merci beaucoup

February 28, 2009

After staying at CS until well past 2 with quite a bit of dancing, I set up the alarm for 8:15 for my little getaway / scouting trip to Paris. This was so because I thought figuring out ins and outs of St. Pancras Eurostar station setup in advance of early morning trip for 5 in April. How early do I need to get there? How complicated is the boarding set up?

I arrived at Cambridge train station at 9:15 AM or so on my bicycle with two backpacks. This gave me a plenty of time to buy the ticket (useful because the queue was quite long). I bypassed the 9:30 slow train and opted for 9:45 direct train. Either would have got me to Kings Cross at about the same time, 10:30.

My Paris Gare Du Nord train was scheduled to depart at 11:20. I thought I would have plenty of time to explore. After spotting the check-in, I found my way to the electronic ticketing booth. With ticket on hand, I decided to get on the train early.

There were 3 people in front of me. I felt relaxed. The attendants on the other hand looked a bit anxious and asked me if I was getting on the 11 train. I was a little puzzled but said yes anyway. They asked me to hurry as they attached a new boarding pass to my ticket.

Ah. It’s a schedule change. I found out on the train that a new schedule had been in place since February 23. First there was a security check just like in the airports. Then there was a Passport check for entree to France. I got on the train at 10:57. The train departed shortly after 11 just as I clicked to publish the blog post The Savage Detectives. I don’t know if I made it on time.

The English Southeast is not as flat as East Anglia. Even though Eurostar offers little in terms of sights, even I could see that much. To think that I had considered the flatness as one of the defining impression of England when I first visited. There wasn’t a great deal of French scenery to see in the fast-moving and oft view-challenged Eurostar railtracks.

At least it gave me time to get some work done.

After arrival at Paris Gare du Nord, I briefly explored the station for departure points for Eurostar back to London as well as Thalys for Netherlands for future. After a walk to the Est Hotel, after check-in, after seeing a very plain room at street-level with a window facing the main street, the first thing on my mind was to look for free wi-fi spots. Utter failure.

Jardin de Villemin wi-fi spot was non-functional. I had difficulty locating my back-up location (because I marked the wrong spot on the map) – I did find a third spot on Sunday morning but it did not operate on Sundays. Les Forum Halles would have worked fine except I did not get there until the evening outside the working hours. Who would have thought that they would operate wi-fi spots for working hours only (e.g. 9-5 Mon-Fri, 1-5 Sat … this is not exact, but that is the general idea)? Looking for wi-fi spot did lead me to watch large number of people playing a game of Boules at Jardin de Villemin – a game I first saw watching Jean de Florette.

By the way, crossing the street with green walk sign in your favor is not as safe as it is in the UK. In the UK pedestrian is king. When pedestrian walk sign is green, there is no traffic going across that crosswalk. Paris is like the USA – vehicles turning want to get across the pedestrian crosswalk and will try to do this before the pedestrian starts to cross the street. Even with a green light, a pedestrian in Paris has to be very careful – arguably more so than in the USA too (with caveat that outside cities like New York, Boston and San Francisco there are not many large heavy-pedestrian areas in the USA).

Sightseeing was secondary to getting a feel of the city in this trip but sightseeing could not be avoided. I covered the walk from the train station to the Seine. I was a little startled to see can’t-miss gatherings of streetwalkers – I was reminded of the descriptions of the way they greet each other I read in several of John Irving books. I thought their dresses and make-up were de facto uniforms of a sort.

What of an old description I read and used about Salsa dancers in the UK or at European congresses dressing like prostitutes? In the middle of otherwise busy shopping district full of casual or chic dressed Parisians, I would say that even the most provocatively dressed Salsa dancers don’t wear their make-up like the streetwalkers here.

The sightseeing highlight was walking the full length of the south bank of the Seine in the evening. This I planned on instantly after seeing the Seine and being reminded of the Goldie Hawn dancing scene in Everyone Says I Love You. It was very pretty – I wouldn’t mind taking that walk few more times under different circumstances.

I also watched the services inside Notre Dame cathedral and walked through the Latin Quarter while surveying some hotels there. Finally I walked the grounds of the Louvre and Forum de Halles in the dark before making my way back to the hotel on foot - time for more work.

