Finding Shoes for Large Feet in Paris

Recently, I had my first occasion to go shoe-shopping in Paris. I needed a pair of shoes for an audition. For me, the perfect audition shoes look nicely dressy, but are still fairly comfortable, so that I can go about my business singing without thinking about pain in my feet. (No high heels for me!)

Back in the US, I wear a size 10. Even 15 or 20 years ago when I was just starting to wear adult shoes, size 10 was carried in virtually all regular shoe stores in the US. Back then, it was the biggest size available; in recent years I’ve noticed that stores often carry size 11 or even 12 as part of their regular stock.

But here in France, my feet are apparently of giant proportions. Perhaps it’s because of my German/English genetic background. I’ve frequently seen French men who have six inches of height on me whose calves are half the thickness of mine. And my calves aren’t that thick, really. Also, French women my height seem to be quite rare. So I suppose it shouldn’t be surprising that my shoe size isn’t widely available here.

Not knowing I was destined for frustration, I jauntily set out the afternoon before my audition in search of shoes. The closest major street to my apartment seems to be a shoe-shopping district. There are shoe stores literally every two or three storefronts. So I was sure I could find something quickly without even needing to hop on the metro. I was quite wrong.

After going into about five or six stores and being told that they don’t carry my size, I headed home despondent and began looking around on the internet. One of the shoes salespeople had helpfully given me a term to search for: shoes of “grande pointure.” So I looked around and picked out a few places that looked promising. As a public service to women of large feet in Paris, I list my results here:

• Sagone: http://www.sagone-chaussures.com/
• Shoesissime: http://www.shoesissime.com/
• Palais de la Chaussure: http://www.palaisdelachaussure.com/

As it happens, I found a great pair of shoes at the very first place I went to (Sagone), so I didn’t visit the other places. But I plan to try them next time I go shoe shopping.

At Sagone (I visited the location at 63 Boulevard Magenta), I experienced a little bit of stereotypical French lack-of-customer-service. Side-note: I’ve read in books about France that French salespeople can be unfriendly, unhelpful, generally apathetic, etc. However, my experience hasn’t really borne that out for the most part. I’ve encountered many friendly and hard-working retail employees in various kinds of stores here.

So, there were two workers at Sagone that day, a man and a woman. The man was friendly and tried to be helpful when I couldn’t understand him (for some reason he seemed unable to speak French slowly, even though I could tell he was trying to do so after I asked him to). But his coworker was very snappish and impatient when I asked her to repeat herself, and she acted put out by my request to get a shoe out of the stockroom for me to try on. In contrast, at the half-dozen “regular” shoe stores I had been to earlier that day, I spoke to salespeople at nearly every one, and without fail the workers were friendly and patient with my French and didn’t seem to mind having to speak a little slower to be understood. And this was true even after it was clear (due to my shoe size) that I couldn’t buy anything there.

If you are reading this and trying to decide which store to visit, please don’t be put off from trying Sagone. The store was nicely organized and had a wide selection of styles. They carried good brands, too. Just hope that the unfriendly girl isn’t there when you go!

Adventures with Octopus

Jen’s out of town so it’s my chance to do all of the things that she finds objectionable. Tonight I cooked an octopus.

Back in the old days it seems that seafood was often a cheap source of protein. Lobster used to be fed to prisoners because it was so cheap.  Fish and chips wouldn’t be wrapped in newspaper if it were a luxury food.  But today, fish is often one of the more expensive options for protein, at least in my experience.  I had attributed this to our now-empty oceans, but at least part of my problem must have been proximity to a large market for it.  In Paris, fish is plentiful and often cheap.  So I’ve been eating more seafood lately.

I’ve never cooked octopus before so I consulted my Greek colleague and she gave me lots of instructions.  I’m actually not sure that I’ve ever even eaten octopus before in my life.  Calamari, but not octopus.

Turns out that it’s pretty easy and just requires a little patience.  Since it’s not the most common thing, I expected it to be a bit of an acquired taste.  That is to say that I managed my expectations so that I wouldn’t be disappointed if I didn’t like it.  But damn!  It was good!  Very savory, just a bit chewy, and just a bit sweet.  Very nice.

