Weekend Part 1: Introduction to Parisian Cafés and a Journey Back to the Middle Ages

After a week of living in Paris, I finally made it to my first Parisian café. My friend and I went out Friday night in search of an inexpensive place to get dinner, but as we quickly learned, the difference between café, inexpensive restaurant, and bar is quite ambiguous. As we strolled around Saint Germain or the Latin Quarter, we found a number of places that served food, but all the people sitting at the tables were smoking, drinking, and eating peanuts. When we stumbled upon restaurants, they were often too expensive for our budget. In the end, we chose a place where some people were eating, but a large number of people were just drinking.

The café culture of Paris is very different from anything in the United States. People go to a café with friends or for romantic reasons. They order something to drink and then they just sit there for hours. There was a couple next to my friend and me and they spent the whole time we were there just snuggling. There was a group of girls at the next table over and they just sat there and smoked. The couple ordered a few rounds of drinks, but the girls didn’t order anything after their initial cups of coffe. Cafés can afford this because they charge so much for the drinks. A Coke (“coca” in French) costs 5 euros or $7. When you buy a drink, you’re buying the right to sit at the table.

My café experience was a little different. We were there to eat, so we didn’t linger like everyone else. Still, even at a place where drinks are more than half of the menu, the food was surprisingly good, but what else would you expect in France? I got a warm goat cheese salad, which turned out to be a green salad accompanied by pieces of toast with semi circles of goat cheese. I was puzzled as to why the cheese was so sweet until I realized that they had covered it with honey. At the end of the meal, my friend and I were a little puzzled as to the tipping culture, but we just assumed that the price included both tax and tip. That may be one of the reasons why French prices seem so high.

We spent the rest of the evening wandering around the Latin Quarter. In the course of the evening, we passed by some of the famous cafés like the Deux Magots and Café Flore. The French class I took last semester, Visions of Paris, is useful from time to time. Both of these are incredibly expensive and full of French people who obviously know that they’re something special if they can afford to go there. After all, the wine is over 100 euros a bottle. Being poor students, we got ice cream and went down to the side of the Seine. As I said in an earlier entry, I really enjoy going down to the Left Bank where people go to stroll or sit by the Seine. We sat by the river and watched the boats go by. Some of them had parties, which reminded me of Senior Boat. Paris is a great city to be young on a Friday night, even for a poor student like me.

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This city must have more museums than just about any city in the world. My first day here, I stumbled across a museum dedicated to the chase and nature. History major that I am, the first museum I went to here was the Musée de Cluny, the museum of the Middle Ages. As museums go, this one is rather small, but I was quite pleased with the collection. They do an excellent job of arranging the objects, so you’re not just looking at a bunch of objects from the middle ages, but instead see a tapestry with a picture of a horse and then see the harness for the horse and understand that both were important to the hunt. Most of the rooms are arranged around a theme. I particularly liked the tapestries, because they show scenes of everyday life. Even the ones with scenes of the lives of saints had peasants tending the fields in the background.


For its special exhibit, the museum had chosen to feature “the Bath and the Mirror.” Instead of focusing on the idea of beauty over time, the exhibit focused more on hygiene and the preparation of cosmetics. I particularly liked that they recreated the make up from Roman times. Apparently, blond hair was the ideal of feminine beauty during the Middle Ages. The creature above actually held Roman make up in his prime.


After the museum, my friend and I decided to go to the Panthéon, which is the burial place of a number of famous French people. The upper part is one of those breathtaking buildings with high ceilings. Along the wall are frescoes of the lives of some of the more famous French paints, but the statues in the middle celebrate orators and other famous secular figures.


Once I descended into the crypt, I found myself in the middle of the graves of the leading thinkers in French history. On either side of the first chamber, I was greeted by the graves of Voltaire and Rousseau. As I explored further, I found the final resting places of Dumas, Hugo, Zola, both Marie and Pierre Currie, and various other notables from French history. Most of them surprisingly had plain tombs. Still, I was overwhelmed when I left. In the United States, you would never find such a collection of famous people buried in one place. We’re so spread out that it would be next to impossible to bury all the famous Americans in one place.

