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I still feel like I'm on a pitching boat after a jersey-st.malo crossing on seas described by the captain as 'très agité'. The TGV ride was much smoother though and we've just had dinner in La Tartine. I tried parmentier for the first time - essentially cottage pie with high qualty lean meat and lots of thyme.

Le Grand Départ

Sam has wrapped the Jersey presents, the Croydon presents have arrived safely, and we're about to start packing. If all goes well with trains and boats we'll be in Jersey early Saturday morning - blogging will recommence in a week or so. Today on the way home from work the RER broke down at Port Royal and I had to walk the rest of the way home - I'm hoping this isn't a bad omen for tomorrow's voyage to St Malo...

Bonnes Fêtes à tous!

Brunch

On Sundays thousands of Parisians queue up outside the best places to spend the afternoon eating brunch. So, in order to avoid our cold flat and spend the afternoon in a warm café, we went into a nearby place "Le Bucheron" to see what all the fuss was about. We had a 3 course set brunch of fried eggs with pancetta and salad, and lasagne with charcuterie followed by crêpes with tiramisù and fruit. It was very good and we had a glass of champagne which certainly helped us get into the Sunday mood.

Keys, cards,...

I finally got an RFID badge for the doors to our lab today: I applied on the day I arrived but it seems to take them a while. This is good: in order to feel at home in a foreign country, you need to get all of the keys and cards you can get hold of. I now have a Carte Bleu for paying for things, a pass Navigo for Velibs and for the transport system, and I will soon have my annual pass. This is another slightly irritating aspect of the Paris transport system: for an annual pass they have to issue you another card, you can't just have it added to your pass Navigo like the London Oyster card system. Add to that the fact that you can't put credit for ordinary tickets on a Navigo, and you have to start monthly passes on the first day of the month, and you can see that the Navigo pass is a distinctly second-rate version of the Oyster card. I don't know why they didn't just buy the Oystercard system. It irritates me when things (particularly things involving IT systems) are crap when they could so easily have been so much better.

Shopping

This weekend we are going to go shopping for goodies to take to Jersey for Christmas. They have a Christmas market in the nearby municipal hall which should be worth checking out. I also need to buy some more conventional presents. I expect BHV will be as Rammed as the end of Ramadan in Ramallah, so we might have to stick to the local boutiques.

Le Ciel de Paris

On Tuesday we went to Le Ciel de Paris for cocktails - that's the bar on the 56th floor of the tour montparnasse. Ignacio took a beautiful picture of us watching the Eiffel tower flickering.

Cadeaux

I posted my Christmas presents to England today in a carefully wrapped box. Wrapping presents is a good way to get into the Christmas mood. Unfortunately, I have another whole week of work left..

Tube Strike Off?

The militant CGT union has downgraded its call for a strike tomorrow night to a call for 1 or 2 hour stoppages. As a result, the RATP reckons 60% of RER B services will be running, so I should still be able to get to work on Thursday.

Ignacio is in town for work - we met up with him last night for dinner at Café Med, the best of the nearby €12-menu restaurants, and then took a little walk along the river so Ignacio could take some photos. Expect to see the result on his flickr page soon..

Fish

Managed to get up at a record early time for a Sunday (9:45) and get to the marché Richard Lenoir a bit earlier than we'd managed before. I was rewarded by the presence of a new fish stall, which previously I'd only seen being hosed down and packed away. The stall owner's business plan is very simple: buy a large pile of only 3 or 4 kinds of fish. Price them about half the price of the other fish stalls (who offer 30 or 40 different kinds). Offer no cleaning, no gutting and no scaling: the customer can do that himself. Sell the lot. Go home in time for lunch. I bought two dourade royale - the French equivalent of sea bream - for €3.16. I reckon they would have cost at least £15 in Edinburgh (that's pretty much what I paid last time). Sam and I just ate them, baked with white wine, fennel, onions and garlic, and they were fantastic. We finished the meal with a couple of little cakes from the excellent Yiddish deli on our street. Happy hanukkah!

Haircut

Got my first French haircut yesterday from Sing, the nearest coiffeur to our flat. It looks pretty good I reckon. I feel quite French suddenly when I look in the mirror.

Steak

I came home from work exhausted, Sam's away for the weekend, it's pouring with rain, so what to do? Cross the road to the very nearest cafe of course, and order steak. Typically, this being Paris, the very nearest cafe, La Tartine, turns out to have been the major hangout for Guy Debord and the situationists (that's a 60s political/philosophical movement, not a 60s garage band). The interior looks unchanged from the 50s, like a cafe from a Truffaut film. It has a narrow front onto rue de rivoli, and runs all the way through to a convenient (for me) back door onto rue du roi de sicile. There are about 20 wines available by the glass, along with a vast assortment of cheeses, and a selection of savoury tarts which looked good value. However, having just regained my appetite having had a cold earlier in the week, I was in no mood for savoury tarts, and went straight for the entrecôte au sauce poivre. As usual I ordered it medium and as usual it came medium-rare, exactly as I wanted, only instead of coming with frites it arrived with a mound of beautiful mashed potato and a small portion of vegetables. Outstanding. Together with a glass of bordeaux it cost €20. Funds allowing, I can see myself becoming a new-wave situationist..

Shalom

The Marais is full of festive cheer this evening because Hanukkah began at sunset. We sampled some delicious pastries from a Jewish bakery on rue des Rosiers in order to get into the spirit of things!

Back to School

Today was my first day of French classes. I had to do a test so that they could assess my level and it brought back unpleasant memories of school. Needless to say I haven't done a French test for about 10 years, and my written French was certainly a bit rusty. I'll find out tomorrow how I did, but I couldn't remember any subjunctives... il faut que j'apprenne.

French radio

I've been trying to improve my French listening skills by tuning in to France Culture. However, it doesn't have many talk-only programs - there are some news and current affairs shows, but often there are programs that feature mostly music. The worse thing though are these sort of live poetry features, where the presenter gets his guests to read out poems they've written. That's not a bad idea per se, but there seems to be this convention that while the poems are being read, other guests are allowed to gasp and go 'mmm.. oui' every time they like a word - and you tend to get about three or four of these interjections every line of poetry. Eventually I decided I had had enough and switched back to podcastfrancaisfacile..

Food Update

Last week I had three great meals: first in Le Train Bleu on Monday night, where I ate cheek of beef for the first time (delicious), then in L'Oulette, a little bistro near our flat (snails followed by mackerel fillets), and the yesterday lunchtime in La Truffière, an old-school gourmet restaurant in the 5th arrondissement (main course was skate wing on a celeriac puree). Fortunately, due to the propensity of French academics to secure project funds for nice dinners, I only had to pay for the second one, which was very good value - in particular, the wine we had (a Marange) chosen by the waiter to go with our meal (quite tricky as Sam was having cassoulet) was excellent..