Sim Carter: Past Tense Imperfect

A Paris flashback for Dreaming of France. Voila! C'est moi with one of the iconic stone chimera of Notre Dame overlooking the entire city, the Eiffel Tower perfectly placed in the background as though by a giant set designer in the sky. I used to think the horned goat was a gargoyle but he's not. Gargoyles are the creatures fashioned into waterspouts, monstrous looking but serving the prosaic function of keeping water off the roof and the exterior walls of Notre Dame, minimizing damage from rainstorms. My bearded goat-friend is a chimera, a grotesque, one of hundreds added when the cathedral was restored in the 19th century by the architect Eugéne Viollet-le-Duc. Much of Notre Dame had been destroyed in the French Revolution, the French Revolution Mindy and I and a zillion other tourists and Frenchmen were celebrating that July in 1989. I was excited to climb to the top of Notre Dame but once I got to there and my friend Mindy wanted to snap a ph0to of me and my f...

Pretty French Postcards My trip to France with Mindy in '89 was very different from my visit with my sister Nancy, sixteen years earlier, when I was twenty and she was just sixteen. When Mindy and I stayed in Paris, we stayed in a newish hôtel in the business district, an area called la Defense. Modern, comfortable, the kind of place that catered to business travelers. We could have been anywhere. Paris, France. Paris, Texas. New York City. What the hôtel lacked in character it made up for in amenities. A real front desk. A fax machine. A bar off the lobby. A bidet. The place that Nancy and I stayed at in the Pigalle had a fading painted number on the crumbling wall outside, a round black bell you pushed so the cranky old concierge, a French woman straight out of a novel, could open up and begrudgingly show you to your room, eyeing you suspiciously all the while. We barely knew what fax machines were in 1973 but if we had, our little no-name hôtel wouldn't have h...

That's me with the glasses and the sensible shoes. Look at the height of my mother's heels!  The first time I saw Paris it was December, 1958 and I was five. The old family photos show that when it wasn't dripping wet, the sky was a dull steely grey. This wasn't Paris when it sizzles, this was Paris when it drizzles. Cold. Miserable. Could it be that it just looks that way because the photos are black and white? Could be, but we had just left Tripoli where the sun blazed all year long; that wintry Parisian nip must have been shocking. Little did I know my parents were about to take me out of the fire into the frying pan, or to be more accurate, out of the fire into the icebox. After several years of living in North Africa, we were on our way to Canada. Canada where we would arrive, by boat, in Halifax, Nova Scotia in the middle of winter. Average temperature: Below freezing. Brrrr, baby, brrrr! But first, that stopover in Paris. My parents dragged us ...

The Bicentennial Parade, Paris. July 14, 1989 [Photo by Rene Burri] Mindy and I tried to crash course our French historical knowledge but budgeting just a week in Paris that July of '89, we were mostly interested in hitting the Left Bank, the major museums, the cafes. She was a shopper, I wanted to see where the expat gliterati hung out, drinking absinthe, back in the day. We hit the Gallerie Lafayette, Les Deux Magots, Shakespeare & Co. We  climbed Notre Dame , took a boat ride along the Seine, saw the Eiffel Tower. We went to a bar where we bought our own drinks. I had a $9 beer; almost half of what I planned to spend on my hotel room. We took the metro to a famous Paris flea market where Mindy bought nothing but I spent $90 on a killer pair of black leather cowboy boots. I must have been out of my mind, I had to schlep those boots in my backpack all across Europe. As our week in Paris progressed, it was clear this Bastille Day celebration was a very big thing and we w...

Bonjour! Can you guess where, precisely, this picture was taken? I love the diamond motif on the staircase, and the diamond pattern the lattice-work trellis creates on the wall. I shot the photo in France when we were there last spring, but where exactly? It took me a moment to remember where until I spotted the man tucked beneath the stairs.  So who was he and what was he doing? He isn’t Harry Potter, I can tell you that. An American tourist? A French student? I’m not sure. What was he doing? Drinking a cup of coffee. Perhaps a Cafe Américain or maybe a cafe au lait. Chances are it was espresso.  Where? Any guesses? I’m betting some of you more experienced French travelers will be able to pin it down.  The answer: Starbucks on the Boulevard Saint Michel just down the road from Boulevard Saint Germain. Located quite near our hotel, Cafe de Flore and Deux Magots were both just up the street but on that occasion I just wanted to grab a coffee and take it back to...

 Today's post was inspired by Paulita Kincer, my fellow blogger currently in the midst of picking up her entire American life and moving to France with her husband. Today she shared a photo of herself relaxing, as Parisians do,  at Luxembourg Gardens in Paris.  It's a place where people take their dogs, and those who still smoke, may smoke. A place where one can sit and read the newspaper. Have an afternoon nap Or scratch each others backs. A place where one day this past spring I put my feet up on the rim of the pond and watched the children sailing their boats before the guard very politely came over to say Madame, please, the chairs must remain in the back.  A place where one day in the future I hope to return and possibly have a rendezvous with Paulita. She and I can sit and people-watch while our husbands fetch us coffee and sandwiches. What do you say Paulita?  Meet you in the garden? Posted for Paulita’s weekly Dreaming of Fr...

