“Paris again – the great mouth culture/Oysters and cheese, explanations to everyone.” That line, which sums up the Parisian experience to me, was penned by Leonard Cohen and is on a limited edition print by LC that Husband and I bought each other for our 20th wedding anniversary.
Our hotel is extremely charming, in the heart of St. Germain des Pres. Hotel de L’Abbaye. I’m only getting to stay here by riding on Husband’s coat tails as his company is paying for it. Oh yes, coat tails are a great thing.
After getting off the incredibly efficient Eurostar and checking in, I wandered over to Le Marais amidst the throngs of tourists. ‘Twas a beautiful sky.
Valerie le Plouhinec, translator extraordinaire
The Eiffel Tower was all lit up and twinkling. I met my wonderful French translator, Valerie le Plouhinec, at a tiny bistro called, fittingly, “Le Petit Marcel.” They don’t even have a web page. Delicious and traditional French cuisine. We both had the confit du canard. You sit cheek to jowl with all the other diners. In typical French fashion, Valerie and I drew out our meal over four hours. We talked and talked. She told me about her week at a translation conference in Sharjah, which is one of the lesser known United Arab Emirates. She had a great time, but a few months later a German author, invited, went out for a walk, took a photo of the wrong building, and was arrested. So, there but for the grace of … whomever.
The other thing about Valerie, aside from being an excellent conversationalist: She is a superb translator. I know this, because my books do reasonably well in France, and it’s largely due to her. We’ve all read a bad translation. Valerie is an artist, and takes care, and I make her life really hard with a lot of colloquialisms and difficult to translate humour.
What I love about France: We ordered a standard table wine, a Cotes du Rhone, and it was delicious. Smooth like butta. Afterward we had a pear eau de vie. When we were done I asked Valerie if she’d like coffee, or another eau de vie … She said, “In French we have an expression “It has the taste of to go back to it.” So we had another eau de vie. I had a slow, slightly tipsy meander back to my hotel afterward, arriving home after midnight.
Husband outside hotel
Husband arrived this morning at 11. We wandered over to Le Marais again – because we’ve seen most of the “must-see” museums, we try to see somewhere we’ve never visited before. So today we went to the Musee de la Chase et de la Nature, housed in a beautiful old mansion. It was weird and intriguing, a mix of fantasy and reality.
Deer by Julian Salaud
Um. Those are owls
Those owls, by the way, are on the ceiling, in a dark room. Freaky. Also, as Valerie promised, I got to open a drawer and see real wild boar poop.
Wild boar poop
Now we’re back in our room and deciding where to have our aperitif and where to have dinner. One of life’s tougher decisions, indeed.
