Lundi - July 12th

We decided that our major activity of the day would be visiting Montmartre. It has always been one of my favorite places. I like trying to imagine what it was like when the artists, writers, and other whacky bohemians made this their neighborhood. This is hard to do these days as there are hordes of tourists (much worse in the summer I learned on this visit). Of course I am a tourist too but I’d like to think I not one of “those” tourists with their video cameras, Bermuda shorts, getting the portrait done by a sidewalk artist, etc.

We took Angel with us on this excursion. She was really well behaved but it complicate things generally. Each time I come to Paris it always takes a few times before I feel “oriented” on the Metro. We had to transfer several times to get to our desired location even though the distance traveled from the Marais to Montramarte wasn’t far. We also made a couple of mistakes – getting on the right Metro line but in the wrong direction. The time spent on the Metro this day took a chunk of time out of our day.

It was a hot day and since I couldn’t take Angel into Sacra Coeur or the Montmartre Museum Angel and I waited in the shade. The top of Montmartre on the square where there are restaurants, touristy trinket stores and such there was actually a delightful street entertainer. She was an Edith Piaf clone with a hand cranked music box. She sang and whistled Piaf-type songs and was really very good. We grabbed an outside table in the shade at one of the restaurants. I ordered a chicken salad expecting nice lettuce and grilled chicken. What I got was wilted iceberg lettuce, unripe tomatoes, and four slices of chicken luncheon meat at the bargain price of 12 Euros. This was the first, and hopefully the last, bad meal of my trip.

After “lunch” we walked up and down the little streets of Montmartre and fantasized what a delightful place this would be to live. We saw the usual “quaint” Montmartre sights – the last standing windmill, the “Lapin Agile”, the sculpture of the man emerging from a concrete wall, etc.

Before getting back the Metro we stopped at a sidewalk café. A young Asian couple came by. Angel was very delighted to meet their young male apricot-colored mini-poodle. The two dogs played together and a couple of other passing dogs also joined in. We started talking with the couple and enjoyed them so much that they joined us for about an hour. They are from Japan and are now living in Sweden. He is a physician – an interventional radiologist. He said that in Japan, although they have all the modern technology for radiology they are not doing much with it except diagnosis. He wants to use it for treatment which he is able to do in Sweden. As an example he described using it for treating dissecting aortic aneurysms. I had fun talking with him about some of the interventions we have been doing at comprehensive stroke centers (like Stanford). Besides ddiscussing medicine we had great fun talking with them about their families, life in Japan, life in Sweden (though they have only been there for two months), their honeymoon in Hawaii (how he broke an American’s window with a golf ball and subsequently made a lasting friendship with the American and visited him in Marin last year). We said goodbye and wished them success and happy full lives. These kind of impromptu conversations with the people you meet by chance is what I think makes travel the most interesting.

On the way home we stopped at a sidewalk café on Bastille Place for a glass of vin. We started a conversation with four Canadians from Montreal – 3 men and 1 woman. They became our fast friends. We ended up seeing them every afternoon/evening that we were in Paris. I will write more about them later.


For dinner we walked just a few blocks from our hotel to a restaurant that specializes in cold shellfish. We had been walking by frequently and seeing all the beautiful items (heads-on shrimp, oysters, lobster) displayed on ice on the sidewalk at the side of the restaurant, and the fact that it was very hot outside (even in the evening) made us decide this was the place for dinner. We hah d a platter of shellfish for two and it was wonderful – very fresh, very cold, and very plentiful. Fortunately we weren’t planning on going anywhere but home as by the end of our meal (we couldn’t finish all of it) having peeled shrimp, removed lobsters and crabs from their shells, etc. we probably smelled pretty bad.

Day 3 Lundi July 12
Because the weather forecast for the day was scattered thunderstorms we decided to spend most the day at Pompidou Center. Neither MaryAnn nor I had ever been to its collection of modern art. I’ve always been put off by the Center’s architecture which looks like some kind of horrific child’s toy. It is about 10 stories tall with the floors reached through escalators that go through clear plastic tunnels. The modern art collection is actually spectacular and traces art from post-impressionists, through cubism, to very abstract modern art. My favorites were the many Matisse, Modigliani, and Picasso’s.

There was also a very interesting special exhibit titled “Dreamland” with the theme on amusement parks starting with early World’s Fairs up through Las Vegas and Dubai. Quite interesting. One of the most eye-catching parts showed some of the showgirls of the World’s Fairs and it was quite obvious that a lot of this could actually be categorized as pornography.

In walking back to our hotel in the Marai we went through the old Jewish quarter. It is apparently much smaller than it once was but still seems vibrant. There were quite a few bookstores with books in Hebrew, Jewish delis, etc. Quite a few people walking past us wore Hasidic clothing and hair styles.

We tried to visit the Jewish Museum but got there too late in the day.

On our way back to the hotel we stopped at the same sidewalk café for a glass of wine – this is becoming our routine! And there were the same Montreal foursome that we’d met the day before. We joined them and had a fun time sharing our adventures from the day. Of the four, one speaks very good English. A second one thinks he doesn’t speak that well in English but we think he does. The other man and woman speak very little English. Of course MaryAnn and I, despite taking Level 1 and Level 2 French at Alliance Francaise in San Francisco aren’t very good. We can count, know the days of the week, can order at a restaurant but we are truly limited if you actually want to have a conversation. Despite this, using our limited vocabularies, lots of sign language, we had really had fun. They said they were staying in Paris for their whole trip here. We then bid them farewell sure that this would be the last time we’d see them. Not so however, we saw them everyday – at the same place – the corner café at the end of the day.

For dinner we walked to Place du Voges where we had seen a number of interesting looking restaurants. The setting is really beautiful – my picture won’t do it justice. There is a beautiful park in the middle surrounded with identical buildings that are unique in their architecture.

Unfortunately the restaurant we selected had, without a doubt, the worst service I’ve encountered on this trip. When our waiter came to take our order, he literally looked straight up at the ceiling when we told him what we wanted. We had to ask him for his attention numerous times. When the food came it was sort of thrown at us. Very strange. The people at the next table got up and left before their food came. The other odd thing was that the food was actually excellent. It was a very strange place.