Friday, October 16, 2009

Paris


Arrived in Paris last week for the start of a ten day business and pleasure trip. The pleasure part virtually guaranteed---Paris, right? I love Paris in the....well, anytime! Jase arrived a few hours ahead of me at CDG and we headed to the Marais and a very charming small hotel right off the rue de Rivoli.

Oddly, after all these years as a regular visitor to this grandest of grand cities, I have never stayed in the Marais. I am always across the river in either St. Germain or the Latin Quarter. Loved the change of venue this time. They say the next up and comer is Montparnasse, but I think I've found my new home away from home in the 4th.

New museums visited this trip: the European Museum of Photography, where I was introduced to the work of two photographers I did not know: Ara Guler and Ferdinando Scianna. And I also paid a first visit to the Holocaust Museum, which was impressive and moving with its detailed presentation of the lives and fates

of the French Jews deported by Vichy to meet their fate in Auschwitz, among other camps. The video testimonials of the survivors moved me to tears.



Did we eat well, you ask? Bien sur, though we started (ironically) at a Japanese restaurant called Yen that I did not know. We went French after that, with the exception of a falafel or two along the very Jewish rue de Rosiers and a fun Sunday eve at my fave Moroccan, 404. And an evening along restaurant row on the Ile St Louis.

The pastries, the pastries, the pastries.... I'll work this off when I get back to NYC, I promise !!

We went to several gallery openings in the evenings and had a lot of time to ourselves. The weather cooperated beautifully and we wandered widely. Carelessly left my Blackberry on the grass in the Place des Vosges one afternoon. Jase was surprised at how fast I could sprint back in a panic. Memories of the 100 yard dash at Glenbrook North.

Mission accomplished on the professional front, with several meetings with former colleagues in French media and more to come. After recent years of centering my business affairs in the US, I am reaching out to old clients and making new contacts in European media. Not a great media market here, for all the same reasons afflicting us at home. Margins are suffering--greatly--but print media, and, surprisingly, newspapers are hanging on.

No comments:

Post a Comment