Day 8: market to beers

First order of business Sunday (9 April) was to hit the open-air market on the Boulevard Richard-Lenoir, just north of the Place de la Bastille, a short walk from the Ile St. Louis and our flat.

The only catch was getting there as the Paris Marathon lay between us and the market. At the Place de la Bastille we had to maneuver through the Metro stop’s tunnels to go under the runners. It was a very hot day, I almost felt sorry for the runners. I did get a free banana though. Going home, we had to take the Metro to the Left Bank and walk back to get past the race course. But it was fun to watch the runners for a while, if less so to be deafened by a drum circle encouraging the runners on.

Once we got to the market, wow! Quite an amazing place, with every foodstuff known to man, of generally high quality, being sold at ludicrously inexpensive prices –  I got an entire Livarot cheese for 7 euros; it would be 3 times that in America, if you could get it in America, which you can’t, because raw-milk French cheeses aged less than 60 days are forbidden to import by the Agriculture Department for absolutely no scientific or health reason whatsoever, one of the dumbest rules in existence anywhere.

Rant over.

I also bought chicken – yellow chicken – for a dinner, mushrooms, some lovely soap (one bar lemon verbena, using it now, so distinct an aroma!) souvenirs, a new scarf, herbs, radishes, more cheese, some coffee and lovely fresh-squeezed orange juice, all at prices to die for. (I bought seven cheeses, some of the best ever, for 24.50 euros). My friends stocked up as well.

I could have bought more stuff, but restrained myself. It was hard. Memorable place, colorful and festive and good bargains everywhere. It’s open Thursday 7-2 and Sunday 7-3.

After coffee at the flat, I headed out to St. Eustache Church near Les Halles, the old market area now an appalling underground mall. I had to walk through the mall to exit the Metro, and it was what you’d expect, McDonald’s and Starbucks and the like, but, this being France, also with a remarkable film archive (the Forum des Images) and a 50-meter swimming pool. Well.

St. Eustache, built in the 16^th and early 17th century, is an unusually massive Gothic church. Very high, rather short, with much larger aisles and arcades than many such places. It’s quite impressive if not as elegant as, say, Notre Dame.

The brief recital – 30 minutes, but free and quite well attended – offered a gentle, harmonious piece by Cesar Franck called Priere and then the exact opposite, Charles Ives’ magnificently odd “Variations on America”, raucous and wild, with “Pop Goes the Weasel” written in.

I had to smile as the music of Ives – the most American of composers – rattled around the wonderful old Gothic stone walls of St. Eustache. Ives would have enjoyed it an awful lot -- his music being played on the largest pipe organ in France. I almost laughed out loud when “Pop Goes the Weasel” popped up.

Now here’s where the day took a left turn.

You had to leave the church by a different entrance than you came in as a Palm Sunday mass was getting near ready to start, so on the way out I noticed one of those faux Irish/English pubs that are all over any European city I have ever been in, all decorated in Ye Old English or, alternatively, St. Patty’s Day All The Time, décor, offering all the comforts of home to traveling/expat souls from the British Isles, such as better beer than there is in France (not a high bar to get over), appallingly bad food (why anyone would eat in one of these places anywhere, much less in Paris, is beyond me) and drunken louts carousing in the unique way Les Rosebifs (English) or Les Paddys (Irish) do.

This one, called “Quigley’s Point,” was of the Irish persuasion meaning lots of green décor, Guinness on tap (at 8 euros a pint), bacon-flavored potato chips, and a gruff Irish barkeep.

Normally I’d walked by the place faster than a mouse at a cat convention, but I noticed soccer was on the telly and it was my team, Everton, in the second half of a game with Leicester.  

I went in, ordered some white wine, and quickly noticed three gents cheering on Everton. I struck up a conversation with them – Kevin, Neil and Ronnie – and it turned out they were Englishmen from Liverpool (where Everton is) in Paris for the weekend for fun, to watch the marathon and, it would seem, drink beer. They were definitely good at the latter.

We watched the remainder of the game, a 4-2 Everton win (yay!) and then they asked me to come along with them back to their hotel near the Anvers metro in the upper 9^th/lower 18th and hang out. So I did.

We had a quickie dinner at Le Diplomate on the boulevard Rochechouart, where I enjoyed an andouillette sausage, frites and salad for dinner. Then we went to several bars, none of which I really remember, where we denounced Liverpool (the soccer team) as scum; they talked up Liverpool (the city) as the greatest place on earth; yakked about Trump (boo), British PM Theresa May (boo); Brexit (boo) and generally had a drunken good time as they drank gallons of beer. I stuck to wine. A lot of wine.

