Paris,
France
November, 2007
Part 1 Part 2 Part 3
Back to James Writings and Travelogues
©2007 James Teitelbaum. All rights reserved.
Use of text or images contained within this document is strictly prohbited.
We then made for the Louvre for day two of our adventures therein.
This visit covered the entire first floor of the Denon wing, and a a few little bits of the Sully wing (also first floor) left over from Friday’s visit. Or in other words, large format French paintings, Italian paintings from the 13th to 18th centuries, a small room of Spanish paintings, a few extant Greek antiquities, the famous Apollo Gallery, and a temporary exhibition of Biedermeier craftsmanship.
The Apollo Gallery is
a long hall with very
high arched ceilings.
All of the walls are decorated with intricate woodwork, and there are
portraits of important persons along the entire length. Further
paintings, including original works by Delacroix, are permanent parts
of the arched ceiling. The room itself is a marvel, one of the
high points of the Louvre, and certainly must have been even more
impressive when this building was a palace. In fact, when
we think of what a palace might look like, we think of the Apollo
Gallery. Fittingly, the objects that have been added to the room
are minimal in number, but key in stature: no less than the crowns and
jewels of several past monarchs, set delicately in glass display cases.
Kings are an indelible symbol in popular culture, even in a society like the United States, which was formed as the result of a massive rebellion against monarchy. From the noble King Arthur to the greedy King George (against whom we fought for independence in America), and from the Burger King to the Lion King, we have our share of crowned symbols of heroism and villainy alike. But somehow, this little object in this little case in this big room in this big museum carries with it a power and mystique. This little metal band, covered in shiny baubles was worn on the head of a man who held the very power of life and death over his subjects. It radiates authority and a palpable sense of great history.
The Biedermeier display was
interesting because it contained a selection
of furniture that clearly inspired art deco, but predated deco by a
good 100 years.
The movement was very much ahead of its time.
The exhibit contained plenty of other material from this era (about 1815 to 1848) which looks a lot more like what we usually think of as being contemporary to that era, but the small selection of (if I may) "pre-modern" pieces took me by surprise.
No fan of art deco should fail to do a little research into the Biedermeier period.
It is great to have one's eyes opened in this way.
Of course, there were so many other experiences like this during my fifteen hours in the Louvre, and also while in the other museums of Paris. Connectons are made, references and allusions and influences are understood. An epiphany in the Orsay made me truly understand the connection between classical composer Maurice Ravel and the painter Eugene Delacroix - never mind that Ravel was born seven years after Delacroix died! Even upon coming home and going into the Art Institute of Chicago, I saw a painting in there called Champs de Mars, which I had walked past - and ignored - many times in the past. Only now do I understand that the Champs de Mars is the road leading to Tour Eiffel, and that the red object in the painting is a Cubist version of the Eiffel, painted red in a sort of visual pun: red being the color of Mars, the Greek god of war, and the name of the road leading to the tower. It is like a big game of Tetris: as each little gap is filled, a deeper understanding of the connected history and meaning of all of the arts grows. But also, like the game, the pieces never stop falling, and the number of possible connections is endless. You can never finish, you can never win, you can just keep having fun helping all of the pieces fall into place, for as long as you're able.
Galleries 75-77 are
large format French paintings.
Someone really meant it when they named this wing.
These things are indeed huge.
Opposite these galleries, via gallery 06 (Mona Lisa) is a really, truly, extremely long hallway called the Grand Gallery. It must be a half mile long, seriously. Four centuries of Italian painting are covered here, but the problem I had is that the Italians didn’t seem to be capable of painting anything but Jesus until the 18th century. This entire Grand Gallery, one of the central points of interest in this vast institution, and a place where kings once held council, took me very little time to see. I can appreciate the work at hand for artistic achievement, but the biblical paintings have always left me feeling a bit indifferent.
Quite a lot of fuss over a two-millennia old piece of symbolic literature.
Rebecca encountered a Japanese tourist who saw a painting of Jesus and exclaimed: “Jesus-san! Ah! Jesus-san!”.
We’ll visit him again in 2008 when the next voyage takes me to Japan.
Back hotelward...
For dinner, we decided
that eating poorly or ramdomly was not an option,
so we asked Sophie - the prim and efficient desk clerk at the Atlanta
Frochot - for a recommendation.
Sophie has long, straight black hair, and wore a crisp white blouse every single day, always with a floor-length black skirt. She never smiled. All of the other hotel employees had a bit more variation in both their demeanor and wardrobe. There was the slightly disheveled middle aged man who helped me perfect my pronunciation of soixant (or 'sixty' - our room number) when asking for they key every evening. There was the kind of goofy old lady who was there some nights and who loaned us her corkscrew from time to time, and there was the sort of dumpy girl of about Sophie’s age (early thirties maybe) who was there most mornings. None of them wore name tags, so we only got Sophie’s name, regrettably.
She sent us to a place in the neighborhood (in the other direction from porno land) called La Marmite (uh, The Pot). Upon arrival, Rebecca saw some hearty salads going out to the tables, and went on to order one. I got the prixe fixe. Rebecca tried to get an appetizer a la carte, and was talked out of it by the waitress, who assured her that she’d barely be able to finish the salad. This was accurate. For my entree (i.e. my appetizer) I got a sort of warm philodough packet filled with goat cheese and little chunks of sweet apples, like what you’d find in an apple pie (but smaller chunks). Very nice. My plate (entree) was a small but nicely cooked piece of salmon on a bland bed of linguine (yes, this is what I'd had the previous night too!). Rebecca’s salad was indeed massive, with a fat layer of disc-shaped french fries on top of it. Also, pickled hot peppers, fresh mixed greens, corn, cabbage, tomatoes, and a sort of Ranch dressing.
The carafe of house wine was considerably less of a bargain at La Marmite than elsewhere (€9).
We discovered that there is an American-style grocery store called Champion half a block from our hotel, and of course it is located in the only direction that we never previously got around to exploring. We could have been buying our water and wine for the room for 1/3 the price that we paid at the fruteria mini-mart that we have been patronizing. Of course, we’d still buy our picnic lunches at the local market zones wherever we roam, but it boggles the mind to think that you can get a perfectly drinkable bottle of wine in a Parisian grocery store for €3 or less. Even the €6 or €7 we had been paying had seemed reasonable! We got a bottle of Chateau Grand Antoine Bordeaux for €3.50 in the newly-discovered Champion (open until 11:30 every day), and it was just fine. I guess we can average the wine prices out for tonight (€9 + €3.50 / 2 = €6.25 per...).
After Rebecca hit the sack, I went for a walk to photograph some of the neon signs in the area of Place de Clichy. The short walk to de Clichy at night also meant walking through Pigalle at night. Of all the nights that Rebecca and I were in that neighborhood together (i.e. every night, when coming and going from the hotel), no one ever bothered us, at all. However, the one time I set foot outside alone, I was swarmed with men and women trying to bodily pull me into the little hostess bars, promising me ‘nice girls’, and ‘good drinks’, and ‘no cover for you, my special friend’. No less than three separate girls took me by the arm and tried to pull me into the tiny bars that employed them: ‘my girlfriends are nice, come inside, take a look for free, just look around, you’ll like them’. My only temptation was the curiosity about exactly what it is that these girls did for cash... but no cats were killed that night.
I disentangled myself and went on with my night photos, including this little masterpiece:
I discovered a corner called Place Andre Breton, named after the writer, poet, and founder of the Surrealist art movement.
The sign announcing this honor is nailed to the front of a crappy bar called Long Island that has happy hour every day from 4:00 to 10:00 and then from 4:00 to 10:00.
That is: 4:00 p.m. to 10:00 p.m., and then 4:00 a.m. to 10:00 am.
That is scary.
Tuesday, November 27
After breakfast, we made for today’s museum, Musee d’Orsay
(1 rue de la
Légion d'Honneur, 07e).
Built in the remains of a beautiful and grand (of course) train station, this institution covers the vital period after the Louvre cuts off (1850 or so), but before the Pompidou begins (1900 or so). There is some overlap between the museums, and the Orsay does cover much more than that fifty year period.
But the focus is 19th century art, and the rise of Impressionism.
All of the Van Gough, Monet, Manet, Renoir, Degas, Gauguin, etc. is here.
If you want to see Degas express his ballerina fetish, Gauguin express his island girls fetish, or Van Gough express his automutilation fetish, they're all here for you.
Neither Rebecca nor I are truly big fans of this stuff, so we didn’t budget a huge amount of time for this one.
