New Blog, New Address

I've fallen in love with Wordpress's clean lines and have started a new blog over here:
http://touristeparisienne.wordpress.com/

Hope you'll come and check it out!

Meet the Hamiltons !

We adopted two chatons from the Durham APS to keep us company: brother and sister tabby cats, who were on their own just a couple weeks old. George and Linda Hamilton are their names. Purring and attacking strings and sitting on piles of papers are their games.

Au revoir Paris!

Nikki is packing, and I, Jackie, have been instructed to update the blog, for the last time from Paris. Her packing technique consists of smelling the clothes and making two piles: one for "fresh" clothing and another for the clothes that she has not worn, therefore lacking an obtrusive odor. As she fights back the tears, I am going to give a petite presentation of the last month's highlights.





We love Parisian graffiti...








Most evenings, we are accompanied by the "sweet, swweet music" of Nostalgie Radio.

If you listen for long enough, you may hear one of their amazing jingles such as:

"I'm a Nostalgie Lover"

"Nostalgie takes me higher"

"Nostalgie, my baby, Nostalgie, sweet, sweet music"

Et dans le weekend:

"Weekend, sweet, sweet Weekend"

We went to Chablis. We tasted wine and had lunch in the vineyard.




We saw caged chipmunks on l'Ile Saint Louis...and les coqs, the national symbol of la France.

Rain and la BN

March and April were considerably warmer and more springy than May has been, oddly. Today, it appeared to be a hot day as I trudged off to the Bibliothèque Nationale (which is one of the most magical places in Pareee I think…it’s like an ultra-modern pyramid or castle with its four glass towers, and the secret and velvety lush garden down in the center of the building. (So many people have complained about this building, Adam Gopnik among them, but I am a staunch supporter)). I spent all afternoon in the hushed womb of the library, reading the letters of Abélard and Héloïse until my microfilm arrived. Then I took up said microfilm to the microfilm “loges” on the second floor. Everywhere one goes in this library, there’s always a necessary confrontation with massive stainless steel doors protecting and imposing seamless entry. One has to tug quite hard sometimes just to get the doors open. And when one is also juggling one’s computer, cardboard squares of microfilms and other books, this is not as easy as it would seem. The microfilm loges are well-appointed and worth the circuitous passage to find them. You are perched in these boxes, with wooden slats blocking out the quiet, well-mannered light from the readers and their individual lamps below, with the gentle whirr of microfilm in the background. I felt slightly like I was in the Doges’ Palace and kept thinking I heard the swish of whispers and garments pass by. As I hunched in the darkness over the lit up microfilm screen, I saw the whitish flutter of a moth approach, drawn toward the small patch of light over which I was filtering black and white pages of a high-brow literary journal from 1948. He must have been swept in from the garden jungle indoors and now he was condemned to wander the immense halls of the BN’s rez-du-jardin, searching out private points of light.

By early evening, the hot day had stacked into a tremendous thunderstorm that seemed to dump water down onto the carpet of ferns from a long way off from my viewpoint, where I remained tucked under layers of earth and glass and stainless steel in the library. To wait out the storm, I had a coffee from the bibli's vending machine. Yet when I got home, the window of the garret had blown open and there was water everywhere. May has been odd like this, with huge gusts of wind and storms coming out of nowhere. To document the earlier traces of spring, here are some pictures from le Jardin des plantes, which is just down the Seine from the BN, including an amazing Cedar tree, planted in the 19th century, with a root brought from a cedar tree in Lebanon.

Les Chiens de Paris

As I am what you might classify as a dog enthousiaste, I have been taking careful photographic note of all of the dogs -- in their myriad forms -- of Paris. Some chiens are caniches -- those lovely little poodle dogs. Some dogs just look like caniches, but they are actually bichon frises and other crazy curly-haired variations. Some dogs are tough and their owners are small and petite. Some dogs are really tough and they lounge on the sidewalk in front of a working class cafe in Montmartre with a gas mask around their neck. Perhaps this is in case of another manifestation in which the police will overreact and use tear gas ?

Les Ponts de Paris !

Le Pont Mirabeau

Sous le pont Mirabeau coule la Seine
Et nos amours
Faut-il qu'il m'en souvienne
La joie venait toujours après la peine.

Vienne la nuit sonne l'heure
Les jours s'en vont je demeure

Les mains dans les mains restons face à face
Tandis que sous
Le pont de nos bras passe
Des éternels regards l'onde si lasse

Vienne la nuit sonne l'heure
Les jours s'en vont je demeure

L'amour s'en va comme cette eau courante
L'amour s'en va
Comme la vie est lente
Et comme l'Espérance est violente

Vienne la nuit sonne l'heure
Les jours s'en vont je demeure

Passent les jours et passent les semaines
Ni temps passé
Ni les amours reviennent
Sous le pont Mirabeau coule la Seine

Vienne la nuit sonne l'heure
Les jours s'en vont je demeure

Guillaume Apollinaire

Sarko wins

Well, tonight Sarkozy decisively beat Segolene Royal in France's second round of the presidential elections. Even though I am not surprised, I still thought for a moment, right before the results were announced, that perhaps Sego would pull through. Alas.

A crowd tried to protest the impending doom at Bastille...Go here to find my favorite new Sarko slogan.

I watched the results by walking up and down Rue St. Jacques, first stopping at the overflowing, but hushed small satellite bureau of the PS where plates of pasta salad sat untouched, down past the cafe au coin where I watched Sego cheerfully address her crowd (she almost seemed somewhat relieved) and then I spent the last hour, waiting for Sarkozy to finish his triumphal car ride and address the public, in the little marche next door, where the nice vender bagged up my Perrier and cheese, and ticked his tongue in disappointment telling me that France was now going to have a president who was 'a mere thumb, a small, not nice man.'