La Palette

A beautiful morning deserves a beautiful setting.

Above: coffee at my old neighborhood café in Saint-Germain-des-Prés

See post "First café"

An ordinary morning

  Monday, April 15, 2019... A quick stop for an early café. 

 

It started like any other day.

Notre Dame Cathedral: "The fire began at 6:50 p.m...."

 

Some called it an omen. 

 

 

She'll be back

Goodbye for now beautiful Lady, Our Lady, Notre-Dame de Paris - original title of Victor Hugo's novel, "The Hunchback of Notre Dame."

Above: a rose window and partial view of the interior as I will always remember it

Eataly!

A long-awaited temple of Italian deliciousness has finally made its way to Paris.

Eataly

37 rue Sainte-Croix de la Bretonnerie 75004 

***

Gala opening was Friday April 12
Photos in May newsletter

A hotel by any other name

 

In French, a mairie is a local town hall. It's where the mayor (maire) presides, and is known as the hôtel de ville, three little words that have confounded more than one foreign traveler in search of a place to sleep for the night.

 

Years ago, driving from London with friends to the south of France on our way to one of those three-day château weddings (in this case a great-great-granddaughter of Victor Hugo who was marrying her piano teacher), we decided we should find somewhere to stop for the night. Arriving in a small town in Burgundy, the driver, a Brazilian banker who fancied himself Ayrton Senna, upon spotting the elegant hôtel de ville, stopped the car, jumped out and proclaimed, "Now this is what I call a hotel!" and began to unload the bags from the trunk. His usually cool-calm English wife, fed up with being cramped in the car for hours and bickering with him at almost every kilometer (he preferred taking time-wasting wrong turns rather than asking anyone for help), leaned back, closed her eyes, and calmly said, "For Godsakes that's the town hall! Pleease put everything back in the car and stop being so tiresome!" - BPJ

Above: l'Hôtel de Ville - Paris' main town hall

La sortie

 

Path to a métro station carpeted with blossoms.

Marking history

Oar-shaped historical markers throughout the city harken to the Parisii, a Celtic tribe who settled on the banks of the Seine 3rd century BC.