But of course, the Orsay is much bigger than we imagined, and contained plenty of surprises that I did like, in the realms of sculpture, early photography, art nouveau treasures, and paintings in the Romantic and Orientalist traditions.
So, the museum was worth seeing.
This should not have surprised me.
Once again, notes were extensive, but I will spare you them here.
After about three and a half hours, or a bit after 2:00, we left the museum, and spent €10.40 for two baguettes and a chocolate eclair at a place called Gosselin boulangerie (on the corner of boulevard St. Germain and rue de Belle Chaise). We lugged them down rue St. Germain to Luxembourg Gardens. It was a beautiful day, sunny and calm, if cool.
On the way to the gardens we found
ourselves back at the corner of boulevard St.
Germain and rue Bonaparte, not far from the Sorbonne, Shakespeare and
Co., and the Latin Quarter, but closer to La Rhumerie and Taschen's
palace of art books. We spied the famous Café Les Deux
Magots (frequented by the writers of the "Lost Generation" of the 1920s
and 1930s, and by the post World War II Existentialists) and
Café de Flore, but had no occasion to pause this time.
We also strode by another historic eatery, the Brassiere Lipp.
A waiter stood on the patio, which was enclosed for the winter in partly transparent canvas walls.
The waiter was very tall, very thin, wore a tux, and had slicked back hair with a pencil thin moustache.
He had his arm cocked at a 90 degree angle with a crisp white towel neatly draped over it.
We thought he was a mannequin or a statue.
He was perfectly motionless, not moving as we strode by.
He did not breathe, did not twitch.
He did not even blink.
Then I discovered an antiquarian bookstore called Les Argonautes (74 rue de la Seine, 06e). They were having a small art exhibition by Jean Luc Chambaud, an older gentleman who is completely self-taught, and who does collage art just for fun. His stuff seems a bit inspired by Max Ernst (of course; can any collage artist fail to go back to Ernst?), but in color (unlike Ernst, and therefore recalling Winston Smith but with less political irony). The work also featured cameos from Hitchcock, Dali, and Einstein among the other found imagery juxtaposed on paper. The gallery had a dozen or so pieces hanging in the window and in the shop, and another 50 or so works in stacks to browse. The art was reasonably priced at between €100 - 200, mostly closer to €200.
Virtually next door to the book shop, we spent €4.30 for
four macaroons
from Gerard Mulot (corner of rue de la Seine and rue Lobineau).
Rebecca decrees that the macaroons at Laudree are better.
I was unable to distinguish the difference.
I defer to her advanced pastry-tasting pallette.
We finally made it to Jardins (gardens) Luxembourg, after having scratched it off of Saturday’s list, and after having become sidetracked on the way there today. Luxembourg is a 25-hectare green oasis, decorated with statues, fountains, and flowers. At the entrance is a palace built in the 17th century by Marie de Medicis, a French queen. We found some chairs on a terrace overlooking both palace and gardens, and ate our lunch. Within the palace there was an exhibition happening by artist Giuseppe Arcimboldo. Posters advertising the show had been hanging all over town. I like Arcimboldo's work (he painted portraits of people in the 16th century, but substituted his subject's anatomy for weird clusters of vegetables), but there are so many museums to see on this trip already. One must be selective. We skipped it.
Plus: outdoors is they key way to spend some time at Jardins Luxembourg.
The November sun was already starting to set at about 4:00, but I caught the last of the great light in what photographers call the ‘golden hour’ - that last hour before twilight when the angle of the sun illuminates everything in a brilliant golden hue.
Some random French guy was secretly taking pictures of a solitary man sitting in the park reading. I had to admit that the composition and the mood were nice, so I leeched in and took the same photo that the other guy was taking. The third man, the stranger who was being photographed, noticed what we were doing just after I finished, and began to get annoyed at the multiple pictures that my companion in photography was shooting.
I got all I needed in a single attempt:
Walking back towards the river,
through the Latin Quarter, we hatched a
plan to buy some cheap used bikes next time we come to Paris.
There
are state-sponsored bike rental facilities scattered throughout the
city, but you pay by the hour for those. Having something more
long-term and economical might be the way to go. We covered a lot
of ground on this trip, by Metro and by foot. Having a bike might
be a fun way to split the difference, especially in warmer weather.
Near or at the corner of boulevard St. Germain and boulevard St. Michel is museum de Cluny. This is museum of “Moyen Age” or medieval arts and crafts. It is housed in the Hôtel de Cluny, a Gothic mansion built about 1490. We didn’t stop in. Put it on the list for next time.
Around 5:00 p.m., I finally stumbled across something I’d been keeping my eyes out for, which is a store that sells graphic novels, French style (they call 'em albums). This particular shop is simply called Album, and is located near the Sorbonne, right on the corner of boulevard St. Germain and rue St. Jaques. I think we must have walked right past it on Saturday. It is just around the corner from Shakespeare and Co.
Like the Japanese and their Manga, the French take their comics (albums) seriously.
They’re all published as lavish hardback editions.
It was hard shopping in Album (the store); I wasn’t used to the organization system, and the shop was fairly vast.
There are a few artists whose work I am fond of, but I was unprepared for the treasure trove of stuff at hand.
I could not find anything either good or new to me by Moebius (a genius artist whose work I have followed since the early 1980s; he has been regularly translated into English) or Romain Hugault (a guy I got hep to recently). I did find the whole Pin-Up series (a 1940s noir mystery story) by Yann and Berthet, volumes 1 through 9. I have #1 to #3 in English already, and #4 and #5 in French. I wanted to get #6 and #7 but the only copy of the latter number in the store was damaged pretty badly. So I got #6.
I also picked up a title called Songes Coraline (Think Coraline) by Terry Dodson and D.P. Filippi, which I’d never heard of before. I can’t read too much of the damned story, but the art is truly amazing. Clean lines but with a lot of detail, and a nice muted color palette with watercolor backgrounds. There’s a bit of a nouveau feel to it too, and a bit of the genre known as Steam Punk, in which people regularly do unlikely things with 19th century technology. The gist of the tale is that a tutor named Coraline in an alternative 19th century goes to a remote and sprawling estate to take care of an orphan boy who lives there. There is a nanny and a butler too. The three adults have their hands full as the boy seems able to build all sorts of fantastic machines, one of which seems to send Coraline into several fantastic alternate-alternate realities.
Or something like that.
I passed on another
book by the astounding Italian artist Milo
Manara. Manara is one of the most talented illustrators working
today, and has been since the 1970s. The problem is that he
chooses to draw mostly porn comics. I can only take so much of
his work before
I
require something of more substance. In the case of the book I
saw at Album, Mananra seems to
have concocted some sort of tribute to the great Italian film director
Federico Fellini. It looked like there is a bit of a bio going
on, and perhaps illustrations inspired by a lost Fellini script.
Or so I
gathered. A lot of the book is straight text (in French) and it
was rather expensive. I must remember to look for an English
version: a non-X-rated Manara meets Fellini is too good an idea to pass
up on
forever.
After a relatively restrained purchase of two albums, we jumped
the RER from that area, taking
the
train along the curve of the Seine to the Tour Eiffel, moving the
opposite
direction (but covering same ground) as our long walk on
Saturday.
The RER train, compared to the Metro, is an old-school two-level
passenger train that feels like something made for much longer voyages
than our quick jaunt along the arc of the river. This is what one
imagines that riding the Trans-Europe Express or the Orient Express
might
be
like.
The idea we had for our visit to the Tour Eiffel was that we’d already seen it during the day on Saturday, and we’d also experienced a panoramic daytime view of the city from the top of the Arc de Triomphe. So we thought it might be more interesting the go up the Eiffel at night.
I also felt like we had been extremely well-behaved on this trip. In spite of all of the wine and Kir mentioned with dinner and in the hotel room, we never had more than a glass or two in any one sitting. The cocktails at Hemingway bar were too expensive for more than one round.
So, a bit of reckless abandon was long overdue.
It was dark by 6:30, and I knew that the only possible thing to do during this fine Parisian evening was to hydrate with a bottle of water, and then enjoy the view of Paris from inside the Sparkly after imbibing a bit of vin. Or a lot. At a little market, we paid €4.50 for the Vin de Pays du Jardin de la France (Uh, 'Wine of Country of the Garden of France'... 750 ml, 12.5 abv), plus €1.50 for the water.
I borrowed a corkscrew from the owner of the shop; he handed it to me and I said “perfecto!”.
He got all excited and said “aahh! Italiana!”.
