Month: August 2005

An evening in Paris

A wonderful evening with Jane in Paris this evening, while Liz sat the kids back at the hotel. Since 2003, every August, Paris has set up a beach environment on the right bank of the Seine, called Paris Plage. It’s a wonderful idea, particularly for this city, which half depopulates on 1 August, and Jane and I had a good beer in a beach cafe overlooking the Île de la Cité, before wandering on to the Pont des Arts. It was full of picnicking couples and families – not sure whether they’d been drawn there by Paris Plage – and we bought a couple of cold beers from a passing beer seller, and enjoyed the view down the river.

Finally, we headed for a glass of extraordinarily expensive, but wonderful, wine in the brasserie Le Pré aux Clercs at 30 Rue Bonaparte in the 6e, and the evening was rounded off with a crêpe complet at the stand outside the St. Germain des Prés metro stop.

Travel notes: Paris

More spots around Paris:

Eating:

Le Beaupré brasserie, av. de Suffren, near the Eiffel Tower: adequate bistro, with overfriendly staff a bit too ready to try English, German, Italian, etc. on foreign-looking visitors. Thanks, but we do speak French.
Chez Paul, Rue de Charonne, 11e.: Excellent and very traditional French bistro – with one (1) vegetarian option on a huge menu. Tom tried snails and steak tartare.

Shopping:

Galerie Kara, 24 Rue St. Louis en l’Isle: Lovely jewellers in the swish Île St. Louis, with some great necklaces. Email galeriekara at hotmail dot com.

Travel notes: Chambéry

One evening in Chambery, capital of Savoie, en route from Verona to Paris. It was quite a pleasant spot – our soulless but comfortable hotel, the Mercure, was right opposite the railway station. I got the feeling, wandering round in search of food, that there were a lot of people having fun somewhere, but just somewhere else. I found a ‘pub’ – complete with beer and signs, confusingly in English, and had a Savoyard speciality called (I think) a tartine, which was a sort of ham-cheese-potato concoction. Nice, but not very summery.

The rail journey down from Chambery to Lyon was just beautiful, through cloudy mountains and high meadows. Nearby is Evian-les-Bains, home of that water.

Travel notes: Venice

Venice was as wonderful as it always is, with the usual hordes of tourists around the Piazza thinning out nicely as we walked round past the Goldoni theatre and la Fenice to Campo S. Stefano. The pistachio ice-cream at Paolin’s there is a good thing. Jane slipped into a reverie at the Ponte dell’Accademia, which was great (I always think I might be a bit too Venetophile).

The Doge’s Palace is beyond words, again. Tom got a cat mask from a shop called il Ballo del Doge, near la Fenice.

Missed my usual trip to see Goldoni’s statue in C. San Bartolomeo. If they ever make a statue of me, I’d like to be smiling like Goldoni is (not self-satisfiedly, whatever the article linked might say).

Why railways don’t run hotels any more

I am posting this from a hotel (with wifi) apparently scientifically situated in the middle of nowhere, somewhere near Marseille. This is thanks to SNCF voyages who, while good at booking rail tickets, are apparently absolutely incapable of understanding the concept of a hotel being close to their own railway station, as opposed to a €30 taxi ride away from it.

Tories vs. Human Rights

Another stall-setting rant by David Davies confirms his credentials at righter than right.

Most of it is Tory-paranoia boilerplate, but it repeats surely the most stupid of all Tory policies, the repeal of the Human Rights Act. Apart from the obvious implication – in the headline of this post – it also is supremely pointless. Unless the Tories also want to withdraw from the European Convention on Human Rights, the Convention will still bind Britain, it will just be harder for people to exercise their rights, because they’ll need to go to the European court every time. The Tories – they don’t mind you having rights, they just don’t want you to exercise them (unless you’re rich enough to afford expensive lawyers).