I blanched the octopus for half a minute and then braised the legs in their own juices in a small covered skillet for about two hours.  They give up enough fluid to keep themselves going for a long time, although I did add water once or twice.  At the end of this, the remaining fluid is concentrated and flavorful.  I tossed some fresh fettucini with capers, olive oil, garlic, lemon juice, and the cooking fluid, then arranged the legs on top and sprinkled chopped parsley over everything.

Elevator Discipline

When we were looking for an apartment in Paris, Greg and I wanted to find a place where we would be on a high floor without an elevator. We wanted to make exercise a little bit difficult to avoid. Since we also wanted a furnished place, moving in/out wouldn’t be a big problem. But the apartment we eventually found was so wonderful in every other respect that the fact that it does have an elevator wasn’t enough to deter us from taking it. We live on the seventh floor (sixth floor in French convention). We told ourselves that we would take the stairs most of the time even though we have an elevator. In practice, we walk down the stairs about 98% of the time, and walk up the stairs about 20% of the time, if that. Walking down so often has helped my quads develop a little bit, but I’m not getting the mini-dose of cardio that a quick stair climb would afford me. (On the other hand, if I am sick with a cough or were to sprain my ankle, it would be nice to be able to take the elevator on those days.)

Some days, if I have a lot of errands to do in the neighborhood, I will come and go from the apartment six, seven, eight times within a couple of hours. If I climbed the stairs each time I returned, that would be wonderful. But usually I rationalize myself out of it somehow or other. So I’ve decided to try a new system to work my way up to doing the stairs more often.

I am going to give myself a stair-climbing deductible.

Every day, I will climb the stairs the first three times I return from somewhere. After that, if I don’t feel like it, I will allow myself to take the elevator. After doing this for awhile, I envision myself increasing the deductible gradually so that eventually it will effectively cause me to climb the stairs all the time.

The nice thing about this system is that on days that I don’t come and go much, I will basically climb the stairs every time I return to the house. But if I am coming and going like crazy, I can give myself a break after a few times without feeling bad, since I’ll have at least done a bit of work that day.

I’ve also been trying to walk an hour a day five days a week recently, so the stair-climbing isn’t my sole exercise. But I’ve been at my healthiest during the times when I was doing structured exercise and at that same time incorporating small exercise into my daily life, i.e. choosing the physically demanding version of things when possible. If I do structured exercise without the second part, I notice myself compensating for the structured exercise by minimizing physical effort in other parts of my life, which is counterproductive.

Also, since we’re in Paris, I don’t want to give up my chocolate croissant habit. So I need to work even harder to make up for that!

Going to the Louvre

Having a membership to the Louvre has been great. We’ve already visited four times in our first month. On a recent weekend, we went two days in a row. We didn’t plan to do that– on Saturday we had decided ahead of time to go, but on Sunday afternoon we simply found ourselves in the neighborhood and thought we might as well stop in for a visit. We have a map of the museum at home, and we’ve started marking the areas of the museum that we’ve visited, so we can make sure to see them all at least once. I think it will take us about five or six more visits to do that. It’s truly a gigantic museum!

Click on each image to see a larger version.

The entrance to the Louvre was designed in the eighties and was controversial at the time. Now it’s an iconic part of the museum. I find myself drawn to repeating patterns and textures in my photography, so I was happy with this shot I got from under the pyramid including part of a cement staircase. The clouds were doing interesting things that day too. Most of the time recently, the sky in Paris has been a uniform grey, so it was nice to see some blue mixed in for once.

The Louvre has several big indoor courtyards filled with sculpture. They are airy and open with high glass ceilings, so it feels a lot like you’re outdoors. In fact, many of the sculptures in these courtyards actually used to be outdoors in various cities, but were later moved to the Louvre to protect them from the elements. On Saturday’s visit we decided to focus on these courtyards, since we both enjoy sculpture so much.

In one of the courtyards, we saw a compelling interpretation of Perseus rescuing Andromeda, completed by Pierre Puget in 1684. We didn’t actually get a good photo of it, but here is a picture of it on Wikipedia. I like the sculpture because my eyes keep wanting to move around and examine different parts; they don’t just get drawn to one place and stuck there. There is a lot of motion implied in it, and I think it strongly evokes the ocean wind and the sense that the people are up on a high cliff. Greg commented that the statue looks equally interesting no matter what side you stand on to look at it. It’s hard to do this statue justice in a photo, so please take my word for it that it is really cool-looking in person.

