Paris, France
November, 2007

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Thursday, November 22, 2007
Creepy Paris day!

Rebecca's favorite Metro stop was Concorde, with its matrix mosiac of letters spelling untranslatlable words in French.

The advertising in the Metro stations is unavoidable, with big color posters in the hallways, and mammoth color posters in the stations. We practised our French while waiting for trains by trying to translate the advertising. Rebecca had trouble translating the title of a recent fantasy film - The Golden Compass - which has an elaborate and unwieldy title in French. She now refers to the film (which she hasn’t seen, and doesn’t plan to see) as Across the Mountain on a Golden Polar Bear. It will do. I, on the other hand, tried without success to figure out the title of the film advertised by endless thousands of posters of some fairy princess and the reciprocal posters of her evil witch adversary. Turned out to be Enchanted, and yes, I skipped this one at the cinema too.

We were to see plenty of these posters today: on our third day in town, and our last day of miscellaneous activity before breaking in our Museum Passes (and therefore scheduling all of the other major sights in town as well) we wanted to tick a few things off of our list that were all on the outskirts of the city. These three things formed sort of a triangle with points in the 09e, 20e, and 14e. With the transit strike still happening, we were slightly worried about the large amount of travel today - on no other day in Paris would we rely on the Metro so much - but once again, the free rides were reliable if occasionally quite crowded.

Arrondissements of Paris. Memorize this, or be lost.

Just by coincidence, all three of today’s attractions involve dead people, so we dubbed today “Creepy Paris Day”. In spite of my past in the Industrial music scene, and Rebecca’s present in the dusty twilight land of the classical musical world, neither of us are particularly fascinated by the morbid. But as stated above (while discussing Montmartre cemetery), the boneyards in Paris are just as full of beauty and art as the museums are, and visiting a total of three of them was rewarding and did not feel obsessive or redundant.

After a pleasant and free petit dejeuner in the hotel (free, also, of scary maid lady yelling at us), we made our way to Pere Lachaise Cemetery (Boulevard de Ménilmontant, 20e).
This is the biggest and most famous of the Parisian cemeteries. Montmartre cemetery is immense, but Pere Lachaise is very immense. People like Oscar Wilde and Jim Morrison are buried there. Many of my comments about Montmartre cemetery apply here as well, but more so. One could spend weeks in here, just admiring the art, the history, and the quiet tranquility. There are also monuments of great power here, such as one entire boulevard (again, a literal city of the dead inside these walls), devoted to memorials to each of the individual concentration camps of World War II. Terrifying sculptures of emaciated victims mark these monuments, unflinchingly refusing to let us forget the suffering caused by the Third Reich and its allies. Buchenwald, Auschwitz, Treblinka, Belsen, and the others each have their own monument.

Near this area is the grave of Surrealist artist Paul Eluard. You may remember that his wife Gala ran off with Salvador Dali, and then remained by Dali's side for fifty years. Seeing the monument to Eluard, someone who created ideas and beauty, rather than the suffering of Buchenwald seen across the little street, raised our spirits a bit and led us to go in search of some other creative heroes.
We found Max Ernst and Maria Callas in the mausoleum, and film maker Georges Milies in a proper grave.
A large sculptural sepulcher devoted to the heroic Abelard and Heloise was being restored. Oscar Wilde’s grave was covered with presents and lipstick kisses all over the stone, in spite of a sign hung nearby imploring visitors to refrain from this particular traditional vandalism.

Some trees at Pere Lachaise.

Neither Rebecca nor I are particularly impressed with Jim Morrison (lead singer of famous 1960s rock band The Doors), but his presence here is so iconic that we felt as though we had to at least wander past his resting place. His small grave is sort of shoved in behind the larger family tombs of some other unknown Parisians, and is largely unremarkable in every way, except for the guards stationed near it. No other grave in all of Paris boasts of this distinction. Hell, even the grave of Elvis (at Graceland, in Memphis, Tennessee) doesn’t need guards.

Next stop: more dead people!

On the way... I made a tape of a guy playing John Coltraine and then Beethoven on a sax in the Metro. I also liked a certain busker who we saw another day. He had a little cart with a CD player and speakers hooked up to it, and he played his accordion along with instrumental tunes off of the CD player. Accordioke.
On the Metro, we curved down across the southeast regions of Paris to the catacombs (1 Place Denfert-Rochereau, 14e).
The catacombs are miles and miles of underground tunnels, some of which are used as an ossuary to store millions of human bones that could no longer fit in the cemeteries (I tol’ you it was Creepy Paris Day!). Only a small portion of the catacombs are usually open to the public; when we arrived at the entrance to the public section, we were disappointed to discover that they are entirely closed for some renovation. This renovation began just two days before we got there, and lasts until February of 2008.

We found the local markets in the Denfert-Rochereau area and made a picnic of a baguette and a water for €0.94, a cheese for €1, a great apple tart for €2.04, some grapes, bananas and clementines for €2.24, and some Camembert cheese. Rebecca was excited to remember that a drippy Camembert was what inspired Salvador Dali to paint his famous melting watches (which are in New York’s MoMA). Like Dali’s gooey, flowing cheese-inspired time, this meal was two weeks ago as I write this, and is steadily oozing back into the recesses of memory, just as Dali told us it would. We ate it in a nice and definitely uncreepy park by a statue of Ludovic Trarieux, first president of the French League of Human Rights (1840-1904).
We then walked a short distance trough the Montparnasse neighborhood (within the 14e) to Montparnasse cemetery. This one is smaller than the other two boneyards, and is marginally less fascinating - or is it just that three cemeteries in two days had diminished our enthusiasm for such things?

The landscape here is flatter and with less trees than the cemetaries at Pere Lachise and Montmartre. It feels more open, but also more crowded. One grave was open and I peered into the hole. The grave was wide enough for two caskets, side by side. A series of six brackets were installed into the earth so that 'shelves' can be built, and coffins can be stacked. I saw the corners of two ornate wooden boxes poking out from under a plywood shelf, way down in the hole. It looked like there was enough room for ten more, five more levels with two caskets side by side on each level.

This is only a third of the chocolate aisle!

We paid respect to Man Ray, Jean-Paul Sartre and his girlfriend Ms. Beauvoir, the photographer Brassai, and musician Serge Gainsbourg.
We were unable to find composer Saint Saens or Tristan Tzara, but we’d seen the latter’s house in Montmartre, for whatever that is worth.

Back on the train to 09e, we stopped in again at Galeries Printemps.
Rebecca once again explored the shoes on the fifth floor, once again lingered at the Jonak section, and once again left with no new shoes.
I was once again grateful for the chance to park my ass on the same bench as I had on Tuesday, and let her indulge.

Next door at Galeries Lafayette, we did make a purchase.
We went to the food section and spent about €40 ($60) on chocolate (mostly - not entirely - for gifts) after browsing further culinary delights that we couldn’t always identify, including great heaps of spices.

...great heaps of spices!

