My first Parisian haircut!

Louis has had several haircuts during our stay in Paris, but I managed to put off finding a reliable coiffeur until this week. With several special events coming up soon (stay tuned!), I knew I could wait no longer...

Before:
After:

Not the best haircut I've ever had, but certainly not the worst, either! And it didn't break the bank. Thanks, Franck Provost.

The Greenest Wall

Call me obsessed, but there are some special things going on at Paris's many super-duper-department stores, aka Grands Magasins. Since I've already devoted attention Galeries Lafayette, Printemps, and Le Bon Marché, I'll turn briefly to the smallest of the four, BHV, whose men's department (BHV Homme) has been designed to communicate "rugged" and "tenacious," at least from the outside.

You've heard of a "green roof." This is a green wall. It's alive. It's on Rue de la Verrerie, just around the corner from the Hôtel de Ville (from whence Bazaar de l'Hôtel de Ville). And it's even wilder-looking in the warmer months.

Fill It, Don't Spill It

Not all gas stations in Paris look like this, but enough do that it makes me slightly nervous. I wonder how often people plow into roadside pumps, setting off massive gas-fueled fires. Not as many as I'd imagine, luckily.

If you click on the picture, or have very, very good eyesight, you'll see that a few different types of gas are advertised. SP or S/Plomb stands for "sans plomb," meaning unleaded. Gasoil and gazole both mean diesel, and not listed here is essence, which is regular gas to us. Notice how high the octane numbers are: 95 and 98. Since octane levels are measured slightly differently in Europe than in the US, these both correspond to what we'd call "premium" unleaded (91-93).

A liter of diesel here costs anywhere from 1.049 to 1.250 euros per liter. That's around 4 to 4.75 euros per gallon, which is around $5.76 to $6.84. Ouch. I'm no expert, but I think the government keeps it that high on purpose (using taxes). Being carless (but not careless) I can't say I mind. Bring on the carbon taxes! Public transportation all the way!

Even if you hate carbon taxes, give it up to the French government for making it easy to find the cheapest gas around, which must do something to promote competition and reduce prices.

Marianne looks on proudly.

Shh... don't tell Louis!

Louis turns 26 on Monday (February 1), so tomorrow is his last opportunity to get in free to the Louvre as part of their under-26-on-Friday-night Special.

Will he go? I don't know! But if he does you can be sure that he will chat up the jeunes ont la parole, or the young art and art history students stationed throughout the museum, ready to tell you all about their favorite pieces of art.

Here's a not-so-great taken-on-the-sly photo of Louis learning about French sculpture from two weeks ago:

I'm sure he'll explain to you all that the nice young woman explained to him. And you will understand it and you will enjoy it.

And here's another memorable photo of Louis at the Louvre, standing next to ... uh ... Louis, what are you standing next to?

As you can see, the Louvre is an endlessly fascinating place. Louis has an endlessly fascinating face. And his birthday is coming up soon, so don't forget!

Chapter 149: In Which Our Protagonists Dip Their Toes In The Murky Waters Of Socialized Medicine

Maggie got sick last Friday. I had the decency to wait until Matt left to get sick, but I got sick too. We're both still suffering from congestion, runny noses, fatigue, and coughing. This makes me sad, and makes Maggie a little crazy-eyed.


So today we went to the doctor. Sure, it's obvious we just have bad colds, but we figured just going would make us feel better. WE FIGURED WRONG!!!!!!1111

See, France has what you might call "SOCIALIZED MEDICINE!!!!!!" and we knew what to expect. First off, we couldn't keep our regular doctors. Because they were still in the States. Second, we couldn't choose our new doctor here. Because we kept getting recommendations from all our neighbors, and we just could not figure out who to pick. Third, we knew there wouldn't just be a single doctor seeing us, but rather a whole PANEL of doctors!!! And everything would be more expensive, and we would be brainwashed into becoming Communists, and we would probably leave more diseased than we arrived. Sad times . . .

