visiting Paris from Spello, Umbria, Italy

You would expect your toddler to while away a prodigious number of hours scooting buses and cars around a plastic racetrack. But it’s kind of funny that when a fourteen-year-old loves transportation with an intensity unchanged since those Thomas the Tank Engine days. Though now his passion takes the form of a deep seated fascination with trains that work by magnets and how wind velocity pushes up airplane wings to create lift. I probably have all of that wrong, but I’m not the one with a transportation fixation, so that’s okay by me.

Transportation and maps, two things that feed my son’s soul, which only added to the mourning when the pandemic shattered our plans for a year traveling around the world (he had already found a place to rent bikes at the north end of the Curonian Spit so we could wheel through forests and along beaches from Lithuanian into Kalingrad, Russia). I figured that our Swiss adventures would have wet his whistle as it were, what with all of those trains and funiculars and gondolas to experience and ponder and investigate the counter-weights. He must have spent a good twenty minutes on one slope telling me how the ski lifts get put to bed at the end of the day, a question that would never have crossed my mind to wonder. And even after a day of skiing, he wanted to take the bus into town by himself to pick up groceries or take the train together to Wengwald so we could hike down the mountain.

But, alas, not even five weeks in Switzerland is enough to slake my boy’s transportation thirst. In fact, we’d barely turned the calendar page after returning to Italy and Gabe wanted to know where and when we could take a train. We considered taking one to Cinque Terre or Florence, but the timing didn’t work.

So when I realized we’d have to get from Bordeaux to Paris, I instantly resolved to book tickets for the TGV. Planning of any trip begins with Gabe wondering aloud if we can take a bullet train, but we haven’t been able to in his memory. Plus, flying through the French countryside like an arrow shot from a bow seemed the perfect way to enter Paris, our last hurrah before our flight back to the States after a year of living-in-pandemic-Italy.

As we waited for the train to arrive, Gabe fidgeted restlessly like a kid in a candy store. Or a transportation-obsessed teen in a train station, I suppose. Throughout the two hour journey, he checked our speed, cheering when it tipped over 300 kilometers per hour. Bullet trains are, apparently, magic. A kind of magic that never got old.

As for me, I considered the canelé we picked up outside the station to be the real wonder, especially when enjoyed with far reaching views of green and yellow stripes of passing farms. But what do I know?

Before we knew it, the train rattled to a slow and we arrived in Paris.

Paris!

From my last post on staying in outside Bordeaux, you’ll know that my history with France’s capital is long and rich. When we originally planned the around-the-world year that didn’t happen (thanks again, pandemic), I wanted a full month in Paris. I’d been overruled, partly by my family who wanted to explore new places and partly by the Schengen rules that would have limited my stay in most of Europe to three months (the rest of my card-carrying Italian family had no such restrictions). So I secretly thrilled to getting time in Paris after all. Our travel deck of cards had been tossed into the air as if by a sore-losing child, and we had to pick up what we could. Paris seemed a pretty fantastic bit of luck in all that.

Nonetheless, when my friend Sandy advised me to book my accommodations early because our visit crossed with Bastille Day, I almost decided to scrap Paris all together. I despise crowds with the white hot fury of a thousand cramped suns, even in the best of times, and especially as an unvaccinated family in a global pandemic (since rectified, by the way, once we got home and could pop into any drugstore and get the shot), the whole idea seemed borderline preposterous.

But when I suggested to Sandy in that hot second that perhaps we’d just skip Paris, take the bullet train in on the day of our flight to New York, she was aghast. No, we must visit, but we’d need to be thoughtful about where we’d stay. Normally, we chose to base in the Marais, but we’d want to be further from the hubbub. Sandy suggested Montmartre as far away from the bulk of the action, but with a charm all its own. She said that the neighborhood retained its village vibe, as it once lay beyond the boundary of Paris. Being outside the norms and taxes of Paris made Montmartre the ideal place for the birth of bohemianism, and so artists and free thinkers and can-can dancers had made Montmartre their home.

