Lèche Vitrine 2- Window Shopping in the Place Vendome

Like all major cities Paris is a different city for everyone I suspect. Tonight I walked past mothers bedding down their children on the street on Boulevarde St Germain. Last week we were window shopping at Place Vendome.

The perfect place to pick up a new necklace it seems. They must be cheap enough as none of the shops bothered to display the prices.

I loved this one

and this one at Chaumet

or I might pop into Chaumet when I need a new tiara
I wonder when tiaras will come back into fashion?

Chanel

Van Cleef and Arpels

Boucheron

See my previous Parisian window shopping.

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It's Not Easy Being Green

One of the great things about travel is discovering new things. This is an absolutely amazing new thing!

Walking through Hediard at 21 Place de la Madeleine 75008 I found this life changing display. Actually Master Wicker alerted me to the presence of samples of Creme de Pistache. He knows me, what can I say?

Oh my! Unctuous wonderment.

I don't make macaroons, so I just need to use it like green Nutella

Naturally I bought a jar straight away

I didn't have any brioche, so toasted rye bread (pain de seigle) had to do.
Not pretty, especially as I was too impatient to let the butter warm up, but OMG so, so delicious.

So, while Creme de Pistache is Sicilian, I found it in Paris, and the French have taught me to love pistachio in all it's wondrous forms. If in doubt go the pistache. 

Signs of Summer in Paris- Jasmine

We have a lovely cobbled entrance courtyard to our rented Paris apartment. It's cool, quiet and calming.

We've been in Paris for a few weeks now. The weather started off cool and overcast with the occasional shower. Last Saturday we arrived back from a few days in London and we were greeted with Paris in summer. It's hot (although not yet as hot as it was in 2010) and the jasmine in the courtyard has burst into glorious, fragrant scent. 

Paris to the Past

 I received a hardback copy of this lovely book from the equally lovely Deb at Readerbuzz. It's been sitting on my shelf waiting rather impatiently for my attention. A few weeks I couldn't get to sleep and I  finally picked it up. I'm so glad that I got to this wonderful book in the week before we headed toward Europe, and Paris, again. The cover blurb that "Paris to the Past promises to become one of the classic guidebooks of our time." That's very true I think. 

Ina Caro has created a wonderful testament to her passion for both history and for France. She fell in love with France on her first trip in 1974, and then made annual visits, for two months at a time- oh to have the same hemisphere freedom and cheap airfares to do that, and has lived in Paris at times. Ina often approaches travel in a different way to those I've thought of before. She toured the Chateaux of the Loire in the order they were built for instance, and thought of her car as a time machine. This book came about from Ina's dilemma (one that I share) "of how to visit all the places outside of Paris I had not seen, while not leaving it." Paris to the Past gives us 25 one day train trips that depart from central Paris and "transport us magically through eight hundred years of French history."

Ina appreciates the way that the French preserve their history.

Because the French, being the French, preserve their past with such pride and with such meticulous attention to detail, we actually had the sense of stepping back into the past. One restorer, at the Castle of Beynac, actually spent twenty years petrifying wood in a solution so that the staircase he was restoring would be exactly like the one that had fallen into dishabille. A countess who was restoring her chateau at Villesavin came close to tears when she told me she didn't have the money to replace the gilded lead roof that had been removed by Napoleon, who had used the lead to make bullets for his soldiers. Because restoration is so scrupulously executed, French fortresses, castles, and cathedrals seem to be frozen in the period in which they were built, making it possible to turn a French vacation into a magical tour through time. 

And she realised that all the places she "really loved visiting had been built by memorable characters whose fascinating lives helped explain the age in which they lived". I knew that I would trust Ina's suggestions implicitly when she said

It is a terrible thing for a historian to have to admit, but the quality of my lunch really does influence how I feel about the places I visit. 

I'm so glad that I picked up this book at this time. It has strengthened my resolve to visit the Basilique Saint-Denis this trip, and it will add many fascinating details to my appreciation of the day. I was a bit disappointed in the all too short chapter on The Louvre, but of course did learn things regardless. There were also interesting sections on Places des Vosges and The Luxembourg Gardens, where I have already made many wonderful visits this holiday. 

Ina has thoroughly researched the modern day train trips that travellers need to undertake and gives us handy tips about train lines and things to watch out for so we don't get lost on our journeys back to Medieval France. 

I only wish that I had had time to read the whole thing before we left for this trip (I only read the Paris sections), and to visit all the marvellous places that Ina suggests. But that's one of the great things for tourists to France, there's always something more, something new to discover, another reason to go back. 

London

Perhaps I should try and read something more learn-ed when travelling, but I do enjoy the Horrible Histories franchise, and had already bought the London title, so it was an obvious book to include for my holiday reading. It made great reading on my Paris Gare du Nord to London St Pancras Eurostar train. 

I've read a few Horrible History books now and reading London has certainly confirmed the notion that every place has a bloody, and rather Horrible history. We may now think of the English as a gentle, well mannered people but that certainly has not always been the case. Indeed they were a rather blood thirsty and brutal lot. 