We walked around the briefly aforementioned maze of ritzy streets connecting Place Madeleine and Place Vendome, which are full of extremely expensive gourmet food shops, jewelry stores, four-star hotels, perfumeries, and exclusive clothing boutiques. Reaching Place Vendome, we were astounded at an unexpected display of Paris-ness. This large square with yet another monument in the center would be the star attraction in most cities, but in Paris it simply another of the thousands of wonders that await around every corner.
We’d visit Vendome again in a few days when we explored the Hemingway bar in the Ritz (read on: that is called blatant foreshadowing). There's a picture of Place Vendome at that point too, I am sure you cannot wait.

Back in the Atlanta Frochot for a rest, we made tape recordings, argued over the pronunciation of 'Sartre' and 'Saint Saens', and Rebecca pontificated onto my recorder as a catharsis from the trauma of the pit toilet she encountered in Montparnasse cemetery.

Dinner was at Fare Tahiti (11 rue Godot de Mauroy, 09e). We were to meet my friend Nicolas and his wife there at 9:00. We got to the vicinity early, so we stopped at a little cafe across the street. Rebecca wanted an aperitif. Kir is her favorite; we make Kir Royale here at home from time to time (simply by introducing a good dollop of Creme de Casis or the more expensive Chambord liqueur to a glass of champagne). The standard Kir aperitif is the Casis or Chambord in a glass of white wine (€3 here). Rebecca liked this little cafe; I did not. I found it to be hot and stuffy, too smoky, and we had to stand at the corner of the bar and make awkward conversation with the barmaid while the people around us relaxed comfortably and had fun. I couldn’t wait to get out of there. Under other circumstances, this typical little Parisian cafe would have been fine, but tonight it was not working for me.

We soon met Nico and his newly pregnant wife (congratulations) and had an adequate meal in the only Tahitian restaurant in Paris. Our waitress was a lively and vivacious wahine in a brightly colored mu'umu'u, who never seemed to comprehend that Rebecca and I don’t have much of a grasp of French (we tried, everywhere we went, we really did!). She spoke rapid-fire, and fortunately Nicolas was able to translate.

Nicolas, being the saint he is, bought dinner. His English is very good, but while convincing me to let him get the check, he kept saying “you’re invited” -- I think he meant “you’re my guest”. It was only after we got back to the hotel that I remembered that today had been Thanksgiving. I had chicken for dinner - close enough.

We might have had a bit of Beaujolais Nouveau before hitting the sack (we often did), but I was in a coma before midnight. I slept like the dead for the first half of every single night I was in France, but I also woke up at random hours very early every morning, and usually had trouble getting back to sleep. Each night was a bit easier, and each night my sleep was longer and better before my random internal rooster crowed.

Friday, November 23, 2007

And now we get to the major monuments of Paris.
We had rested up, recovered from the jet lag, had done all of the minor 'local' things, and now we had six days to see all of the postcard-worthy places in Paris.

Feasting upon another hotel breakfast, I began to find some of the other guests in the hotel familiar - the German couple with bad manners, the two Japanese girls who kept to themselves, the solo American guy who I overheard bragging: “I got through the Louvre in five hours yesterday”.

This statement stuck with me all week. He “got through the Louvre”, as if it was a burden for him to overcome, a hassle, a task that he had to complete before moving on to other things.
”Whew, am I ever glad that’s over!”
My plan was exactly the opposite: I’d earmarked no less than three sessions of several hours each at the Louvre over the next six days. By the following Wednesday, I would spend a total of about fifteen hours in the museum, and in retrospect, I feel as though I barley scratched the surface.
“...got through the Louvre”.
Five hours?
Screw that.

I wanted to savor every inch of the place. Why go to a museum - or anywhere else for that matter - just to run though it?
How much did the guy who “Got through the Louvre” really see, really understand, really absorb? How much does he remember? Did he stop to linger at anything that moved him, or did he check the Mona Lisa and Venus de Milo off of a list before sprinting up the banks of the Seine, jogging past Notre Dame and glancing at Tour Eiffel, all in the same morning? And seriously, you’d have to trot along pretty quickly just to take a quick glance through all of the major galleries of the Louvre in five hours. It really is that big.

International Rebecca and I arrived by free Metro in the station below the museum. An underground passage cum mall leads to the museum. We were pleased to see that the little indie coffee shop in the mall was doing better business than the Starbucks across the way. Arriving in the museum's general ZIP code, we queued up in a line of about fifteen people to get our Museum Passes. This shortish line took about twenty minutes to get through. Once we had our passes (€60 each for a six-day pass), we immediately saw the value in making this investment: not only were we now authorized to skip all future lines to get into all future museums, but we could come and go from all of Paris’s main attractions as we wished. We did end up seeing some things that were covered by the Pass that we might have skipped if our entry hadn’t been covered for ‘free’ by the Pass, so it enriched our trip on that level too. All in all, I definitely recommend getting one of these, with the caveat that you’ll want to organize your trip in advance to take full advantage of the sites that it covers.
Which I did, because I am amazing like that.

The long building that you see on the left is about 20% of the Louvre. Seriously.

The Louvre is a former palace, and a former fortress, the roots and history of which go back half a millennium or more. I don’t want to get into the entire chronology of the place here, but suffice to say, it has exclusively been a museum for a little over 200 years.
It is also big.
Very, very big.
I mean it.
Everyone knows that the Louvre is big, but when you hear that the Louvre is big, you’d better believe it, Buster.
It is big.

The shops, entrances, cafes, and all of that jazz are in the subterranean level below the glass pyramid, and above ground there are three further levels, each of which is big (etc.). Each of the three levels is also divided into three wings (the Denon, Sully, and Richelieu). I decreed that on this first visit we’d look at the second floor (third floor in American parlance), which is only half the size of the first and ground floors.
Some four hours later, I was bleary and unfocused, and couldn’t take any more art.
This is exactly what I expected, and is why I decided to plan three separate visits.
There is no way that anyone can remain focused and alert for fifteen hours of looking at art.
Best to do it in small chunks, and to start fresh each time.

Another tiny piece of Le Louvre.

So, we saw the second floor of the Richelieu and Sully wings. The Denon has no public exhibits on the second floor. Most of what we saw was French paintings from the 14th to 19th centuries. The Louvre cuts off around 1850; there is very little art here from after that period. A completely separate institution - The Orsay - picks up from the middle 19th century to the early 20th centuries, and the Pompidou Center, yet another museum, contains 20th and 21st century art. In addition to the French paintings, we also saw German, Flemish, and Dutch works from around the same era.

I made extensive notes on my copy of the museum map, detailing some favorite works, plus things, people, and periods to further investigate. I won’t go into them all here. Ask if you care. I refrained from taking pictures of the individual works of art for the most part, focusing my camera and my time on the building itself. The reason for this was because there are many thousands of amazing works on display in this institution, and I felt that once I began the slippery slope of taking snaps of just my very favorites, I'd be in for hundreds of photos and a lot of precious time. There are a lot of books detailing the paintings, sculptures, or objects d'art to be seen in this mammoth building - best to just pick one of those up!
I did make a few exceptions, and they were fairly random, based on whim.

One tiny thing (photo is aprox. actual size) in the enormous Louvre.

