Update: August 20-24

Eric arrived from San Francisco that Saturday. I moved myself over to Muriel’s beautiful and central apartment, and then headed over to the airport on the RoissyBus from Opera. (I had grand ideas of buying loads of fabulous foods and filling the apartment with flowers, but it turned out there wasn’t time for any of that.) I arrived at the airport without incident, although I nearly had an anxiety attack that Eric might get there first and not be able to find me.

But his plane was late. (Every time I bring this up, he apologises, which is silly bc of course it isn’t his fault the plane was late.) And there was another plane from London (where he changed) that came in first. Unfortunately, I thought that he should have come off the first plane (unaware of the second one, which he was on) and when people started piling out of the arrival porte with loads of baggage, I wondered how I could have missed him and if he had arrived when I was looking the other way and headed into Paris without me. Then I thought of something else. Maybe he wasn’t coming at all. Maybe it wall some big practical joke invented to embarrass me. I am not known for emotional generosity, and having been incredibly excited about his visit, I knew that this would be a really thorough way to humiliate for me. (OK, people, you know you all have these kinds of thoughts!)

Finally, at long last, he stepped out of the gate. I saw him first and was able to position myself so that he could roll out of the door and into me. We returned to Paris on the RER, per his preference, so that we didn’t have to walk with the bags, and probably also because trains are just cuter than buses. (Although, I have to say that I had a nice rapport with my driver on the RoissyBus, and it reminded me of how important bus drivers can be as community guardians. Trains can be painfully anonymous.) We installed ourselves at Muriel’s and headed out for a walk and a picnic dinner by the Seine just in time for sunset.

It was also the last night of the Paris Plage, where they convert the river’s usual side-highway into a public open space for people with games, cafes, services, music and activities. The idea is that the riverside becomes a beach. They even install large sandboxes where people can sunbath and then shower themselves off. Because this summer, Paris’s theme is Brazil, there was a Brazilian garden too. However, we chose to picnic on the western point of Isle St. Louis, with cheese and bread, a bottle of wine (but we forgot the glasses, making it that much more romantic) and of course pastries for dessert, the most memorable of which was the uber-chocolate “Opera”.

I had forgotten what we did on Sunday, but here is what Eric said when I asked him: “Sunday we wandered through the city looking for concert schedules at churches. We stopped by the one near Les Hales (just looked it up - St. Eustache), then walked over to Notre Dame and St. Chappelle, then over to the Left Bank, where we wandered through that quarter for a while. Sat at a cafe near St. Germain for chocolat chauds, then wandered back. Caught some of the organ concert at St. Eustache at 5:30, left early because I was falling asleep, then back to the apartment for a nap, then dinner at Julien.” The restaurant, Julien, is in the same building as Muriel’s apartment, and I have wanted to try it for a long time. It’s interior is decorated in a beautiful art nouveau style. It was good, but in the end ranked third (of 3 meals eaten in restaurants) among our culinary experiences together during this trip.

Likewise, I had forgotten what we did Monday too. Here’s what Eric said: “We wandered up the canal to the Parc de Villette to look at the big mirrored dome, took the metro to Bastille, back to Place des Vosges for cocktails, …wandered through the Marais, and bought food for dinner (we stopped by the minimart near Pompidou and got salmon, salad, cheese and bread).” Eric, like the French, is wild about baguettes. I am not sure how it is possible that I had never before seen that big mirrored dome in Parc de la Villette; it’s super cool. The whole park is pretty neat, and it was nice for us both to experience it together for the first time.

Tuesday morning we got up early and took the train to the Loire Valley. We travelled, checked into out hotel (which was not as nice as it looked in the web, IMHO), and headed out again to see the city of Blois without incident. The Blois Chateau is large and imposing above the cute town. The town center is pedestrianized and approachable, with lots of parks, but I found it a bit difficult to navigate. For lunch we got some savory pastries (quiche, something with sausages) and a “Brazilian salad” that did not include chicken (it was bamboo shoots or something that looked like chicken) as we had hoped but was good none the less. We ate it midway up a long, wide public stairway that led down to the town center with a fabulous view of the city and adjacent countryside.

The chateau has 4 distinct styles: feudal, gothic-renaissance, renaissance, and classical. We were most impressed by the François I staircase which winds round (it is a spiral staircase in an octagonal shape) on the exterior of the central court yard with a series of balconies off of it so that members of the court can see who is arriving from above. We also enjoyed seeing the coats of arms of the families which included strange animals: the porcupine, the salamander, and the duck…? On the first floor of the royal compartments of the François I wing is a room with many secret compartments used to hide jewels, etc., and possibly poisons belonging to Catherine de Medici. The fine arts museum is housed in the Louis XII wing of the castle, but I don’t remember anything in particular from their collection.

It is always important to take a nap in the afternoon, but even more so when you are travelling. My parents met us at the hotel in the early evening, and we went to a very cute sidewalk café for an aperitif or 3. Later, we found another delightful restaurant on a tiny, pedestrian-scaled side street that we think was this one: "Le Castelet" on Rue Saint Lubin, http://www.castelet.fr/. It was our best restaurant meal together that week and very affordable. I think for our plats we all got either duck or lamb, which were perfectly cooked, but the thing that really put it over the top were the sauces. They were both wonderfully complex and blissfully simple and harmonized perfectly with the food and the wine. And food is always better eaten outside in warm evening weather.

Our next day was a big one – we planned to rent bicycles and ride them out to various chateaux. In an attempt to kill neither ourselves nor each other, we decided to ride in one direction, see 2 chateaux, and then ride back that same way. The whole ride was probably about 40 km (is that about 25 miles?). A good portion of it was on a carless roadway thru the forest, which was really pleasant on the way there (on the way back it made the ride bearable).

We chose Chateau de Cheverny as our main chateau destination because of its furniture. Cheverny is built entirely in the classical style and forms an imposing white edifice rising up from the flat landscape. It is still owned by the family who built it in the 1600s. I guess I don’t really have anything to say about it other than what was most striking about this chateau to me was how imposing and white, and really out-of-place, it looked on the flat, flat earth.

Chateau de Beauregard is built in the Renaissance style. It is most famous for it’s portrait gallery, where we found a few familiar names like Catherine de Medici and Amerigo Vespucci. The floor is covered with tiles from Delft with white and blue designs, little people or farm animals against a horizon. They also have a modern garden designed in the Renaissance style, but the thing we liked most about the castle was a ruined church with no walls in a lovely meadow in a forest.

It wasn’t a perfect day. We got a flat tire. We didn’t plan our eating schedule very well and ended up missing lunch (we were carrying some snackies, but that doesn’t always count), and we accidentally took the long way both there and back. After we made it back to Blois, we drank beer at our favorite café before catching the train back to Paris (late). Then, of course, we quarrelled on the train (our first one, perhaps?). But nobody died as a result, and we made it back together and with all our belongings.