March 1, 2009

Some more work after getting up. A short stroll to the Canal and around in futile search for free wi-fi and better luck finding cheap breakfast. Back to the hotel. Ate and showered. More work.

Barrio Latino

I had counted on finding out the hours for Barrio Latino for Salsa dancing after getting to Paris. I vaguely remembered that it started from around 2 and ended around 7, but when do the lessons end? I thought it best to go early and find out in person and spend the rest of the time exploring the Bastille area as a possible hotel option in April.

Taking the Metro from Gare du Est to Bastille (1.60 euro single ticket – surprisingly lengthy queue due to ticketing machine breakdown), I arrived at Barrio Latino at 1:30. The attendant did not speak much English but I managed to find out that the lessons started at 2 and goes to 3:30.

Bastille seemed like a more interesting district to stay compared to Gare du Nord/Est area. It might be cheaper too. For the purpose of the April trip, it probably would be less convenient for the main train stations but perhaps slightly better for trips to the main attractions – close call on the latter. In addition to Barrio Latino, Balajo (the main Tuesday LA/NY Salsa venue) is also in Bastille area not far from Barrio Latino. The Latin Quarter on the south side of Seine is nicer than both districts but more expensive.

One of the most surprising things about Paris was the preponderance of Japanese restaurants. I saw one near my hotel, three or four more on the walk to the Louvre area, two or three more in the Latin quarter, four or five in the Bastille area. Later in the guidebook, I saw that I hadn’t even touched the Japan-town area of Paris to the northwest of Louvre. I saw no more than a quarter that number of Chinese restaurants by contrast.

I decided to try a Japanese/Korean place for lunch. It seemed to be operated by the Chinese. The décor was primarily Korean and secondarily Japanese – nothing Chinese in sight except for the language used by the staff. Incidentally the type of food I ate was decidedly non-French – a kebab (and to think I never went to such places in the UK), an Indian (why oh why?), Japanese/Korean and to be seen later a hamburger.

I returned to Barrio Latino around 3:15 in order to catch a glimpse of the lessons. It seemed that the policy was to keep others in the lobby until very close to the end of the lessons. While standing around I struck a conversation with a cute Israeli salsera visiting Paris for two weeks. The turn pattern class was followed by a shine, and it all ended with some sort of cool-down type group exercise.

Barrio Latino is a multi-floor venue and a moderately expensive restaurant. The main dance floor could be observed easily from circular balconies upstairs (and many did so). The floor was extremely crowded and dancing spilled onto the lobby as well as the second floor by the end. Coat-check was free of charge for 2 items, but drinks were quite expensive (something like 7 euros for Coke - not sure if the entry included a free non-alcoholic drink as was the case at O'Sullivans).

For people familiar with the London scene, I would describe Barrio Latino Sundays as a party with elements of Bar Salsa Mondays (as a restaurant venue – except I would imagine that most people would say that Barrio Latino has more interesting décor and nicer floor plan) but also elements of SOS Sundays (I doubt there are any random non-dancers trying to dance here given the Sunday afternoon timing).

For me it was very much like going to SOS except for the crowding and that I didn’t know anyone. I would say that not having reliable familiar people to dance with was more than compensated by not having people I became accustomed to not asking for dances. I say this because on any given Sunday, I probably have twice as many of the latter as I do the former. Figuring out prospective partners, who would be nice to dance with, was easy enough.

I’m guessing that about one third of the dances I had were On2. I had fun dancing either. All the dances were singletons except for one. I was struck up for conversations by a few followers – somewhat unusual (I think one was named Louisa?). Most people seemed able for short exchanges in English if not more. Random bias – I think the French girls generally dress nicer than the British counterparts.

The music was fine. The social started off with Ken Moussoul Guis Li. Things got a bit too fast for too long at times. I wouldn’t say it was On2-centric at all but to say that the music was congress-like might not be far off mark. I probably knew less than 10% of the songs by heart (Mojito, A El, others?). Ana Y Saoco became a very shine-heavy dance for me.

