American Visitors in Paris

Cooking the Risotto

After a wonderful, but wallet-draining spring break, my friends and I have taken to cooking when we get a chance to save money on eating out. Since we all live with host families, we eat five dinners a week with them, but then generally eat out on Friday and Saturday. We’ve been fortunate in finding either someone whose family is out of town, or will allow us to cook so that we have been able to do a couple dinner parties! I think our best creation so far was on the Saturday after we came back from break, and we made a blue and goat cheese risotto with walnuts and spinach salad on the side! It’s fun to mix our American dinner traditions with French ones. In France, it is very rude to pour yourself water (or wine, as it may be) without attending to your neighbors first. While I think I do this generally in the US, I am much more attentive to it now, and we’ve all decided we are going to bring back some of the habits of the French to the US!

Our wonderful dinner!

On Sunday I got up and got ready to pick up my parents at the train station! I don’t think I have ever been quite so excited to see them – I may have been bouncing slightly in the train station waiting for them to arrive! They were coming in from Antwerp where they had spent the last week traveling through the Netherlands and Belgium, and getting to see all the wonderful tulips. It sounded like they had the exact opposite weather of my trip – which just makes me want to return to Amsterdam all the more!

We spent most of Sunday getting settled and catching up, but did make it to Notre Dame to walk around during one of their Easter masses. There really is nothing like hearing the organs echoing throughout the church. After a pre-dinner aperitif and some wandering – we had dinner at Le Procope which is one of the oldest restaurants in Paris, though I had mostly chosen it because I knew it would be open on Easter Sunday. We enjoyed the meal though, and afterwards we headed over to Trocadero where would be able to watch the Eiffel Tower sparkle at night. We had a great time people watching and filming the sparkles!

The Sparkling Eiffel Tower

Sacré Coeur in Montmartre

Monday we decided to go to Montmartre to see Sacré Cœur because Dad never got to see that the last time he was in Paris. It was really crowded, so that wasn’t too fun, but we got a good view over the city and wandered around the area a little bit. When we had had enough of the crowds, we stopped for omelets at a little restaurant. Our waiter was very friendly, and since this section of town is very touristy was impressed when I spoke French with him, and had fun trying to speak English to Mom and Dad. 

Mom and I at the restaurant in Montmartre

Afterwards we embarked on quite the large walk down to the Marais, where we visited the Place des Vosges and poked in a couple galleries around there. The last time I was there it had been winter so it was fun to see the park again with all the trees out and blooming! We stopped for a break and got crepes with confiture (jam) to get some of our energy back before heading for a walk through the Tuileries and up the Champs Elysées. There are a lot of cool car shops on the Champs Elysées which was something I thought Dad would enjoy, so we stopped in a couple of those on our way up. Afterwards, Mom and Dad went back to their hotel and I headed back to my host family’s house. My host family had been away on their own spring break, and got back that day, so it was good to come home and see them and tell them about my break and hear about theirs! That night, they had invited Mom and Dad to come over for dinner at their house, so I helped my host mother prepare dinner while telling her about my vacation. We had a wonderful dinner – all four of my host siblings were there, even though only Tristan (the eldest) ate with us. It was a lot of fun to hear my host family speak English! I knew they all spoke English well, but I did not really know how well until I got to hear them that night. Quite impressive! After dinner, they took us on a drive through Paris in their car so that we could see it by night, which was so nice of them – and really fun to see! I neglected to point out the club that my friends and I go to here when we drove past … what they don’t know won’t hurt them!

In the boulangeries: slightly confused as to why
Dad is photographing me from the corner...

My favorite boulangerie

On Tuesday, I had class for part of the afternoon, but I insisted that we visit my favorite boulangerie (bread/pasty/sandwich shop) before class. A girl in our program found the place a couple of months ago and now everyone loves it! They all know us there now, which is really fun and they are always happy to see us back! They make delicious sandwiches and quiches (not to mention all their tarts and desserts!) and so we all got our lunch and headed to the building where I had class later to eat outside in the garden out back. My Tufts classes are all held in a building called the Forum, which I believe is just basically a place where people can have meetings and such. I suppose by now I should have that figured out, but the random biblical

singing that takes place in the crypt in the basement generally throws all of my theories off!

We had a lovely lunch in the garden, and Mom and Dad got to meet a couple of my friends on the program before I headed to class and they to the Luxembourg gardens. We met up by Saint Sulpice after my class, and walked over to the Musée d’Orsay. Since I have had class there almost the whole semester, I wanted to take them around and show them all the paintings I have been studying. We waited in a rather long line to get in, but we got our tickets and I took them on a whirlwind tour of the museum and a special exhibit of Manet that they were having. It was a lot of fun to feel like I knew what I was talking about, and to show them what I had been studying all semester!

