Don’t you wonder about the story behind this bike with its flat tire? I wonder how long it has been there.

Just about everything, in some way, is different in France. Now, of course, their beds are similar to ours, there are just differences. They don’t have box springs, for instance, but flat, narrow platforms with small wooden slats that are convex and it seems to do the same sort of job to me. There are no wheels underneath, but straight legs. I brought some of my box springs with me to France and they all have wheels. I used to think this was great but here they slip and slide all over the place, moving even when you sit down on them. I had a horrible time finding some sort of flat little rubber containers to go underneath and, in fact, finally had to buy some in the States.
The French aren’t as big on dust ruffles either and I ended up bringing those back from the States as well. I will say that they can be a little difficult when the matress moves around when someone sleeps in the bed and, when the duvet cover is tucked under at the end, everyone but me also tucks in the dust ruffle at the end of the bed-not a pretty site.
I had never used duvets before I came here. They are fluffy bed coverings, very warm in the winter, that are tucked into large envelope type covers, rather like putting a pillow into a pillow case, and that becomes the bedspread. I bought some, in Paris, for our two twin beds and they are too small. There are little drafts of cold air when you are sleeping in either twin bed when you turn over and the narrow duvet doesn’t quite cover your whole body. I should have gotten one size larger so they hang over the edges of the mattress more. They are a pain to get the duvet into its cover-it takes all sorts of pushing and pulling and fluffing.
When I moved here, I put a top sheet underneath as this was the way I was used to doing things-putting sheets under bedspreads. The French don’t do this, but just use the duvet. The problem with this is that the duvet cover has to be washed and then you have to do the wrestling thing again getting it all put together. I do see people, usually on the week-ends, with their duvets laying across the bottom of the open window being aired. I haven’t done this as of yet as my windows are filthy on the outside frames. I do know that it is the habit here, and in other European countries, to pull back the duvet and open the window for a while every morning so everything airs out. Some people even put a mirror on the bed to see if it fogs up, a sign that it hasn’t aired out enough. I must admit, I never thought of this. I just washed the sheets when I thought they needed it. I’ve been trying it, just so everything thing is as dry as possible every morning.
I have returned to putting a top sheet under the duvet on our queen sized bed. I like keeping our duvet cover as clean as possible so I am not always washing it, and when it gets too hot, the sheet is nice when we push the duvet to the bottom of the bed.

This is the metro entrance at Palais Royal at Place Colette. It was done for the Millenium and is made of hand blown glass from Murano Italy.