Rebecca and I spent some time in careful debate about when exactly to go up into the Eiffel: should we watch Sparkly from the ground and then hit the elevator, or should we attempt to experience Sparkly from within while it was happening? These are the sorts of life-altering decisions that you have to make in Paris.
A few tips about the Eiffel tower:
1.
Crowds are indeed considerably shorter on Tuesday evening than on Saturday afternoon. Very considerably.
2.
The stairs close at 6:00, just in case you’re too cheap to take the elevator.
It costs €4 to go to the first level by elevator, €7.50 to the second and €11 to go all the way.
You can climb the stairs to the second level for €3.50.
3.
No glass allowed.
I had a bag with some food, my new albums, and our water... plus half a bottle of wine. The man working the metal detector at the entrance to the line, to get into the other line, to go up the elevator waved his wand over my sac and then waved me through. For some reason, totally atypical for me, I offered him a better look, even after he waved me past. It was only then that he saw the bottle and said (as one word): “noglassnoglass”.
...so we retreated to a bench and discreetly finished our beverage.
Going through the line again, the man said to Rebecca “you have drink?”.
Rebecca said yes, nodding, as the metal detector man winked and laughed.
This little delay meant
that Rebecca’s beloved Sparkly Time happened
while we were in the elevator.
It wasn’t bad though.
From the moving glass box, we were able to experience the strobing effect from several different continually shifting angles.
According to a sign, there are 3 million visitors to the top each year. That is 8219 per day, and 609 per hour (9:30–23:00).
The second level is even more popular, so that’s a lot of freaking visitors.
The first level of Sparkly has exhibits, a post office, a snack bar, souvenirs, and a restaurant called Altitude 95. Another Restaurant, named after Jules Verne is a bit more high-end, and is said to be booked for months in advance. The second level (which is actually two stories tall) has more souvenirs, more educational exhibits, and the best views, especially on the upper deck of the second level.
We didn’t go to the top, and there doesn’t seem to be much need to. One has a perfect view of the entire city from the second level; it seems as though the top level is so much higher that you are just farther away from everything. Remember that even at the second level of Tour Eiffel, you are at the highest point in the city, except for Montparnasse tower, and of course, the third level of Eiffel. So you can see everything you want to see from there; going up to the third level doesn't really give you a better view. Just a more distant one.
From the second level, in exactly a 180 degree arc, starting on my right, I could see Montparnasse tower, then the Arc de Troimphe, and then Notre Dame all lit up, and then the Louvre, which is all shadowy and not distinct, and then the Ferris wheel and the Obelisk at Place Concorde, and then the glass-domed Grand Palais, and then Sacre Coeur atop Montmartre in the far distance, and then the Seine winds into view, and then the Arc de Triomphe, and then finally, all the way to the left, all of the big buildings in the suburbs at La Defense. In the immediate foreground is the Pantheon and also the Musée de l'Homme and Trocadero gardens.
I also saw a boat on the Seine that looked like a centipede.
A Seine-tipede.
Seeing all of this
reminded me of a painting
by Shag called “The
Impossible View”:
The moon has been full for the past few nights, but all of a sudden a good quarter of it is gone. Suddenly. There is a red planet or a bright reddish star near the moon. That is the only thing I can see up there aside from the moon.
Two Italian girls asked
me take their picture.
I asked “Italia?” and they said “yeas”.
After the photo I said “bella!” and they said “gratzi”.
This was the second time in an hour that I busted out some first-grade Italian vocabulary.
This might be due to the fact that we have had Italian food for dinner recently... with two more Italian meals coming up soon.
Like... now!
Dinner time!
But first...
We have been walking distances of something like ten miles per day.
We had a little party in the room, with plenty of good things to eat: macaroons, and cheese, and chocolate, and wine, and bread. We took inventory of the remaining beverages and snacks. Then we went to our two little beds quite decadently and irresponsibly well-fed.
Wednesday, November 28
Our last full day in Paris was indeed another full one.
We began, after petit
dejeuner, at the Museum Gustave Moreau
(14, rue
de La Rochefoucauld, 09e), which was walking distance from the hotel.
The museum is housed in the apartment building that Moreau lived in, with a reception area on the ground floor, and Moreau’s actual apartments preserved for inspection on the first floor. The second and third floors have both been gutted, and are now each a large gallery room. A cool spiral staircase joins them. These two galleries are crammed to the rafters with several dozen of Gustave Moreau’s excellent paintings. A cabinet in the middle of the room on the top floor contains panels that can be folded out by the museum visitor; each panel has one or more small paintings or drawings affixed to it. An unusual display, but given the premium that wall space is at in this museum, it is a necessary one.
The museum is worth a visit, but I found it to be a bit disorganized, even given its diminutive size. The museum offers laminated cards in several languages containing information about the art works. The problem is that some of the paintings had no numbers next to them, and others had numbers that were clearly keyed to text descriptions of completely different works. So, as was the case in most of the Paris museums, I had to forgo all historical significance, context, biography, artistic intention, or other trivia, and merely take the work at face value.
So, we took the RER train over to Notre Dame
(we had one ticket, so we
bought one more to use now and two for later for €4.50 total).
Notre
Dame cathedral was impressive of course, but I thought that Sacre Coeur
at Montmartre was much more impressive.
So did the tasteful International Rebecca.
Leaving the church, we were walking down a busy street by the Seine, and we saw this tiny, wrinkled, stump of a woman. She must have been four feet tall, tops, but she was all hunched over with a gigantic hump on her back, limping down the street with great effort.
So yes, we actually did see a bona-fide hunchback at Notre Dame.
The next mission was to walk over to St. Chapelle, yet another cathedral, so as to admire their legendary stained glass. St. Chapelle is basically one room, but if you love stained glass, this is the motherlode. The room has what amounts to a mural in glass that tells the whole story of the Old Testament and part of the New. The majority of the glass is original, and some of it is 850 years old. There are chairs along both sides of the room, so we rested and took it all in.
The St. Chappelle visit is €7.50 that we would not have spent if we’d been paying for attractions a la carte, but the Museum Pass got us in for 'free' so, we did it. With the pass, we were also able to bypass a huge throng of Italian tourist kids.
St. Chappelle is
actually within the gates of a large, impressive-looking, and
apparently rather important government building. So
you have to pass through heavy security to see it. As monumental
as this building is, it has to be said that every building in this city
looks like it is... or was... or should be... something really
important.
Half of them are.
But even the ones that aren’t can fake it.
Golden angels on top of a monument, fountains with sphinxes on them, grand sculptures of important people and mythological figures. Whatever the case, these people like their monuments.
However, they do not like plumbing.
There are no water fountains anywhere, the showers are lousy, the toilets are stinky. I saw no bidets, by the way. Perhaps France’s plumbing has at least reached 19th century standards. I found better plumbing on freaking Easter Island.
But they do have some good food in Paris, that is for sure.
Between the two cathedrals, we passed one of the thousands of outdoor crepe stands in Paris. This one was at the corner of quai du Marche Neuf and boulevard Palais, in a takeout window at Le Soleil D’Or Cafe. The crepes are big thin pancakes, 12 to 14 inches wide. The crepe person heats it up on a big round steaming hotplate-cum-skillet, slaps a big heap of the filling all over it, and then wraps it up into a wedge shape like a big slice of pizza. Filings can be whipped cream, sugar, nutella (very popular), or Grand Marnier (intriguing - but of course that is just a liqueur, I am not sure how it would be served), but no Crepes Suzette (which is also a recipe using Grand Marnier). I wanted to get a flavor that was unique to me, so I chose the creme de marron, sort of a sweet chestnutty paste with the consistency of an extra thick catsup (but a completely different taste in every way of course). We ate it standing on the busy corner.
It was good.
€3.50.
By 3:00 we had rather leisurely
accomplished most of our missions for the day: the Moreau
museum, two cathedrals, a return to the rue Cler market, and a noble
effort at a boat tour. All that remained for the day was
our fourth and final visit to The Louvre.
We parked our butts in the Tuilieries garden, and ate the sandwiches that we had dragged around all day. The garden was pretty, even though it was barren due to the impending the winter. Today was the only day on the trip that we found to be uncomfortably cold, so our fountainside lunch was cut short. We finished our apple tart at a table near the Louvre's indoor snack bar.
We entered the museum proper at about 4:00, and finally gave up by 9:00 -- tired, burned out, aching joints, glazed eyes. We still hadn’t seen it all, but we had to cede our defeat and make a vow to experience the rest of the Louvre next time we come to Paris, whenever that might be.
