A Parisian Stroll

The French have a word for it: flaner.  Loosely translated, it means to stroll from here to there, unless we decide to detour to somewhere else, and it really doesn't matter if we ever get there, nor how long it takes.  And that's what we did today.  If you're results-driven, the result of four hours of effort was breakfast, two cups of hot chocolate, and four sore feet.  And oh, let's not forget a copy of Volume 1 of The Adventures of TinTin.  And dinner at the home of an amazing friend.

Our first stop was breakfast at Paul's, of which there seem to be about 500 in Paris.  It's a convenient place for a coffee, pastry, or, in our case, a simple ham and cheese sandwich on a baguette.  It was next door to guess what--a bookstore--also of which there seem to be about 500 in Paris.  I had recently acquired my first Asterix & Obelix, and I'd been itching for a TinTin.  This shop had a bookshelf of them going all the way back to a recent reprint of the 1930 Volume 1.  So I carried my prize around with me the rest of the day.


Our next planned stop was Odette's.  It's a tiny little pastry shop just off Rue St. Jacque, on the Left Bank near Notre Dame.  We had stumbled upon it quite by accident on a previous trip, and then were astonished to find it in the Carnavale Museum.  The museum has a collection of scale models of Paris showing several of its neighborhoods around the turn of the 20th century.  In one of them I spotted Odette's when it was still a bakery.  Today you can either get a nice gift box of pastries, or eat them sur place, as we did.

Strolling on, we finally ran into a Christmas market.  Because of the events of last month, they're getting a late start.  This on, also in the shadow of Notre Dame, was very upscale.  We passed on a nice little ring for "only" $1500.

Anita's ankle has been bothering her, so I recommended interrupting our stroll with a bus ride to our next stop, but she would not be deterred, so we crossed the river, checked out the Christmas display at City Hall,

and headed up Rue de Rivoli to Angelina's.  In the words of my favourite choral director, let me stop just long enough to say that if you've never had a cup of L'Africain at Angelina's and you come to Paris without having one, I wash my hands of responsibility for your decision; you are informed.  It's almost as if you melted a chocolate bar and drank that.  Almost.  Of course, you can't just have chocolate, so I had a chocolate-covered chocolate mousse, and Anita had a chocolate fudge on a bed of meringue.  But remember--we walked there.

We ended the evening with dinner at the home of our dear friend, Jean-Marcel.  He is the brother of Catherine, our first French teacher at Alliance Française.  He is a retired lawyer and emerging author.  I read his first book last year, Coups de Feu à Montmartre, and am eagerly anticipating his next one due out soon, a full-length suspense novel placed in Africa in the 1970s.

And I believe that's a wrap.  We have another day or so, but fitting in the time to do the blog will be too much a challenge.  I hope you've enjoyed reading it as much as I've enjoyed writing it.  A bientot!