One thing that I photographed was a tiny wooden ball, the circumference of a silver dollar. A hinge allowed one to open it up, and in each hemisphere there is a little scene carved out of wood. The detailing is microscopic, and it was all made with 15th century technology. Some forgotten craftsman with a primitive lens, very steady hands, and the 15th century precursor to an X-acto knife coaxed this scene out of a miniature piece of a little tree. The execution is flawless, and the detail is astounding.
But here is the thing: the Louvre owns hundreds of thousands of pieces of art, every one of which, in its own way, is equally amazing.
Only a fraction of the collection is on display to the public, but this fraction amounts to a dizzying 35,000 works.
How can anyone choose which pieces to focus on, to spend some time with, to study, to remember?
I took one photograph. One little object. 1/35,000th of the publicly visible part of the collection.
Was it my favorite piece? No, not at all.
Was it the most technically amazing piece I saw?
It was very technically amazing, but the most? No!
It was just one little thing, half the size of my fist, lost in this vast sea of irreplaceable treasures.

Um, and maybe I just wanted to see if the Macro lens on my camera could handle it.
It did.

It should also be noted that all of the text next to all of the art, from names and dates to descriptive paragraphs about the works, are in French only. If you speak English, Japanese, German, Spanish, Eskimo, Swahili, Tahitian, Portuguese, or Dutch, you’re out of luck. There are many, many guide books available (I found and bought a very nice one that seemed like a bargain at €17 for almost 500 full color pages, and which is available in at least eight languages), but looking at the museum with one’s head buried in a book is perhaps not the most rewarding experience. Maybe I will buy the audio tour next time I go.

By 4:00 p.m. the rain had stopped and the skies were blue. This perfectly coincided with our leaving the Louvre. We walked out the front door (the big glass pyramid), with the intention of strolling through the Tuileries Gardens (the huge manicured park that is basically the Louvre’s front lawn... it is about a mile long). At this time of year, it was rather cold, and the Tuileries were far from being in full bloom. The flowers were gone and the trees were bare. Many of the fountains were turned off. The little food carts were mostly in garages for the winter. This was one of the few Paris experiences that we felt like we missed out on by picking November for a visit.
To quote the governor of California: I’ll be back.

Neptune's fountain.

Before walking the entire length of Tuileries, one gets to Place de la Concorde. Like all of the places of Paris, traffic zips around a central island, decorated with a monument. Concorde’s centerpiece is the 3,300-year-old, 72-foot tall, 220-ton red granite Obelisk of Luxor. Naturally, it is amazing. The obelisk was carted here from Egypt in 1830s, a gift to the French king. The gold pictures on the pedestal tell the story of its two-year journey.
During the French Revolution, this same spot was named "Place de la Revolution". A guillotine stood where the obelisk now stands. A bronze plaque memorializes the place where Louis XVI, Marie-Antoinette, and over 2,000 others were made "a foot shorter on top".
Even more impressive (to me) are a series of fountains, depicting Neptune and his undersea posse in green, black, and gold.
There is a Ferris Wheel here too, which underscores a bit of a Chicago-Paris rivalry.
In 1887 to 1889, the Eiffel Tower was erected for the Exposition Universelle, or a World's Fair in Paris.
Trying to outdo Paris for the 1893 World's Fair (aka Columbian Exhibition), Chicago built the world's first Ferris wheel.
Naturally, Paris had to respond with a bigger and better Ferris wheel. Chicago's original Ferris wheel was destroyed, but a modern one, even bigger than the one in Paris, now draws the eye towards Chicago's largest family-friendly tourist trap, Navy Pier (which should be avoided at all costs!).

Continuing to walk in a straight line from Louvre through Tuileries, and past Concorde, brings us to the Champs Elyses, Paris’s grand boulevard.
This goes on for another mile or so, finally ending at the Arc de Triomphe.

Champs Elyses as seen from the top of the Arc de Triomphe

We were starving, cranky, a little cold, and in a daze from all of the art we’d just stared at for so many hours. No longer caring where or what we ate, Rebecca and I stopped on a side street at the beginning of Champs Elyses for lunch in a brassiere called Paul (on Avenue Franklin D. Roosevelt), which is part of a local chain. Two sandwiches, a piece of flan cake, and a bottle of water came to €15.20. That is basically $25. Making picnics at markets for lunch is definitely the way to go. Yummy, customized, and cheap. The food at Paul was fine, but I am in no hurry to patronize them again.

We continued up the Champs Elyses. The ‘quiet side’ is old Paris, with little cafes and small shops. The ‘busy side’ is like Michigan avenue in Chicago: chaotic, crowded, and full of huge and uninteresting retail outlets like The Gap and such. There are also movie theaters and high-end car dealerships. I didn’t care much for it, and we didn’t spend much time lingering there. Tourist guides will also lead you to the famous Lido, which is Paris' largest cabaret.
It was the only bastion of naughtiness that we saw outside of our home base neighborhood of Pigalle.

Montmartre and Sacre Coeur as seen
from the top of Arc de Triomphe

At the end of the Champs Elyses is the famous Arc de Triomphe, a monument to France’s victory in war. You'll forgive that there are three views from the Arc de Triomphe on this page, and no views of it - the dusk backlighting didn't make for good photos. Of course we walked around and under it - you almost have to if you’re visiting Paris - but we would not have climbed the 284 steps to the top if our Museum Pass had not let us make the climb for ‘free’. It was worth doing, and we were rewarded with a great view of Paris at twilight. Beyond the Arc, continuing in the direction that we had been walking, we could see the avenue Grande Armée, which leads to a forest of skyscrapers around an even bigger modern arch in suburban La Défense.

All of the sites I have mentioned - from the Louvre through the Tuileries, up the Champs, past the Arc de Triomphe, and on towards the newer Arc in the suburbs - are in a strict line called the Axe Historique (Historic Axis). From the top of either Arc, one can look right down the arrow-straight Axis and see 7 miles worth of Parisian history all lined up. The Arc de Triomphe is not quite at the halfway point.

Tour Eiffel from top of Arc de Triomphe

This brings me to another cool thing about Paris.
None of the buildings in the entire city are over six stories tall. The exceptions are monuments like the Arc de Triomphe, Sacre Coeur, and the Sparkly Tour Eiffel. There is also one other exception: in the 1970s, a super-skyscraper apartment complex was built in Montparnasse (14e), and it just doesn’t fit in with Paris.
Parisians hate it, every single one of them.
This inspired the city to ban all tall buildings. So, right at the edge of the city in the suburb of La Defense, are all of the mega-office buildings that you’d see at the heart of any other major city. The effect here is that no part of Paris feels like ‘downtown’.
Arrondissements 01 through 04 are the center of the city geographically, and do contain things like all of the major museums, cathedrals, and government buildings, but the feeling of being 'in Paris' is more or less consistent all over the city.
These people really care about their culture and the quality of life. They know when they have a good thing, and they don’t always let commercial interests trump lifestyle interests.

We got back to the bottom of the Arc de Triomphe at 6:30, when the flame at the base of the monument was kindled, as has happened every day since Armistice Day (the end of World War I in 1918).

Macaroons!

We hiked back down the other side of the Champs Elyses - the quiet side this time. We checked out two famous cafés, Fouquet's (expensive and home of film stars, but we didn’t go inside after seeing caviar for €810 on the posted menu) and Café Ladurée. Ladurée is a classic 19th-century tea salon, restaurant, and pastry shop. The reason that people line up here at all hours of the day is to get their macaroons, which come in a palette of delicatte-sounding flavors and colors from mint to raspberry and from violette to rose. Rebecca queued up to get some tasty pastries, while I wandered around and peeked into the cozy seating rooms upstairs. The bakery also makes traditional little cakes and gift-wrapped finger sandwiches. Rebecca paid €11.73 for ten little sandwich cookies, and was thrilled with both the confections and their little pink box.
Good thing for me, her parents taught her how to share.