I remembered eating a baguette sandwich outside Sacré-Cœur with my mom all those years ago. But other than that, all my images of Montmatre were framed by Amelie and Moulin Rouge. Since these are two of my favorite movies, I cottoned to the idea of staying in Montmatre. Especially when we started looking at Airbnb’s and found one with a view over Paris and the Eiffel Tower.

While I steer clear of spectacle, my introvert’s heart does like to observe it from a distance. Might we get a good fireworks show from this apartment? Certainly worth a shot. Especially since Bastille Day fell on our last night in Paris, nay, our last night in Europe after this year of living in Italy. What a fitting moment if we could catch a glimpse of fireworks! It seemed worth it, even though our 19-year-old daughter and our 14-year-old would have to share a sofabed.

The apartment was better than I expected, with not only tall windows looking over Paris from the living room, but views over Montmartre from the bedroom. The sofa bed did not, in fact, bed, it only sofa’ed, so our kids wound up curled up on sofa cushions on the floor. Not ideal. But we attempted to not focus on that as we dashed to get our Paris on. If there’s anything this year has taught us, it’s that life is better if we can focus on the gifts in our hands. And Paris, Paris was in our hands.

First a stop for a Kir Royale and crepes at a café located on a bustling street at the bottom of the butte. A word about geography here. Montmartre is essentially a hill, or a butte, once covered with farms. Evidence of those farms remain, with grapevines here and there, and a smattering of windmills, along with homes that look out of a French storybook about cobblers and bakers. Steps (and one funicular, which you can ride for the price of a metro ticket) wind up Montmartre’s hill that’s capped with the airy confection of Sacré-Cœur. At the base of Montmartre’s hill there are busy and untouristed Parisian streets, filled with the requisite shoppers, bakeries, grocery stores, and fruit stands. Also a lot of wedding clothes vendors, for reasons I never figured out.

In any case, over refreshment, we invented a life story for the French Colonel Sanders a few tables down, lingering lovingly over his beer. The four of us have been together a lot in the last twelve months, is it any wonder we look to bring newcomers into our circle through storytelling? In fact, we have recently started wondering if we figure into anyone else’s family narrative the way the naked lady of Subasio, the pizza flinger in Torre Chianca, or the retired fisherman wearing his wife’s yellow lace hat have woven into our family lore.

We decided perhaps the portly gentleman fancied himself more a Mark Twain than chicken king, with a fondness for rivers and long afternoons.

Backstory determined, we dustied off crepe crumbs before ducking into Saint-Jean de Montmartre, the art nouveaux church across the street, just as the first rain drops began to fall. I don’t mind the rain France, I think it adds a certain moodiness. At the same time, I was all too aware of the vanishing supply of clean clothes in our diminutive suitcases. I didn’t favor being damp for days.

So we wound up dining indoors for dinner, which we really try to avoid in these pandemic times, at Cafe les Artistes. We didn’t get COVID, so that was good.

I only wish I knew the virus wasn’t lying in wait for us, so I could have enjoyed the atmosphere more—the walls were covered with posters from the Toulouse Lautrec oeuvre. You know what I mean, long neck ladies sipping cocktails in profile, black cats, all posters for Parisian nightlife long past. The food at Cafe les Artistes fit the environs, with all the characteristic French dishes we’d been craving. I particularly enjoyed my French onion soup, which was a bit lighter than the ones I’m used to—perhaps made with chicken as opposed to beef broth—but it was satisfying and delicious, a great warm up for the duck confit which was exactly like I like my duck confit—lots of crispy bits and caramelized edges.

The next morning was all about finding pastries (tricky when unfortunately the pandemic closed down some bakeries and the upcoming holiday closed others) and a place for a COVID test for our upcoming flight back to New York City.

We succeeded well on both counts, finding remarkably wonderful pastries that we enjoyed on the steps lacing Montmartre’s heights and a pharmacy that not only boasted the gentlest COVID test we’d had before or since, but also a customer with a dog that seemed more rug than canine. He trotted in and out of the pharmacy while we waited outside at a pop-up tent for testing, and whenever I scratched him behind the ear, he melted into the pavement, sinking into a state of relaxed bliss that soothed all of our collective concern about the test—“will it hurt?” (our first one, back in Switzerland, left us with stinging noses for a time) and “will one or more of us be positive?” Having had COVID the previous year, and with Gabe struggling for six months with long-haul COVID, we just couldn’t bear the thought of entering that roller-coaster again. Besides the question that occurred to us as we waited, “if one of us is indeed positive, do we all stay behind?”

