Hawkes Bay NZ Water trail

Sunday, July 7, 2013

Cafe de l'industrie near Bastille

As part of my deliberate efforts to be extra nice to myself today, first I stopped for a coffee at this authentic Art Deco era bistro in the Maraisn near today's market, then stayed for an excellent salade nicoise and iced tea for lunch. I'm feeding my grief about losing William by trying to immerse myself in the France i adore. I hope it's helping. At times, I am in danger of transferring my anger about the theft to a generalization about Paris being just one big nest of thieves, streets full of rubbish, and entire families of beggars using busted phone booths as bedrooms, and I never want to come here again, etc.
That's not true, though, because you have to accept that a big sophisticated city like Paris has an underclass of "have nots" who are shut out, and this do what they need to do in order to live. I'm just a very fortunate woman who had parents to raise me, and who valued education so much, they sent me to college, where I learned about Oscar Wilde and Collette, and all the famous people buried in Pere Lachaise, so I got the ticket into the middle class. I'm now a teacher myself, and I've worked with adults who never had the advantages I did.
So, I just enjoyed the atmosphere of this classic early C20th restaurant with dark wood panels on the walls, engraved glass at the bar, and a pressed tin ceiling, along with the guy sitting next to me who was dealing with his ciggie craving by keeping an unlit one between his lips as he worked on his laptop. Such stereotypical French behavior, straight out of a J-P Belmondo movie from the 1960s.
Food was bistro good, wait staff professional and I could look out the window at 4-storey buildings with oeil-de-boeuf windows in their attics.
It distracts me from being depressed and that's good.

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