So That's What Blue Sky Looks Like

After a couple of weeks of nothing but gray skies, it's awfully nice to look outside and see the sun shining and blue skies.


Surprisingly, there were no patrons here.



Even the seagulls were sunning themselves.

Romance for Those Sans Budget

Valentine's Day is just two weeks away so now's the time to plan. If you're stuck, consider this offer from the Ritz on Place Vendome:

Love is in the Air - Valentine's Package

02/01/2009 - 02/28/2009

Each couple who stay at the Ritz to celebrate their love will be showered with attention during the entire month of February.

- Upon arrival, all guests will be offered a half-bottle of Ritz rosé Champagne and a box of chocolates specially created by the Ritz’s Pastry Chef.

- The Ritz will discreetly place a superb “passion” rose in the room.

- As a souvenir of this special occasion and to celebrate Ritzy nights all year long, each couple will receive two personalized pillowcases embroidered with their initials.

Package includes American breakfast.

One night in a deluxe room, 895 euros.
One night in a deluxe suite, 2,325 euros.
Being considered the best valentine ever: priceless.

Backstage at La Comédie Française

The big news in France today is the general strike affecting pretty much everything: transportation, banks, schools, post office, you name it. I hear even the clerks at the big box supermarket Auchan are joining in on the fun. But since I'm lucky enough not to have to go anywhere and my kids are in private school, I'm hoping that it's just a blip on the radar screen.

So while all the other Paris bloggers may be sharing their tales of woe, let me instead tell you about something else entirely. Yesterday, I had the incredible luck to go on a backstage tour at the venerable Comédie Française, the theater company that's been putting on shows since 1680 and working out of its current quarters from just after the French Revolution. Beth Thompson, an American woman, is the relatively new head of the hair and makeup department, the first woman to hold this position, and she was kind enough to provide a view behind the scenes to a number of other Americans. Although the company does its share of the French classics -- Molière and Rostand to name a few -- they also present contemporary works so the demands on the hair stylists and wigmakers are varied and considerable. The recent production, Hommage à Molière, had a cast of over 50, each requiring a handmade and hand styled wig. Ms. Thompson showed us some of the 5,000 wigs she has on hand and described for us the artistic process from production design through the day-to-day details of getting the cast ready for action.

She also took us to see the repassage (ironing) department where several ladies were hard at work, readying garments for the next performance. Who knew that ironing could be so fascinating? I'd never given a moment's thought to those stiff collars from the 17th century but now I'll never look at one the same way again. The collars are laundered and starched after each performance. Then the folds must be put back in, uniformly, using hand tools that are heated in an oven. Each collar can take several hours to finish.

Difficult and tedious? Perhaps, but the woman who was demonstrating the technique was swelling with pride. A modern production is quick work for the repassage ladies. If the actors wear t-shirts or even a dress shirt, these can be laundered and folded or ready with a few quick strokes of a standard steam iron. But, she added, the ironing team likes the traditional plays best because it gives them the satisfaction of practicing their special craft.

Tickets to see the specially laundered collars and carefully designed hairdos in their proper theatrical context are available on-line at the company's Web site. Seats for Cyrano de Bergerac are pretty much gone but there's plenty more to see.

Bon Anniversaire Wolfgang

It's Mozart's birthday today and though he was Austrian, not French, he's got both a street named after him here and this nice plaque placed in the courtyard of the Hôtel de Beauvais on rue François Miron in the Marais. It commemorates his first sojourn in Paris (for a period of five months) at the age of seven as the guest of the Bavarian ambassador.

The building's history is a bit spicier; it was a gift of Anne of Austria, queen of France, to one of her ladies in waiting, Catherine Bellier, who apparently introduced the young Louis XIV to the ways of the world (if you get my drift). Mme. Bellier was not much of a looker but she seems to have gotten the Sun King off to a good start. Antonia Fraser's terrific book, Love and Louis XIV: The Women in the Life of the Sun King, has all the details on his relationship with his mother, wife, and multiple mistresses. On a cold day, it would go nicely with the Mozart flute quartets and a cup of schokolade mit schlag.

The Weirdest Thing I Saw Today

I'd have to say that it was a tossup between this:


The French in the right hand corner was half torn off. Whatever the joke or the political statement was, it was lost on me.

Or this:


An ad for Nicorette gum posted on an ashtray outside a local restaurant.

Blue Bloods

A while back, I was dropping off one of my kids at a friend's and when I went to push the buzzer, I noticed that one of the other residents of the building was "Comtesse de" well, I forget what she was the countess of, but a countess nevertheless. I asked the mom of my child's friend about it, she said, oh yes, the comtesse lives right above her, a lovely lady widowed a while back, and her grown son, le comte, lives on the floor below. They have a chateau or two somewhere in the provinces as well.

So what's the deal here? France got rid of the monarchy a couple of times, once with Louis XVI lost his head (the anniversary of his death was just a couple days ago by the way) and again after his brothers, restored to power after Napoleon, gave it up, and then again when Louis Phillipe couldn't sustain his rule, abdicating in 1848. Revolutions abolished the hereditary claims to royal status and the made up claims under the two empires. And yet, in this land of egalité, there are still those clinging to the trappings of nobility.

Thus the beginning of my investigation. I've asked a number of French friends about this and pretty much got a round of shoulder shrugs. The official weight of the titles was abolished long ago. Some of today's nobility are the descendants of the nobles of yesteryear; others have just adopted them for their own reasons. As my friend in Marseille wrote to me, "Best to leave them with their delusions."

Postscript: For more information, go to the blog Ask a Frenchman .

In Which We Shift from the Sublime to the Inane

Somehow imperceptibly, sometime between last spring and the end of summer, my expat status shifted from newcomer to experienced. And so started the questions: where do I buy x? what do I do about y? Doctors, dentists, electric plugs, piano lessons, buses, vacuum cleaner bags, you name it, I've heard it and am willing to dispense phone numbers and advice. Amazingly, there's one particular question that pretty much everyone asks: where are the bread crumbs in the grocery store?

The first time I heard this question, I didn't know what to say. I hadn't even noticed that there was a bread crumb deficit in Parisian grocery stories. Because who needs to buy them when you have the beginnings of the world's best bread crumbs sitting on your kitchen counter already -- yesterday's baguette. Fresh bread is one of the great wonders of living here but you must eat it promptly. Wait more than a day and you can use a loaf to fight off a household intruder. Think you can preserve it? Think again. Wrap it in plastic and it becomes tough and chewy. So, go ahead and splurge, for less than a euro, you can have a fresh loaf. And take that old one -- throw it in the food processor or blender, bash it with a rolling pin or a wine bottle, hell, even put it in a plastic bag and step on it -- and cross bread crumbs off the list.