At 7 AM my dog Britanie tells me it is time to get up and start our daily routine. It begins with her first walk of the day that includes a stop at Boulangerie Delattre, on rue du Cherche-Midi. There I leave her attached to a hook outside the door while I run in and buy my breakfast croissant for 1.10€.

I prefer a croissant beurre, made with butter as opposed to ordinary croissants, which are made with margarine. The butter gives it more flavor than the ordinary croissant.

“The quality of the butter also makes a big difference,” Mme. Delattre tells me. She and I both remember when butter prices went up and the Delattres experimented with a lower quality. They gave it up in disgust after a couple of weeks and raised their price from 1€ to 1.10€. Cheaper butter produces a chewier croissant, with less taste. The Delattre croissant beurre is flaky, and when small flakes fall off, I give them to Britanie, who watches for them with an eagle eye.

I eat the croissant with my two morning cups of coffee. I love this breakfast ritual, which I have followed for over forty years, first with my husband Earl, who died four years ago, now alone. I have held to it like a treasure, to remember him by.

But today is Saturday, August 12, beginning a four-day weekend which will culminate on Tuesday, August 15, a legal holiday called Assumption. It celebrates the bodily taking up of the Virgin Mary to heaven at the end of her earthly life. The French call such cobbled together long weekends ponts or bridges. This holiday looks to me like a consolation prize for those businesses unable to take their fermeture annuelle (annual closing) in August. More businesses seem to close for this one than for Christmas.

The hunt is on

Knowing that Boulangerie Delattre will be closed for the whole month, I go straight to Boulangerie Thevenin on the rue de Rennes, a bit farther from home. Their croissant beurre, also 1.10€, is large and flaky, just as good as Delattre, but I don’t like to leave Britanie hooked up alone by the door in this busy area where I cannot see her from inside.

Alas, their “engineers,” as Earl used to call them, have built the holiday “bridge” and Thevenin is closed. A sign on the door tells me this boulangerie will reopen on Wednesday, August 16th.

Britanie and I walk several blocks further to Eric Kayser at the corner of rue de Sèvres and boulevard du Montparnasse. Eric Kayser is a chain with twenty locations, three of them in New York. I have always distrusted chain stores because their quality can vary so much. After a long wait in line I pay 1.20€ for my croissant beurre, thinking that for the 10 cents more than I am used to paying it had better be good. It is flaky enough, but it has a burnt spot on the bottom.

The following day, Sunday, August 13, Eric Kayser is closed. I remember that the bakery and pastry shop Gérard Mulot, a good deal farther from home, near the Marché St. Germain, is open on Sundays. Better known for its pastries, I don’t find the Mulot croissants as good as either of the other two. They are chewy rather than flaky, and again I remember a burnt spot on the bottom of the last one I had. It also costs 1.40€. But I am desperate, so Britanie and I trek down there, only to find they are taking the whole month off.

On my way home I pass several other boulangeries, including a big chain one, Secco. All are closed today. At last I remember Boulangerie La Parisienne, at the corner of rue de Vaugirard and rue Madame. It’s one of seven shops owned by a baker who in 2016 won the presitigious Best Baguette in Paris competition which made him the official supplier to the Elysées Palace (official residence of the French president) for a year. I stand in an interminable line of mostly English speaking tourists struggling to order in French. My croissant costs 1.20€, it is the largest one I have found yet, and it is nice and flaky. To me, it’s also tasteless. After I eat half of it, I give the rest to Britanie. She nibbles it without enthusiasm.

On Monday August 14th, I assume Eric Kayser will be open, since it was closed the day before. It is, but when I get there around 10:30, they are sold out of croissants. Secco is, however, open, and I take home a croissant that is more than chewy, it is almost tough, for which I again pay 1.20€. This time Britanie gets three quarters of my rejected croissant. She does not lick her dish to get every crumb.

Eric Kayser has announced that its boulangerie will be open on August 15, Assumption Day itself. It keeps its promise. I go early, at 9 AM, and find a breakfast croissant that is reasonably flaky, reasonably buttery, bottom unburnt this time.

