Yesterday was a fun day! After taking care of business and whatnot in the morning, I took the Metro over to the Bastille area and attempted to take a tour of the Bastille Opera House. Sadly, tours were not being offered. So I spent my afternoon strolling through the nearby Marais district, which includes some very old but nice palaces and gardens and the Jewish quarter. I saw a lot of very interesting architecture and had trouble resisting the wide variety of foods on offer.
About 1600h (4 pm) I went out to the Museum of Music and joined my friend Phil Demetrion for the "We Want Miles" exhibition, which covered the career of Miles Davis. French exhibition curators are, as Phil pointed out, very, very thorough. The career of Miles Davis is long and amazing and the exhibit didn’t skip a minute of it. Phil is a retired music journalist and we first met when he was my guest backstage at a Frank Zappa concert back in the 70s, hence the connection.
After a cocktail, Phil and I took the Metro down to the 5th Arrondissement and met up with his lovely wife Marti who, like me, is a UVA Theatre School alumni from the early 70s. We were good friends back in the day when she was a costumer and I a techie. She made the wise switch to business after graduating and now has 27 years in with British Telecom, which landed her and Phil here in Paris 18 years ago.
They introduced me to Louis Vins, a terrific traditional French restaurant not far from my hotel. My meal started off with Profiterole d’ Escargo (mushrooms and snails in a little bread cradle) then progressed to Blanquette de Veau Ancien, a very traditional French stew of veges and veal. All accompanied by a lovely bottle of Burgundy Savigny-les-Beaune. The finisher was some kind of chocolate ecstacy with vanilla sauce. Absolute gastronic Heaven and only 44 Euros each! I can still taste the garlic from the snails this morning – wonderful – and the veal was outstanding. Easily the best meal I’ve ever had in Paris. After a leisurely 3 hours at the table, I was sorry to say goodnight to my friends. Many thanks to them for expanding my horizons.
All in all, a really nice day and the fabulous Fall weather (sunny and mid-60s) continues.
The Occasionally-Examined Life 