Category: Paris

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Back in Paris, Day 7

First piece of apartment decor is up. Coincidentally, there is an inherent blend of ‘old v new’ in the display, what with the little pots I made in Cambridge holding up the piece I bought here.

There are so many blank walls in this space. So much white space to fill up, and I feel both a rush of excitement and a pang of…regret?…at the thought of doing it alone. Of choosing what to place where, of defining my unshared living area. It’s times like this when it’s hard not to slip back into thoughts of what should have happened, of what was supposed to happen, especially when you’re still teetering a bit after the rug’s been pulled out from under you. I suppose the only thing that can be done now is to try and find the beauty in the blank space, the space ready to be ‘marked’, ready to evolve with you and ‘as’ you.

And if not that, there are always small successes like trips to Glace Bachir near the still chaotic mess that is Les Halles for a scoop of their signature achta ice cream – it’s got orange flower water as well as masticha in it, a reminder of my Greek homeland I’m due to visit in a couple days – covered in chopped pistachios. Funnily enough, I used to hate masticha when I was younger; now I can’t seem to get enough of it.

A small achta cone at Glace Bachir
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Back in Paris, Day 6

More walking today (including a stop at the café of the Grande Mosquée de Paris for a mint tea and pastries), but really the highlight was passing by a furniture store and seeing this : 

Which to me looked like a slightly more f-ed up version of this : 

This has been a Sunday.

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Back in Paris, Day 5

Going back to the whole ‘mini successes’ thing today because this evening I treated my mom to her first tasting menu experience as a thank you for helping me move (hauling 5 suitcases up six flights of stairs is not easy, even with two people).

I chose to take her to Le Chateaubriand partly because as far as tasting menus go, this one is pretty affordable – although there is no conceivable way I’d ever be able to make it a regular thing anyway, at least in the immediate future – and partly because I had been wanting to go back since my first visit there four years ago. There’s almost no point in going through what we ate in detail since the menu changes daily, but the basic structure is that there is a set menu of five starters, followed by a first course, a fish course, a meat course, and two desserts (although one could also choose to substitute a cheese plate here). The option for wine pairings with each course at an extra charge is also available – and which I did the first time I ate here – , but we chose instead to stick to just one glass each.

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Gougères at Le Chateaubriand

 

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Steamed salt cod with yellow bell pepper, verbena, lemon, and a chorizo broth

 

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The one standby – other than the gougères – , and an egg yolk I actually enjoyed eating

 

I remember the first time I came here, I mentioned to our waiter (after he had asked about any potential allergies or food aversions) that I did not like eggs*, a fact that still stands to this day. I don’t quite know why I did not bother to do the same this time around – perhaps I did not expect to see this dessert placed in front of me again – but the end of the meal saw me face to face with my nemesis the egg yolk.

 

But unlike during my first visit, this time I actually popped the thing in my mouth in one bite – as instructed by our server – and to my surprise, I found myself actually quite enjoying it. Maybe it was the fact that I got the yolk down first before tasting the rest of the components, or maybe it was the fact that it tasted remarkably like an exceptionally creamy crème brûlée, but I wasn’t having an averse reaction to it like I thought I would.

 

So I guess that’s another success for the day. I ate an egg yolk and was fine with it. This does not mean that I am ready to graduate to omelettes quite yet. Got to have some principles after all.

 

 

*exceptions to the egg-hating include things like quiche, frittata, and strata – where you really cannot taste the egg at all – as well as things that involve egg in the preparation but it’s not the star of the show.

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Back in Paris, Day 4

A note to anyone who has ever thought ‘hmm I think I might want to pay Effie a visit in Paris. Surely that will be a swell, relaxing time…’ : be prepared to walk. Everywhere. All the time. 

You will walk until you think you can no longer stand on your own two feet.

You will walk until the brink of delirium.

You will walk until you start to legitimately consider the merits of a Segway. 

I’m pretty sure I walked my mom to the limits of her sanity today, but I firmly believe that one of the best ways to explore this city is on foot. And considering that, despite the rather ominous-looking clouds, the day was promising to be dry, I figured why not take advantage of it before the unpredictability of fall really kicks in. 

And so we walked from Hôtel de Ville to the Eiffel Tower and back again, ticking off the usual sites while soaking in the almost uncanniness of Paris in August. I have only spent one August here – in 2013 when I was finishing my 1st Master’s thesis -, and back then I was so absorbed in crafting that beast of a paper that I barely noticed how quiet things got, how even with the constant stream of tourists there were these pockets, these empty spaces that were opening up. That the city seemed to oscillate constantly between activity and dormancy, never quite reaching either but performing a strange sort of balancing act, cognizant all the same of this bubble of energy growing – somewhere – underneath. 

I’m still of the opinion that it was rather fortuitous of me to come here when I did, under my current circumstances. Sometimes I feel as though I am standing on the edge of a precipice dreading but also desperately wishing for that inevitable plunge into the unknown. Those who have listened to me ramble about my research interests know how much I invest in the meaning of space, its charged nature, the fact that it is constantly ‘marked’ not just by our presence but by the presence – and absence – of those who occupied it at the same moment we have. The first time I lived in Paris, I was single. When I came back, I had him. Now it’s as though I’ve entered a process of coming full circle, approaching completion but never quite getting there – because can you truly ever come full circle when you’ve been so changed, when you walk through familiar spaces juggling two different versions of yourself all while wondering where this new one fits in? I am in flux. The more my memories pull, the more I want to at once keep them and burst out of them

Then again, this could all just be the steak-frites talking. Or the wine. 