By August 16, the worst is over. Thevenin has reopened, and will see me through until my favorite Boulangerie Delattre reopens at the end of the month. I will then be at peace until next August, when Britanie and I will set out again on the Great Croissant Hunt.

© Alice Evleth, 2018

Alice Evleth is a long-time American expatriate living in the 6th arrondissement of Paris.

The post Holiday in Paris: The Croissants of August appeared first on France Revisited - Life in Paris, Travel in France.

An idea comes to me. Why not an afternoon in a park? I live near the Jardin de Luxembourg, in the middle-class 6th district. It is a formal garden in one part, with tennis courts in another. A fountain created at the initiative of Queen Marie de Médicis has been placed to one side. The garden now belongs to the French Senate. There I can enjoy watching ducks swimming in lines in the center pool, or admire 106 statues, but I must stay off the grass. I don’t feel like going to the Luxembourg Garden today. I know it too well. Since it’s vacation time in Paris, I’m in the mood to try something new and a bit less formal.

I consult Google, make a list of a dozen parks I don’t know. The one I choose is the Jardin de la Folie Titon, on the rue de Chanzy in the 11th district of Paris, a racially mixed working class area some distance from my home. I choose it because it sounds small and cozy, a real neighborhood park, but especially because I have never heard of it before.

When I reach the park I learn that it does have some history connected with it. At the entrance, a sign tells me about it. The Folie Titon was a wallpaper factory built here before the French Revolution, and it participated in that event’s history.

A plaque on a wall on the nearby rue de Montreuil says that on April 28, 1789, a few days before the opening of the Estates General, the factory was burned during a people’s riot that was harshly repressed. Another plaque states that the first manned hot air balloon took off from this site October 19, 1783. The factory was rebuilt, but then demolished permanently in 1880. A middle school now stands on the site, built in the architectural style of the small factories which still exist in the neighborhood. It features broad windows across each floor, overlooking the park. The school is named Pilâtre de Rozier, after the 1783 balloonist.

The Folie Titon Garden is designed with a circular path around a big lawn, where today, couples and families are sitting or lying. There are no “keep off the grass” warnings here. An informational sign tells me about a lily pond at the far end of the park, recently installed to encourage “aquatic biodiversity.” There I see water lilies with tall reeds behind them, and a goldfish swimming around. In front of the pond are a variety of flowering and aromatic plants, honeysuckle, nasturtium, fuchsia, sage, and even a few vegetables, cherry tomatoes and squash.

I sit down on one of the numerous benches placed along the path, and watch the people around me. There are other bench sitters, most of them elderly white men. On the lawn there is a mother with a curly headed brown-skinned boy who looks to be about four. He is having a fine time chasing the butterflies flitting around the plants that separate the lawn from the path. He takes time out from his chase to greet me. “Bonjour,” he says. “Bonjour,” I reply. I can see his mother watching him from the lawn, but she does not get up. She must not consider me scary.

What could be scary is the group of teenage boys clustered near one of the park’s exits, not far from the lily pond. They are blacks and Arabs, and they are talking loudly. They stand very close together, and it’s hard to tell just what they are doing. Are they smoking weed? Could they be a gang? I am apprehensive, but relax when I see that the teenagers are ignoring all of the other users of the park, who are also ignoring them. Nobody seems afraid, so I will not be, either.

Two young women, one white, one black, dressed in summer casual clothes, pass my bench. They must live in the neighborhood, I think.

Just beyond me, they stop and look at the middle school. They have a Paris guide, and one reads to the other from it. Once they have finished reading, they take pictures with their phones, then they leave the park. “Why, they’re tourists!” I think to myself with amusement. I thought the only tourist in this little-known, out-of-the-way neighborhood park was me.

I sit for a while longer, enjoying the peaceful atmosphere, then I leave the park, too. I follow the path the rest of the way around the central lawn. There are fewer people on this side, few trees, no benches.

Then I see the Plaque. It is white marble, with lists of names in columns in black letters.

The Plaque reads:

“Arrested by the Vichy Government police, accomplices of the occupying power (Germany), more than 11,000 children were deported from France from 1942 to 1944, and murdered in the Nazi camps because they were born Jews. More than 1200 of these children lived in the 11th district. Among them, 199 babies who had not had time to attend school.