Ground-Less in France

The metro stops in Paris always, for the most part, fascinate me. I often sit there on the train as we come to stops and wonder how they came up with some of the names. Most, as you would think, are named after the street they are on or a major site nearby and the names are so interesting such as Stalingrad, Chemin Vert, Télégraphe, Picpus, Chateau d’Eau. I often want to get off and look to see where the names have come from. I’m sure French people know all about the history behind most names. I believe there is even a book out that would increase my knowledge, I just haven’t found one in English yet. It is part of the charm of Paris to see these names and be intrigued by them.
I have a few favorite metro stops. The Louvre Rivoli stop is full of carvings and sculptures such as the ones you will be seeing if you proceed inside to the museum. It is very classy and cultural and I’m wondering if they are copies as they are exposing them to those monsters that do the graffiti in the metro lines. The metro stop at Hotel de Ville at one time had a lot of interesting copies of paintings and photographs done through the years of events occurring at the Hotel including a beheading. I like looking at copies of paintings or drawings done many years ago and look at the style of clothing they wore or what transportation was being used or how the area surrounding the Hotel de Ville has changed. These pictures show pieces of history of this interesting and sometimes brutal city. Then one day, they were all gone and replaced with the history of many of the names of metro stops. I just have to remember to take my French dictionary so I can translate it all.
At Gare de Lyon, a metro stop for a train station, the stop has been made of gigantic columns of iron riveted together and painted bright yellow. It was designed by Eiffel, the man responsible for the Eiffel Tower. I don’t like this metro stop as it is very large and getting to another line always involves a long walk, but I enjoy going into the train station and looking at all of the trains sitting ready to head off into other parts of France and I love a restaurant here called Le Train Bleu that is a step back in time when people who traveled by train wanted luxury as they waited. This restaurant has high vaulted ceilings with scenes from all the parts of France that Gare de Lyon services. There are also gilded cherubs, lace curtains and bathrooms with dark wood doors and old marble sinks. A resident cat who usually sleeps in seldom used rooms. I like to take friends here for a drink and we all sit there amazed at the beauty of it.
One line, number 14, doesn’t have an engineer driving the train. It is all done automatically. The train track at the stop is covered over with a glass tube so people can’t get to the track (there are suicide attempts occasionally on the train tracks). You can get in the front car and sit at the window where the engineer once would have sat and watch the train whiz through the tunnels. The stops themselves are all new and clean with pink marble floors and what looks like tropical gardens behind glass. There is always a bad odor in the stops and in the trains on this line. I’ve heard it’s because the line is so far underground and near “wet” smelling soil and that everything mildews in the moisture or that it is so far underground it is near subterranean gas pockets. I’ve heard it is the fuel used by the trains. I don’t know. It’s just part of the experience of riding on line 14.
My favorite stop of all the Arts et Métiers on line 11 and which is lined entirely with copper. At first I thought it had been constructed to look like a submarine because there are round “windows” and rivets everywhere but above the track are gigantic models of gears and I found that it was supposed to be similar to being inside an engine. The stop is named after a fabulous and interesting museum, one of my favorites. I also like the Abesses stop for all of the wall paintings done by local artists. If you are feeling energetic you can climb the extremely long curving flight of stairs and be charmed by the art work. I delight in the metro entrance there, too, as it is one of two original remaining done by Guimaud in the art deco style.
I have seen a few fights on the metro lines. Twice I have seen men get into fist fights but they aren’t brutal. I guess, in the phrase I’ve heard my son use, they fight like girls with slapping and flapping their hands, but no fists. The most frightening time was when a homeless man boarded when I was on a train one morning. He was one of those scary ones who make eye contact and are belligerent. A young black man sat across the aisle from me and didn’t seem to be bothered by what the man was saying to him. I say he didn’t seem to be, but that was wrong as he suddenly stood up and did a karate kick right into the man’s head. The man went down in the aisle and the young man continued to kick him. Finally, someone got up and talked to him and he stopped. When the train pulled into the station he got off and went to a car several cars down. The homeless man stood up and actually looked around for his assailant hoping, I assume, to resume what he was saying. I was glad to get to my stop.
There are turnstiles to get into each metro station that require a ticket to get through. I often see young, and not so young, people jumping the gate. Sometimes someone will ask if they scoot in behind you and get in on your ticket. Sometimes they don’t ask and suddenly there is some guy behind you with his body pressed against yours which can be startling. Occasionally, there are security police waiting out of sight to give tickets to those not having tickets and the guilty are given large fines. If you let someone go through the stile with you, you get a fine, too. One time a young man in his 20’s tried to get through the gate with my husband and Maurice told him to go and buy his own ticket. We went on down to the waiting area for the train but soon the guy showed up. He had been drinking and started yelling at Maurice. Maurice told me later that he was threatening to push him in front of the train when it arrived. Maurice stood up to him, though, because he feels like people like this get away with threatening and the other person backs down. I was afraid the guy was going to attack Maurice and I got my purse ready to swing if he did. My purse is not a small dainty thing but back pack size and I have it loaded with so many things that I could do serious damage by using it as a weapon. Luckily, I didn’t have to. The guy eventually moved on down the line although he continued to yell things at us.
There are several metro stops that I hate and I often get out my metro map to see if I can avoid them. One is Chatelet which is huge, dirty, filled with people standing around looking like drug dealers to me and lots of teen-agers heading for the Les Halles shopping mall. If you don’t know which street exit you need you can be doomed to roam about for hours and start wondering if this will be another stanza in that song from the 60’s by the Kingston Trio in which they stated, “He Never Returned”. I was once looking for the St Eustache exit and found myself in the shopping mall when I took the wrong exit. Roaming around looking for exits, or sorties as they say here, I finally saw the cathedral through a window and was able to make my way there some time later.
I hate the Franklin D. Roosevelt stop as well. It looks like it hasn’t been touched since the 50’s to me, either by designers or cleaners. It is always dirty with water stains running down the walls and sagging ceilings. They were doing some sort of work there for a while and dozens of black electrical wires were just hanging there all within reach of anyone wanting to touch them. The ceilings are really low and give me a feeling of claustrophobia although I have never experienced this before in my life.
Montparnasse is a huge underground space. I think most of the population of Paris could use this as a bomb shelter if the need ever arose. One day I had an appointment on Blvd. Montparnasse. I thought I had given myself plenty of time. I got off of line 4 and started walking. And walking. After a while I came to one of those moving sidewalks. I was really running late by now so I moved to the left and started walking as fast as I could. I came to the exit I needed 10 minutes later. The area I came out to was also huge and confusing and I couldn’t even tell where Blvd. Montparnasse was as there were so many roads taking off from the roundabout. Luckily, the person I was meeting for my appointment was running late. After that, when I had to be at Montparnasse I took another metro line that involved changing twice so I could arrive closer to the exit I needed.
Then one day I read that a new “moving sidewalk” had been installed under Montparnasse. They were calling it the TGV People Mover. Well I thought this could be interesting. It apparently had been under study for years and had cost a fortune to build. As I had yet another appointment that day I decided to give it a try. Before I reached it I still had a ten minute walk but then I came to the old moving sidewalk area I had used before. And there it was looking rather like something out of Star Trek, all gleaming silver metal and flashing blue lights. At the entrance stood 8 young men there to help the uninitiated. I didn’t see them say or do a thing as the poor naive people about to launch themselves into the unknown went to the entrance.
I saw, at my feet, about 20 feet of thin, metal rollers whirling and turning. I stepped on and immediately grabbed the handle strip on the side as it was like suddenly being on skates. I wobbled and slipped around like a 5 year old on skates for the first time. A woman was in front of me and as she approached the flat rubber moving sidewalk there was a little hump. She almost went down. I decided to hop over the hump and as I landed the fast moving surface I came close to going down myself. Thank God I was wearing jogging shoes. I hoped if anyone approached this thing at the beginning wearing high heels that those helpful young men would direct them to the still present slow moving sidewalk.
Soon we were whizzing along. It was rather cool to pass the people slowly moving along side us like a Mercedes passing a Deux Chavaux on the motor way. Maybe this wasn’t so bad. Then I saw another little hump coming up and there were signs flashing in red and yellow to stop walking. I saw the same lady in front of me wobble and clutch the side. My heart started beating as if I were on a roller coaster getting near the top of the hill knowing that a horrible drop off was on the other side. I grasped the side handle with both hands deciding to “take” the little hump instead of jumping it. I went over and suddenly it was as if I was on ice. I gave a little scream and hung on tightly. A man next to me was doing the same thing and we exchanged glances that said, “Can you believe this?”. He said something in French but I have no idea what he said. Probably it was similar to what I was thinking - never again.
So that was it. My heart beating in my chest I staggered up the metro steps into the sun thankful to be alive. I plan on making two metro line changes the next time I come to Montparnasse. Maybe they should call this thing the TGV People Eater. The next time I was in this metro stop the “People Eater”had been shut down, and continued to be so 3 months later. I think I was not the only one to feel it was dangerous.