But seriously, everything went swimmingly. We picked a doctor recommended by Héloise, in part because the office was two blocks away, in part because any doctor that wins the trust of a mother of three boys under 8 must be doing something right. I called at 1 PM, concluded we didn't need a house visit (doctors still make them here), and got a 5 PM appointment. At the office, we waited about 15 minutes, he saw us for about 30 minutes, we left the pharmacy with our prescriptions 15 minutes after that.

We filled out no paperwork. He asked us if we had insurance, but only so he could sign and hand over the reimbursement form. We paid cash for the visit - 44 euros for the two of us, which (at $63) seems more like a co-pay than the full cost of a doctor's appointment. (Also, it was weird to hand cash over to the doctor himself, but hey, whatever it takes to save on administrative costs . . .)

The really shocking, devastatingly "socialized" part came when we arrived at the pharmacy. We handed over the prescriptions. The guy couldn't do the insurance stuff online because Maggie doesn't have a permanent card yet (she's on French student health insurance) and I'm still on Blue Cross/Blue Shield (ironically, I wasn't eligible for French student health insurance). So he did the insurance stuff by hand, and gave us our medication, and guess how much it cost?

10.96 euros. For five different pieces of medication. Including two whose slogans must be something like, "Strong enough for a rhino, gentle enough for your nose." So 10.96 euros, and that's before insurance reimbursement. Normally, you'd get it all back, but since we don't have a "regular" doctor in France, the insurance company takes 4 euros off the reimbursement. Harsh.

In conclusion, we're kind of hoping we can get our hands on some of this socialized medicine stuff when we get back to the US. (Thank goodness for Massachusetts! Or not . . .)

PS - If you look closely at the boxes, you'll see Braille. Very cool. Socialized Medicine FTW.

Afternoon Tea in Paris with Joy and Cathy (Part I)

My mom likes tea. A lot. So during the week my mom and Cathy spent in Paris, we made it a priority to test drive as many salons de thé as we could stomach. (Literally - eating/drinking well every day, a few times a day, becomes taxing very rapidly.) Our second salon de thé, Ladurée, was one Maggie and I had visited (and posted about) before.

Famous for its macarons (not to be confused with macaroons), Ladurée operates several swank tea rooms in Paris and around the world. We visited its Rue Bonaparte branch, which is decorated in a not-so-subtle exoticist style, despite being the newest Paris location. (Fake East Asian lettering, woodblock prints and bamboo shoot decorations everywhere. Yeah.) Anyway, the pastries and tea were as delectable as the room was quaint/not PC. Which is to say, extremely delectable. Pictured below: Strawberry Ispahan (named for the rose whose fragrance graces this macaron); Maggie and Cathy helping themselves to more tea; the exoticist interior (with a mountain of macarons on display); and the also-fake, old-style exterior, so you'll recognize the place if you ever walk by.


If you'd like to torture yourself by gazing ravenously at other pictures of the pastries we enjoyed there, go to Maggie's flickr page. And if you're ever in Paris and only have time for one tea salon, make it Ladurée.

Ladurée was our second afternoon tea experience because the first time we tried to get in - on Jan. 2nd, a Saturday afternoon (after our return from Chartres) - the place was completely packed. So we had to wait until a weekday for things to calm down. Our first "afternoon tea" experience came on Sunday, Jan. 3rd, and turned out not to be afternoon tea at all.

On the advice of some Parisian friends, I led my mom and Cathy to the Hôtel de Crillon, probably one of the most luxurious hotels in the city, if not the world. It's a five-star venue in an 18th-century building filled with furniture, tapestries, and various objects from the reigns of Louis XIV through Louis XVI. Leonard Bernstein stayed there (and left behind a piano). So did German High Command during the Occupation. Also several American presidents. While sitting in their lobby and soaking in the history would probably have been inspiring and memorable enough, we decided to go one better and try their famed hot chocolate. (This was after we had been held at the door while one of the doormen checked to make sure there was seating inside. We must have looked completely unlike their normal clientèle.)