The questions didn’t plague us, but they did rattle about some as we headed out from the pharmacy toward the Musée des Arts et Métiers https://www.arts-et-metiers.net , a long walk from Montmartre, but we had no place to be, and what is better than a Parisian stroll?

So we set off with much enthusiasm. On the way, just as we hoped, we passed a likely looking brasserie for lunch. Not quite midday yet, so we had a family conference—find a place closer to the museum or stay in the brasserie’s neighborhood so we could be first to arrive when they began serving lunch? Without fuss or even much debate in the shorthand we’ve established after a solid year of togetherness, making small decision that feel big in the moment, we decided on a giro.

Some Italian words are so specific they’ve replaced the English translations in our head. Giro is like a trip, a circuit, a little tour. The perfect word for an aimless wander.

On our giro, we stopped at this and that impressive building, reading signs and enjoying the sound of children playing in a pocket park. We paused outside the window of an art gallery and were surprised to be invited in. The nice lady was Sophie Bøhrt, the artist herself. How marvelous to talk to her about her work, her process, and admire a set of plates with her design. I didn’t bother asking the price, knowing them to be only in the realm of collectors and the only thing I can afford to collect are wishes and memories.

Sophie must have known we didn’t have the resources to purchase anything. In fact, the studio had none of the trappings of purchasing—no credit machine, no discreet cards with calligraphied prices, no slick brochures. And yet, she made conversation with us as if she’d been waiting for us and now only felt glad we’d finally arrived. As a person who always considered myself pure introvert and the pandemic taught me otherwise, I get it. I think she was hungry to connect, to discuss her work, to use her English.

I myself was just hungry.

Time for lunch! We made our way back to Brasserie Bellanger, just as the rain began in earnest. But snug under the sidewalk awning, I couldn’t have been more content. Especially as the food began arriving and it was all fabulous. We ordered poireaux vinaigrette (leek salad) and a country pate with bread for appetizers with fun cocktails (they had fabulous mocktails as well, to the kids’ delight), just in time to cheers the text of our negative COVID result. With our meal, Keith and I got lovely glasses of wine that only elevated the joy of tucking into one of my favorite meals—steak tartare and fries. I love the Italian style of steak tartare, but I either like the French way better, or maybe just as a change of pace. Mustard, lemon, and just the right amount of shallot. The fries, too, were extraordinary. Desserts followed, fabulous confections of merengue and dark cherries and another of a crisp hazelnut cookie with hazelnut cream. I walked away patting my stomach and content with my lot in life. To have had a year of excellent Italian eating, and now marvelous French food….These are excellent cuisines people, in case you weren’t already aware. Definitely a collectible memory.

We continued on to the Musée des Arts et Métiers, which we chose for Gabe’s sake. My poor son has been subjected to far too many art museums this past year. My daughter is an artist, the kind that has to hold herself to keep from falling to pieces when she sees an Artemesia Gentileschi original. Given that Italy is pretty well known for art (there’s an Italian piece or two you might have heard of), we often find ourselves “just ducking in this museum for a bit”. Especially during this pandemic year when we can take a spontaneous trip to Florence in which we get no tickets and make no reservations and then stroll by the the Uffizi Gallery, where there is no line. And then there’s Gabe again, quietly waiting at the exit of each gallery. He doesn’t complain about it, he even tries to get into it for the first hour, which almost makes it worse. It’s hard to begrudge quite toleration.

I always mean to include a museum for him on our travels, but he’s interested in, you guessed it, transportation and that’s just boring (Il Bel Centro readers will chuckle here, remembering that at five years old, Gabe raged against anything he didn’t like—from not getting a second biscotti to us denying him a trip to a torture museum— by yelling that we were “boring!”). Correction, he’s interested in transportation and physics. Blech. Even if I was similarly minded, it’s surprisingly hard to find a museum dedicated to fluid dynamics.