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Yesterday morning when I was leaving the foyer, my friend and I heard music coming from over the wall of the building next door. We went to explore and found a group of children putting on a performance for their parents. It was so cute, a bunch of elementary school students doing traditional French dances.

Qu’est que c’est un foyer or what exactly is a foyer?

In the previous entry, I mentioned that I was staying at La Vigie, a foyer on the Île Saint Louis. Before I left for Paris, I told everyone that a foyer is like a dorm, but now that I’m here, I feel that is more like a boarding house. I’ll explain more and then you can decide for yourself.

The occupants of La Vigie are young women between the ages of 18-25. At a dorm, the inhabitants are bound by the fact that they attend the same school or university. There is more of a fluidity to La Vigie, because we’re all staying here for different reasons, though most of us are either attending university or working. In addition, people go in and out on a weekly basis. Some people stay for long lengths of time, like my roommate who has been here for more than a year, while others like me and the other girls from my school, are only staying for the summer. There are people from all over both Europe and Asia staying at the foyer, but I think that the four girls from my school are the only Americans. I’ve personally met people from Italy, Spain, Britain and of course, France. I’m enjoying meeting people from all over. Aaron always teases me about my international complex.

As for the actual building, I think it may have been a home for nuns at one time. There’s a statue of the Virgin Mary on one of the staircases and one of my friends found a plaque that described the building as a nunnery. I get the sense that the buildings are fairly old, especially considering the quality of the plumbing. We have to enter at an imposing wooden door on a narrow street on the Île. Once you go in, there’s a cobble-stoned courtyard with a garden where we can eat. There’s a cat that lives in the garden and a number of people who live here feed it. There’s a room next to the entry way, which is the only place where the WiFi really works, so it’s always crowded with residents. The actual rooms are in the four buildings that surround the courtyard. Think of the standard limestone French building with the shutters and window boxes and you’re on the right track. In each of the four buildings, there is only one toilet per floor and one or two showers. I actually have a sink in my room though along with a desk, a lamp, a closet, and a bed.

As with my residence college at school, the foyer serves meals; however, they only give us breakfast and dinner during the week. We have to cook for ourselves on the weekend, but I’ll save that for another entry. For breakfast, they put out a giant basket of French bread and a bunch of spreads. There aren’t the multiple varieties of cereals I’ve gotten used to at school and no fruit. Like a number of the other residents, I have to drink my tea from a bowl because the set of eating utensils they gave me didn’t include a mug. The dinner consists of either fruit or dessert, a warm plate of food (usually a starch, a choice of meal, and cooked vegetables), either yogurt or cheese, and of course, bread. The food tends to be decent; I would compare it to Wilson on a good night. Once in a while, it can be a little odd. Two nights ago, they served andouillets, which turned out to be a sausage made of the innards of a pig. My French friend later told me that none of the real French people actually took it. Alas for foolish Americans.

I’ve never lived in an all female residency and if I start to think about it, there are certain differences between the environment at my residential college and at La Vigie. First of all, it’s a lot quieter. The first night I arrived happened to be a Friday. Suffering from jet lag, I woke up in the middle of night a number of times. Each time, it was completely quiet. When I went down the hall to the bathroom, I felt like I was disturbing everyone by the horrible noise the floor made when it creaked. I later realized that a lot of the French girls go home for the weekend, but even during the week, it’s quiet way before midnight.

I think it’s also easier to approach people and make friends in an-all female residency. At dinner, it’s not as awkward to just sit down with a group of girls. Everything is simpler and more straightforward. Everyone is very relaxed and no one has a problem wandering around in her pajamas. True, a number of people do that at Princeton, but I think it took me longer to be comfortable doing that.