Leaving the Champs Elyses, our mission was to go back to the Place Vendome area and check out a place that has the reputation of being the best bar in the world: the Hemingway Bar at the Ritz Hotel (15 place Vendome, 01e). On the way, we wanted to get some dinner, and we also thought that we might go see a free Mozart concert at the Louvre.

We wandered around a bit on the way back toward the Louvre:
I discovered a great bookstore called Librarie Contacts (rue de Colise, near the intersection of Avenue Franklin D. Roosevelt, and running parallel to the Champs Elyses). Librarie, by the way, means book store. Contacts sells books on movies, graphic design, and photography, and that is all. Hell yeah. I love this. Many of them are even in English, which is rare for Paris.
Rebecca discovered a Jonak store, and finally gave in.
She got a nice pair of maroon Mary Janes for €75, after making a friendly hipster girl earn her pay: there were 'just a few' pairs of boots tried on before the final purchase was made.

Part of the Denon wing of the Louvre.

We discovered that the Louvre's Mozart concert was not free, that it was in fact expensive, and that it was sold out anyway. Someone told us that the concert was “24 bucks”, and we weren’t sure if they meant dollars or Euros.
Doesn’t matter, there were no tickets left.
But here is where the Museum Pass was once again cool: the Louvre is open late on Friday nights. Mentally refreshed (if a bit physically weary) from our six-mile walk outside, some food, and a hearty climb up the Arc, we re-entered the museum. Louvre visit #2 saw your narrator wandering around a few of the galleries on the first floor of the Sully wing, which is mostly ancient Egyptian treasures. We only spent 90 minutes or so there, but the Louvre collection of old painted sarcophagi is more impressive than that of every other museum I have been to (that is a lot of museums) combined. It is just mind-altering.
And then there’s this huge stone sphinx...
As if that wasn’t enough, the rooms on this floor are among of the oldest parts of the palace, and have amazing painted ceilings and antique woodwork on the walls and ceilings. The floors are often interesting too.

Of course one must also investigate the Greek Antiquities, in this case galleries 7 to 17, including Venus de Milo. On the way out - almost 9:00 p.m - it was determined that this was the time when we would have the best chance of seeing the Mona Lisa without lots of crowds around her. So we made our way across the museum, running through galleries that we’d see again on the following Monday, and came to gallery 06 of the first floor of the Denon wing. It is a large gallery, with paintings on all four walls, naturally.
But in the center there is another partial wall, only half the height of the room, and only maybe twelve feet wide.

A partial barrier exists in the center of the room.

The only painting on this wall...

in the center...
at eye level...
behind tinted bullet-proof glass and a ‘no photography' sign...
with ropes and stanchions keeping people at a distance...
and two guards nearby...
...is the Mona Lisa.

People looking at Mona Lisa

Big fucking deal.

Next.

Really, I have no idea how this chick acquired the cachet that she has.
Like Paris Hilton, the Mona Lisa is famous for being famous.
There are a hundred paintings in the Louvre that I like better - at least - and a thousand that are technically as good or better.
What is she looking at, and why is she smiling?

People looking at the Venus de Milo.

Who cares.

The crowd was minimal; late night was indeed a good time to have paid our obligatory token visit to Lisa, perhaps the second most famous object in Paris, second only to the ‘Sparkly’ Tour Eiffel.
Remember that guy who ‘got through the Louvre in five hours’?
Now I know how he felt: unmoved, unimpressed, and vaguely satisfied at having checked something off of the ‘have to do it in Paris list’.
I moved on.
Fortunately, unlike my hurried countryman at breakfast that morning, I did find lots to love and savor and enjoy in the Louvre - but it wasn’t this long-dead Italian dame.

We had snacks for dinner: grapes plus more Camembert on rolls that - sadly - were from a package (€5.87 total). These were the only baguettes we ate all week that weren’t bakery-fresh, and if nothing else they really made us appreciate all of the great pain (bread) that we enjoyed during our other meals. Thusly fed, we headed for the Hemingway bar in the Ritz Hotel at the amazing Place Vendome, where we spent €26 per cocktail ($38 - hence the cheapo dinner). All of this is further discussed on my CocktailSnob.com web site.

On the way back to the hotel, there was news: the transit strike had ended during the afternoon.
A friend of Rebecca’s who lived in Paris briefly had given Rebecca some extra Metro tickets.
So we used two of them to get back to Pigalle, paying (sort of) for our Metro ride for the first time.

Beaujolais Nouveau in the room once again finished the night, but this time we had macaroons and chocolate to compliment it.
This is coming from a guy who never eats dessert.
But in Paris, how can you fail to end an evening with a €26 cocktail, a glass of wine, a gourmet pastry, and a chunk of 82% cacao dark chocolate?

Saturday, November 24

After our usual petit dejeuner, we discovered a lovely and sunny day. Rebecca and I made it to a street called rue Cler (in 07e) by 11:00 a.m. We were told that the local market there was wonderful, much better even than the one on rue Abbesses in Montmartre. The idea was to make a picnic lunch again, and then explore the new Quai Branly museum (primitive and tribal art), the lovely Luxembourg Gardens, and then near dinner time, the Latin Quarter neighborhood (including the Shakespeare and Co. bookstore and the Taschen bookstore), which are all in the 06e and 07e. The Tour Eiffel is in 07e as well, but that monument was scheduled for another day.

Rue Cler was as described: a festive street full of shops, all of them with their fronts open to the crowds of people going from store to store to get their bread, cheese, fruit, chocolate, wine, etc., Everything for sale looked delicious: the fruit is universally fresh and ripe, the bread is always hot from the oven, the bakeries all sell astounding little pastries in addition to the more utilitarian baguettes, and in the cheese shops the owners will ask if the cheese if for consumption aujourd'hui (today) or demain (tomorrow) and then gently prod your potential purchase to make sure you get one that will be at its best when you’re ready to chow down.

Lunch and snacks cost €2.70 for fruit, €0.20 for 1.5 liters of water, and €8.90 for a sandwich on a baguette, an apple tart, and a piece of quiche. Some other American girl was ordering quiche too. We got her quiche in our bag, and were charged for it. The girl had already been charged too. The dumb-ass Asian girl behind the counter wasn’t able to figure out that she owed us a refund for the egg pie, that she also owed the other American girl the food, and that the other girl had already paid. After some haggling, she gave us our refund, but it was €0.20 short. I didn’t press the issue any further.

Rebecca has also fallen in love while in Paris.
She had a passionate affair with some macaroons, an ongoing fling with chocolate, and a deep and romantic friendship with wine, but her true love is fresh apple tarts.
She met one on Thursday that had stolen her heart, and the one today solidified the romance.
Fortunately for me, her parents taught her to share, so I got lucky and found myself with International Rebecca and a French tart, engaging in a mange a trois at a picnic area in the shadow of the Tour Eiffel.

