Paris in the rain! A perfect time for me to take a walk on the Champs Elysee. No walk is complete in Paris without a coffee at a sidewalk café so I stopped at the Café George Cinq. (I don’t believe there is a relationship to the swanky hotel.) The drier tables, reserved for dining patrons, left the outer rim for boissons only, but my charming waiter whisked away the cutlery and placemat and gallantly offered a chair for me in a wind free location.
For the price of a cup of coffee the table rent
is paid for as long as you want to sit. I pulled out my Hemingwayesque moleskin to jot down notes. Carried away with my writing I noticed a bit of shuffling but didn’t look up until I heard an enormous splat of water hit the ground close to my feet!
Rain had filled the awning above my head. Halfway under the awning stood the big round umbrellas normally situated further out on the sidewalk. A smiling waiter used a broom handle to push the canvas up dispelling the water, which poured down on the umbrellas, where it rushed in multiple rivers, one of which whooshed down near me. The shuffling I heard came from the waiters moving the women to drier places and the men into the trajectory of the water. Chivalry still reigns in France!
As I’m watching this typically French approach to a problem, two policemen astride their magnificent horses plod slowly in front of me, on the sidewalk of the Champs Elysee, pedestrians rushing by, bumping umbrellas, avoiding the persistent rain. I could have reached out and patted the horses. I should have. They would have been implacable.
{ 0 comments… add one now }