Yes, it’s definitely the wine. 

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Back in Paris, Day 3

Roaming around the kitchenware section of a department store is pretty much a recipe for disaster for me because 1) I want everything and 2) I immediately remember the limits of my budget (also, does one really need a spiralizer?).

On the plus side, I did manage to snag (among a couple other things) a filter coffee maker – because there are some American things that cannot be given up, apparently – and a small kitchen scale for when the inevitable urge to bake hits (as well as for my daily coffee measuring. Again, habits).

This evening I met up with an acquaintance at the Canal, and during the course of our conversation, the subject of what we were planning to do after finishing our respective PhDs inevitably came up. Maybe it’s cliché, but every time I get asked this question, I can’t help but think of the opening of The Graduate when everyone is hounding Ben about his ‘future’. 

(Side note : this is also the film that inspired my affinity for bourbon because if, as a woman, you’re going to take inspiration on how to live your best life, why not take it from Mrs. Robinson?)

I mentioned that I had been considering getting back to writing again, specifically for theatre. I haven’t written a full play since high school, but I have little free-form sketches and imagined dialogues scattered amongst the pages of countless notebooks stored mostly in my parents’ house in California (if not lost forever). Part of me thinks I should just buckle down and make something out of them – especially in Paris, which up to this point has been one of the few places where I’ve felt an insatiable itch to write – but there’s this nagging fear in the back of my head of putting out something in the world that I consider to be an intimate part of myself. Maybe I just set too high expectations for myself for what I consider to be ‘worthy’ for public consumption. Aren’t we all our own worst critics, after all?

Speaking of books, I’m leaving for my annual visit to the homeland (Greece) soon, and am looking for book recommendations since I pretty much sped through the one I was hoping to save for the trip (final side note : everyone should read Wajdi Mouawad’s Anima. Non-French speakers, I’m not sure if there is an English translation available, but if there is, get it. Now. Seriously. It’s that good. TW : I should note that it gets very intense/violent at times, so it might not be the best read for everyone), and now I’m very close to just bringing my copy of A Thousand Plateaus with me.

So, any recommendations, friends and readers? I’m open to pretty much anything and everything. To give an idea, past summer beach reads have included the following : 

  • Les Misérables
  • Anna Karenina
  • War and Peace (this one being a particularly hilarious choice, given that a large part of it takes place in the dead of Russian winter). 
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Back in Paris, Day 2

Is it really that surprising that my first meal out back in this city was tacos from El Nopal? 

No. No it isn’t. 

As much as I lamented about the dearth of quality tacos in Boston, for some reason, even during my brief work/school trips back to Paris before the official move, I had not made it back to El Nopal since moving away three years ago. And although I cannot say the same about all my former haunts (looking at you, noodle-place-that-will-remain-unnamed), this place has not changed a bit. 

Really, I should have stopped to take a photo of my pastor, alambre, and pollo tacos before chowing down – to memorialize the moment and whatnot – but sometimes the need for comfort and satisfaction through food overrides the demands of the ‘gram. Maybe I’ll remember next time I’m there, and I order a torta. 

This morning also came with the discovery that I will be potentially woken up daily by the loudest church bells I have ever encountered. Unfortunately, unlike the rest of the city, they have not gone on holiday.

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Back in Paris, day 1

I’ve decided that in order to recultivate a sense of optimism/general positivity, I am going to – either on here or elsewhere – list a few things I did successfully throughout the day.
Here are today’s successes :

1. Successfully moved in to my apartment. This included lugging 5 suitcases (3 of which were rather giant) up six flights of stairs. I guess all that working out paid off.

2. Successfully filed a change of address at the bank. Before my last move out of Paris three years ago, I made the decision not to close my bank account here mostly because opening an account in Paris (well, France in general) is almost hilariously complicated, and I had a feeling I’d be back relatively soon. I also found out that in the time I was gone, they never received my change of address info for Cambridge, which explains two things. First, the fact that I never received the standard letter that accompanies a request for password recovery (this was two years ago, and I haven’t been able to log in to my account since. Also, it’s 2017. There has to be a better way of doing this). Second, as a follow-up to the first point, the fact that despite my supposed “nomad” (according to their system) status, they still kept my account running, so now I know that the occasional transfers I made into it so that it appeared active were worth it.

3. Successfully purchased my year-long Navigo pass. A mini success to accompany this one is the fact that I was first in line at the window. Granted, I was also at a less-frequented station, but this just goes to show that sometimes it pays to trek out to the slightly more obscure ones. 

Today also involved doing some shopping at Monoprix, with this particular location being the same one I shopped at three years ago back when I – when we – first lived in this neighborhood. It was strange walking around there again, at once familiar and unknown. Some of the cafés are still the same, others have been replaced by new ones, and still there are those that I wondered if they were always there, and if so, why they seemed so strange to me. 

I also walked past the old apartment building. I feel as though this is going to be a repeated but inevitable occurrence. Maybe someday I will be able to pass it with indifference.