Party on with Pigs - Monday, 15 October

Late this afternoon I stopped into Au Pied de Cochon ("At the Foot of the Pig," one of the classic old restos next to Les Halles, which used to be the central market of Paris) for a restorative soupe à l'oignon gratinée - not the best in town, but there's nothing like French onion soup to get ya goin' again.

As always, I had a coffee after my meal, and as always it was served with a little something extra.  The "something extra" is usually a little square of chocolate, or a small cookie, or a meringue, or a chocolate-covered almond.  This time it was sweet little pink meringue pig's foot!  Too cute (although the eyes and nose on the hoof are a bit creepy)!

I can feel a whole theme party coming on, or a line of custom meringues for restaurants and receptions and special occasions.  Extra bonus: they're tasty and low fat (see...I do know that some people care about such things).

6, rue Coquillière   http://www.pieddecochon.com/en/

Tagliatelle aux Deux Saumons: Try this at Home, Kids! - Sunday, 14 October

Most restaurants are closed on Sunday evenings, and after a long day of travel and a short afternoon of strolling, I wasn't in the mood to venture very far for dinner.  So I just grabbed a sidewalk table under an awning and a heater at "Bianco," a pizza-pasta place on rue Montorgueil, just a couple blocks from the apartment.  I decided to try their Tagliatelle aux deux saumons - tagliatelle pasta with poached and smoked salmon and crème fraîche for a sauce.  It's a great idea - chunks of poached salmon tossed in with the pasta and a couple thin slices of smoked salmon placed on top just before serving - and it was pretty good - but with a few small adjustments, it could be fabulous.  A squeeze of fresh lemon juice in the crème fraîche wouldn't go amiss, and some chervil or "fines herbes" (Italian parsley, tarragon and chives chopped together) would bring it to a whole different level without much effort at all.  Give it a try, kids!

One of my stops this afternoon was the great Stohrer patisserie, the oldest bakery in Paris (established in 1730 in its current location on rue Montorgueil).  I picked up a slice of pâté en croûte aux morilles (pork country pâté with morels in a pastry casing) - I'll write about it after I have it for breakfast tomorrow!  But I also grabbed a vanilla Éclair for dessert back in the apartment tonight.  WOW!  A very thin casing of choux pastry enveloping intensely vanilla crème pâtissière, topped with vanilla frosting and a couple little flecks of gold leaf for good measure.  Life is sweet!

A Lazy Sunday in the 'Hood - Sunday, 14 October

What a difference the day of the week makes!  I don't think I've ever arrived in Paris on a Sunday morning before.  The trip into the city from the airport was a dream...no traffic jams at all...it took half the time it normally takes.  Of course, the drivers were still crazy, changing lanes suddenly, zipping through too-narrow-for-my-taste gaps, etc.  But my trusty driver/apartment-manager Xavier deposited me in this really gorgeous apartment without incident.  It looks just like the photos and is very comfortable, with all the conveniences of home and then some!  www.vrbo.com/214859

I had every intention of heading over to my favorite Sunday morning haunt, The American Church in Paris, but after unpacking a bit and making some coffee I just needed to put my feet up for a few (ha ha) minutes.  Oh, well, naps are good things...they're what vacations are for, right?

After waking up to the lovely tap-tap-tap of raindrops on the windows and the narrow balconies outside the windows, it was time for a few hours of fighting with technology.  Once everything is working it's a dream, but I hadn't used my netbook computer in a while and so of course it needed to download about 2000 Windows updates (just a slight exaggeration!).  And Internet Explorer wasn't cooperating at all, so finally I downloaded Chrome (I should have done so a long time ago).  And although my iPad is a dream machine for many things, it just doesn't play nicely on a few tasks such as inserting photos in this blog.  OK, all of this is irrelevant in the grand scheme of things, and technology can be wonderful (I'm sitting here listening to a recording of Glenn Gould play the Bach Goldberg Variations via the Amazon Cloud Player), and my vacation objective isn't to accomplish a ton of stuff, but still.....

Late in the afternoon I finally got out to stroll the neighborhood and to stop at the cash machine and patisserie and to grab a bite to eat.  The afternoon was grey and drizzly, and there weren't a ton of obvious tourists around, and I'm familiar enough with this quartier that I could just stroll without having to constantly consult a map (after all, I had nowhere in particular to go).  It almost makes me feel like I belong here!

