Day 3 Bonne Annee

New Years Eve began for us with a fascinating three hour walk of discovery through the famous covered galeries or passages couverts of the Right Bank of Paris. Basically these 18^th and 19^th century covered laneways are the antecedents of our modern malls. In days gone by Parisians flocked to these centres of warmth, food and materialism to escape the cold and filth of the Paris streets. A couple of these galleries are beautifully restored, but the most interesting are somewhat neglected and quite tatty. Some are filled with the finest and trendiest shops while others contain shops that stock only old postcards, dolls house furniture or music boxes. Others are the homes of artists, artisans and eccentrics; very Paris and very chic!

Lunch was the experience of a lifetime at a restaurant called Chartier. The food was not worthy of much comment but the vibe was something else. A beautiful three hundred-seat room meant a table for deux (two) was to our surprise (and after a wait) two seats sandwiched in the middle of a table for 6, with our coats stowed above us like a railway carriage. We watched as the waiters, mostly mature aged men, were literally run off their feet. The dexterity of the waiters was something else, with one guy being able to carry seven main meals at one time, on one arm. When we ordered, from a French only menu, our waiter, an elegant young French women with a very grubby apron, scrawled the order onto our paper tablecloth. We were sitting close to the main till and watched in amazement as a queue of waiters would file out of the kitchen and swipe their identity card next to the till while the main cashier would record on her register the meals they were carrying to waiting customers. When our meal ended, the waiter returned to again use our paper tablecloth, like a butcher in a previous generation, to add up the cost of the meal. There was no other bill. As our meal ended and the lunchtime setting was closing the people next to us finished and then something very odd happened. The maître di sat down next to us, and proceeded to do some rather unusual accounting using these restaurant seats as his office. Waiters came with a pile of slips, which he organized, on the table in a series of small drinking glasses. He was obviously tallying up each waiter’s takings for the day. For some waiters there was loud discussion and lots of hand raising. It was entertaining, bizarre and wonderfully odd.

New Years Eve was a long, cold walk down to join some hundreds of thousands of people in the Champs Elysees and then later near the Eiffel Tower. It was interesting in that, as far as we could see, nothing happened- no fireworks, no countdown, no excitement, not even any kissing. However it did seem that everyone had their own bottle of champagne with which they toasted the New Year. Earlier we had seen the crowds queuing outside the fancy dress shop, but alas they must have been at another party because we didn’t see any fancy dress at all. Still a New Year in Paris with a temperature of 1.5 degrees was a new experience. Apparently we can say Bonne Annee (Happy New Year) for the whole of January!