10 (inexpensive) things I love about Paris

Paris is no doubt a fabulous place if you're very rich and can stay at the Plaza Athenee and shop in the Place Vendome. Our budget doesn't quite stretch to that, so here are my favourite things about Paris which don't cost the earth. It's famously said that in Paris, bread, wine and public transport are cheap, so I'll start with those.

1. The French make the best bread I've ever tasted. I won't say in the world because I haven't been everywhere, but if there's better bread somewhere else, I'd love to try it. Making bread is considered an artesanal thing here. Martin loves to go off most mornings to buy a baguette and croissants or brioche for breakfast. The bread is a perfect combination of a really crispy crust and a moist, chewy inside.




(Sorry about the dreadful photo.) The standard baguette costs a little more than one euro and is absolutely delicious.

2. You can buy perfectly decent wine in French supermarkets for well under €10, often under €5. It may not be a vintage Margaux, but it tastes great to us.

3. The metro - you can go anywhere in Paris for €1.25. A trip on the tube in London cost us £4.30! The trains come every 3 to 5 minutes, and they're fast. It's also very logical and easy to negotiate.

4. Window shopping - see previous post. French window displays are fabulous. There's a reason why it's called leche-vitrine (window licking) here.

5. The food - I can't comment on really expensive restaurants, as I've never been to one here. I'm sure you can get bad food here too, but we've had really good food in Parisian restaurants, and we only go to reasonably priced ones. It's also not as expensive as the same food in Perth. And the service is always very attentive and polite.

6. Bookshops! If the e-book is a threat to the traditional bookshop here, there is absolutely no visible sign of it. I've never seen bookshops anywhere like those here. They're on every street (often there are several on one street) and the range of books is truly mind-blowing. The books on display in the windows aren't bestsellers or cookbooks - they're essays on political or social issues. Even department stores have huge bookshops, and people sit around reading for hours.

7. Monoprix - like Target in Australia, only much better! (The clothes and homewares are great.)

8. The cinema - it's called "le septieme art". (The arts are numbered from 1 to 9 in France, with architecture at number 1.) You can see all the new release French or English-language movies (and other languages of course), or there are numerous cinemas devoted entirely to showing old movies.

9. People watching. The French apparently love doing this - that's why chairs in pavement cafes all face the street.

10. Just wandering. It's fun to throw away the map and lose yourself in little back streets and neighbourhoods. This city is just endlessly fascinating and beautiful!

Daphne Guinness and shop windows

Before we left on our holiday, my sister Annette asked me to hunt down the perfume "Daphne" by Commes des Garcons. The socialite / Guinness heiress has become something of a muse to my sister. I haven't had any luck finding it in New York or in Paris, and I've looked in all the obvious places, except the CDG shop, which I'm not brave enough to go into.

Anyway, I heard from my sister that DG has been involved with window displays for the Printemps department store, featuring 3D laser images of her made by the artist Nick Knight.








Which is a long winded way of saying that French shops have the most brilliant window displays - the ones in Printemps and the Galeries Lafayette are amazing, especially at Christmas. Even very unassuming shops take great care with their windows - we have been lured into many lovely little shops because of their windows.

Today, we went to the Musee de la Magie - name just about any subject, and it will have a museum in Paris. This fascinating little place has all sorts of old optical illusions and paraphernalia relating to magic. There is also a great magic show included in the price of admission. It's obviously a popular place for school excursions - we watched the show with dozens of eager kids, and then had to elbow the little dears out of the way to view the exhibits.

There's also the adjoining Musee des Automates, featuring many wonderful old automata. Having recently seen the movie "Hugo", we found these especially fascinating, although none were anywhere near as complex as the automaton featured in the film.

While waiting for the museum to open, we wandered up the street and around the corner. This street (the Rue St Paul) has so many great little shops (all with great window displays) - lots of vintagey / old French crap type places. I could see myself spending far too much money, so resisted the temptation to go into most of them. Next time!

Chateau de Fontainebleau and Thornfield Hall

The cold snap in Europe is big news here. The cold in Paris obviously isn't on a par with Estonia and Poland, where the temperature has been down in the minus thirties.

Yesterday we took a train to Fontainebleau and visited the famous chateau. It had been snowing - just enough to cover everything beautifully.




The chateau houses a great museum featuring (amongst other things) Napoleon's uniforms, regalia and personal objets. He obviously wasn't as short as legend has it, but he had very slim feet if his slippers are anything to go by!

Outside, Martin drew his little self-caricature in the snow




and we had a quick walk to look at the gardens, much of which seem to be closed off in winter.








This morning, we woke up to a snowy Paris. It was just soft, pretty snow - not blizzard stuff. We walked to the Luxembourg Gardens - again, more pretty snowy scenery.




I'm not sure how the grass stayed green - the French are very good at making sure things look beautiful!

We then went off to see the 1944 version of Jane Eyre, starring Joan Fontaine and Orson Welles.




I've always loved this novel, as well as several of the film/TV adaptations, but I've never seen this version before. Although it takes great liberties with the original story, I really enjoyed this as a movie. Orson Welles is a fabulous Mr Rochester, and the gothic look of the cinematography is brilliant.

