Most of this recent visit to Paris, I just wasn’t interested in taking photos.  It seemed too clicheed, too… I don’t know what to call it.  Everybody and their brother are taking photos of everything there is to see in Paris.  What could I document that wasn’t already documented by a hundred thousand instagrams, Facebook photos, and more?

So I revisited Paris mostly with my eyes, ears, and heart. I absorbed Paris in my pores.  Wow, did it feel good.

My cautionary tale:

The summer I was 19 I returned to France to revisit the wonderful friends I had made the previous summer, which had been my first and tremendously pivotal experience in France.  That subsequent summer, I borrowed my mother’s Zeiss Ikon 36 mm camera and took 6 rolls of film, to document all of the magic that I had lived the year before.  Returning home, I had the film processed — only to discover that the camera’s shutter had stuck after the second frame,  and I had zero pictures.  Zero.

On that awful day, I vowed never to live a moment through the lens of a camera… NEVER.  I understood that the moment lived is far more important than the documentation of it … to me.

How could I have envisioned 2013, when not a moment goes undocumented and immediately shared with friends?  Sometimes I want to just chuck the camera (and everyone else’s) and then some times I’m so grateful for those fleeting moments captured by camera.  It’s a toss-up.

That said, I did take a few photos of recurring sights of Paris that I simply had to document for posterity. All from the vicinity of my rental apartment on the Esplanade des Invalides.  When you walk out the door and this is what you see every day, you simply have to take a quick snapshot, eventually.  Too breathtaking!

One thing I always appreciate about ordering an aperitif at a cafe in France:  no drinking on an empty stomach!     Invariably, one is served a dish of olives or peanuts, or if you’re even luckier, some other zakouskis of the chef.

Here, lovely standard fare with a glass of Sancerre at le Bar du Central, rue St. Dominique, in the 7e.

When the raindrops stop and there is time for meandering around Paris, life just doesn’t get any better.  On boulevard Beaumarchais, I was heading over to a jewellery vente privee (trunk show) when I saw a store filled with French café chairs. Floor to ceiling, literally.

The art, as always in Paris, is to stop in your tracks, head in the door, and check it out.

So, of course I went in.  Of course I had to find out all about it.

I know many people who have longed to have French café-style chairs and tables on a patio, and I agree.  Not that I would want to re-create an entire Café de Flore chez moi (though that is possible), but just would enjoy adding a bit of panache, a little je ne sais quoi to a typical outdoor gathering space.

Well, Grock France is the place that supplies the furniture and furnishings to the cafés and restaurants of France.  The real deal!  There were chairs in every imaginable café style, color and chair weave.  Plus tables, menu holders, the whole shebang.  The genuine article.

I hope they deliver worldwide.

Tell me.

Do you really love Paris street signs and French metal signs in general?

If you are like me and adore all of them — not just the classic plaques émaillées with the street names, but also the house numbers, the Pietons signs, the Sens Interdit signs, well.  Have I got a treat for you.

On rue des Tournelles today I came across the Gallery Art Jingle and an exhibit of a fabulous artist, Fernando Costa, now know just as Costa.  If you haven’t heard of him already (he is quite famous, at least in France), his medium is reclaimed metal, mostly signage.

All inspirational and on top of that, just perfect for any francophile.

To top it off, it turns out that he is also designing this year’s Art Car for the 90th anniversary of the renowned Le Mans race, and the car will be unveiled tonight!

If all this creative art is too hi-falutin’ for you, and if  you just want some street-sign memorabilia to take back home… well, let me see.  You can always, ummm, buy this men’s shirt, seen shortly thereafter on rue de Turenne.

Lunch today at l’Entracte de l’Opera, a pleasant and bustling café and brasserie. As I was finishing my delicious poulet fermier, a kindly older British couple was seated near me at a corner table.

Getting straight away to business, they ordered, in high-school French, a bouteille de rosé.  The waiter departed to fetch their wine, and they began to scan the food part of the menu.  They looked quizzically at the specialty of the day:  Souris d’agneau.

“Un souris? What’s a souris? Isn’t that a smile? A smile of lamb? Whatever could that be?”

“Just ask the waiter, dear.”

The waiter returned with their rosé, ceremoniously had monsieur taste the wine.  Then retrieving his pad, “Vous avez décidé?”

The gent looked up through his glasses and asked, “C’est quoi un souris, s’il vous plait?”

“Euuhh, une souris, c’est un petit animal,” replied the waited, scrambling his fingers across the tabletop to illustrate a little mouse running.  He searched for a translation.  ”Euuh, a moose?”

“A mouse???”  They looked at each other with the-French-are-serving-WHAT? startled expressions.

Never able to mind my  own business, I intervened.

Une souris is indeed a mouse,  une souris d’agneau is a lamb shank.

Everybody knows spring in the US ends on the last Friday before the last Monday in May, so it’s time to look back before we start this summer. I’ve got big things in the works like a video on the magic of campfires for a company that makes a pot that generates electricity as you heat up water, I’m training to try and win the Bay of Fundy Marathon in June, Arlin and I are finishing up our New England frisbee documentary and it should be released today or tomorrow, I’m working on a short documentary with Prehensile Productions on Brood II cicadas, I just finished up two series of videos for Groton, it was weird, but fun to be back, I’ve been hard at work on my mountain running documentary, I’m planning trips down to West Virginia for July, and am hoping to keep working on a bigger photo essay on off-grid islands in August and September. There are weddings and other fun video projects thrown in there as well.