The wisdom behind going to Eiffel on the following Tuesday was that there would be fewer people there than on Saturday (today). On that sunny Saturday, the lines to get in were ridiculous. Sitting at the edge of the park that surrounds the landmark, we were pretty far removed from the seething throngs of humanity trying to gain a little altitude via Mr. Eiffel’s 1887 erection. The park near Eiffel was chosen as a lunch spot due to its proximity to rue Cler. Even though we were at Tour Eiffel already, we decided to stay with the plan to actually go up into the tower on Tuesday (although we did shoot some pictures, taking advantage of sunshine and blue skies).

Our biggest problem was a flock of pigeons wanting to eat our picnic crumbs. Rebecca dislikes birds. I had to do a rather insane dance to scare them all away. These flying rats, by the way, were almost the only rats of any sort that we saw all week. Paris is a remarkably clean city. In spite of having seen the cartoon Ratatouille just a month earlier, I only saw one real rat in Paris (including all of the time we spent in subway stations), and it was at the base of Tour Eiffel, actually, on Tuesday night. But I am getting ahead of myself.

By the base of the tower, we were accosted by scrawny, weather worn, sad-eyed girls who seemed to be twelve years old and going on forty, all wearing gypsy-ish attire. They asked us if we spoke English. We said yes, and they passed us a badly-written note in a language that only superficially resembled the language you’re reading at the moment. The note basically said that these people were refugees from some war-torn Balkan state, and that we ought to give them our money.
Later we saw the entire family of a half dozen kids and their parents all jumping the turnstile to get onto the Metro. The station attendant didn’t seem to care, but when my own Metro ticket malfunctioned moments later, I chose to purchase a new one rather than trying his patience.

Right across the street from the Tour Eiffel is the river Seine, which divides Paris in half. Parisians refer to lower or southern half of the city as reve gauche (left bank) and the upper or northern half of the town as reve droit (right bank). “Upper and lower” or “north and south” banks would make a lot more sense than the less accurate "left" and "right". I’m just the messenger.

The plan was to walk along the Seine, following its curve along the road called Quai Branly, until we got to the Quai Branly museum (37 Quai Branly, 07e). Quai, by the way, means quay, but is usually used to indicate a road that runs along a river.

Quai Branly is an interesting museum that just opened last year. It focuses on tribal and primitive art from all over the world, with particular collections devoted to Africa, the Pacific Islands, southeast Asia, and the Americas (South a bit more so than North). The African collection is the strongest, followed by the Pacific collection. The Asian wing is a bit unfocused and tries to cover too broad an area, lumping too many distinct cultures into one mass. The South American collection needs a bit of bolstering, and the North American stuff is basically an afterthought.

There are a lot of videos and interactive exhibits (most of which feel like video-intensive web pages), which seem equally balanced between appealing to kids and to adults. There are also things to touch. Most of the interactive material is multilingual, but only a few randomly selected signs near the artifacts are (more so than the Louvre, at least).

We noticed that all of the museums in Paris are geared towards a more adult mentality than the museums in North America. Back in Chicago, during the month following the Paris visit, I went to both The Art Institute and the Museum of Science and Industry, and was interested in noting how kid-centric the latter museum is, especially compared to anything in Europe. My trip to Spain and my multiple trips to London solidify this observation. I guess they expect the kids in Europe to step up and persue culture and/or knowledge from an adult perspective. There is no pandering to the kiddies, no brightly colored plastic displays like there are here at home.

Quai Branly exterior.

In the main temporary exhibition hall, there was a show about the art of Benin, which we skipped (it cost extra, and we’d seen enough for the day anyway). We did visit other, smaller temporary exhibits. One was some mawkish photos of photographer Anne Noble’s daughter that didn’t seem to belong in this building (or any building, for that matter, but particularly this one). Also on display were a nice series of Daguerreotypes (but not as impressive as the collection that was in Chicago a few years back), and an interesting display of texts and artifacts concerning the Pacific explorer Festetics de Tolna from 1895-1898.

All of the museum galleries are located on the upper floor of a new, modern building. With the exception of the entrance hall, the entire museum is sort of on stilts - that is to say that there is no ground floor. Below and around the museum are a series of gardens, throwing the contemporary architecture into relief with the smatterings of nature that envelop it.

The Quai Branly also houses an amazing collection of musical instruments from all over the world.
I wish that these instruments had been the subject of some of the interactive exhibits; it would be fascinating to see them played in context (even if on video), and to hear how they sound.

New Guinea spirit boards in Quai Branly

As currently displayed, they are organized on a series of shelves housed within a giant glass cylinder, which is visible from the ground floor lobby and also on both the first floor of the musuem and a second floor balcony area. This three-story tall glass tube is meant to look as though the objects within it are being researched; they are all lined up neatly on their utilitarian metal shelving, and all are tagged and numbered as if for easy identification by enthomusicologists. Some sort of interactive device that would allow a person to listen to recordings of each instrument would be very cool, and to be honest, I am very surprised that it hasn't already been installed, given the prominent display of these instruments, the broad and comprehensive nature of the collection, and the wealth of other audio-visual material in the museum.

The walk further along the Siene towards the St. Germain and Latin Quarter neighborhoods (06e/05e) is a whole lot longer than it appeared to be on my map. We decided to skip Luxembourg Gardens for today (it was getting dark, and we’d be back in the area on Tuesday) and head straight for some (English) book shopping and then dinner.

We got more book shopping than we bargained for: all along the Seine, from the region of the museum Orsay (Monday, read on) to the area of Notre Dame (Wednesday, read on!), which is quite a distance, perhaps two miles or so, there are little green boxes affixed to the wall that runs along the sidewalk next to the river. These boxes unfold into little vendor stalls. There must be two hundred of them. Folded up, they’re the size of a steamer trunk, all painted the same shade of green and all padlocked shut.
When unlocked and unfolded, they’re ready for business.

Book stalls along the Seine.

All of them sell one of exactly two possible things: either antiquarian books, or cheapo Paris postcards. Some will sell both, but none of them sell anything other than books or postcards. The postcard sellers all have exactly the same merchandise, as if there were only one state-licensed supplier -- who also supplies the vendors on Montmartre. The micro book shops, on the other hand, have a dazzling array of titles, many of the tomes being -- possibly -- one of a kind. I had seen some rare early Jules Verne editions in (of all places) the Quai Branly museum (they were there to make a point within that exhibit about Festetics de Tolna), and I wondered then how rare they were. Some of the vendors had the same beautiful art nouveau editions right there on the street, for many, many Euros.

I didn’t linger at these stalls for even a quarter of the time I would have liked to. International Rebecca is not nearly as enthusiastic about book browsing as I am, and I felt pressure to continue on our walk at every stop. Perhaps it is all for the best, since most of the books were in French anyway.
But this is why I do like to travel alone sometimes. Nothing at all against Rebecca, but it is nice to be able to cater to one’s own whims exclusively without having to worry about someone else’s desires or needs.
Pure freedom.
At other times, one wants to share experiences with someone. Balance is the key for me, carefully choosing which trips would be best experienced with a co-conspirator, and which adventures are solo missions. And yet, in either case, there are always moments where the other option might have been best. Hopefully though, only a few moments.
Well, anyway, on the other side of the street, the side of the street across from the water, there are a lot of pricey high-end antique stores.
But we didn’t go into any of those.