Right behind the Palais Royal, is a restaurant that most people are familiar with. It is the Grand Colbert which is the restaurant in the movie, Something’s Gotta Give with Jack Nickelson and Diane Keaton. It is the scene in the last 20 minutes or so of the movie in Paris. Earlier in the movie Diane’s character say’s to Jack’s, “If we still know each other in January, let’s go to Paris and eat at le Grand Colbert. It is this wonderful little bistro and they have the best roast chicken in the universe!” This, of course, has lead to many Americans wanting to go here when they visit Paris.
It is a lovely place in the Belle Epogue style. The staff there will glady talk about the movie and when it was filmed. I was told that they closed the bistro for two weeks to do the filming and that some of the waiters got to be extras in the movie. The booth that the actors sat in in the last one in the back and is often asked for. Many people order the roasted chicken there as well. I’ve had the onion soup there which was very good and the salad is very good. I’ve never had the chicken. When I was there with some people we were asking about the movie and they brought out a scrapebook of the movie being made and some photos. There was an article also about the house used in the movie on the Eastern coast of the States that, to my surprise, wasn’t a real house but a movie set. I loved that house and the decoration. You can also buy an apron there with Grand Colbert on the front. In the window is the newspaper ad for the movie as well as an article about the large amount of chicken now ordered there.
I loved the movie-it’s a chick flick-but really, would you choose Jack over Keanu Reeves? Not me.

