March 1st, 2012
The Reims Cathedral light show. Reims celebrated its 800th anniversary with a sound and light show on the cathedral facade.
The Jewish children’s refuge in Izieu in the Rhone Valley near Lyon. From 1943 until Klaus Barbie, the butcher of Lyon raided the home in 1944, Sabine Zlatin and her husband Miron operated the home.
Annecy in the French Alps.
In Paris with Joyce and Bill Frey, formerly of St. Petersburg, now living in Texas.
Drinking hot chocolate in the Marais with Patricia Calvert.
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June 16th, 2011
“It’s unusual” American friends tell me when I tell them we have a friendly relationship with our French neighbors. We have lived in this Boulevard Saint Germain building for six years, first in a courtyard apartment, now overlooking Notre Dame. French neighbors on the courtyard side invited us to a neighborhood cocktail party when they were doing major construction on their flat We invited our building caretaker, called a guardian, and her family to dinner one Sunday. Fatima is Portuguese as are most guardians. “You do not invite the building hired help to dinner” an American, ironically an African-American woman who grew up in the southern United States, told me. However, I have never been one to live by the rules or dictums of others.
So our relationship with our neighbors has continued to grow. We rent our Boulevard apartment from a French man, now our accountant, and his French wife, human resources director for Ralph Lauren France. After I spent time in the hospital in 2009, my French neighbors greeted us with housekeeping, kisses and vital legal help.
I invited all the neighbors for a holiday party in December 2010. “They will never drink sorbet punch,” my husband Jim’s French conversation partner told him. Au contraire, they drank the southern-style punch, strawberry sherbert, sparkling wine and ginger ale with gusto.
The Paris plage beach comes to the Seine in July and the apartment-house contingent is alreading planning a picnic party.
Life is good! Viva la France!
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June 14th, 2011
“Is the fifth arrondissement in Paris losing its soul?” screams the headline in a recent issue of the French magazine Le Point. My reaction- non, non seasoned with a little bit of oui! Independent bookstores are threatened here in the fifth as in the USA. Okay ya’ll, you do not go to readings on Amazon. Keep buying books. I know Kindle is the rage and the future. Maybe that will be good for books but not so for bookstores. Thursday night in Paris we will go to a fiction awards ceremony co-sponsored by Shakespeare books.
Is food threatened here in the 5th- well we still have the Maubert street market near where I live plus a few French chain supermarkets. As for dining, there is the excellent, good, and tourist trap ugly, just like any major city.
So what is soul to me, Crepes, croissant amandes and authentic cuisine just as my grits and biscuits soul food in Savannah, GA, and real grouper sandwiches in Florida; the back streets of my nieghborhood and Montmartre instead of major thoroughfares, just like the cobblestones in Savannah, and waterfront streets in St. Petersburg.
See life is not so different no matter we live on the right or left bank of the Seine or the Atlantic.
Pamela
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February 22nd, 2011
Debates continue about the state of French cuisine, in France at least. Some critics say the best chefs have left the counry for America and other ports. In my humble palate opinion, there are way too many tourist traps. However, I ran into the same experience in Florida where tourists seached for fresh seafood, and in my hometown of Savannah, Georgia where fast food and chains replaced white tablecloth good food establishments-Paula Deen and Mrs. Wilkes notwithstanding!
So what’s a foodie to do in France. If you have an apartment with a kitchen, shop the markets and put the meal together yourself with fresh fish, seasonal vegetables, ripe fruit, and some gifts from the food gods- citron mayonaisse, almond croissants, fresh brioche bread, salted buter, salted caramel ice cream.
Go out for crepes to the Montparnasse quartier or the 15th arrondissement, to Angelina’s for hot white chocolate, to the 13th- Lao-for the best Asian food around.
Keep it simple, avoid tourist corners, enjoy the sights-food for the senses. As for me, I will enjoy a glass of red wine at a corner stand-up bar later today.
So what
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February 14th, 2011
Happy Valentine’s Day! A French chocolate maker told me this past week the French still don’t get Valentine’s Day- I guess that’s because they live it every day. Visit my friend Adrian Leed’s site, parlerparis.com for her love-ly Paris column today.
Saturday we attended the American Women’s Group gala at the Marriot Rive Gauche- a festive evening with dinner, a wine auction, a silent auction and dancing. We brought home a lipstick red Eiffel Tower lamp.
More French differences for you to ponder:
Scarves around the neck are not for elegant fashion-the French believe the neck is the gateway to the body and thus must be protected.
These tibits to keep you out of trouble at the table française from my friend and author Shari Leslie Segall:
Do not order coffee with lunch or dinner-”this will cause an international incident.” Order it with or as dessert, though the waiter may insist on serving it after dessert as has been my experience-Pam. Did you know dessert comes from the word desservir- to clear the table.
This one from Shari I did not know- Jim and break this rule frequently. Shari says “Don’t pickat the basket of bread until the meal comes. It’s mal vu.
Sad news- We join with Jim Bitterman of CNN and his friends across Paris, the USA and the world in sadness at the sudden loss of his wife, Emmy-award winning producer Patricia Thompson here in Paris. Pat died at the age of 62 in December following a cerebral hemorrhage. I met her twice last year and we laughed over our beginning days in television, mine as the Romper Room doobie in the 1970s at WFLA TV in Tampa, and hers in the newsroom at WMAQ in Chicago. There are some wonderful tributes to Pat on the Web. Jim is an incredible man and journalist and so was she . Who can forget Jim telling the world so many years ago that Diana was dead in Paris. He told us last year that he stayed on the air for many hours over those days. He and Pat were having a CNN labor day weekend party at their home when a tourist called CNN alerting that “something was going on at the Ritz.” Our best thoughts to Jim.