But in my search for non-art museums in Paris to while away a rainy afternoon, I stumbled on the Musée des Arts et Métiers. As a museum of technological innovation, I figured we all might get something from it.

Not only was the museum free, which was a welcome surprise, it was also a fascinating retrospective on technology in our everyday lives (technology defined differently in different epochs, for instance the three dimensional map that showed the position of the planets around the sun and the abacus-like counting machines). As a bonus, it also fascinated my artistic daughter who loved the visual impact of old technology She continually “sparked” and now my phone (she never brings hers) is filled with photos of early looms, ornate statues holding pendulums, and figures painted on wheels that, when turned, create moving images.

And then at the end of the museum… ta da!

Transportation!

Gliders and engines and funny bicycles. And best of all—airplanes.

Gabe wandered the catwalks between the airplanes, all agog. He told me facts about engines and advances in propulsion and I had to wonder, where did he get all this from? The child has been living a school-free lifestyle for a year. Well, he’s been nominally homeschooling, but as a person who believes life is the best teacher, I admit I don’t provide what can necessarily be called “curriculum” or “instruction”. I feel strongly about words (shocking, I know), and so we’ve done a unit (I hesitate to even use the word, it seems so codified) on poetry and he’s written biog posts that he’s edited into submission until he can spot a weak verb or passive voice from a kilometer away. But mostly he’s studied what interests him. So I suppose it should come as no surprise that he’s been watching videos on early jet engines and trying to understand what provides lift to wings, with a calculator and sketchbook propped beside him.

I guess my surprise comes from this—if I had been handed that kind of freedom at his age, I would have lounged around reading novels all day. It does make me wonder how he’ll adapt to regular school, where he has to transition when he’s not ready to transition. Some days this past year he’d declare he was having a “math day”—can’t do that in public high school. I also wonder how he’ll study what he’s not interested in. Then again, sometimes it seems he’s interested in everything. Except art, maybe.

In any case, he walked away from the museum with his head as far in the clouds as those airplanes. This ranked up there with the Museum of Musical Instruments in Brussels (a fabulous museum, for some of the same reasons—it’s fascinating to see niche everyday objects from long ago and imagine life back then—but also because guests wear earphones and when you approach an instrument, you’ll begin to hear it played, which gives the whole museum a kind of soundtrack that I still think back on with great fondness, especially the sight of my older two entering a ballroom, hearing an upswell of music in their headphones, and spontaneously waltzing together across the filigreed room).

After hot chocolate and champagne at a nearby bar, we took the metro back to the Airbnb, where we tried to dry out before our dinner with my friend Sandy.

I met Sandy years ago at a book launch at New Dominion, our local independent bookshop. She followed my Facebook author page and started chiming in with insightful and warm comments, through which I learned that she lives most of her time in Paris. Since then, I’ve seen her when she’s in Charlottesville, and she’s helped me loads with my application for French citizenship. (Incidentally, a reader just reminded me that I haven’t given you all an update on that—I submitted my appeal at the end of February 2020, but obviously one or two things happened in the world since that landed on the desk of a French bureaucrat. I did get a letter last December that said they’d accepted my letter of appeal and would start working on it and I was by no means to contact them, they would contact me. Since they provide not a phone number nor an email address, it’s not like I could have contacted them anyway, but now I’m in a holding pattern. Just waiting. But I know it will be slow. My application for a permesso in Italy arrived a few weeks after we returned home—nine months after applying, where it used to just take two or three. Things are slow at the moment, it’s a time to send grace and patience into the universe.)

On the metro to dinner, the kids mused that they needed to ready their stock responses— “Yes, it was a great year.” “Yes, I’m looking forward to going home, but I’m sad, too.” Et cetera, et cetera.

But Sandy doesn’t ask typical questions. It’s like she’s already thought through all that chaff, and instead offers compassion and perspective, by having considered what it must be like to be at this point—the whirlwind, the chaos, the flurry of emotions.