Emma got some cool Italian pants:

Emma’s first pinhole:

Jackson Jills 25th anniversary concert:

Christmas trees do burn quickly:

Boston Common:

Lilypad in Cambridge:

Race Brook Falls in the Berkshires:

Tufts Africana Center Graduation:

Wedding up in Woodstock, Vermont:

Tufts University Commencement:

The chicken coop LA, Stephen and I built for my parents a few years ago will no longer house chickens. They were sadly slaughtered by a raccoon last week and my mother decided not to get more chickens:

Iranian graduation party:

A favorite Paris pastime is browsing through the Marché aux timbres on avenue Gabriel.  In my mind, it is one of the best shopping places for authentic bits of France that are almost impossible to find outside of the Hexagon — at least in terms of selection.  And which you can take home without weighing down the luggage.

For about an hour I took shelter (kind of) from the dripping rain under a number of tents of stamp and postcard merchants.  If my nice leather flat shoes hadn’t been soaked, I would have stayed longer.  Yes, some of us must suffer: caught in the Paris downpour!

This postcard, from around 1910, caught my eye:  a manif!  ”Place de la Concorde (Manifestation).”  With the Eiffel Tower in the background.

There are so many comments and complaints from expats and tourists about “oh those @#%*& demonstrations in Paris.”  And I share the frustrations.  Kind of.  Because, as this points out, really, they are just a part of Paris tradition.  Well before 1910.

As regular as rain.

But I have no idea what the manifestation was about.  Any ideas to help solve the mystery?

My Paris rental apartment

Somehow, I have good apartment karma — mostly.  This one is no exception.

My criteria:  the 7e arrondissement, if possible.  But I immediately dismissed any apartment ad that  boomed “near Eiffel Tower!” or “proximity to Champs-Elysees!”  I just wasn’t interested in staying in (or paying for) a place that added a premium for being in a tourist area.

First stop:  VRBO and a few other websites of locally-driven apartment rentals.  I found that they were almost all over-priced, and more than one used bait-and-switch “That apartment isn’t available but we have this really great one in the 18e.”  Don’t get me wrong — I love the 18e — but for this trip I really wanted a place in central Paris where I could get around with a quick bus ride or a brisk walk.

Next, I moved to my two other favorite sites, abritel.fr and homelidays.com.  No middle-man, direct from the owner, and the prices are about what I would expect. It helps to speak or understand French in some cases.

(By the way, there are many 2-star hotels in Paris which I also really love, which end up being about the same budget — but for 10 days, I wanted a place where I could fix my own coffee in the morning and relax in my jammies before heading out to embrace the adrenaline-laced Parisian hustle and bustle.)

So I found what seemed to be just the right place — a studio near the Invalides, just my budget.  A few email exchanges with the owner and I was ready to roll. (An important step is making sure that if needed, there was an elevator.  Totally key when renting a Paris apartment.  In this case, the apartment is on the ground floor, so elevator wasn’t an issue.)  The only early challenge was doing the wire transfer of funds — it would have been so nice to have been able to use PayPal.

Then, the following email from the owner:

Dear Polly,
I am so delighted that you will be renting the apartment. Also, you will have a large modern bathroom with bathtub and shower, and a large modern kitchen which are all delightful to be in. Plus the beautiful Haussmannian building… and room to live.
You’ll have something to eat upon arrival, and I offer you some fruit, ham, a baguette, butter, sugar, coffee, a bottle of good wine (do you want tea?) so that you don’t have to do shopping when you first arrive. If you want something special, don’t hesitate to ask me.
Your bed will be ready. All you’ll have to do is to fall into it to recuperate from jet lag; and I won’t bother you you too much the first day except for a few essential questions. I’ll come back the next day to go over the details.
Vivement la semaine prochaine!

Is that a dream, or what?  And I arrived, and here is what I found:

Only a few days in Paris, and life is never dull.  Today was filled with many incredible moments, but what stopped Paris in its tracks was the massive protest for “Le Mariage pour Tous.”

It brought much of the city to a standstill.  No taxis, no buses.

Here, at the place de l’Alma, where one group in the parade began.  They were singing La Marseillaise:

The groups of protesters continued pouring from three different directions into the Esplanade des Invalides (where I am staying) until the early evening.  As far as I know, no major problems arose.  I arrived home a few minutes ago and the police were still out in full force, blocking the street:

Wow.  Have I really been writing this blog for seven years?  Did I really first arrive in Paris in 2006, that long ago?  The digi-world, the blogger world, was so different then.   Click here for the very first Polly-Vous Francais? post.

Seven??  I feel ancient.  I feel humbled by all the wonderful readers and their snarky comments enlightening feedback.

Thanks, everyone!

And I’m heading to Paris in 10 days, so please stay tuned for timely updates about planning for and returning to Paris.

Can you really go home again?  

We’ll see.