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Church
tower and clock on the Ile St. Louis.
Chandelier
in the Musée Cognacq-Jay. I love these
smooth,
Garden
at the Musée Carnavalet, above and below.
A
quiet and shady place to rest, the ampitheatre in the |
Saturday, August 11 You’d think he
would be a modern sort of guy who would believe in basic rights such as free
speech. Think again. An organist
named Marc Giacone has an irreverent sense of political humor. He had the nerve to post some satirical
portraits of Albert as a clown with a red nose on a web site called Monaco
Politic Circus. For this
offense, the procurer of In addition,
Marc, who is 53 years old, lost his job as an organist at a chapel in The Procurer
of Monaco, Gérard Dubès, had this to say to Marc: “Vos clowns de
la politique monégasque ne font rire personne. Vous n'êtes pas un comique, un
clown, un humoriste, un guignol de l'info monégasque ni un blagueur, mais un
triste individu qui n'hésite pas à injurier, offenser, diffamer. Votre page
web n'est pas une œuvre d'art, mais un jeu de massacre . . . .
La liberté d'expression doit être protégée, mais elle ne doit pas être
un bouclier. Il ne faut pas banaliser ces faits.” Translation: “Your clowns
of When he was
arrested, Marc was interrogated for seven and a half hours! He suffered a panic attack during that
time. He asked forgiveness from all
the people he had insulted. Evidently, he
had posted caricatures of other high-level people, but it is only the
caricatures of the prince that brought him to court. In According to
Quentin Canette, a writer for Le
Parisien, Prince
Albert II is criticized for his lack of personality. When Quentin contacted the procurer and the
government of The sentence will be finally deliberated on October 9. Stay tuned. On to more
pleasant topics, like food. Thanks to Bob
Spencer, a regular reader of this Journal, we now know that a céviche is
actually an American word, seviche, and according to Merriam Webster, it is
“a dish of raw fish marinated in lime or lemon juice often with oil, onions,
peppers, and seasonings and served especially as an appetizer.” The dictionary says, more specifically,
that it is an American Spanish word that dates back to 1939. Isabelle was being quite multi-cultural to
use such a word on her French menu at Le Tire Bouchon! Yesterday my
sister called to say the Nespresso boutique was not where it is supposed to
be, at 126 rue du Bac. I was shocked
and dismayed. I questioned her about
where she was at the time she made this startling discovery. Yes, she was in the right place. Right next to the entrance to the Foreign
Mission association, and across the street from Conran’s home furnishings
store. So in the
evening, when Tom and I went out for our walk, we went to investigate. Whew.
The boutique is still there. It
is three bays wide, with two entrances facing rue du Bac, and it has three
awnings with the word “Nespresso” in large white letters on the brown wall
above each one. What went
wrong, I wondered? If you are
approaching from the direction that my sister was coming from, you’d see the
Nespresso Nespresso Nespresso, unless you were looking down. And once you are right in front of the
shop, there are no words painted on the windows that say Nespresso or
anything close, just the Nespresso logo etched subtly on the glass. My sister must have been looking down at
her feet as she approached the shop. The shop has
several big display windows with espresso machines, espresso cups, and the
Nespresso capsules on display, all charmingly arranged as Parisians would
want them to be. My sister was
no doubt looking for a shop that had aisles and rows of shelves from which
you would pick out your own Nespresso capsule boxes. That isn’t how it works, and that is what I
should have explained to her.
Hindsight is 20-20. There are no
such shelves or aisles where you can freely browse. There is a little exhibit which explains
what each type of Nespresso is like, and what its name is. Tom always studies this for a bit when he
first arrives in the shop. Then you go up
to one of the many cashiers who are situated at various intervals behind a
long counter that snakes around three sides of the boutique. All of the Nespresso boxes are stored
neatly in cubbyholes in the wall behind the cashier. You ask the cashier for the ones that you
want, and they ring it up and hand you your nifty brown Nespresso shopping
bag with your boxes inside. I think the
place just didn’t look like what my sister expected, and so she just couldn’t
“see” it. After
reassuring ourselves of the boutique’s existence, Tom and I went up to Le Bourbon
(telephone 01-45—51-58-27), the fine brasserie in front of the National
Assembly building (or is it in back of?
Anyway, it is on the Place du Palais Bourbon). We think it is under new management. Tom had a
terrific dinner of lamb chops, and I was delighted to find raie (stingray, or
skate) on the menu. It was served with
a fine lemon beurre blanc with capers.
The green beans that we were served were overcooked, in my opinion,
although I know people who prefer them that way. We each had a moelleaux au chocolat for dessert. Heavenly. Seated next to
us was an extended, well-to-do Egyptian-American family. They were babbling away in two or three
different languages, but their language of choice for dealing with the
restaurant was, of course, English.
The young man in the family seemed to be the only one who knew French,
and his pronunciation was bad. Mostly
he was going on at length in perfect nasal American English, directing his
comments mostly toward his father (or father-in-law?), on the subject of
relations between Then we walked
home, guided by the glittering |
