Paris Cafe Letter

 

Everyone loves Paris cafes ☕️ 

Right?

La Pâtisserie Viennoise, Diptyque, tasse à café

It may be Spring but hot chocolate/chocolat chaud ☕️ is always a good idea in Paris 

La Pâtisserie Viennoise is tucked away on a side street is easy to miss - 8 rue l'école de médecine 75006 Bus 86, 63 go right by it.

Cafe Deux Magots letter, City Pharma

Some wise travelers know Paris is a Mecca for makeup. City-Pharma is their bargain land Holy Grail. At 26, rue du Four 75004

I met up with two clever ducks Cheryl & Debbie on Tuesday because they'd ordered the 6-pack of Paris Letters and wanted to pick them up while in Paris (instant gratification). 

(This is a repost from 2015 with additions)

Creating the Paris Letter & How to Paint A Cup ☕️

I used to own all these miniature coffee/tea cups ☕️ They ended up at Salvation Army when I moved to Paris 😭 I wonder who has them now?

This week has been a coffee cup immersion.

Weekend this & that, BiblioMania

 

On Saturday I went to Bibliomania near Odeon again. It’s on today till 6 pm.

Always a good place for visual inspiration

La Cafe de la Mairie, Chanel bonus

This last week I've been running 🏃‍♀️

All over Paris looking for large brown cardboard envelopes.

No luck. So today I ordered 100 envelopes online.

A couple weeks ago 

I went back to your favorite breakfast café, Cafe de la Mairie.

Since then I've been trying 

To paint their pretty coffee cup. 

Not much luck there either.

I'm ready to throw in the torchon/towel and just relax like this French gal. I need a dog...

I got swimmer's haircut because they turned off the hairdryers at the pool. My swimmer's body is back-ordered.

This Pylones Summery turban would be cute, but maybe not with a mask...

Today in BHV I was shooting this ginormous bottle of Chanel Gabrielle.Naturally the sales gent came running over. "Puis-je vous aider/can I help you?" I asked "How much is it?" He said something like "€2,000+." I said, "I'll take 2 bottles s'il vous plait" He said, "deux bouteilles, et voila!" I said, "Its a cadeau/gift." He said, "Un cadeau. Bien sur". "A cadeau for me." "Mais oui, bien sur," he said. By this time we were both giggling... "Oh just one thing," I said, "can you change the name (Gabrielle) and put my name on it?" "Ah...non. Non, non, non! Pas possible!" "Ah..dommage,"I said. End of story.

But you dear PBers can have your name on a bottle with a subscription to Paris Maps/Letters. Pas de problem. Crossing my bridge 3 generations of Parisiennes. Toute en blue marine/all in navy blue. Please stay well and cool dear PBers. Paris is waiting for you❤️💋🐻

Mission To Paris

 I've been noodling with l'heure bleue teapots...

 And atmospheric pomme...

 Whilst dipping into tres evocative Alan Furst's Mission To Paris.

Set in Paris, movie star Fredric Stahl, twice nominated for an Oscar, steps smartly into the caldron of late 1930s Europe. "I was born in Vienna, wandered about the world for a time, lived and worked in Paris, then, in the summer of 1930, Hollywood. I'm an American now," Stahl tells a woman he meets on a ship sailing to Paris.

 Some excerpts to get you enthralled in this period thriller:

In Paris, the evenings of September are sometimes warm, excessively gentle, and, in the magic particular to that city, irresistibly seductive. The autumn of the year 1938 began in just such weather and on the terraces of the best cafes, in the famous restaurants, at the dinner parties one wished to attend, the conversation was, of necessity, lively and smart: fashion, cinema, love affairs, politics, and, yes, the possibility of war — that too had its moment.

 ...he didn't want to work - the light fading outside the window, the gathering dusk, had reached him. It was l'heure bleue - time to be meeting a lover, looking for one. Well, he had nowhere to go. He put the script aside, went to the desk, found Hotel Claridge stationary and began to write a letter...

 ..."You're staying at the Claridge?" she said. "I just love that hotel, so much quieter than the Ritz."

A glass of champagne was put in his hand, a silver tray of caviar blini flew past. "They certainly make you comfortable," Stahl said.

 ...The cocktail party was in the drawing room, where splendid old paintings in elaborate gold frames - lords and ladies and cherubs and a few bare breasts - hung on the boiserie; walnut paneling that covered the walls. It was a stiff, formal room, with draperies of forest-green velvet, maroon taffeta upholstery, spindly chairs from royal times - chanting in chorus don't dare sit on me - and a mirror-polished eighteenth-century parquet floor. Against one wall, a huge marble-topped hunting table with gilt legs, a place to toss your pheasants when you came in from the field...If this room didn't intimidate you, Stahl thought, nothing would...

 It's 1938, when Jean Gabin's Le Quai des Brumes came out and Mission To Paris could not be more film noire if that's your taste...

 Loaded with atmospheric scenes right and left...

 Like mysterious train station rendevous essential to any noirish thriller...

 Exotic spies right and left, naf main character Frederic Stahl gets in over his head and it's fun to follow his toings and froings...

 

The perfect place to read Mission To Paris would be hanging out at a cafe nursing one cup of Joe all day, which by the way, Furst tells us, became a habit with Parisians who often had no heating at home back then. Who knew?

The French & Coca

What is it with the French and Coca Cola? I don't get why it has such a place of honor on the table? It's ubiquitous - on cafe tables...

Even on cafe table mats?!

While I was having an elegant breakfast at cafe Pouchkine...

French-speaking fellow eaters were imbibing horrid caca 'coca'.

What's up with that?

Eating lunch with Jill/Mad about Macarons at Jean-Paul Hevin, I couldn't help notice an attractive couple drinking coca with their lunch! OUCH et yuck.

No wonder French wines are suffering...

Can you imagine my shock to see French sandwiches wrapped in coca-cola bags...

Then put into Coca-Cola carrier bags :O

And worse news yet:

French Girl has mini cans in her frigo. Does it get any worse? I ask you. What can we do as Americans to stop this heresy? 

The French are NOT perfect!!
Au Revoir Coca!!!

R U in Paris?

You could imagine looking at this photo, that you're in Paris...
This one too...

Mais non PBers, you're looking at a video in Barney's window honoring Vogue editor, Carine Roitfeld on Madison Ave...
Is this waiter (oogling a passing Parisienne) in a Paris resto?

Mais non encore! This is Rue 57, a New York Parisienne brasserie that serves sushi as well as croissants...hmmm

Is this a French petit gosse/little kid clutching his 'doudou'?

Like this kid on rue de Rivoli..? Non way.

New York has been invaded by the fashion types for FASHION WEEK - you can spot them by their big hair, big shoes and big cameras. Oh and they'll be eating the requisite hot dog.

More BIG shoes entering Bergdorfs...

Whoops - No way R U in Paris PBers.

Did you read Elaine Sciolino (of La Seduction) and her weekend story on the French and their addiction to short skirts?

'And I know no French woman in Paris who wears jogging shoes and carries her dress shoes en route to work.'

Only in New York do gigantic dogs roam the streets...

Does this look like Paris?

It surely tasted like Paris - pistache macaron with framboise + pistache ice cream sandwiched inside ($5) YUM/ MIAM!!

Merci M. Francoise Payard. You hit the nail sur la tete.

BONNE JOURNEE PBers!

I must book my ticket TODAY!