We began by finishing the first floor, namely the Richelieu wing and a corner of the Sully. The Richelieu wing has the Objets d’Art galleries 1 to 34 and 62 to 96 currently open (35 to 61 are closed). So do the math: we saw 68 rooms worth of Objets d’Art. Some of this material was interesting, but a lot of the galleries were very sparsely decorated. I only made notes on a few things.
Down to the ground floor of the Richelieu wing, I absorbed galleries 1 to 21 and A to D, which are Oriental Antiquities. Adjacent to there were sculptures, Galleries 1 to 33 (French, 5th to 19th centuries). I liked the Anton Louis Barye pieces, dramatic combat scenes from mythology, many different ones. Also Jeean-Jaques (James) Pradier’s Satyr et Bacchanate, his Toilette d’Atlanta, his Les Trios Graces, and his Psyche. These pieces, along with dramatic works of sculpture in the Orsay, gave me some new insight and appreciation for the medium. Sulpture must work dynamically, or else it is no different from painting. That is to say, that in order to be effective, a sculpture must have something new to offer when viewed from any angle.
I also
decided that next time I go to Paris, I must first study up on Pan,
Mercury, Cupid,
Spyche, Jupiter, Venus, Diana, and Joan d’Arc.
Half of the freaking art in this city is about these personages.
Continuing with the lower ground floor, I looked at the small Arts of Islam department (Galleries 1 to 13 and A). I wrapped up my first trip to the Louvre (part 4) with the History of the Louvre galleries (all in French and therefore free of meaningful context to me), and the Medieval Louvre relics (foundations of the earliest original incarnation of the building). I skipped eveything in both the ground floor and lower ground floor of the Denon wing.
Headed back to the hotel after the museum, we were so knackered that we got on a Metro train going the wrong way, for the first and only time on this trip.
Once again we were famished from a long day, and once again we decided to see what Place de Clichy could yield for us. Maybe this wasn’t the best idea, given Rebecca’s inability to choose last night, but there are so many restaurants there, and it is so close to the hotel, that it seemed to be a logical option. Sophie at the hotel had recommended three different seafood places at Place de Clichy, and we thought we’d make our last dinner in Paris a nice one.
Long story short (for once): someone who doesn't really like seafood was also once again unable to be adventurous in any capacity at all, and we ended up at a second-rate Italian place (Casa Nostra, on rue de Douai, right off of the rue de Clichy, by the Pathe movie theater).
Eating for Italian a third time was a rather unimaginative dining choice, and I was doubly annoyed by it because Casa Nostra is not even an especially good restaurant.
I have made a certain someone promise, swear, testify, and vow to work on this particular quirk should she end up coming to Japan with me in 2008. A lesson in open mindedness and the value of culinary adventure has been learned, and this particular difficulty will not be an issue on future voyages.
Or so I have been promised.
For an expensive €32.50 Euro we got a vegetarian pizza for Rebecca, and a plate of penne pasta for me (with olives, anchovies, crushed red pepper). Our usual Kir aperitif and half bottle of house wine completed a meal that was very similar to the one that we’d had the previous night, except for that the quality of Tuesday’s dinner was two notches better and €10 cheaper.
Rebecca also broke the pizza rule.
No pizza in France was the rule.
Walking back to the hotel Atlanta Frochot, we opted to not give the nearby absinthe bar a second chance, but we made note of the huge line to get into the 11:30 late night show at Moulin Rouge.
Thursday, November 29
And so it
ends.
We ate our last identical and ritualistic breakfast of croissants, bread rolls, sticky pastries, orange juice, grapefruit juice, and (for Rebecca) coffee.
With only an hour to kill, I suggested a quick travel-grocery shopping trip at rue Abbesses in Montmartre.
€6.42 for several bars of 86% cacao dark chocolate and some water at Champion.
€9.40 for our last two baguette sandwiches and a fresh twisty bread with little bits of chunky ham baked into it.
€4.50 for a Camembert, carefully prodded by the cheese shop owner when I told her it was for consumption demain (tomorrow).
She was careful to select just the right one.
Walking around our neighborhood for the last time, I snapped pictures wildly.
Having been careful about use of the four memory cards and two cameras that were with me, it was now time to pull out the stops and shoot from the hip.
Let’s see what I can grab in the final hour.
We walked past a school, and noted a
large group of students, at least
100 of them, across the street. When we walked by their school,
they started throwing things at us!
We were almost hit by either a rock or a roll of hard bread. The kids were all yelling and shouting. We might not have been the primary targets - we might have been caught in the crossfire when some kid or teacher had been entering or leaving the building. But then again these kids have pretty lousy aim - we were well past the door when the projectile zoomed towards my skull.
Rebecca responded by doing something that I have never seen her do in the five years I have known her: she gave them the finger!
Do they have the finger in France?
The kids didn’t respond.
What the hell is it with these French people and their protests and revolutions?
Just during the week we were there, we had to contend with the Metro strike, whispers and half-heard conversations about some rioting in the suburbs, a threatened museum workers strike (damned glad that didn’t happen - unless of course it means that, like the Metro strike, all the museums would have been free!), and now these students getting pissed off like it is May of 1968 all over again.
Liberty, Equality, Fraternity?
How about: Protest, Revolution, Riot.
We got to the airport efficiently.
I bought some Cuban rum at duty free, and also some exotic Creme de Casis and a bottle of a certain Martinique rum that I haven’t seen at home. Duty free really is cheaper for some things, but can be the same price or more expensive for other items. You just have to be aware of the prices at home for whatever you’re buying.
Depart Paris, American Airlines flight 41, Terminal 2A.
Depart 2:20 p.m. / arrive 4:45 p.m. / Flight time 9 h 25 m.
As was the case on the flight to Paris, the flight home was mercifully almost empty.
In fact, I had two entire rows of seats at my disposal: the center row of three seats sufficed for naps, but when it was reading time, I discovered that the overhead light was broken. So I switched to a window row of two seats for reading... and then went back to the center row for more shut-eye. Having been cramped into a single seat next to some fat stinky person for eight hours while crossing the Atlantic in the past, I was appreciative of this arrangement and savored it.
I had €3.82 left, including the remains of leftover Euros from Spain in 2005.
We put a few souvenirs (shoes, graphic albums, booze) and a few expensive meals on credit, and paid for the hotel in advance before we even arrived.
So for the most part, the €438.09 in cash that I stared with got us through the whole trip.
Total trip cost:
$1601.61 each
plus $244.70 (Rebecca souvenirs)
and $145.21 (James souvenirs)
Ate up my hammy bread thing on Friday at home, the Camembert at the rate of a bit a day through Sunday, and made the chocolate last for almost a month.
By that time, this document was written, and with all of the writing done, the photos sorted, and the treats consumed, the Paris trip was truly over.
November, 2007
Part 1 Part 2 Part 3
Back to James Writings and Travelogues
©2007 James Teitelbaum. All rights reserved.
Use of text or images contained within this document is strictly prohbited.
Monday, November 26
We made our farthest excursion from central
Paris today, and in fact
left the city limits for the first and only time. Literally
across the street from the northern border of 18e (and therefore the
northern border of Paris) in the suburb of Saint-Ouen, is Le Marche aux
Puces, or literally: the Market with Fleas. This is the original
and very first flea market, the one for which all others are named.
From the northwest corner of avenue Michelet and rue Jean Henri Fabre, one can walk north on Michelet or west on Fabre, and encounter more or less what would be encountered in a modern North American flea market: lots of booths along the streets full of people selling socks, batteries, cheap jewelry, and sunglasses. However, in the maze of tiny pedestrian streets that cram into the small blocks behind Fabre and Michelet, there are thousands of little antique stores.
There are so many of
them that maps are needed to navigate it all
(available for free), and the various areas are divided up into named
zones. Just like everything else in Paris, this place is a vast
and seemingly impenetrable experience that can’t possibly be absorbed
in one visit. We spent a few hours in the Marche aux Puces, and
wandered through less than half of it: the Vernaison, Antica, Biron,
and Serpette sections. The market was supposed to have opened at
11:00 a.m. We got there at 10:55, by chance. However when
1:30 or so rolled around and we’d had enough, less than half of the
stalls we walked past were open (Marche aux Puces advertises itself as
being open Saturday, Sunday, and Monday only). Perhaps this was a
blessing in disguise.
Truly, we were in the Louvre of flea markets.
