06.03.05
Catch that Rabbit
Friday, June 3, 2005, 2:00 AM
Had lunch at a hip neo-Italian joint on Rue de Rivoli near Place des Vosges. The waiter was cute and friendly but rather inept. The food was ok, far from great but I did enjoy my eggplant and mushroom Pizza. After lunch Dad and I went to the Musée Carnavalet (which contains the Museum of History of Paris), a deceivingly large museum for being housed in an old private house with Parisian artifacts going back to the Roman colony in 4000 BC and up to the French revolution. The collection was impressive and extensive though a bit disorganized. As we went from hall to hall we jumped forward then backward in time from Louis XV to Napoleon back to the Revolution then to prehistory and then to the renaissance. I walked a bit with a schoolteacher leading a group of young kids that spoke French slowly enough for me to understand him and wished I could have taken the whole museum in with a tour.
This is probably an appropriate time to make a comment on the French language. Let me quote myself from my first entry in Paris:
I can make out most the written French, understand about half of what is being said and bumble my way through simple questions.
Lies. I can make out what slow talking (country?) French people say but Parisians speak like they are constantly late for an important engagement. I have heard Parisians give out a whole chain of sentences like it is a single word with no pauses. Truth is I can barely understand what people say and read about half (maybe a bit more) of the written language. The part about bumbling my way through simple questions is true enough though I am sure I sound to the locals like a secondary character in a bad western: “Me wanting big glass beeerie plueze”. Kind of makes me want to start taking language lessons again.
The Paris History museum took a good few hours of walking about and my feet are starting to really ache. We went home for a well needed rest before heading back out, this time to Au Lapin Agile, a cabaret in a very old, small and dark chalet on Montmartre. I am not sure what I was expecting but was a bit disappointed by how much of a tourist trap the place seemed (most of the other patrons were groups of Chinese and Japanese tourists. At the center of the intimate space were some six to ten (they kept walking in and out) older French men and women who sang what sounded to me like drinking songs. The performers were really quite excellent and I very much wanted to know some of the lyrics (or at least understand them) so I would have a chance to join in. The show was quite enjoyable but it felt kind of like paying people to act like they were having a jolly old time at the local pub.
We left the place before the show came to an end, Himelda explained that I was tired and was flyiong out the next morning but the truth of the matter is I wanted to stay longer and it was my dad who was hungry (the place did not serve any food). I am glad we left when we did because we did not sit down for dinner at a place on Rue St. Michelle until 11:30 or so. Being my last dinner in Paris I decided to go all out and had frog-legs for an appetizer followed by Cannard a l’Orange and Profiteroles with vanilla ice cream and chocolate sauce for dessert. We got home close to 1AM and I had to pack before bedding down.