Down and out in Paris

Wandering around the Morais, nudging Mags past ‘cute’ boutiques, it occurred to me that Paris must have 90% of the world’s population of wicker chairs all spread invitingly on the pavements welcoming visitors for a leisurely vin rouge or two.

Yes, we’re in Paris for the weekend, a well deserved break for Mags after a week or two of hard labour in Canary Wharf.

We arrived for the Eurostar after a bit of a scrum at St. Pancras station where thousands of people descended on security at the same time. We’d opted for a quick bon voyage drink at the champagne bar so perhaps should have arrived at the queue a little earlier than we did. Anyway, the company sensibly delayed the train by a few minutes so that everyone could get on.

We stayed on Ile Saint Louis, the smaller of the two islands on the Seine in the 4 Arrondissement, close to Notre Dam. This is our usual haunt in Paris, so we felt relatively at home.  We’d come to meet up with our friends Karen and Malcolm from Tasmania who had rented an apartment in the same street. We generally mooched around with them on Sunday, checking out the shops and buying vegetables from the food market in the Latin Quarter. The market runs along Rue Mouffetard and was buzzing with locals. There are numerous delis along the road squeezed in between butchers, fish mongers and boulangeries. We had to queue for our baguettes which must be good thing, the bread still warm as we bought it. Karen was almost talked into buying some cherry tomatoes but at twenty odd euros a kilo, possibly a tad expensive at this time of year despite the assertion from the green grocer that they were the “Rolls Royce” of tomatoes.

We had a wonderful meal at Karen and Malcs apartment, which is situated on the top floor in a small quadrangle of 17^th century buildings. The stairs up was a bit of a struggle but well worth it.  The view from their small balcony is of ancient rooftops and chimney pots, the spire of Notre Damn just visible.

Despite our short stay, we’d managed to become locals at a couple of bars on the island. After the meal, we thought we’d have a digestif at the Les Fous de L’ile. We’d just ordered a couple of drinks when Mags elbowed me and declared in a hushed whisper that she ‘knew’ the guy sitting next to her at the bar. I said the perhaps he was famous and that she recognized him rather than knew him. There is previous here as Mags went up to an ex Spurs footballer in Cape Town with a “G’day, how’s it going?” only to be met with an incredulous look. She had a rethink on the adjacent bloke and decided that he was an old rocker. Anyway, he was on his own and obviously wanted to chat. Seeing that Mags was speaking English (close to anyway), he soon engaged her in conversation. A couple of locals joined in. Bizarrely, a Magician and his partner, who was loudly arguing some point in Franglais but I didn’t really catch his drift. The old American rocker turned out to be Mike McCready from Pearl Jam. He was initially impressed that we’d heard of the band but less so when we couldn’t name any of their hits – oops. This led onto a conversation about French music, prompted by our waitress. Unfortunately, we foreigners could only come up with Charles Aznavore, Edith Piaf, and Plastic Bertrand which got a laugh from the locals.

After a few Armanagcs, there was much talk of moving on to party the night away. Thankfully, we’re a bit wiser (older) now and left them to it so Mike and the Magician disappeared into the Paris night. I asked our French / Vietnamese waitress if the guy really was a Magician. “Apparently” she said and asked the remaining throng “Has anyone seen him do a trick?”

“Non” was the unanimous response.

“A magician who doesn’t do tricks”, she shook her head while polishing the beer glasses.