We finally made it to Shakespeare and Company (37 rue de la Bucherie, right across the river from Notre Dame), a legendary bookstore at the edge of an exciting and bustling neighborhood near the Sorbonne University called the Latin Quarter. We were disappointed to find that Shakespeare and Company is vastly overrated. Their selection of books is minimal, the place is crowded, disorganized, cramped, and stinky. Consider the concept that I was in the most legendary English book shop in all of Paris, and that I am an obsessive collector of books. In fact, I like dusty, forgotten places in which I can discover something long abandoned that needs to be carefully rescued and curated in my library. The darker, woodier, and dustier the bookstore, the more I like it.
But this place was just all wrong, on all levels.
I couldn’t get out of there fast enough.
Just some notes though: the upper floor of the shop is full of books that are not for sale, and exist for reference purposes only. There is really nowhere comfortable to peruse these volumes however, save for a single table with one small chair in a tiny room. I discovered two stinky hippie dudes who appeared to have set up camp on a wretched moldy mattress shoved into the corner of another room. A tiny balcony over the staircase contains the Mirror of Love, on which you’re supposed to leave notes for the owner about how wonderful he and his shop are. Many I have, I didn’t.

The Grand Palais (we never went inside), as seen from across the Seine.

Walking away from the river and into the Latin Quarter, we veered southwest towards the adjoining/overlapping St. Germain area. The Latin Quarter is said to have once been an area of culture and intellectual activity, due in part to the Sorbonne. The area was the scene of the famous 1968 student riots, but is now considered to be a shadow if it’s former self. As one gets into the St. Germain area, things get a touch pricer, and more refined, for whatever that is worth.
Our itinerary said to:
“...walk streets near the Paris Conservatoire. There are shops dedicated to every musical niche you can think of and you can watch all the brass men, string men, etc. working in their shops. Plus, all the bars have funny names that have to do with music”.
We missed all of this, somehow, but we were also informed that:
“The area runs along the southern shore of the Seine, consists of the area east of boulevard St. Michel as far as to include the Musée d’Orsay. It stretches some 4 to 5 blocks to the south, including boulevard St. Germain and several blocks to its south. Bordered on the north by the Seine, to the east by the Invalides and Tour Eiffel Quarter, to the south by the Luxembourg Quarter and to the west by the Latin Quarter. The intellectual center of gravity, of this quarter of bistros, book shops, coffee-houses, galleries, nightclubs and publishing houses, is at the intersection of rue Bonaparte and boulevard St. Germain. This is the location of the Café Les Deux Magots (frequented by the writers of the "Lost Generation" of the 20s and 30s, and by the post World War II Existentialists), the Café de Flore and the Brassiere Lipp. It was supposedly at No. 9, Cour du Commerce St. André where Dr. Guillotin perfected his decapitating machine. In 1835, the composer Saint-Saëns was born at a house where the small courtyard of the Cour de Rohan opens to the rue du Jardinet.”
We eventually poked our heads into some of these places, but Café Les Deux Magots, for example, has let its legend dictate its prices and vibe; all of the people in there looked like they were pretty impressed with themselves, and coffee was like €12. Nothing intellectual about that!

Spotting a more contemporary cafe -- one of the internet variety -- I decided that it was time for an impromptu detour to check email, for the first time since leaving home (€2.25). It appears that North America still exists. I was lured into yet another bookstore that sold only French books, reprimanded myself for doing so yet again, and continued towards the Taschen store (2 rue de Buci, 06e). It was nice to be able to examine a lot of their excellent titles in person. I see their books on the internet and they also send me an elaborate and lavish printed catalog a few times a year, but one can’t really make choices about buying art books without being able to flip through them. I made some notes for future purchases, but honestly, I can get all of their books at home at discounted rates - everything in the store is full retail price. In fact, France has laws that I was vaguely made aware of that ban discount book sellers. All books are cover price, everywhere (unless they are used).

For dinner we went looking for a place called Chez Papa that Rebecca’s pal Carrie had recommended. Before the trip, I found no less than three Chez Papas on the internet, but based on the geographical info from Carrie, the one at 3 rue St Benoît (06e) was the place we thought we wanted. She had said that it was near St. Germain, and none of the other Chez Papas were anywhere near that part of town. Well, there must be fourth Chez Papa, because the eatery we found was definitely not the place that we were looking for. This doesn’t mean that it wasn’t a good restaurant, however. In fact, it seemed like a very worthwhile place to eat, but it was also very expensive. The Chez Papa that we found in the St. Germain area is a jazz supper club with a small intimate acoustic jazz trio (including a chanteuse) performing during dinner. The club is dimly lit and cozy. Unfortunately, the prices made La Strasbourgeoise seem like a bargain. This instance of Chez Papa truly seemed like a great place, but we ducked out and headed directly across the street to Deux Petit St. Benoit, a homey little family restaurant that serves authentic French provincial food.

By 'provincial', I mean that the plaster was crumbling and the toilet was in the alley.
Our waitress was a skinny little descendant of Brigitte Bardot, perhaps fifteen years old, and going on twenty-eight (they grow up fast here, but not as fast as those Bosnian refugees who accosted us at Tour Eiffel). The table we were directed to seats six (three on a side). The restaurant was small, cramped, and very busy. Our little waitress was running around like a bumblebee on crack, barely avoiding the middle aged man who was no doubt her uncle and boss, and the slightly older, much calmer, and somewhat more pleasantly curvy waitress who could have been her big sister.

International Rebecca and I found ourselves sharing a table with another couple, with the one empty chair on each side of the table providing a barely adequate buffer zone between them and us. It was only a matter of time before they said hello. The man was a suave and boisterous Frenchman, or so he claimed. His accent was the sort that the English or Americans use when doing funny impersonations of French people. He sounded basically like Pepe Le Pew. He was the only person we met in France who talked that way. After helping us with the menu, he told us that he and his wife are from Monte Carlo, and didn’t get up to Paris very often. They did seem wealthy. His wife didn’t say much, but the man insisted on keeping the conversation going with us. He was a friendly fellow, but in a sort of haughty or almost abrasive way, somehow. Rebecca was convinced that he was from New Jersey.
When our new friend from Monte Carlo or New Jersey left, a group of four older people came in, and didn’t acknowledge us at all, even though they were seated elbow-to-elbow with us at what we now thought of as ‘our’ table.

Dinner came to €35.50 ($52.11) for a bowl of watery fish stew for me and a leg of chicken for Rebecca. Starters were a scoop of tuna salad and an iceberg lettuce salad respectively, and a Kir aperitif for Rebecca. Finding good meals when traveling is so difficult. It is the hardest thing. There are ten thousand restaurants in Paris, but which one to pick, and what to order? Even with a recommendation, it’s a gamble, every time.

Something else about Parisian restaurants: tipping. We were warned that almost all tax and tips are included in the listed price of the item on the menu. If it says €10 for an item, then that is what you pay, all inclusive. Most receipts will show you how much of your meal price was tax, but that amount listed as tax is not added to the price of the bill, it is not an additional charge, it is there for reference purposes only. Occasionally, it will say service non compris on the menu, which means the tip is not included. We were advised that if in doubt, we should ask. I am here to tell you to ignore this advice. Just assume a tip is included unless the menu specifically states that it is not. Remember to look. Otherwise, if you ask, the server will tell you that service (tip) is not included, even if it is. So you pay twice.
Consider yourself warned.

