You Can Stay in My Chateau

Dear Reader,

One year not too long ago frustrated with our family during Christmas time we decided to escape and spend Christmas in our favorite city, Paris. It felt selfish and I had difficulty with the guilt of not putting on our annual Christmas feast and overall drunkathon but it seemed that no one cared anymore, so why should we?

We flew to Paris the day before Christmas Eve arriving on the day of. I had a nice chat with a local Parisian next to me on the plane who told me all about the Christmas Eve tradition of eating raw oysters. This I had never heard. He even gave me several recommendations for restaurants that might still be able to fit us in. They get booked up far in advance. As for him, he was picking up a case of oysters to take home and prepare for the family himself. A very nice man, indeed.

Upon arrival at Charles de Gaul airport we took the RER train into town. However, the ticket does not cover the metro so we had to get off at Gare du Nord to buy our metro tickets. We've done this before many times but this time the station was empty and quiet as a morgue. There were no ticket windows open anywhere so we decided to look for a ticket machine. They did not seem prevalent either. I think we were both just so tired and both coming down with colds that we couldn't think straight.

A young woman saw us standing around trying to figure out which way to go and she came up to us and asked if she could help. We told her and she pointed the direction of the closest ticket machine and gave detailed instructions how to find it. I'm glad I met her because I don't know if I would have ever found that one.

Once we found the ticket machine we had other issues. I think it was difficult to tell which button to push for credit cards vs. a pass or cash. I'm not sure. Like I said, I was bleary eyed. Then a very nice young man approached and asked if he could help us. We told him the problem and he did it for us while explaining how it worked. Normally I would have felt stupid not knowing because we've bought tickets from these machines many times before but in this situation I was just grateful. How nice it was of him to help strangers and obvious tourists.

We got to the Hotel St. Andre des Arts, where we had stayed three times before, and it was like a homecoming. The owner was there playing  his jazz CDs and recognized us and offered a big greeting. We found our room which was in the loft, a six floor walkup. By the time we made it to the room we were so exhausted that we fell asleep. It had been an overcast yet warm and muggy day so we had all the windows open when this happened.

At midnight I awoke to the sound of Notre Dame's bells ringing. I couldn't believe it. We'd slept through our Christmas Eve dinner. Oh well. We agreed there was nothing to do about eating so we went back to sleep. Once again, we were unaware that we were about to be very sick and just thought it was unusually bad jet lag.

Christmas in Paris is extremely festive and the people seem to be overjoyed. Lights were everywhere. Each arrondisement (quarter) had it's own light display. I particularly liked the lights in the second arrondisement which were very old fashioned and hanging over the ancient streets. Up at Montmarte there were white lights on all of the trees and the stone pavements glistened. There was no snow but the views of Paris and around were glistening, even during the daytime. Of course the Champs Elysee was lit up for it's full length. Every tree had white lights all over it, not just a few but all of them. At one intersection there were Christmas trees arranged in two different traffic circles. They were quite large and flocked. After dark colored lights would rotate shining various hues of green, red, blue, purple, yellow on the white trees. It was a beautiful sight to behold. Another great display was at the Hotel Ritz inside their solarium. All trees were decorated and brilliant, some green and some flocked and they glittered reflecting on pools of water. It was a lovely sight.

By the day after Christmas we were both quite ill. It was sad to feel so bad in Paris and we did our best to keep our spirits up and enjoy ourselves. I thought it might be a nice change to go down the street to the Irish Pub and have beer instead of our usual French aperitif. This was probably a mistake because it was dark, packed and filled with cigarette smoke which made John cough and my throat hurt, but I wanted my beer so we looked for an empty table with no luck. I noticed a table which could seat four people squeezed together and only had two occupants, a man and a woman sitting across from each other. They did not appear to be in love so I walked right up and asked if anyone was sitting with them. They shook their heads and offered us a seat.