In case you need a refresher on the backstory: Perseus rescued Andromeda from a sea monster using the head of Medusa (whom he had recently killed) to turn the sea monster to stone. In the sculpture Medusa’s head is down by Perseus’ foot, and I thought it was appropriately scary. Greg had brought a sketchbook that day, and he decided that he would settle in to work on a drawing of this statue.

Just next to Perseus and Andromeda was a series of four statues representing the four seasons incarnated as people. The statues of summer, spring, and fall were all beautiful women, but winter was depicted as an old man. I wish we had noted the name and date of the sculptor, but we didn’t. All four statues were appealing, but old man winter was especially well done.

Another statue I liked was this much-larger-than-life bronze man. It is part of a group called the Four Captives, by Martin Desjardins. They represent Holland, Spain, Brandenburg, and the Holy Roman Empire. I learned on the Louvre’s page about this work that these were the four nations defeated in the treaty of Nimegen in 1679, ending the Dutch War. The statue I photographed represents Holland.

There is a longitude line that runs directly through the Paris Observatory (2°20′14.025″ east) and the French were angling for it to become the prime meridian for the world. Of course, now we have Greenwich Mean Time instead of Paris Mean Time, so we know how that turned out. In any case, all around Paris there are these little gold markers showing where the line passes. We’ve run into them unexpectedly several times in our explorations around town, and we found one in the marble floor of the Louvre Museum. They are featured in a popular book, too.

While Greg got going on his sketch of Perseus, I decided to explore another area of the museum. I was still feeling sculpturey, so I headed over to the wing with Greek antiquities. Going from the later marble sculpture to the earlier stuff was really interesting. The later marble sculptors were often trying to imitate the ancient Greeks, and you can definitely see the resemblance in subject matter and style. Completely by accident, I suddenly found myself in front of the Venus de Milo, which is a fairly famous example of ancient Greek sculpture. While I did find it appealing, I couldn’t really tell why it was so famous. The galleries all around were filled with beautiful, finely crafted sculptures, and I couldn’t see what made this particular example better than the others. I dutifully took a picture, but since we weren’t allowed to use flash and the light in the room itself was quite poor, I didn’t get a usable shot.

The Louvre used to be a royal residence. I couldn’t find any information about these amazing painted and gilded ceilings in the ancient Greek galleries, but I theorize that these were put there when the palace was actually being used by the French royalty and court.

I passed by a room that had been fenced off and was being used for storage while another area of the museum underwent a remodel. These sculptures were draped with plastic veils. I found them creepy and surreal.

When I went to the Louvre the first time about ten years ago, Greg took me to see this statue of Cupid and Psyche by Antonio Canova. It was neat to see it again; it kind of felt like visiting an old friend. The first time I saw it, I remember feeling really moved by it. At the time, Greg and I were in the giddy early stages of our romance. Seeing it again brought me back to that time.

And on Sunday’s visit, we accidentally stumbled upon the Winged Victory of Samothrace, which is another quite famous ancient Greek sculpture. Unlike the Venus de Milo, I thought this sculpture was more impressive in person than in the photos I’d seen, and I did feel like I could understand why it is so famous. Even without its head, it’s a wonderfully expressive statue. The body has a posture of power and dignity, and the clothes look like they’re truly being blown by a strong sea breeze (it was originally set facing the ocean). Even the body itself looks like it’s leaning into the wind.

It was a great weekend of art. I feel so lucky that we get to live here in Paris!

Art or Science?

Jen and I did a project for an art show at Cafe A in Paris last year before Christmas. The title of the show was “Art or Science?” and the subject was the sometimes blurry connection between art and science. Some images from the Hubble Space Telescope venture into the realm of art.  Jackson Pollack’s paintings or Hokusai’s  famous woodcut print “The Great Wave” make some conceptual contact with fractals, venturing into the realm of math and science.

The Cartier Foundation is having an exhibit on a similar subject right now entitled “Mathematics: A Beautiful Elsewhere.”  Their exhibition is an admirable if a bit uneven effort.  Mostly interesting, sometimes compelling, occasionally less than impressive.  David Lynch did a project for the show that I was excited to see, being a fan of his films.  His piece, however, didn’t engage with the mathematical and scientific side of the exhibition with sufficient rigor and came off as amateurish.

