I am writing to you from our second floor flat on Rue St. Martin. From our door we are less than 200 yards from the Centre Pompidou, the mecca of modern art here in Paris. We arrived Friday afternoon and were able to take a train from the airport to a station minutes from our apartment. One side of the apartment faces the street and overlooks a busy promenade complete with bars, pastry shops, and even a Lebanese restaurant with killer tabouleh. The other side of the apartment faces a (currently) quiet school courtyard. If we were here in the Spring or Fall there would be little privacy from children playing hopscotch but in the summer it is quiet and peaceful and a nice touch of greenery.
In our two days here we have done a lot of exploring of our diverse neighborhood. Learning a bit about the history of Le Marais, it was once a swamp, the word Marais actually means marsh. It was drained in the 1200s and settled by the Templars. The area was popular with merchants because it was duty free. In the 1600s, during the height of French glory, the area was a palatial retreat for the French court. Not as remote as Versailles, La Marais housed mansions of the French Aristocracy including a small palace for court. During the French Revolution the neighborhood was taken by the people of Paris and over time went into disrepair. Over the next few centuries it housed many ethnic groups including the oldest established Chinese neighborhood in Paris and Orthodox Jews. It was not until 1968 that an initiative began to rebuild and revitalize the neighborhood. And it is now one of the most popular and eclectic neighborhoods in Paris.
On Friday we got in and took a brief nap and decided to go for a walk. Paris is very flat. Unlike Seattle where you can't walk more then a block or two without having to up or down hill, the only hill in Paris is Montmarte. So without thinking about it, we probably walked 4-5 miles. It felt like nothing compared to home. We likely would have walked more but the weather has been hot and muggy. Not unlike Florida, the temperature has been in the 90s and the humidity is immense.
Saturday we were awoken early by a very severe thunderstorm. We opened the windows and the shutters to watch the lightning and feel the rain blowing in. Given the time difference, we were up at 6am and able to catch the last few innings of the Dodgers and Mariner's baseball. After we watched baseball we decided to go to the market. By now it was 8:30am or so. The Bon Marche in Le Marais was sleepy when we got there unlike the markets in Spain, it seems the French enjoy sleeping in. We stopped a sidewalk cafe and ordered some coffee and pastry. The market was a bit of a disappointment, perhaps Saturday is not the best day to attend or maybe we were still too early but we came home with only bread.
Given the potential threat of thunderstorms and our proximity to the Center Pompidou we decided to go there. The building itself is a work of art. Built in 1977, the exterior had immense escalators encased in glass tubes going all the way up to the 6th floor. The collection at the museum is so immense (10,000 pieces) that even the permanent collection rotates a fair bit.
The permanent collection was diverse but by far the most interesting exhibit was the visit retrospective of Roy Lichtenstein. I have always loved his work. Even as a sophomore in high school taking art history his large scale comic commercial pop art pieces always felt like Americana. This exhibit gave his work so much more context and depth. While his over-sized comic pieces are his most famous, a lot of his other work is inspired by Picasso, Matisse and Mondrian. They had this great piece with 5 panels of a blue bull. The panel on the far left is the most realistic and moving to the right the panels get more and more abstact. The middle looks very Picasso and the final piece looks Mondrian. Seeing his work you can tell he is clever with a wonderful sense of humor. Another part of the gallery has 4 wall size paintings called the Artist's Studio that depicts rooms with couches, bowls of lemons, still life objects and on the walls in the painting it shows some of his own past work.
In the evening, we had the best meal in Paris so far. Just around the corner from our flat down a narrow side street is L'Ange 20. The small restaurant has literally only 20 seats. And they are so packed in that they have to pull out the table to let you sit down before pushing the table back in. The menu is written on a chalkboard. We were lucky to get a table. We stopped by at 7:30pm to make a reservation for later only to find that they were booked for the night but none of their reservation had shown up. We were not ready to eat at 7:30 and told them we would come back. We showed up at 10pm and the place was full and there was a line outside. The waiter remembered us and told us 30 minutes. It was about 45 minutes or so before we got a table but the waiter brought us wine for free while we waited and informed us that this was their last night open before they closed for August. I am certainly glad we waited. The food was phenomenal. Sean had a angel hair wrapped deep fried prawn salad to start. The prawn was sweet and succulent on the inside but the outside was crispy and the fried angel hair added a unique texture. I had the crispy goat cheese salad which was the same bed of mixed greens with tangy balsamic vinaigrette but instead had generous portions of goat cheese wrapped in filo dough and baked crisp. The dough was flakey when cut with a fork and the goat cheese was ever so slightly melted inside. For our main courses, I had a ribeye steak with chimichurri sauce and Sean had veal. Both were served with potatoes, french green beans and sweet potato pureee. The Ribeye steak was grilled and cooked perfectly but the cut was a bit tough. The saving grace was the chimichurri sauce. Chimichurri is an Argentinian sauce made with parsley, lemon, olive oil and garlic. I have had it at many restaurants and Sean has made it many times at home but something they did here was just magical. It was so smooth, so creamy, so flavorful. I could have eaten that green sauce on anything. Sean's veal was fork tender and quite juicy. For dessert, I had chocolate mousse in a chocolate cup with raspberries and Sean had pistachio creme brulee. The meal was absolutely fabulous. The food was tasty, reasonably priced and fairly unique but what really tied the whole place together was the exceptional service. The 10 tables in this restaurant were managed by one waiter who spoke both French and perfect English. He was attentive and managed the entire front of the house alone. While the restaurant will be closed until August 27th, I would recommend this to anyone visiting after this time. It really was a pleasure.
On the agenda for tomorrow we are thinking we might explore the Left Bank including the Natural History Museum.
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