We paid another visit to Crepes a GoGo, and then walked down to Shakespeare and Company, which is still going strong. George Whitman's daughter does seem to have slowly re-organised the shop, but it's still wonderfully higgledy-piggledy. And I hope it always stays that way.

Brrrrrr!

It's really cold here. It's so cold that Martin actually agreed to let me buy him a beanie. It's been below zero for days now, and snow is predicted for Sunday. I just LOVE it!

This morning we once again headed off to the Musee l'Orangerie. The reflection ponds in front of the Louvre were all iced over.




There are some truly grand museums in Paris, but the French aren't too pompous about them. This guy was hanging from one of the wings of the Louvre.




The Orangerie was wonderful - it has eight huge murals of Monet's waterlilies, plus Renoirs, Cezannes, Picassos...I loved the paintings by Marie Laurencin, who I'm ashamed to say I'd never heard of before. I liked her portrait of Coco Chanel.




I've also been to Li'l Weasel, a lovely little yarn shop in the Passage du Grand Cerf, one of Paris' beautifully restored covered passageways (which apparently are the precursor to today's shopping malls.) While I was fondling yarn, Martin was in the passageway over the road in Goodies' Records, having trouble choosing which Dino records to buy.

Tomorrow we're heading out of Paris on a day trip to Fontainebleau Castle. Looking forward to the snow...

Still hearting Paris

We've done a lot of walking and climbing of stairs in the last few days. We've been up and down the 70 steps to our apartment numerous times, and then there's the extra 15 steps up to the bed/bathroom. Not to mention all the steps in and out of Metro stations. We shall be very fit by the time we leave.

Yesterday, we set off to go to the Musee l'Orangerie, only to find that it's shut on Tuesdays. I sense a pattern developing here. Unperturbed, we walked up to the Champs Elysees for some shopping and a restoring drink. We then walked all the way back to our apartment - a 45 minute walk, but pleasantly bracing in the chilly weather.








This morning, we revisited the Aligre fleamarket, and the went to Merci shop in the Marais district. This is possibly the best shop I've ever been to. Great building, beautiful stuff to buy, a really nice cafe, plus they give their profits to charity!




A lot of the stuff is way too expensive for me, but I may have to go back.

We spent the afternoon seeing The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, or Les hommes qui n'aiment pas les femmes, as it's called here. I loved the books and the three Swedish movies, so was a bit put off by an English-language remake. I will grudgingly admit that it was great! I especially loved all the snowy, wintery scenery.

It's really cold here in Paris. Today the maximum didn't even get to zero, and tomorrow it's only supposed to get to minus 5. So far no snow, but it's looking good!

Paree!

Martin & I are now esconced in our very petite apartment on the Rue Mouffetard. It's up four flights of stairs, and then there's a spiral staircase leading up to the bed/bath. It's very cute though, and this is what you can see from the window above our bed.




There's the Pantheon on the right and a rather famous metal structure in the distance.

Today we've just wandered around - we walked up to the Seine, and then along to Shakespeare & Company. It's closed until February 1, possibly because of the death of its famous owner George Whitman (at the age of 98) in December. We had lunch at one of our favourites - Crepes a GoGo.

We've also visited Les Arenes de Lutece, a Roman amphitheatre dating back to the first century AD.




There was a statue of a woman reading which I rather liked.





We've been playing Count the Smartcars - they're very popular here. You can park them just about anywhere!

Library lions and Burke's Law

On our last day in New York City, we visited the wonderful New York Public Library. It's fabulous as a piece of architecture, and has some amazing items in its collections, including a draft of the Declaration of Independence and the walking stick Virginia Woolf left on the riverbank when she drowned herself. The library turned 100 last year, and still lives up to its founding goal - to make information freely available to everyone. Somewhere yesterday, I saw a quote by a NYPL librarian which said (I'm paraphrasing) that all you need to have to be a member of the NYPL is a sense of curiosity.




The section of East 41st Street leading to the Library is called Library Way, and has quotes from famous writers on brass plaques set into the pavement. How can you not love a city that venerates libraries?

Afterwards, Kati went off for one last bout of shopping, while Martin and I took ourselves to the Museum of Television and Radio. You get to sit and watch all sorts of shows from TV's history. I saw the opening sequences to Burke's Law and The Saint (I could have watched the full episodes but we were limited for time), revisited Love on a Rooftop and That's Life (whatever happened to E.J. Peaker?), and watched an episode of Moonlighting. Ah, Bruce! Martin of course lost himself in the Dean Martin show.




Sadly, it was then time to make our way to JFK. This time we took an official yellow cab, and were charged the correct amount.

We left New York, determined to go back again. It's truly a wonderful place - just about everything I can think of to say about it sounds trite and cliched. But I will say that it's just like in the movies, only better! And New Yorkers are great people - really friendly, and very polite and helpful.




Martin and I are back in London again and Kati is on her way home to her Jesse. We just wandered over to the Borough Markets and bought some delicious things for our dinner. After five days walking around New York plus another flight, we're taking it easy tonight!