Anyway, “admirable but uneven” can probably be used to describe the exhibition of which we were a part at Cafe A as well, so I’m not in a position to criticize.  Although I do think that the piece that Jen and I did was better than David Lynch’s.

Our video was projected in what used to be the chapel of a monastery onto a screen that was probably 30 feet across.  I think it’s by far the biggest that anything I’ve done has ever been.

The video explains the features of rainbows in a non-verbal way.  If you pay close attention (and maybe watch the video more than once), you’ll know how light is reflected inside rain drops to produce rainbows and double rainbows, as well as why the sky is brighter inside the rainbow than outside.  Even if the video doesn’t teach you how rainbows work, hopefully the diagrams are aesthetically pleasing in their own right.

We provided a description for the exhibit itself, but it’s difficult to translate it.  French draws a distinction between different ways of knowing things—there are two different verbs.  Savoir is used for things that you know “in your head,” like facts or skills.  Connaître is used for things that you know “in your heart,” like people.  Both are translated as into English as “know” so the title of our work, “Savoir et Connaître les arcs-en-ciel” becomes “Knowing and Knowing rainbows.”

Our description plays on the different ways of knowing things in French in what I hope is a clever way.  The point is that it’s possible to appreciate rainbows in an intuitive way just by seeing one in the sky, even if you don’t have any idea how it works.  It’s also possible to appreciate them in a more abstract, intellectual way by knowing how the light rays and water rain drops interact to produce what you see. And there is beauty in both ways of understanding them.

At last, here’s the video itself, in three inch rather than thirty foot format:

Savoir et Connaître les arcs-en-ciel

On connait les arcs-en-ciel quand on les voit, même si on ne sait pas comment ils marchent. On sait les arcs-en-ciel quand on comprend comment la lumière et les gouttes de pluie travaillent ensemble pour les faire. Les arcs-en-ciel sont plus jolie quand on les sait et on les connait au même temps. La musique représente un arc-en-ciel en segmentant une mélodie en flux distincts, dans la même façon qu’un rayon de soleil est divisé en ses consituents fréquences.

An Amazing Bakery

There are five boulangeries/patisseries within a five-minute walk of our apartment. Five that I know of, anyway– there may be some that we haven’t discovered yet. Each of them is wonderful, and each has a slightly different atmosphere and selection of treats. So we tend to rotate through all of them regularly.

But there is one that stands out from the others. It’s the place we go when we want something really special. It’s where we got the Bûche de Noël that Greg recently referred to as “mind-altering,” and I also spoke highly of it when I posted about our holiday food.

The boulangerie we love so much is Dominique Saibron.

On their window, it says that they won Third Prize in the Competition for the Best Artisanal Baguette in Paris in 2010.  I don’t know who won first and second place that year, but Dominique Saibron’s baguettes are definitely my favorites in Paris so far. However, I have not made an exhaustive survey because I am too lazy. Why would I trek all around the city comparing baguettes when I have so many good choices in my neighborhood? This is also the reason that I haven’t yet tried a macaron from Ladurée. I am sure this fact will horrify many! However, the macarons in our neighborhood are already, as Greg would say, mind-blowing. If Ladurée is truly the best of Paris as everyone says it is, I am afraid my head will explode with excitement if I try one of their macarons. And I need my head.

In addition to their baguettes, we’ve gotten small desserts from Dominique Saibron several times. I also like their quiches. It’s a fast, filling, delicious lunch for under 4 euros, and it’s very French. I have not yet tried their macarons, but I certainly will do so soon.

Coupez la tête!

Going to Annecy over the holidays was probably the best thing we did for our French since we’ve been here. We did speak a little English there, but there were enough people who spoke only French that the center of gravity of the conversations was always French. It was immersion, albeit only for a few days.

During our stay, “Coupez la tête!” (“Off with their heads!”) became a running joke with Leslie’s father. Referring, of course, the the historical French inclination to behead the nobility. We would be driving through the countryside and someone would point out a château; then Leslie’s father would exclaim “Coupez la tête!” While passing another château, I remarked that I had heard it’s privately owned and someone still lives there. He remarked “On a oublié de couper la tête.” (People forgot to cut off their head.)

One time it was Jen’s turn to extend the joke, but she instead exclaimed:

“Coupez les cheveux!”

(“Cut their hair!”)

A decidedly different approach to handling the nobility.