And I do mean that. Once in the maze, all of the vendors cease selling batteries and ski hats, and instead focus on fine antiques. The Marche aux Puces looks like some horrible poverty-stricken shanty town, particularly within the Vernaison and Antica sections. Rickety shacks and dirty floors, leaky ceilings, sometimes no heat, and often no electricity at all. There are probably a fair number of fleas here too. There were definitely a lot of fleas here in the past - the name of this market was meant literally when it was christened. The streets seem to meander with no planned direction. And yet, in almost every shop, we saw pieces of art, furniture, jewelry, and objects d’ decor that often bordered on museum-quality.
There were no bargains to be had in the Marche aux Puces.
From the northwest corner of avenue Michelet and rue Jean Henri Fabre, one can walk north on Michelet or west on Fabre, and encounter more or less what would be encountered in a modern North American flea market: lots of booths along the streets full of people selling socks, batteries, cheap jewelry, and sunglasses. However, in the maze of tiny pedestrian streets that cram into the small blocks behind Fabre and Michelet, there are thousands of little antique stores.
Arrondissements of Paris.
There are so many of
them that maps are needed to navigate it all
(available for free), and the various areas are divided up into named
zones. Just like everything else in Paris, this place is a vast
and seemingly impenetrable experience that can’t possibly be absorbed
in one visit. We spent a few hours in the Marche aux Puces, and
wandered through less than half of it: the Vernaison, Antica, Biron,
and Serpette sections. The market was supposed to have opened at
11:00 a.m. We got there at 10:55, by chance. However when
1:30 or so rolled around and we’d had enough, less than half of the
stalls we walked past were open (Marche aux Puces advertises itself as
being open Saturday, Sunday, and Monday only). Perhaps this was a
blessing in disguise. Truly, we were in the Louvre of flea markets.
And I do mean that. Once in the maze, all of the vendors cease selling batteries and ski hats, and instead focus on fine antiques. The Marche aux Puces looks like some horrible poverty-stricken shanty town, particularly within the Vernaison and Antica sections. Rickety shacks and dirty floors, leaky ceilings, sometimes no heat, and often no electricity at all. There are probably a fair number of fleas here too. There were definitely a lot of fleas here in the past - the name of this market was meant literally when it was christened. The streets seem to meander with no planned direction. And yet, in almost every shop, we saw pieces of art, furniture, jewelry, and objects d’ decor that often bordered on museum-quality.
There were no bargains to be had in the Marche aux Puces.
| We quickly discovered that today’s shopping
would be of the window
variety... if the clusters of little shops had windows, that is. One guy had the entrance to his stall decorated to look like rock, the entrance to a cave perhaps, and inside he had things like 16th century Japanese suits of samurai armor, and an Egyptian statue for €12,000 ($17,550). We saw everything from Louis the (x) furniture to tribal artifacts from all over the world, to home furnishings from the 1620s to 1730s to 1840s to 1950s. Near the expensive, explosive mess that are the Vernaison and Antica sections, is the Biron section, which (providing contrast to Vernaison and Antica) is a long straight avenue with slightly less than rickety shops on either side. Some of the wares for sale here are even more high end than in the other areas, and some of these dealers actually take credit cards. A short walk from there is the Serpette section, which is less like a shanty town and more like an indoor antique mall... but they still don’t believe in heat. Thousands of Euros worth of fine antiques at every turn. We saw some amazing stuff in there, including one dealer (Jean Paul Costey 1930) who had a dozen immaculately preserved (or restored) art deco bars, with all of the shakers, glasses, trays, mirrors, carts, decanters, and other accouterments to go with the bars. A British woman across the aisle (Olwen Forest, a well known dealer in jewelry and the like) had further barware, including some highly collectible (according to her) miniature models of bars, each of which was used to hold cocktail picks (of the sort you’d use to stab an olive, for example). Mostly made of teak, some had chrome or bakelite details, and all had themes: a bowling theme, or a chrome die-cut of a woman shaking a drink mounted on the front of the little teak bar. So basically they were decorative pick holders, each about the size of an old cassette tape. I thought that one of these might have made a nice, classy, and compact souvenir... For €400 each ($589). We passed on them. Not sure how much the actual full-sized bars were, but if the prices compared to the pick holders were to scale upwards proportionately with the size... There is nothing shabby in this whole place, aside from the buildings themselves. Unlike most other antique dealers who may bolster their inventory of quality merchandise with a few lesser items that are perhaps in need of touch ups, nothing in any of these ramshackle stalls is less than perfect. I took very few pictures. As was the case with the Louvre, there is just too much. If I would have started photographing individual items, there would have been no going back, and I would have been into hundreds of photos and hours of time. So I shot a few general pictures to preserve a feel for the basic surroundings (none came out worthy of posting here), and left the specifics to the whims of the runny Camembert cheese of memory. Speaking of cheese, lunch was at yet another random boulangerie bear the Garibaldi Metro station. Spent €7.60 for two rather mediocre chicken sandwiches on baguettes. Ate them at yet another sunny little park near yet another lovely ancient church. |
|
We then made for the Louvre for day two of our adventures therein.
This visit covered the entire first floor of the Denon wing, and a a few little bits of the Sully wing (also first floor) left over from Friday’s visit. Or in other words, large format French paintings, Italian paintings from the 13th to 18th centuries, a small room of Spanish paintings, a few extant Greek antiquities, the famous Apollo Gallery, and a temporary exhibition of Biedermeier craftsmanship.
Apollo Gallery ceiling.
The Apollo Gallery is
a long hall with very
high arched ceilings.
All of the walls are decorated with intricate woodwork, and there are
portraits of important persons along the entire length. Further
paintings, including original works by Delacroix, are permanent parts
of the arched ceiling. The room itself is a marvel, one of the
high points of the Louvre, and certainly must have been even more
impressive when this building was a palace. In fact, when
we think of what a palace might look like, we think of the Apollo
Gallery. Fittingly, the objects that have been added to the room
are minimal in number, but key in stature: no less than the crowns and
jewels of several past monarchs, set delicately in glass display cases.Kings are an indelible symbol in popular culture, even in a society like the United States, which was formed as the result of a massive rebellion against monarchy. From the noble King Arthur to the greedy King George (against whom we fought for independence in America), and from the Burger King to the Lion King, we have our share of crowned symbols of heroism and villainy alike. But somehow, this little object in this little case in this big room in this big museum carries with it a power and mystique. This little metal band, covered in shiny baubles was worn on the head of a man who held the very power of life and death over his subjects. It radiates authority and a palpable sense of great history.
Biedermeier furniture
The Biedermeier display was
interesting because it contained a selection
of furniture that clearly inspired art deco, but predated deco by a
good 100 years.The movement was very much ahead of its time.
The exhibit contained plenty of other material from this era (about 1815 to 1848) which looks a lot more like what we usually think of as being contemporary to that era, but the small selection of (if I may) "pre-modern" pieces took me by surprise.
No fan of art deco should fail to do a little research into the Biedermeier period.
It is great to have one's eyes opened in this way.
Of course, there were so many other experiences like this during my fifteen hours in the Louvre, and also while in the other museums of Paris. Connectons are made, references and allusions and influences are understood. An epiphany in the Orsay made me truly understand the connection between classical composer Maurice Ravel and the painter Eugene Delacroix - never mind that Ravel was born seven years after Delacroix died! Even upon coming home and going into the Art Institute of Chicago, I saw a painting in there called Champs de Mars, which I had walked past - and ignored - many times in the past. Only now do I understand that the Champs de Mars is the road leading to Tour Eiffel, and that the red object in the painting is a Cubist version of the Eiffel, painted red in a sort of visual pun: red being the color of Mars, the Greek god of war, and the name of the road leading to the tower. It is like a big game of Tetris: as each little gap is filled, a deeper understanding of the connected history and meaning of all of the arts grows. But also, like the game, the pieces never stop falling, and the number of possible connections is endless. You can never finish, you can never win, you can just keep having fun helping all of the pieces fall into place, for as long as you're able.
Large format French paintings.
Galleries 75-77 are
large format French paintings. Someone really meant it when they named this wing.
These things are indeed huge.
Opposite these galleries, via gallery 06 (Mona Lisa) is a really, truly, extremely long hallway called the Grand Gallery. It must be a half mile long, seriously. Four centuries of Italian painting are covered here, but the problem I had is that the Italians didn’t seem to be capable of painting anything but Jesus until the 18th century. This entire Grand Gallery, one of the central points of interest in this vast institution, and a place where kings once held council, took me very little time to see. I can appreciate the work at hand for artistic achievement, but the biblical paintings have always left me feeling a bit indifferent.
Quite a lot of fuss over a two-millennia old piece of symbolic literature.
Rebecca encountered a Japanese tourist who saw a painting of Jesus and exclaimed: “Jesus-san! Ah! Jesus-san!”.
