Paris is a city so full things to be discovered that it can be overwhelming, especially to two hyper-organized individuals like us -- so many musées, so little temps. It's fitting, then, that the first exposition we went to see when we arrived in January was about inundation, though of the literal rather than the metaphorical kind. It's called Paris Inondé 1910, and it shows in arresting photographs what happened in January of that year, when the Seine rose 26 feet and flooded a quarter of the city. Reading about it now (because we couldn't read about it at the exhibition itself, since it was only in French), I see that, every year, "there is a one in 100 chance that a flood of similar magnitude will happen again." At the acclimating-to-Paris event that I attended last Saturday, one of the speakers said flat insurance is a must, because Parisian apartment buildings are old and leaky pipes are common. I now wonder which is the likelier occurrence.
So how does one begin discovering Paris? Two weeks ago we thought we'd try by taking advantage of the fact that most major museums are open for free on the first Sunday of every month. Talk about inundated: by the time we walked over to the Musée de l'Orangerie, around 3 p.m., the queue was several hundred people long. Disappointed but in no mood whatsoever to stand in line for a hour to save 15 euros, we walked back across the sunny, windswept Tuileries and over to WH Smith, the English bookstore on the Rue de Rivoli, where we thumbed through dog-eared display copies of the latest InTouch and Vanity Fair.
The night before our aborted museum visit, we dined at Le Dumas Café, a short walk from our apartment. It's one of the countless enticing places to eat in our neighborhood. We had an excellent meal, highlighted by a timbale (a round baking dish) of sliced potatoes and trois fromages and a perfect -- fruity but crisp -- white wine from Touraine. (We now seek out Touraine wherever we go: at the other great neighborhood joint where we ate this past Saturday night, on the shelves of the grocery store....) After dinner, I snapped this photo outside the café. I like how it suggests that history and culture are part of the everyday experience here. Since we live on a boulevard named after him, I took it upon myself to read Voltaire's Candide (which our friend Devon in DC thoughtfully sent us). The introduction to the book was stuffy and impenetrable. But the story itself was witty, caustic and very entertaining. The lesson may be that sometimes you have to skip the formalities and just dive right in to the experience. Or the timbale, as the case may be.
The night before our aborted museum visit, we dined at Le Dumas Café, a short walk from our apartment. It's one of the countless enticing places to eat in our neighborhood. We had an excellent meal, highlighted by a timbale (a round baking dish) of sliced potatoes and trois fromages and a perfect -- fruity but crisp -- white wine from Touraine. (We now seek out Touraine wherever we go: at the other great neighborhood joint where we ate this past Saturday night, on the shelves of the grocery store....) After dinner, I snapped this photo outside the café. I like how it suggests that history and culture are part of the everyday experience here. Since we live on a boulevard named after him, I took it upon myself to read Voltaire's Candide (which our friend Devon in DC thoughtfully sent us). The introduction to the book was stuffy and impenetrable. But the story itself was witty, caustic and very entertaining. The lesson may be that sometimes you have to skip the formalities and just dive right in to the experience. Or the timbale, as the case may be.
-- MBB
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