Au Revoir Twenties! (Part Un)

Just being in Paris for my thirtieth birthday was wonderful, but the day had a few particular highlights too. Firstly there was breakfast, or rather there were breakfasts (plural). Having begun the day with a healthy aspect, eating fresh fruit and yoghurt from the Rue Mouffetard market, I decided that old ladies such as myself need additional sustenance to get them through the day. Consequently I had a pain au chocolat from the bakery "La Fournil de Mouffetard". Meltingly soft, buttery pastry and a not-too-sweet chocolate centre set me up for the day's activities.

The boyfriend and I spent lots of time just walking around the Parisian streets. The weather was grey and cold, but not too rainy. We decided to give the ferris wheel in the Tuileries a miss (I suffer from motion sickness and he doesn't like heights - the combination of vomit and terror wouldn't have been a birthday treat), but I did get some good photographs of the Louise Bourgeois "Welcoming Hands" sculptures in the park, watery against a menacing cloudy sky. We ended up stopping at a cafe near the Pont de l'Alma for coffee, toasted sandwiches and warmth, but mostly we just wandered around arm-in-arm, trying to do the city justice by looking our romantic best.

In the afternoon we stumbled upon the Delacroix museum. Eugene Delacroix was a painter and he spent the last years of his life creating murals in one of the chapels of the church of St. Sulpice. We saw these when we went to a free concert in the church last time we were in Paris. Bruckner's fourth symphony dragged a little, especially as the seats were very uncomfortable, but it was free and the murals were extraordinary - a religious theme combined with furious brush strokes gives them an arresting power. Visiting the museum we got a glimpse of the man behind the art. There were surprisingly few actual paintings by him there, but there were many of him by his friends and lots of work by his contemporaries. It was housed in a tiny building where Delacroix once lived and worked. He seemed to have been quite a sickly chap and spent a lot of time being ill in bed there. The rooms have changed little since he was alive and the whole place was very atmospheric. The boyfriend and I, ever alert for interior design inspiration in our capacity as new home owners, were rather taken with a red velvet chaise longue in the hallway. Sadly visitors were not allowed to sit on it. There was a sign in French, German and English telling you not to, but maybe if you were Japanese or Russian you could have pleaded ignorance and got away with it - who can tell?

After the museum I was keen to see what was going on at the Pompidou Centre. When we got there the queue to get in was horrendous, so we just hung about outside and watched a magician as the day started to grow dusky. He had a French techno/trance soundtrack on his iPod and a tame pigeon (elle s'appelle Julie) whom he whispered to periodically and tenderly wrapped up in a scarf against the evening chill. He did some tricks with bits of rope, children and people's shopping. In the end he made l'oiseau Julie disappear. He had a nice line in multi-lingual humour, too. He asked us all, in French, for a couple of euros at the end of the show, then said in English "for the English in the audience, that will be five euros please." Ah, yes, we are the nationality everybody likes to mock. Probably rightly so, acutally.

Climbing back up towards the Pantheon, the Quartier Mouffetard-Contrescarpe and our little apartment, I reflected on what a pleasant day it had been. Then I realised I was a bit knackered from all the walking, so I took an executive decision to stop at Le Petit Cardinal for hot chocolate and beer. Slowly sipping my chocolat chaud while the boyfriend savoured his pression of Leffe, I smiled at the fortuitous presence of such a good cafe halfway up the almighty hilly street on our homeward route. Full of chocolatey goodness, I looked forward to the evening ahead.