When I was getting ready to leave around 7, I had decided that I probably would be able to make it to O’Sullivans later in the evening after all. At the start of the social, I felt a little tired and thought that I might have tweaked my arm leading the Israeli girl before the social actually kicked off. Maybe I paced myself well?

O’Sullivans

Back to the hotel. Shower. Change clothes. More work – there’s been a lot of it in this trip. Then to Montmartre.

O’Sullivans is literally next door to the Moulin Rouge. On the other side are venues of more explicit nature. The Salsa room is at the back. Spacious venue with mix of concrete floor (where the lessons were held) and part wood floor closer to the main O’Sullivans venue.

The person manning the Salsa entrance spoke fluent English unlike at Barrio Latino and let me know about the free drink with the entrance ticket. I didn’t see any brilliant dinner options outside and I took his suggestion to use the food option at O’Sullivans. Thus the hamburger – it was decent. Finally a beer – sorely missed at the Indian restaurant last night.

Speaking of beer, this billboard advertisement on the metro for beer was hilarious: Amsterdam Explorator (6.8%), Navigator (8.4%), Maximator (11.6%). Alcohol content is all-important.

Regarding the Paris metro, the most striking for me was the seat plan. Most fixed seats were for four people facing each other with little legroom in between. Were they designed with people of shorter height in some distant past?

I must say that I was a little worried about the small number of people at the start of the social at O’Sullivan’s. At first there was only one couple – dancing On2. Then one more joined in for the second song. Then another couple joined in for the third song. There seemed to be higher proportion of On2 dancers, however.

I finished my food in time for the start of La Salsa Nunca Se Acaba. I recognized a much higher proportion of songs compared to at Barrio Latino. Other songs included El Yoyo, La Quiero A Morir, Un Verano En Nueva York, some other El Gran Combo and Gilberto Santa Rosa, Madre (this one I’m not familiar with), El Cantante (Hector Lavoe version as my last song of the night) among others.

More people came in as the night wore on. It was nowhere near as busy as Barrio Latino by the time I left shortly after midnight (the party was supposed to go until 3 AM), but it still was quite good. On average, there were less beginners and improvers here compared to Barrio Latino. Not quite half of my dances were On2. All the dances were singletons once again with one exception I danced a Cha and a Salsa.

My legs held up remarkably well despite the Barrio Latino social from 3-7 PM and another 2 hours or so at O’Sullivans. Perhaps the break in between was very helpful. Perhaps the nice new scene was inspiring and invigorating. I think I could have gone another hour easily without any problem. I decided to end it to give myself enough time for the metro and to catch up on sleep. It also meant I ended the night on a high note – one of three best dances of the evening.

Comparing Barrio Latino and O’Sullivans, I generally would say if one has to choose between the two, I would recommend Barrio Latino to the first-time visitors. This comes with a major caveat that O’Sullivans is really good too. It’s just that the sheer madness at Barrio Latino seems more likely to impress more people. However, for people who care about having a decent space (because Barrio Latino can get way too crowded) yet decent number of dance partners, O’Sullivans has an upper hand. The best option is to try both.

I think Paris scene is younger than London. In terms of age of dancers, it’s not very different, but the leads were not very strict about keeping timing they started with. Didn’t I note this aspect regarding a youtube clip some time ago? I wonder if the sign of older scene is preponderance of really good-looking social leads accompanied by social followers who don’t look as good (the other end naturally for the younger scene would be not-so-many superb-looking social leads with plenty of very good social followers). This seems to work for me in comparing the DC-London-Paris scenes.

March 2, 2009

Nothing much here. 10:15 train instead of 9:45. I would have preferred to 9:15 but there was no free seat. The train was full. It’s a very long train.

I had tried to put up the "fictional" post for Friday at St. Pancras station Saturday morning. I saw that I had not succeeded upon returning to St. Pancras Monday morning and belatedly put it up.

Regarding the title, it was a phrase I heard quite a lot in this trip. I had merci part figured out after consulting the French phrases section of my guidebook. I had to use the internet after returning to figure out the word and the meaning. Nice.

It was a quite relaxing trip. Avoiding airplanes and airports and short commutes overall helped.