To end on a Happy Note, we celebrated 29 years of marriage on February 6, and still marvel that WE LIVE IN PARIS!!
Pamela
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February 1st, 2011
Some words and meanings differ between France and the USA.
For instance douche means an all-over bath, not the intimate cleansing definition in the US.
To be invited for a cocktail means the time of day- usually 6 ish and wine or water is usually served, seldom a mixed drink unless some yanks are throwing the party.
A cafe following a meal usually means a petite espresso or a noisette- a nut of milk in the espresso. And lot’s of luck getting your coffee with your dessert- the French usually serve the coffee following the sweet, even if you are paying the tab.
The bathroom is where you take a bath here- the toilette is where you know, and many toilettes are unisex.
HAVE A GOOD DAY, Pam in Paris
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December 17th, 2010
I am too often asked if we are still US citizens, by friends, freelance contacts in the USA, sometimes family members. The answer is yes, yes, yes. We have a longterm visitor permit in France that we renew each year. We pay US taxes in large amounts, and a small amount of French tax. We pay premiums into the French medical care system.
We live in a 50 square-meter, that’s 500 square-feet apartment, one bedroom with a balcony across our iving and dining salon overlooking Boulevard Saint Germain and the Notre Dame gorgoyles. We have the use of a cave, storage room, in the basement- a great little abode for the four of us.
Happy Holidays, Pam, Jim, Chablis, Maggie
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December 1st, 2010
No, I am not talking about dog merde on the sidewalks or drunk student tourists. I recently hosted a “low country boil” dinner party for ten friends in my apartment. I googled Pat Conroy to find the recipe I used for this shrimp, sausage, corn, potato, onions and garlic feast, also known as Frogmore stew to my yankee friends. In my hometown of Savannah, GA the boil is drained and dumped onto newspapers- here I folded French newspapers into placemats. A good southern time was had by all complete with cornbread, and a pecan chocolate chip pie baked by my friend Connie whose uncle owned Anton’s restaurant in Savannah, a popular white tablecoth eatery of my youth.
Thanksgiving found us with friends at Breakfast in America in Paris, including Annabel Simms, author of the “One Hour from Paris” series. Then Saturday night we organized the Unitarian Universalist fellowship dinner for 50 here. We served the main course on china but put out paper plates for cheese and dessert. A couple of French guests refused to eat their dessert on paper “demanding a” proper plate.” Go figure.
Meanwhile, I am writing a feature on David Sedaris for France Magazine, and my forever friend in Savannah Patricia jacobs just made national news for coordinating the Exreme Makeover home project in that beautiful city.
Not bad for two Steel Magnolia Savannah baby boomers.
It is below zero here today, stay warm as we enter the holiday season, Pamela in Paris
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October 23rd, 2010
What do you in Paris is a question often heard from friends in the USA and tourists in Paris. So I am putting the question back to all of you- what do you do wherever you live?
We walk our dog as you all do on city streets and in parks, taking care to use pick-up bags as not enough French are still eager to use.
We shop for food- roti chickens, fresh produce, and bakery bread as many of you at Fresh Market stores, Publix supermarkets, farmers’ markets and produce stands that dot roadsides and Fourth Street North in St. Petersburg, Florida.
We look for dining values at local bistros-there is even an early bird special at the French Hippotamus steak house chain. We go to version original and some French movies using our monthly pass.
So we live life as many of you do every day. We have witnessed some strike parades with little disruption to our lives.
Admittedly some things are different- for example when asked in a French spot “what do you want for breakfast?” you are being asked if you want hot chocolate, coffee or tea. Only at Paris’ Breakfast in America do you order anything that resembles an American breakfast- real pancakes and hasbrowns.
But alas, no grits or biscuits. Say hello to Cracker Barrel and enjoy breakfast for me.
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April 23rd, 2010
Time rolls by as Jim and I marvel at five years here. We marked the date, April Fool’s Day, with breakfast at Breakfast in America on rue des ecoles and a round trip city bus trip on the 69 bus-one of Rick Steves’ fave routes, opting not to get off at Pierre La Chaise cemetary because the weather was still too cold-go figure. We recently attended the so-sublime American Women’s Group wine auction gala at the Mariott Rive Gauche where we bid and brought home a Sonia Bignall artwork. Monday, March 29 found us in he 15th for a Seder dinner at the MJLF Jewish center, in the quartier where Parisian Jews were taken in the July 1942 round-up. As detailed in the current haunting movie La Rafles and the book Sarah’s Key, it was a surreal place to observe passover. A female rabbi led the ceremony and invited me back on April 11 for a Shoah service where all names of the 76,000 Jews deported from France to concentration camps and death were read out loud.
Contradictions still intrique me about living in Paris- contradictions between the beauty, dirt, good and ugly history. My favorite Paris poem remains Cecilia Woloch’s “Filth” – my poetry teacher’s ode to the smog, soot and street dirt of Paris in all its glory. Google search “Filth” and read it for yourself.
The view from our balcony is shown in the two photos. Les SoirToit View and Les Jour Toit View, night and day views first of the Eiffel Tower in the evening and then of the Notre Dame towers during the day.
A first in five years has happened- my change purse was lifted at the Mabillion metro station- lost 60 euros and my navigo bus and metro pass, and felt violated. Travelers- pickpockets abound- watch your belongings.
The New York Times recently featured some young chefs. Jim and I hot footed it to L’Agrume at 15 rue des fossés in our quartier, the 5th. We have been twice and the food is great with a 14 euro lunch formula.
In May I am leading a tour to Chartre where Kat Beaulieu, trained and once employed by Lauren Artress will help guide the labyrinth walk.
The volcano clouds are lifting in Europe, planes are flying and the weather is warmer.
Happy Spring,
Pam Leavy in Paris
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