This pic does not do Le Petit Zinc justice.

Just down the street is another expensive restaurant called Le Petit Zinc. It is totally art nouveau inside and out, and really cool looking. Also very expensive. This whole area, St. Germain, is a bit upper middle class. Not so ridiculously spendy as the area over by Place Vendome and the Ritz, but a bit steep nonetheless.

We stopped in for a drink at La Rhumerie (166 Boulevard St. Germain, 06e), which is also discussed on Cocktailsnob.com, on the same page as the entry for the Hemingway Bar. It is basically a West Indian brassiere, and a rum paradise. Or so they claim. Spent €14.80 for two mediocre cocktails at La Rhumerie, which beats the hell out of having spent €52 for two mediocre cocktails at Hemingway bar.

One the way home, we saw to Parisian kids scoot through the Metro entrance turnstile together on one ticket.
Monkey see, monkey do.

€6.30 got us yet another bottle of wine (Vin de Pays Parinese Orientales) at the small market around the corner from Atlanta Frochot; our room supply had run out. Although this was a good bottle of wine, I think I have to disclaim these Beaujolais wine purchases in general; both Rebecca and I would prefer a Cabernet or a Merlot, but the Beaujolais was so popular in Paris the week we were there, that we had to get swept up in the zeitgeist of it all. Every cafe and store had posters up, proudly proclaiming the arrival of this year’s model. It tasted just fine, but under different circumstances I think that our choices would have been more varied and adventurous.

Sunday, November 25

We over slept just a little, and barely made it to breakfast by 10:00. Guess who was there? Yes, scary breakfast lady from Wednesday. This was the only other day we saw her. The relatively nice breakfast lady from the rest of the week was there today too. The breakfast room was slammed, since it was a weekend. I imagine that the hotel was at peak capacity, especially if the water pressure in the shower is any indication of occupancy, which it seems to be. The little drooling drizzle of a cold shower that I got today was the only part of our Paris adventure that made me long for home. Particularly: the wasteful blast of intense pressure that only a midwestern shower on the shores of the Great Lakes - the largest supply of fresh water in the world - can supply. Until we finish screwing these lakes up and polluting them, anyway.

Today’s museum selection is the Centre Georges Pompidou, a large and newish complex that holds the Musée National d'Art Moderne (French national modern art museum) on the fourth and fifth floors of the Centre, plus rotating exhibitions on the sixth floor. The first three levels are taken up with a library, cinemas, and other exhibition spaces. Also here is Centre of Industrial Design: 20th century architecture and design. Since the Pompidou Centre is open every night until 8:00, we decided to do some outdoor activities during the afternoon, and see the museum later in the day.

"A man was singing arias on one corner..."

We hit the Marais area, which we were told had antique stores and fashion shops that were (uncharacteristically for Paris) open on Sunday. This turned out to be not so true. We also had a short walking tour of some historical sites in the area mapped out.

The Metro stop for the area is called Bastille.
I ought to mention that the Bastille no longer exists. The Metro lets people out more or less where the great fortress once stood. Now there is another place there marked by yet another impressive monument, the Colonne de Juillet (July Column).

We walked over to the historic Hôtel de Sully, passed though their courtyards, and ended up at a big public square called Place des Vosges. Built by Louis XII, there are nine pavilions (houses, but really small apartment buildings) on each side of the grassy square, and fairly generic art galleries on the ground levels of these buildings. A man was singing arias on one corner, Victor Hugo’s house was on the opposite corner, and Rebecca particularly liked the look of one certain cafe on a third corner. She admired the chairs in particular.

Leaving the square, we never did find these two entries from our trip itinerary:
“Stroll rue des Francs-Bourgeois (one of the rare streets of Paris completely open on Sunday)” and “In the heart of the Marais is the village Saint-Paul: Antique Shops (most/all open Thursday to Monday).” This hardly matters however; as stated earlier there is so much to see and do at every turn, that even if we had ejected our entire itinerary and just wandered the streets, we still would have had an amazing trip. The few things that we planned for and yet skipped are minor and have not been missed.
We spied an art deco antique store at 4 rue des France Bourgeois called Heir Pour Demain (Heir For Tomorrow).
It was closed.

Carnavalet Museum

We did make a spontaneous stop in to the Carnavalet Museum, which is a museum devoted to the history of Paris, and which is bigger and more interesting than we figured it might be. Like the Louvre, all of the informational signs are in French, so the context and meaning of a lot of what we saw was completely lost. I can understand pride in one's national heritage, and I do agree, largely, with the reasoning behind wanting to keep France French (or for similar attitudes in any country). But I also think that if you want tourists to learn about French history and culture, and to possibly bolster their respect and admiration for France, then perhaps you ought to make it possible for these tourists to experience the history museum - if no other museums - in a variety of languages.
To be fair, in certain major galleries, the Louvre offers laminated placards in a half dozen languages that sum up the contents of the room’s major works. No such luck at the Carnavalet.
There are loads and loads of old furniture at the Carnavalet, plus paintings of various scenes taking place in and around the Seine (usually involving a bridge), loads and loads of old furniture, a few cool scale models (such as one of La Cite, the island that Notre Dame is on, and which used to be the whole of Paris), and loads and loads of old furniture.

Getting a grip on it all, we did see a lot of paintings of revolutions, and depictions of people taking to the streets and kicking ass.
This is a key theme with the French people. We noticed this in ways both subtle and grand. From the Metro strike to the French Revolution to the news-making riots in the Parisian suburbs last year, and everything in between, these people like their demonstrations. In a way, I sort of wish that the complacent and laconic people back home were as passionately involved in our government. As I stated near the beginning of this travelogue, the French people are fairly mild-mannered, polite, and keep to themselves, until you break a rule, at which time they will get in your face and crucify you. Taking this point of view to a great extreme, these same people are pretty passionate about keeping their leaders in check. For a nation that was ruled by royalty for so long, the modern people of France take their liberty quite seriously. It seems to me as though riots, revolts, revolutions, demonstrations, strikes, and rousing the rabble are common weekend pastimes for the people of France. When they aren’t busy making monuments, they enjoy toppling them. Perhaps that is whey there is a great statue erected to some previous leader at every place (circle interchange) in Paris: all of these statues will eventually come tumbling down as future fodder for some revolt.

"...a great art nouveau room"

In the ass end of the museum in an alcove down a hall that doesn’t go anywhere, but sort of near the bathrooms, there is a great art nouveau room. I also noted a collection of strange little caricature statues of political figures and other personages. And a monkey. These were by Honore Daumier; the Art Institute of Chicago also has a collection of his twisted little sculptures and prints of 18th century political figures.

By 2:30 the museum had revealed most of its secrets. A search was launched for some book shops that my friend Nicolas had recommended while we were dining with him on Thursday. One was closed, and the other eluded us. The next discovery was a great big farmer’s market (on rue Daval, just off of the big rue Saint Sabine) that was just closing up for the day, and an even bigger farmer's market on the perpendicular rue Richard Lenoir that was also packing up as we walked by.