An example of her thoughtfulness—for dinner she’d chosen Bistrot 65, a restaurant along the Seine, close to Notre Dame, reasoning that since we were lodging in 19th century Paris, she thought it would be nice for us to move back in time and dine in medieval Paris.

The rain kept us from being able to sit outside and enjoy the environs or do anything beyond a cursory walk afterwards, but the restaurant was wonderful. Despite its location in a touristed area, it had the air of a neighborhood hang out—young adults gathered for a birthday dinner, couples leaning towards each other over small tables, a cheery bustle between kitchen and dining room.

The food was excellent, too. I had pork jowl cooked in apple cider and served in a dear little copper pot. And for dessert, a chocolate bomb—a sphere of chocolate upon chocolate, wonderful!

The rain had lessened by the time we finished dinner, so we all strolled to Notre Dame to say hello. Or bonsoir, I suppose.

I’m embarrassed to admit this, but I’d completely forgotten about the fire at Notre Dame in 2019 (I suppose that’s what happens when a pandemic demands center global attention). I startled at the scaffolding bolstering the walls, the burned streaks marring the ancient stone. Sandy told us how the builders selected oaks from all over France to support the new roof, and something about the camaraderie of those trees, together, for one purpose, lifted my spirits.

We said goodbye to Sandy and then wound our way to the metro station, past cafés spilling light onto sidewalks gleaming in the rain, past grocers collapsing their awnings, and couples strolling arm-in-arm, heedless of the drizzle.

The morning of July 14th dawned fresh, and while not exactly clear, at least blue sky peeked out here and there, behind clouds that finally seemed plumb out of rain. In a further bit of Bastille luck, Gabe’s sweater that I had conscripted to the trash can, had dried, and in that novel state, finally stopped reeking.

Sandy had told us about the schedule of the day’s events, so we knew there’d be an airshow in the morning. We walked around the top of Montmartre before deciding that the best view could be found at our apartment. So we breakfasted at the old world La Mere Catherine at the top of Montmartre and stared wide eyed as burly guys decked out in camo, berets, and machine guns marched past the artists setting up their easels. I shook my head at the contrast and wondered about the need for soldiers as we climbed flight after flight of stairs back to the apartment. The apartment that, you’ll remember, we overpaid for for the view and where neither of my kids wound up with a functioning bed.

Wow, was it worth it. You’d have to ask the kids if it was worth having to sleep on the floor, but it was certainly worth having my kids sleep on the floor for the sight of the jets thundering past the Eiffel Tower, dragging stripes of blue, white, and red. We lingered at the window as one aircraft after another crossed the Parisian skyline. Gabe could tell you all about each aircraft, as for me, I just hoped for more colors.

After the airshow, we walked to the Museum of Montmartre, which lies on a street full of half-timbered houses laced with climbing roses. Even though it’s an art museum, even Gabe enjoyed it, as the fun movie about Suzanne Valadon at the start and the various exhibits bring the bohemian spirit of turn-of-the-century Paris to life. I learned about artists I’d never heard of, and gained an appreciation for not just their work, but also their lives and their process and how their interactions both influenced other artists and also created the spirit of Montmartre.

Montmartre, and even the site of the museum, hosted many artists that are on the main stage–there’s a exhibit down one of Montmartre’s streets about Van Gogh, who trained here and painted the people and facets of the neighborhood. Renoir once rented a cottage in the gardens, and you can admire his swing in the yard of museum, marking the setting of one of his most iconic works.

Walking out of the museum toward Breizh Cafe that I’d chosen for its variety of crepes, I felt folded between the past and present, until they blurred together and I could hear can-can music in the distant fog, smell the paints dabbed on surfaces the way my daughter cleans her brushes on her arms or clothes when she has no ready rag, and hear political debate raging over glasses of absinthe. Is this my favorite neighborhood in Paris? It just might be. I resolved to look up books set here, fiction or non-fiction. If you have suggestions, let me know! My research didn’t turn up any that drew me into the world the way I wanted to be drawn in.