We’ll visit him again in 2008 when the next voyage takes me to Japan.
Back hotelward...
Here is a picture of a
building we didn't visit: The Grand Palais as seen from across the
Seine.
For dinner, we decided
that eating poorly or ramdomly was not an option,
so we asked Sophie - the prim and efficient desk clerk at the Atlanta
Frochot - for a recommendation. Sophie has long, straight black hair, and wore a crisp white blouse every single day, always with a floor-length black skirt. She never smiled. All of the other hotel employees had a bit more variation in both their demeanor and wardrobe. There was the slightly disheveled middle aged man who helped me perfect my pronunciation of soixant (or 'sixty' - our room number) when asking for they key every evening. There was the kind of goofy old lady who was there some nights and who loaned us her corkscrew from time to time, and there was the sort of dumpy girl of about Sophie’s age (early thirties maybe) who was there most mornings. None of them wore name tags, so we only got Sophie’s name, regrettably.
She sent us to a place in the neighborhood (in the other direction from porno land) called La Marmite (uh, The Pot). Upon arrival, Rebecca saw some hearty salads going out to the tables, and went on to order one. I got the prixe fixe. Rebecca tried to get an appetizer a la carte, and was talked out of it by the waitress, who assured her that she’d barely be able to finish the salad. This was accurate. For my entree (i.e. my appetizer) I got a sort of warm philodough packet filled with goat cheese and little chunks of sweet apples, like what you’d find in an apple pie (but smaller chunks). Very nice. My plate (entree) was a small but nicely cooked piece of salmon on a bland bed of linguine (yes, this is what I'd had the previous night too!). Rebecca’s salad was indeed massive, with a fat layer of disc-shaped french fries on top of it. Also, pickled hot peppers, fresh mixed greens, corn, cabbage, tomatoes, and a sort of Ranch dressing.
The carafe of house wine was considerably less of a bargain at La Marmite than elsewhere (€9).
We discovered that there is an American-style grocery store called Champion half a block from our hotel, and of course it is located in the only direction that we never previously got around to exploring. We could have been buying our water and wine for the room for 1/3 the price that we paid at the fruteria mini-mart that we have been patronizing. Of course, we’d still buy our picnic lunches at the local market zones wherever we roam, but it boggles the mind to think that you can get a perfectly drinkable bottle of wine in a Parisian grocery store for €3 or less. Even the €6 or €7 we had been paying had seemed reasonable! We got a bottle of Chateau Grand Antoine Bordeaux for €3.50 in the newly-discovered Champion (open until 11:30 every day), and it was just fine. I guess we can average the wine prices out for tonight (€9 + €3.50 / 2 = €6.25 per...).
After Rebecca hit the sack, I went for a walk to photograph some of the neon signs in the area of Place de Clichy. The short walk to de Clichy at night also meant walking through Pigalle at night. Of all the nights that Rebecca and I were in that neighborhood together (i.e. every night, when coming and going from the hotel), no one ever bothered us, at all. However, the one time I set foot outside alone, I was swarmed with men and women trying to bodily pull me into the little hostess bars, promising me ‘nice girls’, and ‘good drinks’, and ‘no cover for you, my special friend’. No less than three separate girls took me by the arm and tried to pull me into the tiny bars that employed them: ‘my girlfriends are nice, come inside, take a look for free, just look around, you’ll like them’. My only temptation was the curiosity about exactly what it is that these girls did for cash... but no cats were killed that night.
I disentangled myself and went on with my night photos, including this little masterpiece:
I discovered a corner called Place Andre Breton, named after the writer, poet, and founder of the Surrealist art movement.
The sign announcing this honor is nailed to the front of a crappy bar called Long Island that has happy hour every day from 4:00 to 10:00 and then from 4:00 to 10:00.
That is: 4:00 p.m. to 10:00 p.m., and then 4:00 a.m. to 10:00 am.
That is scary.
Tuesday, November 27
Musee d’Orsay
After breakfast, we made for today’s museum, Musee d’Orsay
(1 rue de la
Légion d'Honneur, 07e).Built in the remains of a beautiful and grand (of course) train station, this institution covers the vital period after the Louvre cuts off (1850 or so), but before the Pompidou begins (1900 or so). There is some overlap between the museums, and the Orsay does cover much more than that fifty year period.
But the focus is 19th century art, and the rise of Impressionism.
All of the Van Gough, Monet, Manet, Renoir, Degas, Gauguin, etc. is here.
If you want to see Degas express his ballerina fetish, Gauguin express his island girls fetish, or Van Gough express his automutilation fetish, they're all here for you.
Neither Rebecca nor I are truly big fans of this stuff, so we didn’t budget a huge amount of time for this one.
But of course, the Orsay is much bigger than we imagined, and contained plenty of surprises that I did like, in the realms of sculpture, early photography, art nouveau treasures, and paintings in the Romantic and Orientalist traditions.
So, the museum was worth seeing.
This should not have surprised me.
Once again, notes were extensive, but I will spare you them here.
After about three and a half hours, or a bit after 2:00, we left the museum, and spent €10.40 for two baguettes and a chocolate eclair at a place called Gosselin boulangerie (on the corner of boulevard St. Germain and rue de Belle Chaise). We lugged them down rue St. Germain to Luxembourg Gardens. It was a beautiful day, sunny and calm, if cool.
Morning breaks across a random building
near the Orsay.
On the way to the gardens we found
ourselves back at the corner of boulevard St.
Germain and rue Bonaparte, not far from the Sorbonne, Shakespeare and
Co., and the Latin Quarter, but closer to La Rhumerie and Taschen's
palace of art books. We spied the famous Café Les Deux
Magots (frequented by the writers of the "Lost Generation" of the 1920s
and 1930s, and by the post World War II Existentialists) and
Café de Flore, but had no occasion to pause this time. We also strode by another historic eatery, the Brassiere Lipp.
A waiter stood on the patio, which was enclosed for the winter in partly transparent canvas walls.
The waiter was very tall, very thin, wore a tux, and had slicked back hair with a pencil thin moustache.
He had his arm cocked at a 90 degree angle with a crisp white towel neatly draped over it.
We thought he was a mannequin or a statue.
He was perfectly motionless, not moving as we strode by.
He did not breathe, did not twitch.
He did not even blink.
Then I discovered an antiquarian bookstore called Les Argonautes (74 rue de la Seine, 06e). They were having a small art exhibition by Jean Luc Chambaud, an older gentleman who is completely self-taught, and who does collage art just for fun. His stuff seems a bit inspired by Max Ernst (of course; can any collage artist fail to go back to Ernst?), but in color (unlike Ernst, and therefore recalling Winston Smith but with less political irony). The work also featured cameos from Hitchcock, Dali, and Einstein among the other found imagery juxtaposed on paper. The gallery had a dozen or so pieces hanging in the window and in the shop, and another 50 or so works in stacks to browse. The art was reasonably priced at between €100 - 200, mostly closer to €200.
Pastry porn
Virtually next door to the book shop, we spent €4.30 for
four macaroons
from Gerard Mulot (corner of rue de la Seine and rue Lobineau). Rebecca decrees that the macaroons at Laudree are better.
I was unable to distinguish the difference.
I defer to her advanced pastry-tasting pallette.
We finally made it to Jardins (gardens) Luxembourg, after having scratched it off of Saturday’s list, and after having become sidetracked on the way there today. Luxembourg is a 25-hectare green oasis, decorated with statues, fountains, and flowers. At the entrance is a palace built in the 17th century by Marie de Medicis, a French queen. We found some chairs on a terrace overlooking both palace and gardens, and ate our lunch. Within the palace there was an exhibition happening by artist Giuseppe Arcimboldo. Posters advertising the show had been hanging all over town. I like Arcimboldo's work (he painted portraits of people in the 16th century, but substituted his subject's anatomy for weird clusters of vegetables), but there are so many museums to see on this trip already. One must be selective. We skipped it.
Plus: outdoors is they key way to spend some time at Jardins Luxembourg.
Rebecca loved the Jardins Luxembourg, declaring it
the most beautiful
park she’d ever been to, even given our brief visit in the less than
verdant month of November.
The November sun was already starting to set at about 4:00, but I caught the last of the great light in what photographers call the ‘golden hour’ - that last hour before twilight when the angle of the sun illuminates everything in a brilliant golden hue.
Some random French guy was secretly taking pictures of a solitary man sitting in the park reading. I had to admit that the composition and the mood were nice, so I leeched in and took the same photo that the other guy was taking. The third man, the stranger who was being photographed, noticed what we were doing just after I finished, and began to get annoyed at the multiple pictures that my companion in photography was shooting.