We wound up at L’Oiseaux at the Anvers metro, where, around midnight, I made my goodbyes (they were on their 33^rd beer it seemed and still going strong) and headed home via Metro.

A wonderful day, if a little hard on the head!!

Day 7, Part II: Bistro by Lucy -- Le Trumilou

The bistro Le Trumilou feels like the 1950’s.

The décor, such as it is, is classic and plain. The food is pure classic bistro, nothing sophisticated, like may well have been served in 1955. The drinks are priced like the 50’s – a wonderful house Bordeaux at 12 euros.

But most of all it feels like the 1950’s because the place could be an episode of I Love Lucy if Lucy ever ran a bistro. It’s a madhouse, a harried house of hearty helpings, that somehow has been running for over 40 years.

And I love the place.

We went at 9:30 or so on a Saturday night. The place was packed, and we settled for a table in the bar area, which is, uh, eclectically, shall we say, decorated, but very comfortable on an old red leather banquette.

That gave us a front-row seat for watching Le Trumilou (open 7 days lunch and dinner) at work. The bar room is flanked on both sides by dining rooms. Between the bar and the dining room on the east side is a passageway to the kitchen where a large table and a computer sit – the operations center of Le Trumilou.

It is manned by Alain, the owner, a 60-ish native of the Auvergne in southwest France. He likes to smoke, yell at his harassed staff, make assorted hand gestures, argue with his chef, chat with customers while blocking the path of his waiters, handle ALL the money, wait on the occasional table, and in general feel as if he’s in control of the place.

Which he’s not. 

No one is.

The waiters – three young men, ranging from 17 to 22, say – dash about serving food, making coffee, pouring drinks, and greeting customers in no discernible order. They often can be seen dashing one way and then turning on a dime back the way they came at some shout from Alain.

The chef, who sallies from the kitchen to berate Alain, gather plates, and fill up his beer glass, looks like he’s about ready to die on his feet from fatigue.

The noise level can be startling, but fine with me—that’s why dining out is so much fun on a Saturday.

Now, the first time I was here in 2016, Madame, Alain’s wife, was also on hand and she kept a slightly firmer hand on the proceedings.

But this night, it was madness.

At one point Alain dashed into the dining room after the youngest waiter, who looked 12, crying. “Une cuillère! Une cuillère! J'ai dit qu'ils avaient besoin d'une cuillère! (A spoon! A spoon! I said they needed a spoon!) waving a spoon in his hand.

Our order of Poire William eau de vie after dinner led to a mad search behind the bar with the young waiter digging through a cabinet holding up bottles as Alain said “Non!”. He did eventually find it, and it was good, but it also kicked the bottle. That led to the entire staff disappearing down a trap door near the bar into the cellar to seek another, which was eventually found to glorious celebrations.

Watching Alain settle accounts was like watching a human abacus that was slightly out of whack as he was chatting throughout. And just when he was needed, it seemed, he was outside for a cigarette.

Alain took our orders, more, I suspect, because we sat 5 feet away and not taking them would have been uncomfortably noticeable than from any real desire to do so, but he was friendly enough, with a weary smile. When one of us did not order a digestif, he raised his eyebrows, shrugged, and said in English, “As you like.”

Despite all this, the place does just fine on what matters most – the food.

Le Trumilou offers a 24 euro dinner “menu” for 3 courses (they have a menu at lunch as well for less, like 20 euros) or 20 for 2 courses and two of my friends ordered that. I went a la carte.

I started with a kir, bracingly made with St. Pourcain white, the best kir of the trip so far. Our water was Badoit (green) and the wine was the house Bordeaux, heavy on Cab Sauvignon, meaty, black-cherry heavy, full-bodied and flavorful. I suspect it was a Graves, but M. Alain will never tell.

The bread (baguette) was crunchy and fresh.

The offerings are all classic bistro fare, sometimes with a twist or two.

Firsts were, for my friend, a pile of pate with a small salad that was porky and meaty; while I enjoyed an amazing omelette, cooked just the way I like it (mildly runny) stuffed with veggies that, at lunch, would have been a generous main.

Mains – my two friends had an enormous portion of onglet (steak), cooked saignant (rare) with a rich blue cheese sauce and I had an amazing half-duck, cooked to perfection and served in the pan it was cooked in, in the best prune sauce I have ever had. The 10 or so prunes in the dish were blissfully good. We all split a huge plate of crisp, delicious frites.