Crepes made the perfect lunch after this exploration of French history and its impact on modern Paris. And we gave ourselves wholesale to that menu—appetizer crepes, lunch crepes, and dessert crepes. Yum. In our visit to the Cognac area I developed a deep and abiding love for salted caramel, and I’m pretty sure my crepe with salted caramel was the very best dessert crepe at the table. But Siena would insist hers with passion fruit topped it, and Keith did get a pretty blissful look at his flaming crepe. Gabe, the stinker, didn’t get a dessert crepe. Sensible child claimed he was full. As if that should be a factor.

We walked off our hearty meal and hard cider by wandering around Montmartre. What a surprise to find throngs of people. What were they all doing here, clogging the streets we’d start to consider our own? I realized the source of the throngs—we had wandered into the the area between Sacré-Cœur and its attendant metro station. After all this time without tourists, it seemed a bit of an assault to the senses—all the people, the souvenir stands selling the same schlock, the pretense of authentic Paris when actual Paris lay just one street over. We ducked away and soon felt the peace and mystery that settle over Montmartre’s avenues.

Knowing we’d be leaving Paris early the next morning, we stopped for breakfast provisions and Keith pointed out a bottle of salted caramel sauce. I immediately decided that we couldn’t leave Paris without that bottle of salted caramel. But was there room? I’d already committed to chucking out my sneakers which had outlived their lifespan with my hours of tromping through olive groves in Italy, past waterfalls and wildflowers in Switzerland, not to mention along the forest brook in France, where we’d wound up at a potter that prompted me to decide to scrap said sneakers in favor of a bowl and salt cellar. Could I cram in a bottle of salted caramel sauce? I decided if I had to also leave behind some dingy socks, so be it. I would take that hit, I would make that sacrifice. I am nothing if not giving in that way. I’m just waiting for my medal of honor. It’s probably stuck in my suitcase.

We strolled further into the back alleys of Montmartre, gawking in the street at a windmill and pausing with a smile at the artificial windmill that was really more of a calling card attraction at the Moulin Rouge. Then we arrived at the Montmartre cemetery.

I’m not sure what I expected of a cemetery located in this reckless, outlandish, charming, intimate, over-the-top neighborhood, but it should have been exactly this. I’m not even sure I can explain it and the photos don’t do it justice (but you’ll find more at the end of htis post). it’s more necropolis than cemetery…an undulating sea of little buildings housing graves, partially located under the overpass, so the tops of the edifices brush against the steel of the bridge. Each mausoleum is totally different, so you might find one that would be at home in a steampunk movie next to a spindly gothic mausoleum with stained glass and gargoyles next to one that appears to be just a rock slab with a gnome perched on a articulated drain spout.

Every corner brought gasps and laughter and wonder, even without the search for names of famous Montmartre artists, the ones I newly felt a kinship with, a sense of connection.

To top if off, black cats slunk around the doors and even climbed out of windows. At closing time, men dressed in black walked through the lanes, ringing massive bells as the crows croaked in response.

Was this place for real?

My mind toyed with trying to evade the notice of the solemn bell clangers, to duck into one more grassy lane, to wonder at more graves, the one with winsome statues of painters or the enormous one designed to resemble a shiny electric guitar, with the stripes of a highway where strings should be. But those bell clangers had a distinct Poe like vibe, one that didn’t brooke insolence. So we allowed them to clang us right out of the gates.

With a little time before our dinner reservation, we stopped at a café that spilled across one of the terraces of Montmartre. I ordered one last Kir Royale. You can make them in the states, but the creme de cassis we have available to purchase in Virginia is not the same. Really it should be called creme de Robutussin.

So I’ll take a French Kir whenever I can, with or without champagne (that is to say, Royale or not Royale). And I smiled a little, remembering that I’d snuck a bottle of creme de cassis and a bottle of creme de peche (for the Cognac cocktails I fell in love in our pre-Paris visit to the Cognac area) in Keith’s suitcase.

For at least a bit after our return home, I’ll be able to pour myself a bit of France. That and Aperol may be all I need in terms of pre-dinner libations. Some evocative flavors, some memories of terraces drenched in sunshine and the overarching scent of something good cooking. Who could need more?