I got all I needed in a single attempt:
Jardins Luxembourg
Walking back towards the river,
through the Latin Quarter, we hatched a
plan to buy some cheap used bikes next time we come to Paris.
There
are state-sponsored bike rental facilities scattered throughout the
city, but you pay by the hour for those. Having something more
long-term and economical might be the way to go. We covered a lot
of ground on this trip, by Metro and by foot. Having a bike might
be a fun way to split the difference, especially in warmer weather.Near or at the corner of boulevard St. Germain and boulevard St. Michel is museum de Cluny. This is museum of “Moyen Age” or medieval arts and crafts. It is housed in the Hôtel de Cluny, a Gothic mansion built about 1490. We didn’t stop in. Put it on the list for next time.
Around 5:00 p.m., I finally stumbled across something I’d been keeping my eyes out for, which is a store that sells graphic novels, French style (they call 'em albums). This particular shop is simply called Album, and is located near the Sorbonne, right on the corner of boulevard St. Germain and rue St. Jaques. I think we must have walked right past it on Saturday. It is just around the corner from Shakespeare and Co.
Like the Japanese and their Manga, the French take their comics (albums) seriously.
They’re all published as lavish hardback editions.
It was hard shopping in Album (the store); I wasn’t used to the organization system, and the shop was fairly vast.
There are a few artists whose work I am fond of, but I was unprepared for the treasure trove of stuff at hand.
I could not find anything either good or new to me by Moebius (a genius artist whose work I have followed since the early 1980s; he has been regularly translated into English) or Romain Hugault (a guy I got hep to recently). I did find the whole Pin-Up series (a 1940s noir mystery story) by Yann and Berthet, volumes 1 through 9. I have #1 to #3 in English already, and #4 and #5 in French. I wanted to get #6 and #7 but the only copy of the latter number in the store was damaged pretty badly. So I got #6.
I also picked up a title called Songes Coraline (Think Coraline) by Terry Dodson and D.P. Filippi, which I’d never heard of before. I can’t read too much of the damned story, but the art is truly amazing. Clean lines but with a lot of detail, and a nice muted color palette with watercolor backgrounds. There’s a bit of a nouveau feel to it too, and a bit of the genre known as Steam Punk, in which people regularly do unlikely things with 19th century technology. The gist of the tale is that a tutor named Coraline in an alternative 19th century goes to a remote and sprawling estate to take care of an orphan boy who lives there. There is a nanny and a butler too. The three adults have their hands full as the boy seems able to build all sorts of fantastic machines, one of which seems to send Coraline into several fantastic alternate-alternate realities.
Or something like that.
International
Rebecca at Jardins Luxembourg
I passed on another
book by the astounding Italian artist Milo
Manara. Manara is one of the most talented illustrators working
today, and has been since the 1970s. The problem is that he
chooses to draw mostly porn comics. I can only take so much of
his work before
I
require something of more substance. In the case of the book I
saw at Album, Mananra seems to
have concocted some sort of tribute to the great Italian film director
Federico Fellini. It looked like there is a bit of a bio going
on, and perhaps illustrations inspired by a lost Fellini script.
Or so I
gathered. A lot of the book is straight text (in French) and it
was rather expensive. I must remember to look for an English
version: a non-X-rated Manara meets Fellini is too good an idea to pass
up on
forever.The idea we had for our visit to the Tour Eiffel was that we’d already seen it during the day on Saturday, and we’d also experienced a panoramic daytime view of the city from the top of the Arc de Triomphe. So we thought it might be more interesting the go up the Eiffel at night.
I also felt like we had been extremely well-behaved on this trip. In spite of all of the wine and Kir mentioned with dinner and in the hotel room, we never had more than a glass or two in any one sitting. The cocktails at Hemingway bar were too expensive for more than one round.
So, a bit of reckless abandon was long overdue.
It was dark by 6:30, and I knew that the only possible thing to do during this fine Parisian evening was to hydrate with a bottle of water, and then enjoy the view of Paris from inside the Sparkly after imbibing a bit of vin. Or a lot. At a little market, we paid €4.50 for the Vin de Pays du Jardin de la France (Uh, 'Wine of Country of the Garden of France'... 750 ml, 12.5 abv), plus €1.50 for the water.
I borrowed a corkscrew from the owner of the shop; he handed it to me and I said “perfecto!”.
He got all excited and said “aahh! Italiana!”.
Rebecca and I spent some time in careful debate about when exactly to go up into the Eiffel: should we watch Sparkly from the ground and then hit the elevator, or should we attempt to experience Sparkly from within while it was happening? These are the sorts of life-altering decisions that you have to make in Paris.
Sparkly.
A few tips about the Eiffel tower:1.
Crowds are indeed considerably shorter on Tuesday evening than on Saturday afternoon. Very considerably.
2.
The stairs close at 6:00, just in case you’re too cheap to take the elevator.
It costs €4 to go to the first level by elevator, €7.50 to the second and €11 to go all the way.
You can climb the stairs to the second level for €3.50.
3.
No glass allowed.
I had a bag with some food, my new albums, and our water... plus half a bottle of wine. The man working the metal detector at the entrance to the line, to get into the other line, to go up the elevator waved his wand over my sac and then waved me through. For some reason, totally atypical for me, I offered him a better look, even after he waved me past. It was only then that he saw the bottle and said (as one word): “noglassnoglass”.
...so we retreated to a bench and discreetly finished our beverage.
Going through the line again, the man said to Rebecca “you have drink?”.
Rebecca said yes, nodding, as the metal detector man winked and laughed.
Eiffel Tower clockworks
This little delay meant
that Rebecca’s beloved Sparkly Time happened
while we were in the elevator. It wasn’t bad though.
From the moving glass box, we were able to experience the strobing effect from several different continually shifting angles.
According to a sign, there are 3 million visitors to the top each year. That is 8219 per day, and 609 per hour (9:30–23:00).
The second level is even more popular, so that’s a lot of freaking visitors.
The first level of Sparkly has exhibits, a post office, a snack bar, souvenirs, and a restaurant called Altitude 95. Another Restaurant, named after Jules Verne is a bit more high-end, and is said to be booked for months in advance. The second level (which is actually two stories tall) has more souvenirs, more educational exhibits, and the best views, especially on the upper deck of the second level.
We didn’t go to the top, and there doesn’t seem to be much need to. One has a perfect view of the entire city from the second level; it seems as though the top level is so much higher that you are just farther away from everything. Remember that even at the second level of Tour Eiffel, you are at the highest point in the city, except for Montparnasse tower, and of course, the third level of Eiffel. So you can see everything you want to see from there; going up to the third level doesn't really give you a better view. Just a more distant one.
From the second level, in exactly a 180 degree arc, starting on my right, I could see Montparnasse tower, then the Arc de Troimphe, and then Notre Dame all lit up, and then the Louvre, which is all shadowy and not distinct, and then the Ferris wheel and the Obelisk at Place Concorde, and then the glass-domed Grand Palais, and then Sacre Coeur atop Montmartre in the far distance, and then the Seine winds into view, and then the Arc de Triomphe, and then finally, all the way to the left, all of the big buildings in the suburbs at La Defense. In the immediate foreground is the Pantheon and also the Musée de l'Homme and Trocadero gardens.
I also saw a boat on the Seine that looked like a centipede.
A Seine-tipede.
The
Impossible View.
Seeing all of this
reminded me of a painting
by Shag called “The
Impossible View”:
...this is of course a painting of San Francisco,
and the joke here is
that there is no place in that city where all of the famous landmarks
can all be viewed at once. However, the
“Impossible View” of Paris is easily achieved from the second level of
Tour Eiffel.
One other thing that becomes abundantly clear from this view, at night,
is that one the many nicknames given to Paris - City of Light - is
perhaps outdated. It is far from the most illuminated town I’ve
been in, and even with the relatively small amount of light pollution
that this metropolis gives off, there are almost no stars visible in
the night sky. Even on a clear night, and from an altitude of 377
feet, lights are minimal both above and below. For big cities,
Chicago, New York, Barcelona, and London all have better night skies -
from any height - and are also brighter on the ground as well.The moon has been full for the past few nights, but all of a sudden a good quarter of it is gone. Suddenly. There is a red planet or a bright reddish star near the moon. That is the only thing I can see up there aside from the moon.
The Possible View.
Two Italian girls asked
me take their picture.I asked “Italia?” and they said “yeas”.