Me in front of the elephant at the Musée d'Orsay

Our picnic lunch

Our place-setting in the Eiffel Tower

We had to leave after about an hour and a half, since we needed to get home to get changed for our dinner that evening. Mom and Dad had met a couple on one of their previous trips that have an apartment in Paris, and had invited us to dine with them that night! It turns out that they had made a reservation at the restaurant in the Eiffel Tower for us all, so we were looking forward to a wonderful dinner! We took a taxi to their house, which is not too far from the Eiffel Tower, and were met by their son outside their apartment. He told us that their plane at been delayed (they were arriving from Italy) and so we were just going to meet them at the restaurant. We walked over to the tower, and were ushered into the restaurant, where we sat down and ordered some drinks to wait for their friends to arrive. After a while, the waiters started getting anxious so we started to look at the menu, but luckily they arrived before we had to order anything! I had foie gras ravioli as an entrée, duck for my main dish, and a delicious hazelnut, praline, chocolate dessert! Definitely a once in a lifetime experience! We walked out of the Eiffel Tower just as it was about to sparkle for the last time at midnight and got to watch it from below which was really fun!

The restaurant in the Eiffel Tower

The next day, Dad had to leave early in the morning, and then Char (for those of you who don’t know her she is, for all intents and purposes, my aunt) flew in that afternoon to join my mom. I had class basically all of Wednesday, but met up with Char and Mom at their new hotel in Saint-Germain-des-Près after my last class ended. I had planned on taking them for crepes that night, but it was a little too early to go for dinner when I met them so we decided that we would get oysters and white wine as an appetizer. I have walked past a little place called the Cabane à Huitres (Oyster Cabin) many times and so I picked that out as our destination since I had never actually been. It turns out it is a restaurant composed of about five tables, and all they serve is oysters, and possibly some cheese platters! I was hoping to order just one plate of oysters for all of us to share, since I was not terribly keen on eating a whole plate. However, I ended up ordering a plate of 14 oysters for each of us! Whoops! Turns out my French is not flawless after all…

Nevertheless we had no problem polishing them off (I even ate all of mine!), and we had a great time talking to the owner who told us about where the oysters are from, and how it is their own family-run business. Mom and Char insisted they were still game for crêpes afterwards, so we headed to a little crêpe place that is supposedly the favorite of the director of my program here. On our first day in Paris they took us to eat lunch, and I ate at a crêperie across the street while another group ate at this restaurant, so I was eager to try it as well. Traditionally, crepes come from Bretagne (a region of France), and savory crepes are made with buckwheat flour, while sweet crepes are made with white flour (which is what we think of for crêpes in the US). We each had our own dinner crêpe with some cidre (hard cider – the typical crêpe drink) and then split a crêpe with caramel au beurre salé (salted butter caramel). It was absolutely delicious – I still don’t know how I am going to eat normal caramel after tasting it here (same goes for honey and butter as well; French milk on the other hand, I will be more than happy to leave behind). Stuffed to the brim, we headed back to the hotel (I got to stay with them while they were here) to get a good night’s rest before the next day’s activities.

The main room at the Gala

Mom, Char and I at the Gala

On Thursday we got up and got some breakfast before heading over to see the Louvre pyramid, since Char had never seen it. We then walked over to Notre Dame, where I left Mom and Char while I went to go to class. I still am not quite sure what sort of trouble they got into while I was gone, but I am sure it was fun! When I met up with them, we decided to go for lunch at a place that had Moules Frites (mussels with French fries – technically a Belgian specialty but they exist in France too!). Both Char and Mom got curried mussels and I got traditional. They were both delicious – especially the curry ones! That night Mom’s friend that we had had dinner with had invited us to a gala that was held by a group 

created for American wives with French husbands (Mom’s friend is an American, married to a Frenchman and is part of the group). It was held at a building that used to house the American embassy, and is now right next door. The building was beautiful and it was fun to meet the different people at the gala! We especially enjoyed sampling all their little appetizers and desserts! We all marveled at these little appetizer things they had, which were more like eyedroppers or a mini baster, but were filled with sauce and used as toothpicks to hold the individual appetizers together. You would pop the food in your mouth and then squeeze the sauce out into your mouth! Very fun! We were forever on a search for them after that but never came across them in any of the shops we went into.

On Friday Mom and Char went to their friend's house in Fontainebleau for the day to take a cooking class and see the house. I had my art history class in the morning at the Grand Palais, which is just off the Champs Elysées. There was an exhibition there on Odilon Redon, who is a very, well, unique artist let’s say. Some of is artwork is very bizarre, and others I liked very much. He created most of his work around the same time as the impressionists but had a very different style. A lot of his subjet matter included Cyclops, heads growing on plants, and smiling spiders. However, there was also a whole room devoted to his very colorful paintings of vases of flowers. Needless to say, he had a wide variety! In the afternoon, I caught up on some homework that I had been ignoring with visitors in town, and then cooked dinner with my friends that night.

On Saturday morning I met Mom and Char at the train station for a trip to Annecy, where I stayed for six weeks last summer… but I am going to save that for the next post because there is just too much to tell!