Hard rock music was playing rather loudly so communication was difficult. Neither of our companions spoke a word of English so I had to do my best shouting in French. The man looked like a fisherman. He had a heavy five o'clock shadow, a thick lamb's wool hat and fisherman's wool sweater on. He also looked rather dazed and confused. I mistakenly thought he was bombed. His companion was older, perhaps by ten years, and she was in business attire. An odd couple to say the least.

I was trying to explain to John where we were going to tour the next day but he couldn't hear me either so I got our my Paris Carte Musee blooklet which comes with the Carte Musee pass. This pass is one of the greatest deals offered by any city I've ever visted. It allows free admission to almost every major sight in Paris and also out of Paris including Versailles and Chateau de Vincennes plus Saint-Denis where all of the French royals are buried. The best part is you never have to wait in any lines, not even at the Louvre. Just walk right past the lines and show your pass and you can visit as often as you like. This is especially good at the Musee' D'Orsay where the line wrapped around the block the last time we were there. We walked right past them and showed our passes to the guard who lifted the red velvet rope for us to walk right in. The passes can be purchased for 1, 3, 5 or 7 days and it's worth every penny. The booklet that comes with the pass folds like an accordian down to the size of a credit card. The pages show all sights included plus their hours of operation, telephone number and address, bus and metro or RER information. It's a great little guide.

On the back of my guide booklet was a minitature of a painting by Picasso. The fisherman saw it and yelled Picasso! I looked at it and agreed that it was a Picasso. He got excited and yelled Picasso again. So I asked him if he liked Picasso. He was still perplexed and spoke to his friend in some unusual dialect that I didn't understand. She tried to explain to me in English which I also didn't understand. I looked and John and he was just as confused. Then he pointed at the picture and back at himself and said Picasso. Now I was worried. This guy thought HE was Picasso.

I looked at John and kind of nudged him a bit as a signal to drink up and let's get out of here. And then he spoke to me in normal French and said something very strange. He inherited a Picasso and it's touring in New York City as we speak. I was thinking, yeah, sure, you own a touring Picasso. Uh huh. He continued to speak slowly and more distinctly and was drawing on a napkin his story. As it turned out, a friend of his had recently passed away and left his Picasso to the fisherman. Not only that, but the fisherman also inherited two and one half chateaux. I asked him twice what he meant by a half chateau but he didn't understand. At least we were making progress.

He ordered us another round of beers and explained that he is a fisherman in Brittany and was in Paris today for the reading of the will. His sister-in-law, who lives in Paris, had accompanied him to help out. He had no idea his friend was going to leave him anything and was still in quite a state of shock when we met him. His sister-in-law confirmed this. I could tell she was rather excited about the whole idea. This guy is a commercial fisherman and owns his own boat but never had anything like a chateau before, much less two and one half chateaux. It was kind of funny and we all started to laugh about it.

We gave many toasts to him in celebration of his good fortune and had an enjoyable evening. Before we left he said very seriously "You can come to Brittany and stay in my chateau.". My eyes must have opened into quarters over that offer and I was immediately a little mistrustful being an American and all and disappointed because we had to fly home the next evening.

Finally the smoke and the drink got to us and we decided we had forgotten to eat dinner again so we should find a restaurant. We told them that we had to leave shortly. He wrote his name, Albine, and addres on the inside of my Carte Musee and said seriously if we ever were to visit Brittany to be sure to let him know and we can stay in his chateau. His sister-in-law, Manuella, also gave us her email address just in case. They were so nice and such every day working people that I felt extremely fortunate to have met them and made a connection.

By the time we flew home I was actually feeling better but poor John was really sick and coughed all the way home. We had such happy and fond memories of our Christmas in Paris though. So many kind and friendly people reached out to us during our visit. Even the waiters were especially friendly and outgoing for Christmas. I've never had any complaints about Parisians or the French in general and fail to understand people who do. This experience just reinforced what I believe to be true. People are the same everywhere and you must give them a chance to make a connection in order to find out this simple truth.

Bon Nuit