Before hot chocolate, we were presented with a small plate of four square truffle-like chocolates. We were charmed. Then came the hot chocolate, which was good, maybe even great, but still not the best we'd have during the course of the week. (More on that later.) Luckily, we managed to order one pot for my mom and I to share, which supplied around six cups and turned out to be way more than either of us needed. (Eden and JP later attempted the same thing, only to be served two pots and a whopping 22 euro bill.) The splendor and decadence of the surroundings nearly overwhelmed us, but ultimately I felt like I could get used to it.

Two afternoon eating events down, three to go. To be continued!

Trash and the City

"Let's get together, yeah yeah yeah" to recycle - that's what the yellow bag says. Or at least, that's the idea. (The directly translation is, "let's sort to recycle.") I find "Trions Pour Recycler" to be particularly uninspiring, so I'm hoping the City of Paris picks up on my version.

Anyway. Trash bags in public places are so mundane that it's easy to ignore them, but they're worth paying attention to. Bags seem so much more efficient and more hygienic than cans. No more smelly, unwashed plastic bins, no more rusting metal containers. Their colors help them stand out just enough ("hey! look over here! we want your trash!") but not so much that they distract from their surroundings.

This was probably not the logic of whoever instated bags in place of cans. The changeover happened the day after 9/11, and may have been inspired by memories of a 1996 terrorist attack in the Paris métro that killed two.

As Maggie points out, the downside is that SDFs (sans domicile fixe, aka the homeless) routinely break the bottoms of the recycling bags to take out glass bottles and aluminum cans, leaving behind piles of refuse.

Still, I'm a big fan (or at least, as much of a fan as one can be of such things). I wonder, though. If the switch from cans to bags took place in Boston, would I notice?

Paris Day Trips: Chartres

My mom and Cathy arrived in Paris on New Year's Day, at the height of holiday tourism. You already know how I feel about crowds of tourists (and how Matt feels about how I feel about tourists), so I was relieved when we decided to leave the city for a day-trip on January 2nd. Our destination was Chartres.

Chartes, population 40,000, is the lovely capital of the Eure-et-Loire department. We ate lunch at a decent restaurant (Café des Arts), checked out the public médiathèque (library for DVDs and CDs), and walked the medieval ramparts. But mostly we were there to see the city's massive cathedral, which is a UNESCO World Heritage site.

There are any number of things that distinguish this cathedral from others in France and throughout the world: the speed with which it was constructed (26 years), its high fidelity to what we think of as the main tenets of Gothic architecture and decoration; the relic it was built to protect (a tunic supposedly worn by the Virgin Mary); its non-matching towers and extant Romanesque façade (above). But one of my favorite parts of the cathedral was its 172 12th- and 13th-century stained-glass windows.

Beautiful, non? Chartres is only an hour-long train ride from Paris (Gare Montparnasse). Tell them I sent you, and don't forget to try the labyrinth . . .

Chrome en français

Chrome is finally here!

Louis and I have been using Google's Chrome Internet browser for a while now, but they've just now started advertising its wonders to the people of Paris. Here's one version of a Chrome ad spotted in the metro:

1 family wishing to eat a tarte tatin
5 family members who don't know anything about baked goods
886,000 results for "tarte tatin recipe"
41 minutes spent comparing recipes
7 emails debating the best way to cook one
16 videos found for "tarte tatin recipe" on YouTube
2 and a half attempts
137,000 images found for "tarte tatin"
0 images that look like ours!
1 video of "burned tarte tatin" posted on YouTube
2 liters of ice cream melting onto the kitchen floor
5 people watching 1 Labrador enjoy it

13 tabs open
0 bugs
1 browser

Only in France would an advertisement for an Internet browser feature a pastry. Love it.

Guest Post: Matt

Matt and I bet on Panda's poop schedule, and Matt lost. As punishment, he had to write a guest post.

Mugshot's Eiffel Tower Tips (re: Eiffel Tower Tips)

After reading Louis's cynical post about the Eiffel Tower experience, and as their last houseguest for a while (I hear they're not hosting anyone for some time — maybe even a week), I just had to offer a rebuttal based on first-hand experience. Get ready to take out your Paris scorecard and put about 50 checks in the "resident" box.

