Paris is a moveable feast

Coucou!


I have so many things to share, so this might seem kind of jumbled...just go with me here...


To John: A Croque-monsieur is an amazingly cheesy, greasy, deliciously oozy sandwich that makes the American version of a grilled cheese look incredibly pathetic.  You see, the Croque-monsieur includes two things normal grilled cheese sandwiches don't generally have: ham in the middle and cheese on BOTH the inside and the outside.  It's also the easiest way to consume a normal week's worth of butter in one sitting.  Also, if ordered in a restaurant, you are generally expected to eat the sandwich with a fork and knife - perhaps putting cheese on top of the sandwich encouraged people back in the day to have manners and use silverware.  I still stand by the butter theory - nothing beats it.  And if you're feeling especially adventurous, you can get a Croque-madame, which is the same sandwich with an egg on top!  The boulangerie near my house makes the best Croque-monsieurs...although it's sometimes more fun to day dream about them than eat them every day!


Two Friday's ago, I went to Montmartre.  Not for the first time, but for the second time, in order to do several important things: see the famous Basilique du Sacré-Coeur, see the Moulin Rouge, and sit at the café Les Deux Moulins, which was featured in the movie Amélie.  (If you haven't seen this movie, you should...it's stereotypical that I love it, but that's not going to change the fact that I do!...also, it takes place in Paris, which makes it all worthwhile)... Montmartre is known for several things: the bohemian artists who lived there, the moulins (windmills) that formerly dominated the area, and the red-light district's many sex shops.  Yes, I'm being serious - Toulouse-Lautrec + Moulin Rouge Can-Can dancers = his career and most of his artwork.  Other notable people who spent quite a bit of time there are van Gogh, Matisse, Degas, Renoir, and Picasso.  So nowadays it's an incredibly touristy area.  But like the Tour Eiffel...Je l'adore!  On our informal walking tour with Rebecca and Kelsy (IES people), we visited a famous chocolate shop, walked around Sacré-Coeur, and of course, had a beer at Les Deux Moulins, where four of us played an intense game of Quiddler that Rebecca had smartly brought with her.  C'était magnifique!  Sacré-Coeur is located at the highest point in the city of Paris, which means there is a wonderful view from the top once you climb all the stairs.  Montmartre, at the top of the hill behind the basilica, is also very touristy but still maintains its artistic spirit with vendors selling their various paintings and textiles, as well as men who walk around with giant easels offering to draw portraits of unaware tourists... All the same, Montmartre is vibrant and beautiful and will never get old.


Last Thursday a former student who stayed with my host family last spring was visiting the city and came for dinner.  It was nice to see that it's possible to stay in touch once no longer living in Paris.  We played at least seven games of UNO, which is Victor, my host brother's favorite game.  He's also incredibly hard to beat!  Somehow, I managed to win two games...I'm sure it was luck, because Victor loves when people have to draw cards, and we all had plenty after being passed the "+4" wild card a number of times.  It was a really fun night and I hope next year or the year after, I'll get to come back and visit too!


Rebecca from IES started a "club de lecture" (book club) a few weeks ago, and so naturally I signed up. We just read a very sad but very good book called "Oscar et la dame rose," in which a ten-year-old boy with cancer writes letters to God at the insistence of his mentor and friend, Mamie-Rose.  So sad!  We are having a potluck dinner next week and will watch the movie-version with tissues at the ready, I'm sure.  


Speaking of books, there is something I have completely forgotten to mention in all the hubbub of sharing my experiences.  The most wonderful, straight out of Beauty and the Beast, English-language bookshop named, perhaps as expected, Shakespeare and Company, is located near Place Saint-Michel, across the street from Notre Dame de Paris.  There is no way you could not fall in love with this floor-to-ceiling book store where books are in every nook and cranny, they have those awesome ladders for hard-to-reach books, there are old and new books alike (I saw a first edition of Grimm's Fairy Tales), they have a piano upstairs, and couches and chairs placed at odd intervals for people to sit and read in, and the store is run primarily by English people.  William himself would die to hang out there.  
I had to buy a book there, of course, not just for the pleasure of reading but also for the more superficial reason of getting the book stamped with the Shakespeare and Company logo.  I tried years ago to read some of Hemingway's books but could not get acclimated to his writing style.  However, A Moveable Feast is an all too appropriate book for an American to read while in Paris.  It was one of the last books he wrote, and serves as a memoir of the time he lived in Paris before he was actually a famous writer.  It's so fun to read because I know so many of the places he mentions, and the sections are rather short, so it's the perfect thing for a morning metro ride.


In addition to all of this, my painter-admirer has a real name: Florian.  If that's not French, I don't know what is.  But naturally, the first thing I thought of was Florian Fortescue, the man with the ice cream parlor in Diagon Alley.  Figures.  If I don't reference Harry Potter at least once, I've done something wrong. Also, I swear by my life that Bathilda Bagshot lives on my floor.  This tiny, crazy old lady with an incredibly hollow face and who never smiles, spends her day shuffling down the hall at the most inopportune times (i.e. when I am also in the hallway).  I prefer to avoid any interaction with her, but sometimes that is simply impossible.  Other oddities of my apartment building besides the painters, M. Richard, and old Batty, are the dog that barks twice at exactly 7:15am every morning and no other time during the day or night, and the couple who live down the hall from me who always sound like they are yelling, when in reality they are probably just unable to hear properly.  It's incredibly interesting to live where I do in Neuilly, if not for the characters, for the fact that there's never a dull moment.


On that note, thank you for reading all of that despite the lack of continuity!  Pretend it's a feast of movable entries...start off with a Croque-monsieur, followed by a show that is borderline raunchy but artistic, have a sit in a café, play a few hands of whatever game you have available, and end up at home with some ice cream and the comfort that you will never need an alarm clock as long as the dog down the hall continues to bark.


Bisous,
Laura