Kathleen, Queen of the Desert

I walked right into a really, really, really fancy hotel: the most expensive and exclusive hotel in Paris. THE HOTEL DE CRILLON. It’s the hotel where Marie-Antoinette took piano lessons. A hotel so good, the Nazi high command commandeered it for their headquarters during the occupation of Paris 1940-44. (”Let those SS counterintelligence idiots take the Hotel Lutetia; we’re taking the Crillon!”)

A hotel so good that former Guns N’ Roses frontman Axl Rose (shown below) chose to rent a room there. Perhaps the Crillon staff thought that would be okay since the American Embassy–and its large security staff–is next door. Those policemen outside our embassy are serious.

Read the rest of this entry »

For all moving beings in Paris, the allees, avenues, boulevards, impasses, passages, quais, and rues are very important. Like in the United States, some of these designations of surfaces for vehicular passage are a little vague–do you have to be so many feet wide to qualify as an avenue as opposed to a rue?–but I’ve compiled a sampler of what I understand so far.

ALLEES: There are several alleys or lanes in Les Halles (the covered markets), the large shopping area south of me. These alleys are small paved pathways, sometimes only wide enough to accommodate pedestrians and cyclists. Even the sprawling Pere Lachaise cemetery has walking allees between the grave sites (shown in the image below). Allees don’t usually have sidewalks.

Read the rest of this entry »

The studios of Walt Disney and Hana-Barbera don’t have the lock on fictional characters. Many of Americans’ most beloved cartoon, storybook, and movie heros and heroines come from writers and storytelling traditions in France. Some of the characters are actually Belgian or Swiss but are very popular in the French language. I’ve listed below some familiar (and some not-so-familiar) French fantasy and fairytale people in no particular order.

Belle, the Beast, Gaston, Lumiere, Mrs. Potts and her son Chip are from Beauty and the Beast. The original story, La Belle et la Bete, was written by Gabrielle-Suzanne Barbot de Villeneuve (1695-1755) and published in 1740 in the collection La jeune américaine, et les contes marins (The Young American, and Tales of the Sea). There were also other “searching for the lost husband” stories throughout Europe at the time.

Read the rest of this entry »

Many Parisian museums are free on the first Sunday of each month, so today I walked right into the Louvre, big as you please. No ticket and not even a glance at the keepers of the gate. I also didn’t bring my pack, so I didn’t have to unzip the pockets, show my umbrella and water bottle, and check it at la vestiaire (the cloakroom). Except for the other tens of thousands of people there at 9 AM waiting to get in, I strolled through the largest museum in the world unimpeded.

Having done the Sully and Denon wings on previous visits, today I explored the ground floor of the Richelieu wing. I was there for 2-1/2 hours . . .  and I certainly didn’t see everything. But I was only really there to take another look at a new Louvre favorite: the Code of Hammurabi. This “code” is a set of laws that was carved in stone around 1760 BC for King Hammurabi, first king of the city-state of Babylonia. That’s him on the left below, with his hand to his mouth, receiving the laws from the sun god Shamash. 

Read the rest of this entry »

It’s about stopping, reading the paper or your guidebook, getting off your feet. Or off life’s merry-go-round. Order and sip. Maybe you don’t do anything else. I haven’t bought a single Herald Tribune (the English-language newspaper sold here) because I usually want to shut out the world’s goings-on. I’ll admit it’s been quite blissful ignoring the U.S. presidential race. I watch people go by and warm my hands on the cup. It’s a calming exercise. A brain reboot. Americans come close to this by going into a Starbucks and sitting down. If you rush things and sit in your SUV at the drive-through, you’re missing the contemplative point. 

In Paris I always order a cafe creme, and I get it in a ceramic cup on a saucer with white sugar in lumps wrapped in paper or loose in a paper tube (such as seen below with a cafe creme). I’ve never been offered a paper cup. Perhaps it’s obvious by my tennis shoes and backpack that I’m not on my way to an office job.

Read the rest of this entry »

I had heard stories about my father Glenn’s year in Meudon, France, since I was a kid. He’d gone with his parents–my grandparents Helen and Karl Grossman–to this southwestern Parisian suburb in October 1928. My grandfather had come to study music for a year with Nadia Boulanger (her picture is below) at the Paris Conservatory, and my grandparents had lived in a hotel right next to the train station in Meudon.

My father was circumspect about his year abroad.  He said he was often left in the hotel lobby when his parents would go out (presumably to a restaurant in Meudon or to a play or concert in Paris). When my brothers and I would tease him about being fluent in French, he’d say, “I can only remember La plume de ma main (the quill-pen of my hand).” I have one photograph of him with some little Meudon friends (whom Dad called “some little French toughs”), so he obviously met and communicated with some of the locals.

Read the rest of this entry »

Parisians had a few pumpkins, skeletons, and witches in shop windows the last few weeks, but I wouldn’t say they celebrate Halloween. But November 1, All Souls’ Day or Day of the Dead, is a major holiday. Today’s November 1 and it wasn’t raining, so it was a good day to visit Cimetiere du Pere Lachaise, Father Lachaise’s Cemetery, in eastern Paris.

Pere Lachaise isn’t an American-type cemetery with tombstones sticking up out of large expanses of clipped lawns. It’s more like a granite city built on a hill  And, at 118 acres, it’s the biggest cemetery–and green space–in Paris. The cemetery is named after Jesuit priest Pere Francois de la Chaise, the confessor to Louis XIV. Today the cemetery was crowded with families and tourists. And lots and lots of chrysanthemums.

Read the rest of this entry »

A place in Paris is a pedestrian walking area, like a square or large patio. Sometimes a place is hard to get to, such as the Place Charles de Gaulle at the Arc de Triomphe, which you enter and exit through an underground passage. France’s Tombe du soldat inconnu (Tomb of the Unknown Soldier) contains the remains of a soldier from the First World War. This memorial with an eternal flame is right under the arch. Faded floral arrangements are taken away and new floral arrangements are placed here every day.

A place can have benches, or not. A fountain and sculpture, or not. What all the places have in common is a respite from the motorcycles, buses, cars, and bicycles. Or not. Some places become congested with parked vehicles.

Read the rest of this entry »

My list of adult fiction set in Paris continues here. Where possible, I’ve listed the publication date of the book. 

JAMES, Henry. The Ambassadors.

JOHNSON, Diane. Le Divorce (1997), L’Affaire, and Le Mariage (2000).

KOEN, Karleen. Through a Glass Darkly (1987).  Caution: there is another book by the same title by Gaardner and the film by Ingmar Bergman.

KRANTZ, Judith. Spring Collection. 

Read the rest of this entry »

I’ve compiled a list of adult fiction books set in Paris from information from book clubs, publishers’ lists, book blogs, and my own reading. These are alphabetized by the author’s last name. I haven’t separated them into genres, nor do I sort the books as great or ho-hum or truly awful. When possible, I’ve indicated the original publication date in parentheses after the title.

You may be aware of a glut of recent books set in Paris. many in the chick lit category. I’ve read a lot of grousing about these books, but I suspect many are well researched and it’s the writing that’s bad, so choose what interests you.

ADLER, Elizabeth. Leonie.

AIKEN, Joan. The Girl from Paris. 

APPIGNANESI, Lisa. Paris Requiem.

BAGESHAWE, Louise. Sparkles.

BAKER, Sam. Fashion Victim. 

BALDWIN, James. Giovanni’s Room. 

BALZAC, Honore de. Cousin Bette and Le Pere Goriot (1853).

Read the rest of this entry »