Striped shirts

When I studied/lived in Paris in 2003, I noticed a trend among Parisians: striped shirts and vacations go hand in hand. But now striped shirts are everywhere, all the time. We took the following pictures during a 5 minute stretch on a weekday, just across the street from Galeries Lafayette.

(And just so you know, women aren't the only ones hip to the trend.)

There's only one possible explanation: Coco Chanel. We recently saw Audrey Tautou play the famous couturière in Coco Before Chanel, and suddenly we understood the recent craze for striped clothing.

Just as Coco took a design initially worn by sailors and popularized it among high society, Tautou-as-Coco 

has reminded Parisians (and visitors to Paris) of the simplicity, timelessness, and cozy-chic of striped clothing. Will we return to the States with our own striped shirts? You'll find out soon enough!

Best. Day. Ever.

Let's just get it out of the way: Ravel is my favorite composer. Daphnis and Chloé might be the only piece of music that can make me swoon. In college, I did my junior-year independent work on Ravel's opera-ballet, L'Enfant et les Sortilèges, and my man Maurice (the myth, the legend) will likely play an outsized role in my dissertation. I love, looove, luurrrrve Ravel. All of this makes Ravel's house, "Le Belvédere," my Graceland.

The only problem is that unlike Elvis's abode, you can't get to Ravel's house using public transportation. That's why, despite multiple attempts at planning some combination of métro, train, bus, and hitchhiking, I only finally made it to Le Belvédere two weeks ago, thanks to Damien and his car.

Ravel purchased his home in Montfort-L'Amaury in 1921 after receiving an inheritance from his uncle. According to our guide, who doubles as the museum's curator and caretaker, Ravel chose this specific house for the majestic view from its porch.

Ravel chose wisely. And not just in terms of the view. He also filled the house with strange and wonderful things. Here, the curator describes a cabinet full of plateware.

Damien: And this silverware?
Curator: So the silverware - the spoons, the silver on the bottom there - were gifts of Ida Rubinstein, the dancer, for whom Ravel wrote Boléro.
Me: She was a great patron, too.
Curator: Yes, a great patron - she gave lots of money. And at one point she dated a Guinness - you know, the beer - so, lots of money there, too.

Furniture, dishes, toys, paintings, even wall stenciling - all bear witness to the lovable and inscrutable eccentricity that was Ravel's.

There's the escargot that flips over to become an ashtray . . .

. . . the miniature porcelain canapé presented as a gift by Germaine Tailleferre, and the foot-cushion under his desk . . .

. . . and an incredible quantity of other knick-knacks, many of them purposefully gaudy.

And that's just the stuff in his study. The rest of the house is equally wacky and delightful.

I wish I could spend a month just creating an inventory of all the items in all the rooms of Ravel's house - that's how weird and fantastic everything seems. I mean, the guy had a secret passageway built behind his sitting room. He was an early adopter of taking showers. He bought a woman-shaped bell made out of ceramic but painted to look like metal, so that when you ring it, expecting a satisfying peal of sound, you instead hear a dull thud. WTF!!!

As much as I loved the house and the accompanying garden, which also manifests Ravel's eclecticism, one part of our tour stands out as the obvious highlight of the day, and perhaps of this entire year.

I played Ravel's piano. Here's how it happened.

When we first walked in, the curator took one look at my camera and said, "You know, photography is forbidden." I replied, "Oh, I didn't realize that. I was just hoping that, since I'm writing a dissertation that's partly about Ravel, I might be able to take some pictures - you know, for research purposes." She said, "You know what? I'm tired of this being forbidden and that being forbidden. Take all the pictures you like. What else is that you have there?" She was looking at the book of Ravel's piano music I had brought with me. "It's Le Tombeau de Couperin. I was kind of hoping that I might be able to play it on his piano." (If I've learned anything in Paris, it's that it never hurts to ask, and you should never feel bad when your request is met with rejection.) She responded, "Of course! So what if the Mayor doesn't want anyone touching the piano - it's there to be played, isn't it?" Damien and I agreed wholeheartedly.

And so it was that I came to butcher Ravel on his very own piano. I started with the first part of the Prélude from Le Tombeau de Couperin.

Giving up on a challenging movement I hadn't practiced in around 10 months, I apologized for playing so poorly, telling the curator I was "ashamed." But she told me I needn't  be ashamed, saying "Well, Ravel couldn't play his own pieces either, so there you go."

Next, I played all the way through an easier movement, the Menuet, from the same piece.

At the end of this one, you can here the curator cackling, "Oh boy, he's happy now!" I sure was. And I can't wait to go back for more. Surely, that house is full of mysteries that remain unsolved. Ravel wouldn't have had it any other way.

One of my favorite things

Yesterday, Louis mentioned Velib', Paris' extra-awesome bike-sharing program. Today, I'm going to show/tell you more about it!

This is a photo (above) of a Velib' pick-up/drop-off area at night. This picture was taken just as Paris was rolling out the bike sharing system (15 July 2007, according to Wikipedia). Clearly, the program was a huge success - at this station, ALL the bikes were out and about.

Because we were visiting Paris just as the bikes were being let loose, we often saw trucks full of eager bikes heading to all corners of the city. 

Velib' has certainly caught the attention of folks in other major cities around the world. Just after the launch, Agnes Poirier of The Guardian (UK) mused: "What the philosopher Roland Barthes described as the true epic dimension of cycling can now be experienced by millions of ordinary citizens living in the same city. Setting a different pace of living, these riders create a new harmony, smoothing the rough edges of modernity, taming the flow of the polluting cars around them."

I'm not sure that Parisian drivers can be tamed by anything, but I'm looking forward to riding the streets of Paris on my very own shared bike. 

Favorite Things

For the first in a series of "these are a few of my favorite Parisian things"-themed entries, I'm focusing on cuisine.

The BEST tea parlor (salon de thé) in all of Paris is Ladurée, family-owned and operated from 1862 to 1993. Hélène and Clément introduced the place to me in 2006, and I brought Maggie there in 2007. And if you come visit us, we'll bring you there in 2009-2010! 

Here's my journal description from 2007: 

"La Durée Salon de thé is one of the oldest and most reputable of its ilk in Paris. They offer not only a wide and excellent selecton of both cold and hot drinks; their desserts are legendary. Maggie and I both ordered Réligieuses - her violet, me chocolat. Based on empirical observations while trying to make the delectability last as long as possible, I can tell you the following: A réligieuse is a pastry where soft dough encloses not ice cream but just cold cream - it's so much creamier than ice cream. Coating the pastry's outsides is more of that flavor in icing form. A smaller pastry is stacked on top of the bottom one, but its composition is pareil [the same]. Pictures may help.

We almost expired from extreme culinary pleasure, these réligieuses were so good. Wondering about the name, our conclusion was that eating these pastries constitutes a religious experience: ecstasy in the original sense."

Here's a link to their website - I've only ever been to the Left Bank (21 rue Bonaparte) location, which is apparently the newest one, even though it looks old. Along with Berthillon Glace, this is my favorite dessert source anywhere. So tasty!

So proper!

So, so good.