Paris. Day 2. Owen Wilson on a Bicycle.

Hallie woke up at 2 in the morning calling out lines from Toy Story.  She was still very fevered so we took her temperature which resulted in quite a bit of screaming and a stunning temperature of 104o – and we didn’t even wait until it beeped so who knows what it really was.  I called Hallie’s pediatrician, who didn’t give much advice, and we gave more meds and then she fell asleep in our bed and actually slept until 7 AM.

My parents left for their driving tour of the city at 9:30.  We were all supposed to be on the tour, but with Hallie sick we just couldn’t do it, so they went alone with the tour guide and a driver in an eight-passenger van.  We stayed in the hotel and went to the lobby café, Café M, for breakfast.  We got cappuccinos, which came half filled in very large cups, eggs, fruits, pastries, bread, jams, cereals, juices, and other stuff.  It was pretty solid.  Hallie had some yogurt and fruit and then the waitress brought her a snow globe.

We spent a good part of the morning trying to find a pediatrician to take Hallie to and eventually found out that the hotel could call a pediatrician to make a house call.  Around 11:30 AM, Doctor Olivier, a kindly older French doctor with a leather doctor’s bag and grey hair (pretty much exactly what you would expect if you called a doctor to make a house call in Paris) came to our room.  He checked Hallie’s ears, throat, temperature, etc., and said everything looked fine and there were no signs of any bacterial infections.  Great.

Around noon, the driver who had taken my parents in the morning came back to the hotel and picked us up.  We then drove to get my parents and their guide at the Louvre (they did a quick trip to see the Mona Lisa and Venus de Milo), and then drove to the Marais (the old Jewish neighborhood).  We walked the Rue de Rosiers (the Jewish street) and had lunch at L’as du Falafel, which is kosher and widely regarded as the best falafel in Paris (the NY Times called it the best in all of Europe).  Tzvi and I had been there before.  It’s very good.  While waiting on line we saw Owen Wilson ride by on a bicycle.

Around 2:15 we met Flora Goldenberg, our guide for the rest of the afternoon.  Flora grew up in the Marais and still lives there.  Her family owned the famous kosher Jo Goldenberg Restaurant that was bombed in the 1970s.  She took us around the Marais and showed us some significant sites and gave us the history of the area.  Basically, in the 17th Century, during the French Revolution, there were a lot of empty mansions in the Marais that had been abandoned by the French aristocrats that had to flee or were killed.  The Jews took all of those mansions because it was cheap and over time the area became populated mostly by Jews.

We started our tour outside of a school that had been built specifically for Jews.  Outside the school was a plaque that said it was dedicated to the 260 children who had been taken to Germany by the Nazis.  Flora explained that the plaque is incorrect because everyone knows they were taken to camps in Poland, but the French put up the plaque as if to say, ‘we really didn’t know what was going on.’  She said they wanted to correct it, so they renamed the street and put up a second sign, but left the original as a testament to the French mentality toward the Nazis.

In the 30s, while Jews were fleeing other European countries, a lot of Jews went to France because they thought it would be safe there.  During WWII the French government cooperated with the Nazis and deported about a quarter of the Jews in Paris; the other 75% were able to hide with the help of the French.  A lot of the shops in the Marais were either closed or operated by non-Jews, but after WWII the Jews came back and took their shops back.  We went to one pastry shop that had been there since the 1880s, but was run by non-Jews during WWII.

We also visited a synagogue that is still in operation and is kind of hidden inside a building.  Flora explained that when the Jews first settled in the Marais they built synagogues inside apartment buildings instead of building grand buildings, because they thought it would be temporary. The aron was a walk-in aron, possibly because it was originally a walk-in closet. During WWII the shuls were just turned into apartments, the torahs were hidden, and then after WWII they were turned back into shuls.

It was all very interesting, but a bit tough walking around given that it was raining.  We made a stop along the way at Pierre Herme, another pastry shop, where we got really delicious macarons.

Around 4 o’clock we left my parents and Flora.  They were going to the holocaust museum, which we had done before, and Hallie, who had just woken up, wouldn’t make it through a museum.  We walked around the Marais for a bit.  Tzvi contemplated a straw panama hat, Hallie lost a shoe, I did some shopping in a store called Les Petits (where Hallie also stunk up the clearly employees only bathroom that the saleswoman let us use), we found Hallie’s shoe sitting on a short wall on a street we had been down 45 minutes earlier, and then Ubered back to the hotel.

Hallie was doing okay and we were all hungry, so we decided we should go out to dinner.  We asked the concierge for a recommendation within walking distance nd suitable for a 3 year old.  She gave us the name of a restaurant called Market.  Tzvi looked it up online and found that it was a Jean Georges restaurant.  His first inclination was that the concierge was crazy, Parisian and completely lacking understanding of 3 year olds, but then he looked at the menu and found that they had pizza and plain grilled salmon, which was actually perfect.

Before leaving for dinner, I discovered that my new coat still had the security tag on it, so Tzvi quickly Googled the store to see where the closest one was.  Google maps said 13 minutes, so we decided to walk it before dinner.  When we got there, we discovered that it was a department store, and after about 10 minutes of walking around we found that they no longer carried the brand (the Google was wrong).  We Ubered to the restaurant and still beat my parents there.

The restaurant as actually very nice, but not too nice for Hallie.  They also gave us a table kind of out of the way in a corner, so that was good.  Also, it was 7:30, so very few people were eating dinner yet in Paris.

I started with a French Martini, my favorite cocktail, which seemed appropriate for Paris (no idea if this is actually a French drink).  We got Hallie a pizza, which she are just a tiny bit of but was delicious, and Tzvi got the butternut squash soup with mushrooms, which he thought was really incredible and had a really defined flavors.  For mains, I got the simply grilled salmon with miso mustard sauce, and Tzvi got the cod with some sort of tomato sauce and basil mashed potatoes.  He liked his dish, but the basil mashed potatoes were incredible – somehow they infused the mashed potatoes with really strong basil flavor.  We also got brussels sprouts with shallots and broccoli rabe, both of which were delicious.  For desserts my mother got a chestnut soufflé, which was interesting, Tzvi got a mille-crepe cake which was interesting and tasty but too creamy, and Hallie had vanilla ice cream.

Hallie spent most of the meal watching Toy Story on her tablet, but actually did very well and we were all able to have a very pleasant meal.  After dinner we Ubered back to the hotel and went to sleep.

Not a terrible day.