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Click the photo of La Seine Musicale above to see an album of photos. Close the window to return to this page. What were we doing our first
weekend in Paris, last September? Well, grocery shopping, both in
Monoprix and the local markets, cooking meals, eating good dinners and
visiting a few new spots in town.
It was a family weekend. Atticus arrived home
Friday from his new school, Collège du Luat, in Piscop, near
Ézanville, about an hour
away via Metro and train from the family apartment. Atticus leaves for
school early Monday morning and stays as a border until noon on Friday.
Atticus got home a little later than usual the day we arrived in Paris.
Instead of staying for lunch at school on Friday, his 8th
grade class had a spontaneous pizza party in a restaurant in Piscop
before returning home for the weekend. That sounded like a good start to
the new school year.
Roman returned this year to the Bilingual school both boys attended last
year. He gets picked up each afternoon by Chao, their long time
babysitter. She usually gives Roman dinner each school night and both
boys dinner on Friday before their parents return home from work.
Erica and Andrew attended the first parent meeting at Atticus' school
Friday evening to meet the staff. That meant the grandparents made
dinner for Atticus, Roman and ourselves, allowing Chao to return to her
family a bit early.
The family this weekend included Andrew's father, Herb Auerbach. Herb
had arrived in France from his home in Vancouver a few weeks before and had
just finished a very successful tour of both WW1 and WW2 sites in Ypres,
Vimy and the Normandy Coast. Herb joined us for the weekend Saturday,
starting with a big Saturday morning breakfast.
Our outing for Saturday was to Île Seguin, an island in the Seine
that was the home of a Renault factory until 1992 and now houses La
Seine Musicale, a music and performance arts center, just opened in
April 2017. New foot bridges link the center to the mainland from both
sides of the Seine. We arrived by tram to find a huge glass geodesic
dome, covered on one side by a mobile sail of solar panels that move to
follow the path of the sun, providing both shade for a concert hall and
much of the energy for the building. Adjacent to the building is a
grassed berm, almost the same height as the dome. Newly planted with
bushes and flowers native to the Seine area, it gives both an excellent
view of the Seine and a pleasant walking space. The day was sunny and
warm and kayakers, paddle boarders and rowers in racing shells were out
in force. We had come to see the latest exhibition in La Seine Musicale,
Maria by Callas. The exhibit was an interesting retrospective of the
life of opera Singer, Maria Callas, told through interviews with her,
movie clips and recordings of some her most famous roles. She certainly
lived a dramatic, ever changing, but short life, dying in New York at
53.
We took the tram back to the apartment where Atticus, under my
direction, baked up a batch of chocolate chip cookies, using the
President’s Choice chips Ray and I brought from Ottawa. Chocolate chips
are not usually available in Paris. The cookies were slated for dessert
that night, accompanied by ice cream. While the final preparations for
dinner were made, Herb played a new card game with the boys. Cards, each
with either green or orange letters on each corner, are used to first
create 3 letter words, in French. If that succeeds, 4 letter words are
created. The player who created the most words is the winner. Of course,
Ray and I could more easily spot English words, but had more trouble
with French words, so we not official players.
Sunday has become the day to go swimming. This Sunday I joined Andrew
and the boys. We drove to the public pool in a shared electric car,
several of which are parked just a short block from the apartment. You
pay an annual fee, use an app to locate the closest available car and
fill in the information on the kiosk next to the parking place. It was a
very convenient and inexpensive way for the four of us get to the pool.
Once at the pool, Andrew and I headed for the large, deep pool with swim
lanes, to practice lengths. The boys jumped into one of the play pools
where they had a great time. They also took advantage of the large tube
slide and swam outside in the open air section.
After lunch, Herb and Erica left to see a Pop Art exhibit at Musée de
Millau. Ray went for a walk, the boys relaxed with their computer games,
and I took advantage of down time to recover a bit more from jet lag.
Dinner was a feast. Andrew had made Osso Buco that afternoon, Herb made
risotto with lots of wild mushrooms and our desert was a rich chocolate
cake, baked by Andrew. This was Herb’s last meal with us as he flew back
to Vancouver the next morning.
We stayed in Paris just two nights before heading off with the boys for
the rest of the week. Atticus and Roman were on their October school
break so we had arranged to rent an apartment in the Argonne region. We
drove to the Argonne the next Tuesday with plans for Erica to join us
the next Saturday morning and drive back to Paris with us on Sunday.
Our return to Paris on October 29 was just in time to get the boys ready
for a trip to Malaga, Spain, with Andrew on Monday, where they would
stay at a resort by the sea for several days. Ray and I just had to
ready ourselves to fly home to Ottawa on Tuesday, October 31. We did
take time off on Monday to walk to Les Invalides, close to Erica’s
library in the British Trade Commission building to meet her for lunch.
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