Fuel-Up before Flying! Saturday, 13 October

I just love having to get to the airport really early for an international flight, especially when that airport is MSP and I can sit on Surdyk's lovely little terrace and have one of their yummy sandwiches and a beer and watch the world go by. Today: prosciutto, pecorino, arugula, apple-rosemary jelly and red onions on ciabatta with roasted beets, olives, cornichon and a Liftbridge Farmgirl brew. Ahhhh... And this way I can avoid most of the food on the plane, another big bonus! (Today it was cold chicken salad, or hot chicken what-not, or veggie pasta for dinner; egg on a dry biscuit with a banana and o.j. for breakfast. Really, I strongly recommend eating heartily at the airport before you leave!)

My second-oldest-friend-in-the-Twin-Cities, Linda Tetzlaff (who will be joining me in Paris on the 25th) played chauffeur to the airport today. What service!

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Packin' my Bags for my Next Jaunt! - Thursday, 4 October

I'm heading off to Paris again at the end of next week, and will be using a trusty MiFi device to stay in touch with everyone.  If overseas travel is in your plans, check out XCom Global's website and enter their contest to win $5000!   Here's the scoop:
Where would you travel with $5,000?
Enter XCom Global's End of Summer Giveaway!
http://www.xcomglobal.com 
Rent and Avoid High Roaming Fees
in 175 countries for a Low Flat Rate

Travel Pleasantries and Future Challenges! - Thursday, 26 January

I started my posts for this trip by complaining about how much I dislike the actual traveling part of a vacation.  I was going to augment those thoughts by grousing about a group of American teenagers who were on my flight back home and who were all chatty and giggly and disturbing the peace of old codgers like myself.

But then, about an hour into the flight after I had gotten up to go to the restroom and perambulate the cabin, a woman who saw me walking down the aisle came to my seat and said hello.  It turns out that she was an old acquaintance who teaches at Bethel University, my alma mater, and who was the leader of said group of chatty teenagers who were just returning from their January term abroad in Jordan and Israel!  What a delightful coincidence!  And to make matters even better, she said "how appropriate to run into you on a flight from Paris" since she had been one of the guests at a series of French dinner parties I gave many years ago.  She then went on to talk about how significant those dinners were for her and her family - piquing their interest in international cultures (which now includes places like Jordan - wow!) and introducing them to the pleasures and the art of long dinner parties where the entertainment is the cuisine and the conversation.  This was most gratifying and encouraging and challenging for me.  

I've started "cooking up" ideas for retirement endeavors (for not too many years from now!) and even got a brainstorm or two while I was in Paris.  I will just end the blog posts for this trip on that note, inviting you to stay tuned for the continuing adventures of "Mariellen, la Parisienne!"

Ain't Technology Grand?!? - Thursday, 26 January

A tip for those of you who might be planning international travel and need to have access to the Internet for work (or other!) purposes.   WiFi service can be spotty overseas, or expensive, or weak, or hard to figure out, or limited (or all of the above).

My friend Dale told me about a company called XCom Global in San Diego that rents small light personal WiFi "hotspot" equipment that they call a "MiFi" configured to work in whatever country you're traveling to.  You pay about $15 a day, the service is unlimited, the equipment comes with rechargeable batteries plus all the necessary cables and outlet converters to recharge said batteries.   You can have up to five devices communicating with the MiFi at the same time, so you and your family and/or colleagues can all use the same device, as long as you stay within about 10 feet of each other!  There were times when I had my smartphone, iPad and netbook all online at the same time, no problems.  And the signal was almost always in the "excellent" range.  I

I just tossed the small MiFi (it's about the size of a smartphone and less than half the weight) in my pocket and turned it on when I wanted to use one of my devices - in cafes, in parks, on the bus, on the Métro, etc.  One day I should have brought along an extra battery (I forgot to turn off the MiFi and ran down the battery that was in it), but no problems at all with the equipment and the service!

They FedEx the equipment to you to arrive the day before you leave home so that you have time to test it out.  And they give you a postage-paid envelope in which to return it.  Easy peasy.

Here's a link to the service: www.xcomglobal.com  Don't leave home without it!