Skip to main content

Day Two/Trip down memory lane!

 Today is the day that was my inspiration for this whole trip...and it did not disappoint!

Some of you may know this back story, but a little refresher for those who don't!  My grandparents (I'll just call them Oma and Opa here!) were amazing people.  In the summer of 1964, the summer I turned 8, they took me to Paris for 6 weeks.  Opa was a professor at CAL and had a summer teaching position at the Sorbonne.  We sailed over on the SSFrance and rented an apartment for 6 weeks.  I just did the math, and am shocked to realize that my Oma was 70 that summer.  I have some very clear memories of our time in Paris, and although I have been back many times to Paris, I never retraced our steps from that trip.  I felt a real need to do that this year, so I did a bit of research and studied the slides that Opa took (and meticulously labeled) and got some addresses!  Armed with that knowledge, I set off today to relive some of those memories!  

We rented a large room at the Pensione Tocqueville in the 17th arrondissement, near Parc Monceau.  Opa would head off to lecture in the mornings, Oma and I met him for lunch and various adventures in the afternoons.  So today I headed off on the Metro and found 27 Rue de Tocqueville...it looks just like the photo Opa took, but the building has been all cleaned up (it now houses luxury long term rentals and dental offices). I remember that the two windows to the right of the front door were the dining room where we ate breakfast.  The Concierge would pack lunches for us if we wished, and we generally ate out for dinner, although sometimes there was leftover heated food for us in the dining room.  Our room was in the back on the ground floor and opened into a private courtyard.  I spent many hours jumping rope in that courtyard!


If you look carefully you can see Oma and me in the doorway!  Apparantly Opa didn't believe in zooming in!

All cleaned up now and looking beautiful.  It's a lovely neighborhood...all residential, no shops or restaurants. 

We generally met Opa in the Parc Monceau, just a few blocks away after his classes were done.  Oma and I would walk and meet him by the merry-go-round.  I sat by the merry-go-round today and watched all the nannies with their little charges.  Sitting there I just reflected on what an amazing experience I had in 1964...and what a wonderful experience I'm having this week!

The entrance to Parc Monceau...now

...and then!  (once again, Opa choose not to zoom in!)

I was pretty outgoing and chatty (surprise, right?!) so I frequently found other children to play with (always under the watchful eye of Oma!) I don't know if you can see in this photo, but I started that summer with longer hair that I wore in braids...Oma got tired of dealing with it so took me to get a pixie haircut, much to my mother's disappointment when we got home!  And look at my snappy looking Oma...70 years old and she wore dresses with stocking and low heeled pumps every single day!  I never saw her in pants until many years later after she had a stroke.  

A few days a week, we would walk to a public indoor pool (piscine) and I would have swimming lessons.  So today I walked from our Pensione Tocqueville, through Parc Monceau, all the way to the piscine, now no longer a swimming pool - its a Lexus dealership now!  It's a 23 minute walk (1.25 miles)...imagine my 70 year old Oma doing that in stockings and heels!



All that walking made me hungry, so along the way I obviously had to stop for a glass of wine, an omelette/salad/fries...and just maybe I had a crepe for dessert! 😉

The piscine/Lexus dealership is directly facing the Arc de Triomphe...so I took a moment to enjoy the view! 
 3 images of the Arc de Triumph are imbedded in my brain...first is Chevy Chase driving around and around it in National Lampoon European Vacation, Second is images of Nazis marching under it as they took over Paris, and finally the Victory Day Parade and liberation of France with Charles de Gaulle.  This monument represents so much to Parisians.  Oh, here's one last image of me looking at the tomb of the unknown soldier under the Arc...not sure what's going on with my outfit here though...it's a little bunched up!! 

I promised Gary that I'd take the Metro more today...I think he was worried that I had walked so much yesterday (only 13k steps today!)!  I took his advice and used the Metro to get to the Trocadero for a great view of the Eiffel Tower!  Much of the Trocadero is roped off because they are dismantling the venue used during the Olympics for beach volley ball.
There was great people watching there...the best was this young woman trying to get the perfect shot of her Dior bag with the Eiffel Tower in the background...she must have spent 15-20 minutes trying to get her handbag to balance on a little ledge, making sure the logo was showing perfectly, and that the strap was hanging "just right"!

