four Stradivari violins, plus ones by Guanieri, and an Amati cello.

Z's eyes kept opening wide as she came within range of a new case, and she was thrilled to find several obscure instruments that had come up in a musical board game we played at home. At one point, she requested some Brahms, but when some showed up in a later case, she was not impressed. "Not this Brahms," she cried, having expected the Hungarian Dances.

The occasional daycare group ran through, but otherwise the museum was comfortably populated. It was arranged in chronological order, and it was interesting to see the development of musical technology and hear its effects on the music itself. Near the end, there was a live demonstration of the range of sounds one could get out of an unpunctured bamboo tube.

We went back to the playground the kids loved, near a wry Claes Oldenburg sculpture of a huge bicycle mostly buried in the ground, but it was overfull. So we crossed the canal and went to the huge dragon slide near the Cite des Sciences. I went down the long tongue slide with the kids, and to be honest, was glad of the excuse to slide down myself. Then we rested while the kids climbed around the dragon's tail segments, talking occasionally to other children.

We had taken both kids to the science museum in 95, but found it less interactive than North American ones, and a bit too much of a showcase for French megaprojects. Besides, it was nearly six. So we boarded the metro at Porte de la Villette station, changed at Stalingrad, exited at Etienne-Marcel, and walked along the pedestrian zone north of Les Halles to the rue Montorgueil market street and to Storher, a patisserie founded by one of Louis XIV's pastry chefs, which we had frequented on the 96 visit.

I bought pastries for after supper and a macaron cafe for the kids to hold them off. A bottle of wine from a cave, and down through the Fontaine des Innocents area, as crowded as before. We continued down Rue des Halles to avoid the horrible people-mover inside the endless warren of the Chatelet-Les Halles interchange. By entering the subway near the Hotel de Ville, we gained our platform quickly, and line 7 took us straight home.

Dinner was Alleosse cheese, pain de campagne from Paul, and a thick, slightly tannic Madiran wine. I bathed the kids after supper, and they made me promise to get a handheld shower at home. Then the pastries from Storher: millefeuille (the kids liked it, so I told them the story from the movie "Time Bandits", about Napoleon obsessing about what food should be named after him), a small canele (appley, said the kids, though I don't believe there's any apple in it), baba au rhum (which was invented at Storher -- too rummy, said the kids, though in fact the not-overly-sweet syrup was about perfect), and tarte aux figues (which the kids didn't want, to our delight).

[Back |Index| Next]