You walk into a tabac in Paris – a bit off the beaten tourist track near the University of Paris – and ask for four stamps for postcards to Australia in adequate if it-won’t-make-anyone-think-you’re-a-local French. The woman behind the counter digs in the register, then announces that she’s run out of those, but if you leave them with her she’ll post them when the stamp comes in.
What do you do?
Well, I’ll find out if the postcards arrive.
Over on My Paris Your Paris I’ve reviewed an exhibition about knights in the Arab world (their traditions and rules were very close to those of their compatriots in the West, I learnt). If it gave me the odd nightmare, well that’s the price of spending a couple of hours looking at often very beautiful, but very deadly, weapons. (And do check out the antelope piece – it is one of the finest pieces of design that I’ve seen in a long while.
The comment: there’s a major cultural difference in how French women and English women buy shoes. French women are concerned with how they look – rolling up trousers to check it out, turning several ways in the mirror, but don’t seem to even bother to walk in them to check for comfort. (At least this was what I observed in a Paris shoe shop today. I caused consternation by wanting to walking up and down to see how they felt…)
The question: why are french meringues so big? I mean ginormous. Since I can’t eat gluten any more, they are the only excuse I have to go into a patisserie – but I suspect they must be meant for three, since they don’t in any way match other French portions. Answers in the comments please…
So many simple things are just done so well:
* I sit down at a cafe near the Place des Vosges and the waitress brings out an English-language menu (all the people sitting outside seem to be Americans speaking entirely English to her), but when she notices that I have a Le Monde on the table she apologises and asks if I would like a French menu. (I would, even though no one is ever going to mistake me for a native French-speaker.)
* I have a banana split in a cafe overlooking Notre Dame (okay – not what I’d normally eat, but it’s been a long month). The chocolate sauce is proper, biting – lots of real chocolate – a sauce – not sugar syrup with cocoa for colouring, and the fraise ice-cream is bursting with real strawberry flavour.
* I buy some Provence-flavour tissane in my favourite shop for this purpose (Cafe Amazonian on Boulevarde Francis Bourgeois) and the smell of summer fills the shop, overwhelming even the freshly ground coffee.
* French bookshops are wonderful – I was wandering around one today which had a shelf each for Portugese literature, Spanish literature, Brazilian literature etc… all in translation. Can’t think of a single English-language bookshop like that – you’d struggle to find enough books in total. (But I was good – only bought one book, “Promenades Sur Les Lieux De L’histoire: D’Henry IV A Mai ’89”, of which you’ll probably hear more…)
Mind you, the fact that a Subway has been installed beside my favourite cafe in the area (Cafe Panis, also overlooking Notre Dame, and that after a refurb last year it is looking rather more touristy, with prices to match) is slightly disheartening.
You often come across visitors, and all too frequently locals, in London putting together incredibly complicated Tube journeys when they could walk the trip quickly and easily. The visitors have some excuse, since the standard Tube map, while a brilliant piece of graphic art, often doesn’t show you how close on the ground stations on different lines can be.
But now no one will have an excuse, for they can consult this map, giving walking times between various central London Tube stations.
(Hat-tip to Rashbre.)
…a slight variation from 1,000 overheard conversations.
Yes I should now be winging, or at least trundling, my way to Sheffield, but for a small salutory experience I shall share for general edification.
You can on thetrainline.com book two single tickets together, on the same email, to and from the same place, on the same date, and somehow it will manage to give you two Quickticket reference numbers, without in any way alerting you to that fact.
So when I came tearing into St Pancras station with a whole two minutes to spare (ok, that’s my fault, but it is what I always do and I am unlikely to change now) scoop your tickets from the machine, jog up to the man on the gate and then find yourself with only the tickets marked Sheffield to London, which prove ineffective in the circumstances.
The story does, however, have a fairly happy ending, thanks to a very pleasant and helpful Midland Mainline clerk. So I am now waiting for the 10,25 with a handwritten ticket in my wallet, without having parted with any more cash.
And wondering when British rail companies will introduce the ‘print them yourself’ tickets that would save all this hassle.
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