1. Steal a map from the apartment. If you stay with Louis and Maggie, note that they have several beautiful maps of Paris. Make sure it's rainy outside. Find the key to the living room cabinets, which is hidden in a Grand Theft Auto computer game box under their bed. Open the cabinet and take the most expensive-looking map you can find there. Down the half-bottle of Bordeaux they were saving for a special occasion. In your excitement, forget to lock their apartment door, and start your adventure toward the Eiffel Tower. (You will also need a bullhorn and around 10 Euros.)

2. Walk four hours in the rain in the general direction of the Eiffel Tower. I love walking, and there's nothing I like better than walking when my socks are extremely wet because of rain and puddles. If you pass all the sites marked on the map below, you will clearly be following the best route to the Eiffel Tower, which is important during bad weather. If you get lost, that's OK. Since it's very cloudy, you won't be able to see the Eiffel Tower and just go toward it. But you can consult your stolen map and watch as it disintegrates in the pouring rain, and then you can try to stumble toward the next waypoint on the map below.

3. Tell as many tourists as you can that the Eiffel Tower is closed. There won't be many out there since it's raining. But as Louis pointed out, people at tourists sites are to be avoided if you want a good experience. Therefore, in your best English, yell at anyone you encounter on your walk that they can't go up the Eiffel Tower during inclement weather, so they should really leave the area. (This includes people who you think might not be tourists — you never know.)

4. Spend some of your Euros on a ticket to go up the Eiffel Tower. This is a crucial step, as Louis also pointed out, because without a ticket to something like the Eiffel Tower, it is difficult if not impossible to go up it. The best way to get a ticket is to say to the ticket person, "Je aller Eiffel Tower," and then point up. This is an example of very good French, so he or she will know what you mean. You should definitely walk up, because nothing feels better than ascending 600 steps to the second floor after you've already walked 20 miles. When you get to the first floor, make a beeline for the gift shop and spend the rest of your Euros on a jambon crudité — you will need it in a minute.

5. Create a diversion. Most of the members of the Eiffel Tower staff are focusing on the elevators. I don't know why this is. But anyway, when you get to the second floor, you'll see that there are lots of barriers blocking access to the third-floor sairwell, as well as signs saying things like "accés interdit" (I don't know what this means!). But if you create a diversion by throwing that jambon crudité down the elevator shaft, you can easily go up the remaining steps to the third floor. When you reach the third floor, take out the bullhorn and declare to all of Paris that you fooled the city and that you can go up the Eiffel Tower in inclement weather. Then, enjoy the crystal clear view of the stunning iron latticework and of your hands. And oh, yeah, sure, that is definitely the Sacre-Coeur whose outline you're seeing in the distance.

In conclusion, I hope you enjoyed reading these Eiffel Tower Tips. I am confident that if you follow these simple steps, you will certainly make a trip to the Eiffel Tower. And probably to the Eiffel Tower Jail.

Signage at the Louvre

If you happen to bring Fido to the Louvre, be sure to carry him when you ride the escalator.

But if you bring a small child, don't carry him and make him stand on one leg?

The Cherry Orchard

Under the shadow of the Tour Montparnasse in the 14th arrondissement, a tiny hidden gem of a restaurant awaits. Chef Cyril Lalanne is hard at work at La Cerisaie creating inventive versions of traditional Southwestern French food.

A few weeks ago, we managed to secure a reservation for six (Louis, Joy, Cathy, Eden, JP, and me). There was no prix fixe menu, but thankfully the à la carte prices were not too steep. For dinner, entrées (first course) were 9 euros, plats (main course) 15, a cheese course for 6, and desserts for 8. Here is just a sampling of the deliciousness that ensued:

Velouté de citrouille/potiron et boudin noir  (Pumpkin soup with blood sausage)	Velouté de chataigne et foie gras (Chestnut soup with foie gras)	Bouillon clair de faisan et farce fine aux champignons (Pheasant broth with mushroom stuffing)

