Bourgeois

I’ve been noticing that while the average Parisian woman on the street is very well-dressed, it’s a very bourgeois type of fashion:  nice shoes/purse/scarf/watch/perfume/suit.  It’s exactly my style, but it’s definitely not at the cutting edge of fashion innovation.  I think that Los Angeles and New York are much more fashion forward in terms of taking risks and doing new things.  Paris feels much less oriented toward the new and the young.  There’s something very settled feeling in this place, which I like.  I can wear my good shoes/purse/scarf/watch/perfume and feel right at home.

Went to dinner last night with some friends who are in Paris for a week.  Jeff Behrens and Lori Rutter live in Boston, but I didn’t know them when we lived there.  I met them only last summer when they came to our place in Alaska.  Jeff was an exchange student here in college, so he knows his way around.  We met for early evening drinks at Cafe Marly which is in the Palais Royal directly across from the pyramid entrance to the Louvre.  Lori had taken a bad spill within hours of arriving here on Monday, and sprained her ankle; but is carrying on like a trouper.  I’m completely impressed with her good spirits and stamina — or maybe it’s the good pain killing drugs?  After watching the sunset and drinking mint tea, we took the Metro to a bistro in the Marais and had a more typical French meal than I’ve had here so far.  I had a pumpkin soup appetizer that was delicious.  Butter!  Yum!  Lori had smoked salmon and Jeff had a salad with crispy duck bits on top.  For our entrees Jeff had duck breast and Lori had veal and I had a white fish.  We had dessert of shared bites of pear tart, deeply rich dark chocolate tart, and flottant, which is a classic French dessert of meringue in a bath of creme anglaise with toasted almond slivers.  Delicious.  I don’t remember the name of the place off the top of my head.  I’ll have to ask Jeff.  We’re going to try to connect at least once more while they’re here.  I feel so relieved to speak English that I’m happy to babble away endlessly with them.

When we were here last April, we explored different neighborhoods with an eye to their potential for longer term visiting this spring.  My impression of the Marais was that it was maybe too edgy for me.  The New York analogy is that I’m an upper east side, or maybe upper west side, kind of babe.  I like to visit the galleries in Chelsea and the Meatpacking District, but I don’t want to live upstairs from a nightclub.  Last night after dinner we walked around a bit in the Marais and there were many more people carousing about, drinking from wine bottles and having noisy arguments in the street than there are in my neighborhood.  I made a good decision to stay in the 7th arrondissement.  Bourgeois Amy.