Finally, the fact that La Vigie is an all female foyer means that are certain rules and limitations. Whenever we leave the foyer, we have to flip our card on a huge board. During the day and until 10 at night, there is always someone at the main desk. If we have guests, they have to sign in and they cannot go upstairs into the rooms.

The picture here is the courtyard as seen from Sully, the building where I live.

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The last time I was in Paris 3 years ago, I made a point of trying to find something the reminded me of each of my friends and I had a mental list by the end of the trip. I never did go back and tell them what specifically had reminded me of them. Now all I remember is that I associated Merry with the mummified cats at the Louvre. My apologies, Merry. This time, I’ll try to actually pass these observations on by recording them here. Thus, Aaron gets a shout out here; however, I’ll try to find something slightly more exciting in the future.

In Which I Admit Defeat and Create a Blog

Although I’ve had a lot of pressure to create a blog, I finally decided to start one when I realized that there is absolutely no way I can keep up with so many people at once. This doesn’t mean that I’ll stop e-mailing and facebooking, but it means I can stay in touch more easily with a lot of people without having to write variations of the same e-mail. I will make an effort to update a couple times a week with both observations about France and my adventures.

At the present time, I have an internship at the École des Ponts, which is just a little outside of Paris. I am staying at La Vigie, a foyer on the Île Saint Louis, right in the heart of Paris. I haven’t gone to any of the well-known places, but I have wandered around Paris quite a bit, so I’ll devote this first entry to sharing some initial impressions.

As of now, my favorite places I’ve been to in Paris are:

1. Jardin Luxembourg
2. The walkway along the Left Bank of the Seine
3. Jadin de Plantes

The natural parts of Paris aren’t the ones you always see in postcards, but they are the areas where there aren’t as many tourists. The Jardin Luxembourg is especially gorgeous and has statues of the queens of France, which I found particularly thrilling. A friend and I made sure to visit all the queens. Even though they have the most famous, there were still some I didn’t know. I’ve also taken to walking along the Seine, because it’s actually quite calming. I can see the historic buildings, such as Notre Dame, without having to deal with the crowds.

At the same time, I love that Paris is so bustling and that there’s so much to do here. It’s so much more alive than Princeton and even San Francisco. Just crossing the street is an adventure. The cars don’t always stop at red lights and you have to be on your toes at all times.

Most least favorite place: San Michel

After growing up in San Francisco, I have a rather low opinion of tourists. One of the reasons why I have so few pictures is because I want to experience Paris as a resident rather than see it through a camera like a visitor. I also don’t particularly want people to know I’m a foreigner, but between my ever-present map and my bad French, I think it’s quite evident. I do want to want to visit the Louvre, Notre Dame, and all the other places that make Paris so special, but I don’t really want to spend too much time in the areas just geared towards tourists. Saint Michel is about the worst. The whole neighborhood is full of shops selling t-shirts with the Mona Lisa and toy Eiffel Towers. There was even a shop that sold berets, but I have yet to see a French person wearing one. The restaurants with ornate decorations remind me of Fisherman’s Wharf. I know it sounds clichéd, but I’d prefer to discover the real Paris, but it’s difficult considering the glitz and glamour are part of the city.

The biggest difference between the French and American that I’ve noticed so far: the French eat way more yogurt.

I told this to someone yesterday and they laughed, but it’s actually true. I have yet to see a French person drink a glass of milk, but they will eat yogurt after every meal. Of course, cheese is more prevalent here than in the United States, but both at my foyer and at the house of the family I visited, a number of people ate yogurt almost as an aperitif after the meal.


I promise, I will update in the near future. I do plan to actually go somewhere interesting this weekend, which I will of course share here, but I will also share more details of my life in the foyer. Stay posted for Miranda’s weak attempts at trying to cook dinner.

The picture is of a store for bears in the Marais. I had to take a picture considering my interests.