That's it for today...time to head out for dinner!

A bientôt!



















Comments

  1. AnonymousOctober 1, 2024 at 9:54 PM

    Kathy - This is Terrie commenting! I have been following along and just finished reading about your Day Two adventures! What an absolute joy to learn about you and your grandparents and the incredible trip they took you on in 1964. Such beautiful, vivid memories! I am enjoying the then pictures interspersed with recent and now current trips to Paris! You are quite the writer - easy to read, very descriptive and soooo obvious that you are having a great time!!!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. AnonymousOctober 2, 2024 at 12:12 AM

      awwww, thanks Terrie! it was an emotional day yesterday (in the best of ways)! Finding those old photos was such an amazing gift. But it cracks me up how my grandfather wanted to get the whole monument in every photo...even if it meant the humans were so little...no zooming in for him! I am really thoroughly enjoying just wandering every day - I wake up in the morning and just decide which direction to head out in - I have a list of things I want to see, but no real agenda - just following my heart each day! Who knows where today will take me...maybe Pere Lachaise Cemetery, maybe Montmartre, maybe the Canal St. Martin?!?! Stay tuned. :-)

      Delete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Ready...Set...Go!

It's finally travel day!  My flight from SFO to Paris is a "red eye", which is great, I can usually sleep a bit on a plane...however the problem with this timing is that the flight doesn't leave until 8:30pm!  That means a whole lot of sitting around, anxiously waiting to go, once you are packed and ready!  Oh well...c'est la vie! I flew on FrenchBee, a budget airline that we have flown 3 round trips before...no frills, but the planes are nice, new AirBus planes.  The planes are spotlessly clean (in fact, last time we flew FrenchBee, I saw the flight attendant clean the bathroom twice  on the flight!), I checked in online from home, got my digital boarding pass, and we headed to the airport.  Once we pulled in to SFO, Gary headed to the International Terminal to drop me off...I looked at my boarding pass and said "no...I need Terminal 1" so that's where he dropped me off.  I grabbed my backpack and suitcase, gave G. a kiss and started to walk off....
1 comment
Read more

Kathy goes to Paris...alone!

Well, I'm doing it...heading to Paris ALONE for one week!  Am I excited (YES!), am I nervous (YES!), am I crazy (I hope NOT!), am I counting down the days until September 28 (YES!).  Lot's of people have asked why I'm doing this, and I'm not sure I can really answer that other than to say I just feel that it is something I NEED to do (and I have felt that way for a while).  I think Gary was tired of hearing me say I wanted to go solo to Paris, so one day he just said "stop talking about it and just book it!"  I didn't waste a second...I ran right to the computer and booked that flight! I love Paris so much, and feel so comfortable there...I'm not sure I'd consider traveling alone to another city that I didn't feel so comfortable in.  But I "get" Paris...I feel comfortable navigating the Metro (in fact, I LOVE the Metro!), I understand how the city is laid out...and I have enough French language skill to get around, be understood, and ...
5 comments
Read more

First full day...here we go!

First full day…here we go! After sleeping great (although I did wake up at 2:30am very very confused…my room was light but my phone said 2:30…was it the afternoon…did I sleep all day?!?)  I eventually realized that it was light because I had left the bathroom light on, and I went right back to sleep until 6am. I headed down for breakfast in the basement breakfast room.  There was a great spread…fabulous baguettes, 2 types of great French butter, 6 kinds of jam, baskets full of croissants and Madelines, granola, sliced meats and cheeses, yogurt, hard boiled eggs, 25 different kinds of tea, a Nespresso machine…everything I needed…and more!  They even had a whole gluten free section with 3 kinds of GF bread and 4 kids of GF granola…it made me feel a little bit guilty that Gary wasn’t here to enjoy it with me. As it was quite dark out still, I was in no hurry to head out, so I hung in my room a while and read, trying to decide what to do on my first day.  Eventually I he...
4 comments
Read more