London was named after King Lud, pre-Roman king of Britain. Lud-dum.

The Romans arrived in 55BC led by Julius Caesar, and they were to stay until 410AD. Caesar's presence is commemorated as his sword is still on the London coat of arms, and is quite visible all over the city. 

On grand dragon statues

And simple traffic bollards

It is thought that Boudicca is buried under Platform 8 at King's Cross Station. 

The real Dick Whittington story does not involve a cat, the cat version was made up 200 years after his death. 

The English had particularly dreadful sports and entertainments involving their animals. Bear, bull and badger baiting were practised for well over 700 years before being banned in the 19th century. 

Of course their bloodthirsty nature didn't end at watching animals die hideous deaths, they were also very fond of public executions.  Most of the people to die at the Tower of London were not beheaded- 7 were beheaded inside the grounds of the Tower the rest were hung outside so that large crowds of people could watch.There was a special gibbet constructed at Tyburn so that 24 people could be hung together. 

Executioners were not always precise in their acts, and sometimes relatives would tug at the dying so that they would die more quickly. It was rather fascinating to read that the body and clothes of the dead then belonged to the executioner and that the family would need to buy them back. The heads that were displayed on poles were of course prone to rotting so they were boiled in salt or painted with tar to make them last longer. 

London tells us that a horrified Charles Dickens attended the executions of the Cato Street Conspirators in 1820 who were beheaded after they were hung as traitors.

There are also wonderful and gory descriptions of plague arriving in London in 1348.

And the interesting beliefs of the time:

London was a perfect introduction for me. 

The Squirrels of London

We've just spent the better part of a week in London, it was our first visit. One of the highlights for all of us was delighting to the antics of the many squirrels in the local parks. We don't have squirrels in Australia so they are a particular joy for us to see, even if those who live with them regard them as nuisances.

But they're just so cute.

No matter what they're doing. 

And so acrobatic!

Of course we weren't the only squirrel fans. Many people feed them, they're clearly quite used to people.

Despite all the requests not to feed them. We came across at least half a dozen people deliberately feeding them on our little walks through St James Park and Hyde Park. 

The squirrels of London are all introduced Grey Squirrels. 

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Whiling away the hours

Recently I travelled from Sydney to Paris, via Amsterdam. While it is always a thrill to be in Paris, it is not always a thrill to spend 21+ hours sitting bolt upright in an economy class seat. Thankfully Singapore Airlines have a vast array of movies in their entertainment options. So as part of my trip I watched two French films to get myself into a French headspace.

I hadn't managed to see Amour at the movies, but had managed to hear about it, and was very keen to see it.

Amour is a story of ageing that just happens to be set in a Parisian apartment. It is very much a domestic  story and film, there are very few scenes outside the apartment, and these only in the hallways of the building from memory, somewhat disappointingly there are no gratuitous shots of Paris at all.

Georges and Anne have lead intellectual lives filled with music and reading. Anne becomes quite debilitated after a stroke, and Amour is the story of illness, decline and the amour of the title.


Amour is a gentle movie after a quite noisy and distressing start. In the first scene we see the fire brigade/pompiers breaking into the apartment, clearly needing to break in because there have been complaints of a smell.

I started watching Amour on the Sydney-Singapore leg of my flight, but rather annoyingly left it too late, and didn't see the very end until after we'd begun the Singapore-Amsterdam journey at some distressingly late hour.

Anne and Georges daughter talking to Georges
A screen shot when I had to randomly stop the movie
 to be served some airline food

It is rather distressing to wake up after the only sleep you'll get on your Singapore-Amsterdam flight and realise that you're still flying over India and have many, many hours before your arrival in Europe. The second movie I chose to fill the time was one I hadn't heard of at all- In the House/Dans la Maison.

I can't particularly remember what drew me to pick this one. It was rather odd. Germain is the French teacher at a high school, Lycee Gustauve Flaubert. He despairs that his new class of 16 year olds is the worst class ever. Things change when one student, Claude Garcia hands in his first writing assignment. Claude has spent much of the summer watching the house and family of another classmate Rapha who he suspects to have a perfect family.

Germain is married to Esther (Kristin Scott Thomas, the only actor I recognised in this film, but then I'm rather hopeless at that), who is the director of a modern art gallery. Esther and Germain live in a book lined apartment as people always do in French films and discuss art and literature at considerable length. Both Germain and Esther are on benzodiazepines. 

It all gets very odd. Claude is a strange boy who wants to enter houses and learn the stories of the occupants. I found the ending bizarre and unsatisfying in many ways, which I suspect were not just because of the poor sleep and disturbed time zone functioning on my overnight and seemingly endless flight.

Overall I did enjoy both movies. I don't get to see all that many foreign language films in small town Australia, and I was rather excited whenever I understood a whole sentence in French. I enjoy French language movies too as a glimpse into a world that is not mine. 

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Paris in July 2013 cohosted by Thyme for Tea and Bookbath