“Passerby, read their names, your memory is their only burial place.”

The children are listed by name and age, one by one, first the babies under four, then the children four to seven.

I feel like I have been hit in the stomach. None of my research on the Jardin de la Folie-Titon made any mention of this memorial to these deported children, the largest and most detailed of its kind that I have seen anywhere in Paris. Few people follow the circular path in that direction, where there are no trees, no benches. From the other side of the lawn, I myself did not notice the Plaque.

In 1942, when the deportation of these children started, I was seven years old, the same age as the oldest of them. In 1945, after the war ended and the concentration camps were opened, I saw a photo in Life Magazine showing heaps of naked corpses. I was ten, an age none of those Plaque children ever reached. I have never forgotten that photo, which became the root of my choice, as a historian, to study the fate of Jews in France under Vichy.

As I walk home through the Jardin du Luxembourg, my mind is still full of my discovery at the Jardin de la Folie Titon. My pretty, formal neighborhood park now seems stiff and stilted compared to what I just saw. I am so happy to live in this city where I can become a tourist and can find something that is more than just pretty, that has a personal meaning for me.

© 2017, Alice Evleth

Alice Evleth is a long-time American expatriate living in the 6th arrondissement of Paris.

The post Paris Parks & Gardens: The Cross-City Tourist appeared first on France Revisited - Life in Paris, Travel in France.

Some occasions are more challenging than others. Consider fashion standards for women visiting their near and dear in a maximum security prison. Their dress style depends on their relationship to the prisoner. Mothers and friends choose clothing that is practical—warm coats, pants and pullovers—because the prison visiting room is cold and dank.

For the young wife, a black lace dress with a very short skirt is the ultimate in prison chic. Young wives wear this kind of outfit to titillate their men. No, it’s not being mean. They know that in this maximum security prison, sex in the visiting room is tolerated. That’s why they also wear voluminous scarves, draped not tied in the fashion of chic Parisian women. These scarves will be used to turn the semi-private visiting booths into more private enclosures. The rule for everyone in the drab blue visiting room, from the guard on duty at one end to the other visitors in neighboring booths, is “don’t ask, don’t look.”

The sexy wives do not, however, wear shoes with spike heels. Those don’t make it through the metal detector. These wives know, as do all the other women, that stiletto heels contain hidden metal stiffening. They don’t want to attract attention by tripping the metal detector, especially if they are smuggling in contraband, drugs, or more innocently, chocolate chip cookies. Boat shoes or rubber sandals may not be very glamorous, but in a maximum security prison, fashion sometimes has to adjust.

© 2014, Donna Evleth

Alice Evleth is a long-time American expatriate living in the 6th arrondissement of Paris.

The post Maximum Security Fashion appeared first on France Revisited - Life in Paris, Travel in France.

An old couple lived in the apartment. I used to see them from time to time in the street. He was a robust looking man, but he had that old man’s shuffle that gets slower and slower with time. Eventually he needed a cane. Later still, the only times he went outside he was accompanied by his wife. Wiry, brown like a wren, she stuck close to his side, ready to prop him up, to help him over a rough spot or catch him if he fell. His face had a grim set to it; these carefully supervised walks were surely not a pleasure, more like a duty he knew he had to do to keep going.

Then I stopped seeing the old man out on the street. I saw him only between the roses of the stained glass window, sitting in an armchair, watching television. Early morning, mid-afternoon, night, each time I walked the dog, he was there, with the television always on.

Today there is a For Sale sign on the apartment, on the window of a little study adjoining the living room with the stained glass. The armchair is empty. The round-the-clock television is dark and silent.

I mourn for this old man though all I knew of him was that he appreciated the beauty of a stained glass window in a neighborhood of anonymous clear glass panes.

I hope whoever buys the apartment will keep the stained glass window of the living room. There are so few beauty marks along my daily dog walk route.

© 2013, Alice Evleth

Alice Evleth is a long-time American expatriate living in the 6th arrondissement of Paris.

The post The Stained Glass Window, a Paris Vignette appeared first on France Revisited - Life in Paris, Travel in France.