I’m totally lying, I can’t wait for my 22-year-old son who has become quite the cocktail connoisseur while he’s been living in Manhattan to make me a Corpse Reviver #2, with that little rinse of absinthe. Or his salted watermelon Aperol sour. Then again, those also remind me of my travels.

In any case, we reclined as much as rickety wood and iron seats allow for reclining and listened to the musicians while watching the birds soar up and over us, an echo of the earlier airshow. All I could think was, “I sure love Paris.”

Which is nice, right? After a year in Italy, it can come to feel like every place is less-than, a shadow of life in my beloved pink town on a hill. What a wonderful reminder before we embarked on the journey home that adventure awaits, with magical places that deepen the moment and brush up against bliss.

Our year in Italy may be over, but life opens up in front of us, too.

The perfect realization before what had to be the most spectacular dinner I could ever imagine. The cap of the cap of our year abroad.

Our friend John recommended Le Coq & Fils and said it was a bit quirky—a restaurant that only serves birds. But quirky and delicious seemed a fitting end to our quirky and delicious year, so we made a reservation and then, despite the advance warning, laughed aloud at the menu: a list of birds. All the birds are prepared the same way, so this was not a list of dishes like “squab with a sauce of prunes in Armagnac over a bed of toasted farro” but more like this:

Guinea Fowl

Duck

Chicken

Only the chicken was further divided into breeds. Each breed indicated also the age of the bird. If you have ever seen that Portlandia sketch about the couple ordering chicken in the restaurant and wanting to know details about the bird like his name and favorite meal, you’ll have an idea of how amusing we found this menu.

We ordered the Bresse chicken because I’d heard it’s a breed lauded for its deliciousness. Each bird comes with a side of fries (or macaroni and cheese) and a salad. The bird itself is poached in broth and then roasted. Figuring that would take awhile, we dipped into the appetizers, which were, fittingly enough, egg themed.

The hollandaise which blanketed the leeks was creamy with just the right amount of tartness. It made me excited about what else lay ahead. With it, we got an order of Scotch eggs, which I’d seen on a cooking show years ago and always been curious. For other neophytes, these are eggs which are hardboiled and then wrapped in a layer of sausage meat before being breaded and fried. Ours were served on a green sauce which lightened the dish and added a different savory level. Delicious!

We nibbled and sipped our Bordeaux wine and admired the chicken art all around. Soon enough, we were sharing memories of the year, unable to believe that so many days had blurred by so quickly, and at the same time, astounded by how much we’d seen and felt and done in a year’s span. We remembered the wild ponies hiding behind the olive trees on our regular walk to Spello’s Madonna, and the indomitable Domenica who made us the very best fried seafood and asked if Gabe wanted a whiskey, and the tanned-to-maroon fishermen in Gallipoli who caught fish with their bare hands before biting on the heads and sticking the fish in their speedos, and the cow parade in Switzerland, and waving to Pope Francis as he left his lunch with Spello’s nuns, and the how we were sure we’d fall into the lagoon when we learned to row like Gondoliers in Venice, and the surprise of finding Fritos with our aperitivo in Vernazza while Cinque Terre’s old men played yet another round of cards.

Faster than I would have expected, our waiter swanned in with a flourish, holding high a platter on which rested our cooked chicken. Unsure what response the situation demanded, I defaulted to applause. The waiter bowed and smiled proudly before returning the chicken to the kitchen for carving. So I guess applause was the right move, as it often is. I recalled aloud other moments of relying on a clap of hands to glide over a language impasse— when I finally learned how to pronounce ciascuolo in the market, when my COVID test was negative at the Swiss doctor’s office, when my pesto matched the creaminess of my teacher’s… applause creates a moment of shared joy.

So I applauded again when the chicken reappeared, this time carved into accessible pieces and flanked by standing cones of fries and a salad napped with a shallot vinaigrette. I closed my eyes and inhaled it all—the moment, the food, the being together for this last meal abroad before we returned home and our family unit necessarily shifted to accommodate the start of real school for Gabe, the start of college for Siena, the obligations and opportunities of normal life.