For €7.60, lunch consisted of a brioche roll with mozzarella cheese and tomato in it, and a poppy seed roll with smoked salmon in it. These came from a sort of fast food shop on rue de Roquette, just around the corner from place de Bastille. While we were buying our sandwiches, someone who lives in the apartment above the foodery started throwing glass out of his window. It exploded on the sidewalk right in front of the shop we were in. The food shop owner went outside to investigate; a cop was nearby and just stood on the street, looking upwards, sort of dumbfounded. He stood there for a long time, even after more glass came down. He reminded me of the character of Deputy Andy on the old television show Twin Peaks. By the time another cop sauntered over to help the first cop stare blankly up at the building, we had carefully exited, and made our way back towards Colonne de Juillet/place de Bastille and the Bastille Metro station.

Rollerblades a go go at Colonne de Juillet/place de Bastille.

Arriving there, we saw another strange site: policemen on rollerblades stopping traffic. Horns were honking, people were mad. Six or eight streets feed into the large place, and the coppers were stopping them all. Lined up on one of the smaller streets were thousands of people on rollerblades, all waiting to enter the circle, as if anticipating the beginning of some sort of roller blade parody of the Tour de France.

And then: it began!

It was like Critical Mass on rollerblades.

The cops moved aside, and many people on rollerblades, all ages and races, raced into and around the Place de Bastille! Then came some bikes and a few scooters, and a guy in a go-cart painted to look like a shark. This reminded me of the foot race that I had stumbled across two years ago in Barcelona. Seems as though every time I come to Europe, I find myself caught up by a race.

Later, on the Metro, some poor guy’s grocery bag was swinging around as he dashed for the train, making it to the platform just as the train doors were closing. He got into the train, but his bag didn’t. Well, not all of it anyway. He had a grip on the handle, but most of the bag was outside of the train, clamped by the sturdy doors. He banged on the doors, but to no avail. The train sped towards the next stop, with this guy standing there looking like some hapless sap. Everyone was laughing at him, but not in a mean way. Some sort of mixture of sympathy or pathos, but also of being unable to stop giggling because it was silly. When the train pulled into the next station, all of the people waiting on the platform cracked up when they saw the bag sticking out of the train and the poor fool looking very unhappy. At least the guy’s bag didn’t break. He got away from the situation with his dinner intact.

Spent €0.50 for 1.5 liters of water at Fruits Legumes Supermarche across the street from the Pompidou Centre.
Rebecca was impressed by the Haribo gummi bear stand in the tiny mini mart, which contained previously untasted varieties of her favorite pre-packaged confection. All of the wonders of Paris, and it is the gummi bears that she loves.
And the tarts, naturally.
Unrefrigerated soft drinks, bottled water, and beer are one-third the price of cold drinks.

Some adventures at Pompidou Center: there was a really long line for the baggage inspection, and an even longer line for tickets.
Our Museum Passes let us bypass both lines.
One has to visit something like eight museums in six days to make the Pass pay for itself, but the savings in time and the avoidance of the sheer tedium of standing in queue makes the Museum Pass a good investment on other levels.

Walking across the plaza outside of the Centre, Rebecca was granted with a healthy dose of good luck - that is if you believe the old wives tales about good luck being granted to these who have been shit upon by a bird. Fortunately, the mess only grazed the corner of her purse. So, her luck will be marginally improved in coming days.

The escalators going to the upper floors of the Pompidou are on the outside of the building, encased in glass tubes. From the sixth floor, one can see every important major landmark of Paris: Tour Eiffel, Notre Dame, Montmartre and Sacre Coeur, and some other buildings that I can’t identify. Only Arc de Triomphe is missing.

The sixth floor of Pompidou had an Alberto Giacometti exhibition going on. We took a long rest in the lobby of that floor, which was brightly lit with daylight. Many of the galleries in many of the museums of Paris are actually lit primarily with natural light. Rebecca and I finished our bottle of water, and agreed to skip the Giacometti exhibition, as neither of us are huge fans of the man’s iconic and instantly identifiable sculptures.
However, an elderly lady left her €9 magazine about Giacometti on the bench next to us, and hadn’t come back for it 45 minutes later.
Reading material for the plane trip home.

Six pieces by Hans (Jean) Arp.

The fifth floor is where all of the great art of the early 20th century is to be found.
I took my time there, savoring works by Carlsund, Baumeister, Domela, Vordemburge, Gildenart, Pevsner, Calder, Miro, Man Ray, Ernst, Tanguy, DeChirico, Dali, Nagy, Duchamp, Bresson, and many more. I also noted artifacts from the Bauhaus, famous early Surrealist magazines, and souvenirs from the 1937 World’s Fair. My notes (not published here) also included questions like: “Why Picasso and not Braque?”, and “Does Cubist sculpture defeat the purpose?”.

The fourth floor is where all of the crappy art of the late 20th century is to be found.
My notes included things like: “Silvia Bachli: MAKE IT STOP!”, “Robert Morris: NO! (hanging fabric). Claude Vaillant: NO! (hanging rope). Bernard Pages: NO! (manhole covers and concrete).”, and “Joseph Beuys piano. grrrrr...”.
But...
“Francis Bacon, 1972: Female Nude Standing in Doorway. Hanging by itself in a corner. Best thing on this floor. As usual, Bacon defies classification, never displayed with any other group or movement.”

Meal time, again.
Rebecca’s associate Fredda suggested Le Machon (16 rue Commines, 03e) for dinner, but when walking by it we decided that the restaurant didn't seem entirely appealing. Instead we discovered an Italian place that we liked. Dinner was €38.80 (€34.80 plus a €4 European-sized tip - service non compris here) at Renato “Meet the Family” Trattoria on Boulevard de Temple, near Place de Republique. I had a salmon and pasta dish. The salmon was actually very good but the pasta was a little bland. Rebecca had Penne a la Ariatta, which was spicy penne in a red sauce. That was good too. The waiter supplied a little plate with olives, and of course bread and a carafe of the house vino. Two carafes, actually, but they only charged us for one. Rebecca chose a chocolate mousse for dessert, which she liked a lot, natch. Plush red booths, painted ceiling, nice staff. I'd go back.

On the way back to the hotel, we stopped in at what might have been the only cafe in Pigalle that doesn’t explicitly advertise an involvement in the sex industry, Cafe Omnibus. For €12, I got an indifferent Merlot, and Rebecca indulged in her beloved Kir. The place was very smoky, and we had to contend with listening to the whole of Bryan Adams’ Greatest Hits while we sipped our beverages.

James: “I want to hear French music. I want to hear Serge Gainsbourg. I can get this (Adams) at home. I can turn this off at home”.
Additional mumbled conversations on my tape recorder included International Rebecca discussing the possibility of avant garde architecture in Beirut, and her new plan to write a book for Taschen about 19th century French cafe chairs in Venice (price would be €200).
She has never been to Venice.

Further wine reserves for the room came to €7.40; I had €7.41 worth of jangly, bulky Euro coins in my pocket.
With one penny left in my pocket, I felt much lighter for having acquired this wine.
(I have lots of paper money though!)

Part 1 Part 2 Part 3

Crazy alien fruit.

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Last updated: September 10, 2011

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