Oeuf cocotte à la crème et truffe fraîche (Egg en cocotte with cream and fresh truffle)


Filet de saumon rôti, garbure de légumes (Filet of roast salmon, garbure of vegetables)


Parmentier de civet de sanglier mijoté sept heures (Parmentier of wild boar stewed for seven hours)

Pomme au four caramélisée comme un crumble  (Crumbly caramelized baked apple)	Tarte fondante au chocolat et glace café  (Chocolate mousse tart with coffee ice cream)

As you can see, the food looked delicious, and it tasted good, too! The restaurant is quite small, so we did feel a little squished at times and we were a bit rushed to finish our meal because our reservation had a time limit (1.5 hours) so they could accommodate another group. Highly recommended, just don't expect much in the way of ambiance, and if you're going early, be sure to ask how long you'll have to eat when you make your reservation.

La Cerisaie Reservations essential. Ph: 01-43-20-98-98 70 bd. Edgar Quinet, 14eme Metro: Edgar Quinet/Montparnasse

Thanks for the photo Adam A.!

House of Three (or Four Really, Really Delicious) Teas

As Louis mentioned, the beginning of 2010 was a little bit ridiculous in terms of how many different food and drink establishments we managed to visit over the course of a few short weeks. One of the most unique places we visited was the Maison des Trois Thés, near Place Monge in the 5th arrondissement.

You might be able to guess from the outside that this is no ordinary Parisian salon de thé. This tea-lovers Elysium boasts an impressive array of fine mostly-Chinese teas (you won't find Earl Grey behind the counter here). In fact, we learned during our visit that the owner, Madame Tseng, spends at least half the year in Asia, gathering teas to sell in this very shop.

The choices were seemingly endless, but based on the advice of our server, we decided to taste four Wu-long or Oolong teas. A traditional Chinese tea hailing from several different regions (we tasted one from Taiwan and another from Fujian province), oolong tea is semi-fermented (which distinguishes it from green (un-fermented) and black (fermented) teas). A traditional way of drinking oolong tea is via the gōng fu chá dào or gongfu tea ceremony (if you didn't read the Madame Tseng link above, I'll just tell you that she is the only woman on a list of ten gongfu tea ceremony masters, so I think we went to the right place).

Madame Tseng was otherwise occupied, but she sent one of her very competent employees to serve us and demonstrate how to get the very best flavor from our chosen teas.

Louis, JP, Eden, and I each had an opportunity to try our hand at performing the gongfu tea ceremony, a process that involves steeping 5g of tea in almost-boiling water for just less than 30 seconds. First, fill a small pot - let's call it the steeping pot - with your tea of choice. Then, add nearly-boiling water until the pot is just barely overflowing. Finally, seal the lid with another quick pour of hot water. Be careful not to burn your fingers!

Wait no more than 30 seconds. Dry off the bottom of the steeping pot on a beautiful towel placed nearby. Next, deftly and swiftly pour the contents of the steeping pot into the (slightly larger) serving pot. A flip of the wrist will ensure minimal spillage. Wait a few moments while the freshly brewed tea empties. This is a good opportunity to amuse your guests with some witty banter. If serving more than one other person, it will be necessary to brew another batch and add it to the first already in the serving pot. These two infusions will mix and provide enough tasty tea for all your guests. 

From the serving pot, pour the tea into the taller, narrower cup - the sniffer (probably not a technical term). This cup is solely for sniffing. We smelled honey, grains, tobacco, flowers, nuts, and more in our teas. Each tea is unique and must be sniffed and tasted for maximum pleasure. 

Finally, pour the contents of your sniffer cup into your taster cup (the squatter one) and be sure to smell the empty sniffer cup for a strikingly different smell experience. Finally, raise the taster cups to your lips, and enjoy!

We highly recommend this tea house for anyone remotely interested in tea. Before we visited, I had read a review somewhere on the interwebs that said the shop was a little bit intimidating. That may be true (the tea canisters behind the counter are labeled in Chinese, for instance), but the staff were nothing but gracious and helpful and we really enjoyed our experience.