And then I reached for a piece of chicken. We had already wondered how in the world one chicken could be any better than any other chicken, so we’d resigned ourselves with great good cheer to the obvious truth that we were about to experience a solid chicken dinner, but nothing in the realm of astonishing.

Boy were we wrong.

This chicken, it’s what chickens want to be. Tender and delicious, with meat that practically fell apart into a happy heap of homey wonder. I reached for a fry and had to lean back and close my eyes as my teeth shattered the crispy exterior and a gracious potato flavor seemed to explode across my palate. When I opened my eyes, Keith smiled and took another fry, saying, “Right? These are the best fries ever.”

After a few bites of chicken and fries (for the record, chicken and fries would probably be my deathbed meal), I dutifully took a helping of salad. Duty salad. I didn’t expect the lettuce to be both silky and crispy and the dressing to sing of shallots and fine mustard.

Wow.

We laughed and ate and told stories and laughed and ate some more. I discovered the pot of chicken jus that Gabe and Siena had squirreled away on their side of the table and, dipping a piece of chicken in it, I declared it the ideal gravy, perfect in every particular. My family nodded mutely, and reached for one more fry, the oyster of the chicken, another leaf of shallot-y salad.

Soon we were all patting our stomachs, resolved to decline dessert. We were far too full for dessert, you see. Far too full.

So says the family immediately before accepting dessert menus just to be polite and then ordering dessert all around. But didn’t we have to? I mean, the desserts were egg-themed! Chocolate mousse (with ginger marmalade!) and strawberries with custard and something mysterious called Le Coq’s Ile Flottante, described on the menu as a snow egg.

Intriguing.

Amici, it was not intriguing, it was astonishing.

The flavor and the concept and the workmanship—astonishing! The best I can describe it is as a perfectly spherical ball of meringue floating in a vanilla bean creme anglaise, topped with a shaving of freeze dried strawberries. It looked like a reverse egg, a white softball in a pool of yellow. And it tasted like a marshmallow that disappeared as soon as it hit your mouth, against a foil of lingering, creamy custard.

Say it with me…

Wow.

Giddy and giggling, we made our way through the darkened streets of Montmartre to the apartment in time for the fireworks. Which were earlier than Sandy had said, and a bit less grand than I expected. But then I ratcheted down my expectations—I had pictured the the fireworks to loom over the Eiffel Tower, which they might if we were right there. Seen from above, of course the scale would equalize. So I tossed aside my preconceived notions and enjoyed the show. If a year abroad in a pandemic has taught me anything it’s the art of adjusting expectations. We went from planning a year around the world, from Scotland to Japan to Tanzania, and wound up not even able to leave our Italian village for three months. But that lockdown prompted us to explore the mountain behind our house, and some of our favorite family memories now include a Subasio backdrop—the mysterious depressions big enough to hold a truck, the views of snow-capped mountains, the crunch of snow beneath our feet.

it’s all about not being attached to outcomes. As long as we’re together and inhabit the spirit of adventure, the joy of life is for the taking.

The fireworks abruptly ended, before they were even supposed to start. We shrugged, having learned that there’s a lot we don’t know and what we do know is often wrong. It’s a side effect of living where you don’t fluently speak the language and so often have to nod and smile and piece together what you can later (“did she say something about her husband?” “I think that he fell off the tractor.” “I thought it was that they had to wait for the olives to ferment a little before using the tractor to take them in. She definitely pointed to the olives and said something about ‘becoming’”).

As if an answer to my inner work, just as I began brushing my teeth and cataloguing what I needed to find space for in my suitcase and thus what I’d have to leave behind, I heard a resonant BOOM. Kids shooting firecrackers? No, this sounded deeper than that.

A few booms later I looked up with a start and raced to the window, flanked by my family who had the same realization. We threw open the window and staggered backwards. Fireworks seem to be running up and down the Eiffel Tower, spiraling off the top and wheeling across the night sky.

Silence, total silence, as we watched the blue and red and white bloom above and around the Eiffel Tower. Ah, here it is.

Thoughts of what I had to bring and what I must leave behind staggered backwards into the shadows as I stood mystified and in awe at the constant beauty of this life I’m lucky enough to live.

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