Some Bar Hopping

And Some Bungling

Paris:- Monday/Tuesday, 81/2December 2003:- The best thing about being a bit late this week is that I can give you a later weather update, although it is still cold as rusty iron 20,000 leagues under the sea. To de precise, it is about three or four degrees, there's little wind, and it is sunny.

This is also predicted for Wednesday, by this morning's Le Parisien and last night's TV-weather news. TV put tormorrow's high at four degrees, but Le Parisien will only bet on two. Both sources agree that the high pressure will move east on Thursday, to be replaced by good old Atlantic regular weather - cloudy, rainy, but much much warmer.

How 'much' warmer is a state of mind. After a sunny day with two or four degrees, how would a 200 percent increase suit you? Both last night's TV-weather news and today's Le Parisien are unanimous in forecasting nine degrees for Thursday.

While I'm a day late with this, I might as well toss in Le Parisien's prediction for next Friday and Saturday. Both days might be kind of cloudy, kind of rainy at times, and kind of nine degrees - with the tip of Brittany stuck out in the Atlantic having a forecast high of 10 degrees.

Café Life

Life proceeded normally during the week with a Wednesday visit to the Champs-Elysées to get the program for January from the Paris Tourist Office, see the Christmas lights and take in the atmosphere just as darkness floated down on the avenue.

Not quite so usual, was Wednesday night. This involved dining in a Montparnasse oyster palace and visits to several famous cocktail spas, starting with Le Select, passing through the Raspail Vert café, and hitting bottom in the Bistro 48 in the Rue Daguerre. At the end, I was full of sea water and too many cafés.

Le Select's terrace was almost deserted - it wasn't late - and offered a splendid view of La Coupole across the boulevard and the passing traffic. A bus turns out of the Rue Vavin there, and every time one did the neons on Le Select's side of the street were reflected in the bus windows. I felt like sitting there for hours.

The Raspail Vert café has been praised by Dennis and Dimitri for its excellent lunches. But this café has been renovated since last summer. Therefore it is no longer desirable as far as these fans of old-time - say, '50s times - cafés are concerned.

I never knew it then. But it seems to me that a certain restraint was used, and the decor is inobtrusive and all of a piece - all in soft earth-tones. The seats of its comfy banquettes are done in light brown, which might be nearly the same color that was proposed for La Corona's famous renovation, and never happened. If there's anything wrong with the Raspail Vert café - aside from now having a 'happy hour' - is that it has nothing green except a few plants.

For a late-'40s style café-bar, you can't do better, or much worse, than the Bistro 48 which is in the Rue Daguerre, but not at number 48. I think '48' is its year-model. It was nearly deserted and a bit cool - proved by the steam rising from the barman's soup. The café's Christmas lights probably date from about ten years ago, because they've lost most of their colors. They cheerily keep them on year-round.

As usual, the whole day of Thursday was occupied with the Café Metropole Club and its members, and the production of the consequent 'report.' As a special exception, I never try to start this day early, because it invariably lasts a long time. But I got finished before too much Friday had passed.

Metropole probably has two types of readers. One pays attention to the 'Scène' columns and the other is annoyed that time spent on them is time lost to other features. It was probably Friday before I got around thinking about updating the two existing columns, and creating the 'Eves' column from scratch.

But first, I had to give the HTML code another complete check. The additions over the past weeks had to harmonised - to conform to the changes and corrections already made and online. I didn't reach the goal of zero errors, but there only remains one small but fundamental step left to do. For editorial reasons, the final step is not planned for the next issue.

I left the week's final photos for taking on Sunday. Quite by chance it was very sunny and very cold, partly due to the stiff breeze. I did the minimum tour possible and returned to the somewhat cool apartment. Its big window is nice, but not in certain wind directions.

You won't see any of these Sunday photos in this issue. After 55 months of non-stop use, the camera's cable connecting it to the computer, gave up the ghost. This left the photos locked inside the wrong box.

No amount of fiddling, jiggling, changing ports or re-starts, made any difference. What a schmozzle! The camera works fine. Folks thinking of buying digital cameras should consider that, even with constant use, they will likely work well as long as any other kind of camera. But their simple wire cables may not.

And, after 55 months, trying to get a replacement cable, on a Sunday, is no easy matter. Maybe there are no replacement cables. Anyhow, plunge forward and do what can be done - even if the scanner keeps the neighbors awake.

The first came last Thursday, from Café Metropole Club member and long-time reader, Doug Fuss. On a mission to Skopje in Macedonia, he spied what he thought was the lost graveyard of Fiat 500s, and he thoughtfully sent three photos of them. "Here they are disguised as Zastrava's but they look like, walk like and talk like the 500s so they must be!"

However, his Fiat 500-spotting talent turned out to be slightly off. All the photos were of the ultra-rare Fiat 600 - or, could be, Zastrava 600s - and one was probably an original Fiat, because of its Hamburg plates. Unless it was an export model. All the same, Doug gets an 'A+' for being on the lookout and thinking of Metropole readers hungry for their 'Fiat 500 of the Week.'

The second good luck of the week came yesterday, from Jim Auman, a Café Metropole Club member and long-time reader who lives in New Jersey. Jim wrote:

"Attached is a photo of the unofficial, non-Metropole-approved non-Euro-approved snow measuring stick showing the total snowfall in the lands west of Paris. With some modifications it could be used to show the amount of Beaujolais Nouveau or depth of the sand at Paris Plage."

The 'measuring stick' clearly shows - at the photo's original size - that the depth of snow is 13.25 inches, or 33.5 Eurocentrics. The New York area was hit with one of the earliest and biggest snowfalls in weather history over the weekend, and selected Metropole readers lived to tell the tale.

Jim gets an 'A+' for being on the lookout for snow depth in his backyard and thinking of Metropole readers anxious to see the first 'Snowfall of the Week' to dump on the New York City area.

Metropole's Lodging page is still online and in this issue. Nobody seemed to believe this would ever get done - myself included - but al have been proved mistaken.