Desserts – my one friend had a Poire belle Helene that he enjoyed but said could have been better (too much whipped cream).

My other friend went with the cheese plate, with a good blue, a lovely Camembert and then a cow cheese that Alain explained to us as being from his home area, an explanation we doubted but was quite good no matter what it was.

I had quality, well-made cassis sorbet with crème de cassis poured over. All came in huge portions.

My café was perfect.

The bill was 124 euros for 3 – a steal. In addition, I left my Moleskine notebook behind and when I went back to get it Alain had it for me. We got a pleasant greeting on the way out.

Lucy couldn’t have done it better. Don’t miss Le Trumilou – it’s old-time Paris come to life. This is the kind of place you come to Paris for.

Le Trumilou

84 Quai de l’Hotel de Ville, 75004

Open 7/7 for lunch and dinner

Day 7, part I: Organic gardens and gardens of organs

Saturday came as another stunning day.

Needing to get some work done, I headed over to les Jardin des Plantes to find a bench and do some writing. No WiFi, better concentration, and I wanted to go there anyway.

En route I stopped for a quickie lunch – saucisson sec sandwich (with pickles), pastis and café at the café L’Institu Nouvel on the Left Bank. Basic but pleasant.

                                                                All but the saucisson.

The Jardin is a 15-minute walk from the flat. The name means that it is a not a flower garden but more of a botanical garden, and one with a zoo and natural history museum at that.

It’s a lovely place and on this gorgeous Saturday an intensely bustling one; finding a peaceful shaded (it was quite warm) bench took some time. I did find one, and finished a major product, started a piece of fiction, and did some reading. I wanted to visit the zoo but the line was too long. I did see a red panda on a tree in its enclosure. 

Then, with some spare time, I strolled around the Jardin and took pictures, some of which you see here. This is a place that will reward further attention.

Back to the flat for a Badoit and a brief pause before heading to the first of two free organ recitals on the day. I grabbed the 68 bus almost at my doorstep and rode to the Sevres-Babylone Metro on the Left Bank, passing, among other sights, the diner Breakfast in America (no thanks), the Ecole Polytechnique (grand old building), the Sorbonne (even the chimneys are marked (RF, Republic de France), the classic Odeon Theatre, and cafés jammed to the roof with people.

I then hopped the 12 metro to Solferino, named after a rare Louis Napoleon III military success, and noted the wonderful old signs over the tunnels heading north (Montmartre) and south (Montparnasse).

After a short walk and an all-too-brief visit to the lovely Square Samuel Rousseau in front of the church, I went into the 19th-century Neo-Gothic Basilique St. Clotilde.

This was the setting for an hour of organ music played by Matthieu Odinet on the church’s legendary Cavaillé-Coll instrument. 

This was the church where Cesar Franck and Gabriel Pierne were the organists, Franck for 31 years; Charles Tournemire and Jean Langlais also ruled for decades.

The program was half French – Franck, Johan Alain, and Marcel Dupre – and half Germanic, Bach, Brahms and Liszt. My companions showed up for the second half. This was the first Brahms organ music I had ever heard, a pleasant prelude. I especially liked Alain’s fantasy and the Bach as well.

We strolled around the neighborhood, including seeing the Assemblee National building bedecked in tricolors, then back to the flat for a rest before heading to Notre Dame for a recital by British organist Paul Carr.

The concert was delayed because the late-day Palm Sunday mass had not ended – you’d think the damn place was a working church or something – but was well worth the wait. The Allegro from Louis Vierne’s Organ Symphony No. 2 got things underway in rousing fashion in what it is to me the greatest church organ I have ever heard. A gentle prelude by William Harris followed, then a marvelously Protestant song and fugue by Samuel Wesley, the kind of thing I grew up hearing in Presbyterian churches. To hear it at Notre Dame, an arch-citadel of Catholicism, made me smile.

I love the English composer Ralph Vaughan Williams but, like Brahms, had not heard any of his organ music before. The “Hymn Prelude to Rhosymedre” was typical VW, meandering a bit, but pleasant; but my companion who was along hated it. A lively Allegro from Edward Bairstow followed, and then came David Briggs (born in my birth year, 1962)’s Theme and Variations on Laudi Spirituali, which was well-crafted and quite enjoyable, ending in a full-blast intensity of sound that my companion called “music to scare gargoyles by”. An unmemorable piece by Eugene Reuschel ended a terrific recital; Carr was given a enthusiastic ovation.

To me, the sound of the Notre Dame organ is one of the best reasons to come to Paris.

We then headed off for dinner … which deserves its own post.