Le Jardins de Tuileries  (from my instagram) I took this photograph last Spring on our trip to France.  I love how most everyone is simply relaxing in the sun, sleeping even, in the middle of the work week. Every week for the last few years, I've tried to create a French themed blogpost like this one, here or at Chapter1-take1 to connect with my friend Paulita's Dreaming of France meme . I call her my friend but we've never met. You know how that weird internet thing can be, connecting you with strangers from around the globe in oddly intimate ways. Now Paulita, who has been dreaming and fantasizing about living in France for years, sharing her photos, her memories from her trips, is actually doing it. After taking oodles of journeys to France, waiting for their kids to reach adulthood, scouting out locations, she and her husband put their house on the market. The house is in escrow and in the next couple of months, escrow will close and they'll be gone. ...

I was scrolling through our vacation pictures from this past spring when this shot of a cafe caught my eye. I wasn't sure what pulled me in. It's certainly not that it's a perfectly composed photo. It's a bit busy, the light fixture at the top left intrusive, the yellow building with the shutters and charming grey and white striped awnings cut off too soon. But I love it. Why, I wondered. Because it takes me back to such a happy period? Of course that's part of it. On the left side, out of range of the photograph is the small market where my husband and I would buy bananas, yogurt and pain du chocolat in the morning. Learning how to use the machine at the grocery store to weigh the bananas, figuring out how to make ourselves understood to the clerks at the checkout line, part of the fun of being adrift in a city where you don't speak the language. When your Ou est? and Combien? are not quite enough. The view of this cafe across the street from our hot...

Those don't look like official cycling shorts to me. Just a group of girls following their tour leader. Ah, oui! Time for a photo! If only they had French berets. I can't decide which of these photos to put on my Instagram.   Any suggestions? Connecting with Dreaming of France

There's something about Paris. #ilovedoors #doors #doorsandwindows #doorsofinstagram … https://t.co/Qz3uiQU1us — Chapter1-Take1 (@simcarter) July 24, 2017 I don't know why but even with the ugliness on the left side of the image, there really is something beautiful about French doors. Amateur photogs like me try and capture the feeling on our iPhones, posting our images on our Instagram feeds but there's a world of amazing photographers who really know how to put the magic of Parisian doors in a picture. Luckily for those of us who can't get to Paris as often as others, they share their stunning images online and in gorgeous books that have us drooling.  One of my favorites                 Doors of Paris: A Photo Essay Photographer Rebecca Plotnick has some stunning doors on her blog. Do you share my love of doors, especially French doors?  There are instagram accounts devoted to nothing but door...

The day we went to see Notre Dame the line was on the longish side so I left my husband to hold our places while I snooped around a bit. He's lovely that way, letting me wander off to see if I spot anything interesting to snap.   I found a bride and groom in a semi-quiet spot on the grounds, conferring with their photographer, his assistant holding a reflective aid (a bounce) in the background. Mid-May, the temperature in Paris was hovering in the low 60's and I wondered if the bride was cold in her frothy white strapless gown. I watched from a discreet distance while the pair posed for the next shot, the pigeons pecking at the ground around them. She was probably too happy and excited to feel the chill.   A pretty picture for the photo album, especially with the way her dress sweeps off to the side but the couple seemed hesitant and I got the idea they were in transition.  Something else was coming. Suddenly they were holding hands and runni...

One thing we noticed while we were in France last month; there are an awful lot of fit people in Paris. An awful lot of fit and trim, sexy and slim, attractive people.  Casting Call: Slim, at tractive French types please line up I blame it on the Metro. My theory is that all the walking to and from the metro, and especially going up and down the stairs of the Paris Metro system has something to do with it. You see, there are very few elevators and escalators.  The first metro line was opened in 1900 during the Paris World's Fair at a time when no one really thought about elevators. While the system is not so good in terms of its accessibility to the disabled, it's a built-in exercise regime for everyone else.  By everyone else, I mean the 4 million plus people who use the Paris metro every day! Parisians walk from work or home to and from the metro, rush up and down those stairs, hurry along the sometimes long and winding passages. I say it must be par...

Our passports. His from the USA. Mine from the UK. In the background, the new bag I bought for the trip. Less than a month until we head across the pond. We’re beginning our 25th anniversary trip with a week in London and then we’re heading across the channel to Paris. I’ve double checked that our passports are up to date, we’ve booked our London lodgings and we’ve almost narrowed down which lightweight luggage to buy for the trip. I’ve bought a brand new bag to sling across my body. It’s large enough for my phone (camera), a small brush, lipstick (even though my hubby prefers me without) a little tube of sunscreen, a bottle of water, passport, moolah etc without weighing me down.  ( Note to self: remember to ask our son if he can give us a lift to the airport, or do we need to book a Lyft? )  And we’ve finally pre-booked our Chunnel tickets on EuroStar. Fly or take the train, it took us ages to decide. Frankly, we were surprised to learn how inexpensive flying co...