Conceptual art at the Palais Royal.

A window at a bar in Paris that you wouldn’t have seen years ago.

They really don’t get Halloween in France, from what I can see. Americans have made this holiday, like Thanksgiving, completely their own. I’ve been asked by several French people exactly what we do on Halloween and what makes it so great. I tell of the excitement of picking out a costume as a child, filling bags with candy as we go trick or treating and the French seem a little puzzled by it all. They do now get little costumes for their children but even if they went door to door yelling, “Trick or Treat”, I doubt that they would get much in the way of candy. They are starting to have parties where everyone dresses up and in the Marais you can usually find people walking around in costumes and celebrating, although not with candy. The shops have discovered that it can be another way to make money, so now sell cute ceramic pumpkins, and the like, and there is Halloween style candy now seen in windows.
What the French do, and I’m sure most other Catholic countries, is celebrate All Saints Day on November 1st. In fact, florists sell more flowers on this day than any other. It is the custom to take flowers to the graves of departed friends and relatives on that day. May families even make it a sort of party and you can see little picnics going on in various cemetaries. I went with Maurice one year to clean his mother’s grave and leave the usual mums. I like to visit a few cemetaries around Paris just to see all of the flowers left.

A view of some great stairs I saw the other day.

I took a photo of this paste up grafitti because it looks like my cat, Elliot.

One of my favorite things to see in Paris are the leaves changing colors and the floral arrangements done by the many florists using the hues of Autumn.

Here is a lamp post on the way up a hill in Montmartre. I especially love these red leaves.

Some more great leaves in front of an old shutter. This is in a private courtyard off of Cour St Andres in the 6th.

Some yellow flowers with autumn vegetables at a florist on Rue du Buci.

There was recently an article in the New York Times on a walk in a neighborhood and the street that runs through it, Rue des Martyrs. It is an area usually skipped by tourists and one usually walked and shopped on by locals. The blog, Chocolate and Zuchinni-http://www.chocolateandzuchinni.com also wrote a little about a few shops found there. One of these is the Rose Bakery. It is owned by a married couple, one of which is English, so the whole shop has an English ambience and sells English products.

This is their sign on the side of the building. I would have walked right passed the place as the sign is very discrete. There are a few little metal tables outside for days with sunshine.

Cans of English baked beans for sale. I remember people often ate these on toast in England. Another one of those cultural things.

The shop has a nice selection of baked goods. I tried one of their scones which was really good but I was disappointed that they didn’t sell that famous, artery clogging clotted cream that the English do so well to go with it. The next time I go, I am going closer to 1 PM when they sell really good looking small pizzas. The little quiche looked good as well. There was a really long line of people waiting to buy lunch as I left. It’s a very small place and many were waiting for an available table.
By the way, while the street is fairly interesting with some boulangeries along the way, I enjoy other streets more as far as having places to eat and an open market “feel”. I think the nearby Rue Lepic (of Amelie’s cafe fame) is much more interesting and lively as is Rue des Abesses taken to reach it from Abbesses metro in Montmartre.