Marty & Jill's Journal: DAY 28 - THU 3/28

We very sadly and reluctantly left Cherche-Midi in the 6th. As soon as we started unloading our many, too many bags from the taxi at our new apartment on Rue Rouelle in the 15th, Patricia Fabre, our petite, vivacious landlord, came out to meet us...she could see us from the apartment which looks out on the street. She showed us around, especially about all the building security system we had to learn. The apartment is lovely, spacious and spotlessly clean and in a much newer and larger building than our first apartment and with a large elevator....well anything would be larger than the 2-person one at Cherche Midi. Since Patricia actually stays here herself with her husband from time to time and it's not a pure rental like the other, things are a little finer.

We settled in and then went out scouting the hood. We found a nice cafe a few streets away and sat for a while, Marty still searching for women wearing 'the uniform.'. Since this is a more working neighborhood, the pickings were slim. It's definitely not as chic and cosmopolitan an area as before, but on the other hand, there is no English being spoken here...so we know this will be a different experience. That's why we wanted to stay in different apartments, in different arrondissements.

Now that we are staying in the 15th, we planned to visit our old neighborhood just across the Seine on the right bank in the 16th. This is one of the few days we will have alone before the Harlings and Gail arrive, so this trip down memory lane had to be done alone, just us, to reminisce about our early days in Paris starting nearly 45 years ago to the day.

We mapped out our route, planning to actually walk across the Pont Mirabeau bridge which leads directly to our old apartment at 6-10 rue Mirabeau. We had never done this when we lived here, so that was a first for us. We stopped along the way a few times, since we weren't familiar with the streets, and a young guy on a bicycle asked if he could help us. He turned out to be Adam Sedgley from Seattle who has been here for about a year with his wife. Adam was charming and we talked for about 20 minutes until he had to ride off to the library to log onto the Internet. He's a birder and works for a small non-profit radio station writing about bird species native to the area. A short story he told us was that when he's in the Bois de Bologne near his house, a huge park known to have an area where the prostitutes run the business, he seems to be looking for birds, and he is!

See the replica of the Statue of Liberty just in front of the Tour Eiffel looming in the distance...

As we approached the Pont Mirabeau we began to get very nostalgic. Although this bridge is nothing at all as beautiful and ornate as the Pont Alexandre III, the unique thing about this bridge is that you can plainly see the miniature replica of the Statue of Liberty that actually stands on a little island near the next bridge, Pont Grenelle. The huge NY statute was installed and unveiled in 1886, and this copy was built 3 years later. And as you are crossing Pont Mirabeau, you can also see Le Tour Eiffel juxtaposed behind it...Wow! As we walked further along we stopped to stare at the cars speeding along the Quai on the right bank, a route we took millions of times to go to and from our apartment on Rue Mirabeau...no one else would have wanted to take this walk down memory lane with us, so today was the perfect day to do it.

At 6-10, our old address, we noticed that not much had changed at all except that the building looked much more worn and not as spiffy as we remembered. We snuck into the courtyard when someone opened the locked gate...that wasn't there in our time. It hadn't changed much at all.

Our name used to be here...can't remember our apartment number though...

It was so nostalgic to us that we were walking where Justin learned to walk right there on that path in the garden, and now, ironically, 43 years later, again almost to the day, Justin is having his own son!!

We strolled up and down Mirabeau and then found rue D'Auteuil, the great shopping street, around the bend and up the hill. Jill and Justin took daily walks to shop on rue D'Auteuil while Marty worked in town. But for some updated stores not much had changed. There was the famous Le Notre patisserie and Le Mouton Blanc restaurant, both still going strong. This is a wealthy neighborhood and the shops reflect it. The local schools in front of the Auteuil church were just getting out so the streets were clogged for it bit.

Back to Mirabeau for a nostalgic drink at Le Mirabeau cafe (known as Hameau D'Auteuil in our day).

We also got almost teary-eyed about the exact two trees near our building where we used to always park our little bitty Mini on the sidewalk...you could do that in those days...and it was hard to find a spot sometimes, even on the sidewalk.

Just across the street was the venerable San Francisco Italian restaurant just like back in the day. We went in for a look see and found ourselves warmly welcomed and engulfed in conversation, in three languages, by Lorenzo Bianchi, the owners son, and the entire kitchen staff holding court with is in their kitchen. They couldn't have been more charming and we reserved for next Monday dinner. That S/B fun.

We hop in the Metro to go back home and freshen up for dinner at L'Entredgeu at 8pm.

We decided to take a taxi, as it was a 3-train Metro ride to the restaurant and we were tired...this set us back 13 euro, about $17...oh well. The restaurant was recommended by Francois Salanon, the French guy we met at Josephine Chez Dumonet on Tuesday. This place serves superb cuisine, just what we like, and was fully engaged and hopping by the time we left. What a find!