Food and Its Consequences

The biggest problem with waking up early due to jetlag is there's no way to get food. Assuming it's been several hours since your last meal, you're starving and have hours to wait before you can do anything about it. We spend the morning browsing social media and lazing around, hoping to catch a couple more winks, but to no avail. Finally 7:30 AM rolls around and Landemaine is open. We go down and grab a baguette with which to finish our haul of sausage and cheese from the day before... plus a couple of pastries. I get halfway through my drops and have to abandon it due to an acute case of crise de foie, the French term for what we'd call a bellyache from eating too much rich food.

Sufficiently caffeinated and sated, we hop on the metro to visit Montparnasse cemetery. During our ride a busker gets on and treats us to what is objectively the worst puppet show I've ever seen. He hangs up a piece of cloth between two poles and turns on a too-loud recording of the song Le téléfon by Nino Ferrer. He has two puppets made out of some kind of foam, both of which are very dirty and one looks as if it has literally been burned black. Any facial features these garish monsters might have had are indistinguishable anyway because the action of the puppet show just consists furiously shaking the puppets' heads around and occasionally holding a phone receiver up to one of them. The busker keeps having to pull up the cloth partition because the elastic is so loose that it keeps sliding down the poles and exposing his face.

This is not the first time I've seen this horrid puppeteer either. The first time was when we lived in Paris seven years before. On that occasion, I had been seated across from a lanky white-haired woman with a very stern face. She had lugged onto the train with her a gigantic, completely full, reusable shopping bag and sat in the seat nearest the door. During our commute the train car began to fill up making it difficult for those getting on and off to navigate around the huge tote. A young woman stepped on and accidentally nudged the bag with her foot. Its owner took dramatic offense and exclaimed, "Mon sac [My bag]!" pulling it nearer to her as if to keep it out of harm's way. The younger woman apologized, somewhat perplexed at the overreaction.

At the next stop the car cleared out and the horrid puppeteer stepped on, immediately starting his music and fastening up his partition between the poles. "Oh nooooooon!" howled the woman, throwing her head back melodramatically. She quickly gathered up her giant shopping bag and stepped off the train, shuffling toward the door of the next car. She underestimated how long this would take her and reached the door just in time for it to slam shut in her face. She arched her back and shook her fists at the sky, as if to curse the gods for her misfortune. "NOOOOOOOOOON!!!!!" she wailed loudly enough to be heard through the closed doors and over the mechanical train sounds. It was hilarious.

But back to today: As soon as we arrive at Montparnasse cemetery we realize we've been here before. I have just never written about it and thus it has blended together in my memory with the city's other cemeteries (I'll give you an in-depth account later). After our stroll, we turn back toward Montparnasse station in search of food. The specific food we are after is aligot, a traditional dish from what was formerly known as the Auvergne region. It is essentially potatoes pureed with so much melted Tomme cheese that it's pourable. The dish is served by holding a hot pot of the stuff a couple of feet above your plate and then tilting it so that its contents cascades down in a long viscous ribbon until the server cuts it off with a spatula. The restaurant we choose is called Le Plomb du Cantal, one of three of the same name in the city. It has a warm rustic decor with big throne-like square wooden chairs and pictures of cows all over the place. Charlie has steak with his aligot and I have duck with mine, both of which are cooked perfectly if a little underseasoned. Our server dumps a small saucepanful of aligot onto each of our plates and we only manage to eat half of it.

This food appeals to the rural peasant in me.

In dire need of walking it off, we circle all the way around Montparnasse station trying to find the entrance to a tiny park that supposedly exists at its center. The whole area is quite drab and soviet looking compared to the rest of the city. There are few people around this quiet Sunday, the silence of which further adds to the overall abandoned spookiness of it. We eventually find the park entrance, catching a glimpse of the Eiffel Tower off in the distance as we enter. There being little of interest in the park, we decide it is time to head home. Both of our stomachs are bubbling urgently in response to the sheer amount of butter we've been eating these last few days.

Well, hello there!

Once home and having taken care of business, we decide it's probably best to stick close to home for the evening. We have leftover rotisserie chicken and potatoes for dinner, and then doze intermittently while watching TV, trying desperately to stay awake long enough to finally overcome what is now a three-day bout of jetlag. We are only moderately successful.