After the photo I said “bella!” and they said “gratzi”.
This was the second time in an hour that I busted out some first-grade Italian vocabulary.
This might be due to the fact that we have had Italian food for dinner recently... with two more Italian meals coming up soon.
Like... now!
Dinner time!
But first...
We have been walking distances of something like ten miles per day.
| I thought that I had brought good walking
shoes. But there is
only so far you can push yourself without resting. Muscles need
48 hours to recuperate after a workout, and I have been essentially
giving my legs a solid working out every day for more than a
week. My knees are screwed. My heels are smashed. My
hips are complaining. My rectus femoris muscles need time to
reknit. My gastocnemuis are rock hard, but they itch like
mad.
Above the waist, I feel fine. Not winded, nor tired. Full
of energy, and ready to go. Awake, alert. But the bones and
muscles below have been abused and are sending me messages that I
cannot ignore any longer. To be honest, this has been the case since our second day here, and on each successive day, the discomfort has kicked in just a little earlier. But, I do not let it stop me, I put the pain aside, and press on, determined to make the most out of every second of this trip. I can rest when I get home - two more days! But... I just can’t walk anymore today. The joints are rebelling and insisting on a respite. I rested in front of a restaurant at Place de Clichy, while Rebecca walked the perimeter, looking for a restaurant that fits her persnickety dining needs. Anything is fine with me, except for any place we’ve been already. I am determined to sample as wide a variety of tastes as possible. There are thirty restaurants within my immediate view. None of them look good to Rebecca. All of them look fine to me. We settled on Italian food again; this appears to fit into her culinary comfort zone. I left my tape recorder running while we ordered, to document how well I could (or couldn't) deal with ordering an Italian meal in French after a week in Paris... with the added bonus of a (very) little bit of Italian practice (three words) today as well. The waiter was a good sport, helping me along; Rebecca thought it was all pretty funny. She and I do both agree that when traveling, one should make the most concerted effort possible to speak the local language. The natives do appreciate the effort and will reciprocate in your native tongue when they can. We ended up with two big plates of pasta again. Rebecca got tortelinni, and mine was salmon again, although it was completely different from the salmon and pasta that I consumed in the other Italian restaurant we’d eaten in this week. I’d been hoping for more adventurous dining, but I can’t complain because the food we ate that night was quite good. Rebecca’s traditional Kir aperitif, a half-carafe of vin de chateau, and a basket of brioche completed our repaste, which came to €23 including a tip. I somehow lost the name of the place, it was Traiteur something, right off of Place de Clichy, on rue Caulaincourt in 18e. All the menus in France tell you how much you get to drink, down to the centiliter (that is ‘centiliter’, as in 1/100 of a liter or .34 ounce, not ‘centipede’, as in 100 legs or a boat on the Seine). Examples: Juice de Fruits: .33 liter, Beir de Italiano: .33 liter, wine: 75 cl (a full bottle) or 37.5 cl. (carafe). Today was definitely wine day, and it is not over yet. I made it to the Champion grocery store just before their 11:30 closing, and for the bargain basement price of €4.96, I scored a wheel of Camembert, a large hunk of ‘noir intense’ 70% cacao, and a bottle of Font Cailloux Bordeaux Superior. Good cheese, good chocolate, and good wine, all for about $7.15 at the Champion. Can’t beat it. |
|
We had a little party in the room, with plenty of good things to eat: macaroons, and cheese, and chocolate, and wine, and bread. We took inventory of the remaining beverages and snacks. Then we went to our two little beds quite decadently and irresponsibly well-fed.
Wednesday, November 28
Our last full day in Paris was indeed another full one.
Museum Gustave Moreau
We began, after petit
dejeuner, at the Museum Gustave Moreau
(14, rue
de La Rochefoucauld, 09e), which was walking distance from the hotel.The museum is housed in the apartment building that Moreau lived in, with a reception area on the ground floor, and Moreau’s actual apartments preserved for inspection on the first floor. The second and third floors have both been gutted, and are now each a large gallery room. A cool spiral staircase joins them. These two galleries are crammed to the rafters with several dozen of Gustave Moreau’s excellent paintings. A cabinet in the middle of the room on the top floor contains panels that can be folded out by the museum visitor; each panel has one or more small paintings or drawings affixed to it. An unusual display, but given the premium that wall space is at in this museum, it is a necessary one.
The museum is worth a visit, but I found it to be a bit disorganized, even given its diminutive size. The museum offers laminated cards in several languages containing information about the art works. The problem is that some of the paintings had no numbers next to them, and others had numbers that were clearly keyed to text descriptions of completely different works. So, as was the case in most of the Paris museums, I had to forgo all historical significance, context, biography, artistic intention, or other trivia, and merely take the work at face value.
| Perhaps this isn’t always a bad thing. There was no such thing as an artist’s statement until post-modern times, and now all contemporary gallery shows and contemporary museums insist on having the artist justify themselves with an explanation of what they are trying to achieve. Should the art speak for itself? Maybe. Are the descriptive paragraphs seen next to selected works in most museums just a way for art scholars to retroactively imagine what a long-dead artist’s statement might have said? Maybe. Personally, I don’t mind insight provided about what I am seeing, but I also recognize that it may influence my perception, for good or for ill. But not in Paris. I lingered for quite a while in Gustave’s shrine, and yet we were back into the cold sunshine of November in about 90 minutes. It just isn’t a very big museum, but it is worth seeing (and covered by Museum Pass, natch). Rebecca wanted to go specifically back to rue Cler, to shop for lunch. We ended up back at the same boulangerie (Maison Auvray, corner of rue Cler and rue Champs de Mars) that had mixed up our order a few days earlier, and spent €9.45 for two baguette sandwiches and an apple tart. Further small expenditures were €0.18 for 1.5 liters of water at grocery store, and €1.07 for a banana and two clementines at the same fruit stand that we patronized on Saturday. We ended up carrying the food around for a while. For the third time in a row, we found ourselves either near the Tour Eiffel (but needing to be near Notre Dame), or vice-versa. Most of this trip was very efficiently planned, but I definitely underestimated the size and the spread between attractions along the rive gauche (left bank). We contemplated taking a river boat tour that departed from the vicinity of the Eiffel, looped around the small island that Notre Dame is on, and ended up back where the tour started. The boat stopped in several locations, and we though maybe we’d jump ship part way back, and then see Notre Dame. But the dock was largely deserted. The one woman in the ticket office was chatting leisurely on the phone, and didn’t seem interested in helping us. One young guy got off of one of the boats. We asked him when the next tour was leaving. He pointed at the phone lady. Never mind. So we went to the other Seine boat tour company. This one offers day passes for a sort of river bus. A person can get off of and back on to the boat several times a day. But we just wanted the one ride, and the cost was not worth it. |
|
Notre Dame
So, we took the RER train over to Notre Dame
(we had one ticket, so we
bought one more to use now and two for later for €4.50 total).
Notre
Dame cathedral was impressive of course, but I thought that Sacre Coeur
at Montmartre was much more impressive. So did the tasteful International Rebecca.
Leaving the church, we were walking down a busy street by the Seine, and we saw this tiny, wrinkled, stump of a woman. She must have been four feet tall, tops, but she was all hunched over with a gigantic hump on her back, limping down the street with great effort.
So yes, we actually did see a bona-fide hunchback at Notre Dame.
The next mission was to walk over to St. Chapelle, yet another cathedral, so as to admire their legendary stained glass. St. Chapelle is basically one room, but if you love stained glass, this is the motherlode. The room has what amounts to a mural in glass that tells the whole story of the Old Testament and part of the New. The majority of the glass is original, and some of it is 850 years old. There are chairs along both sides of the room, so we rested and took it all in.
The St. Chappelle visit is €7.50 that we would not have spent if we’d been paying for attractions a la carte, but the Museum Pass got us in for 'free' so, we did it. With the pass, we were also able to bypass a huge throng of Italian tourist kids.
St. Chappelle
St. Chappelle is
actually within the gates of a large, impressive-looking, and
apparently rather important government building. So
you have to pass through heavy security to see it. As monumental
as this building is, it has to be said that every building in this city
looks like it is... or was... or should be... something really
important. Half of them are.
But even the ones that aren’t can fake it.
Golden angels on top of a monument, fountains with sphinxes on them, grand sculptures of important people and mythological figures. Whatever the case, these people like their monuments.
However, they do not like plumbing.
There are no water fountains anywhere, the showers are lousy, the toilets are stinky. I saw no bidets, by the way. Perhaps France’s plumbing has at least reached 19th century standards. I found better plumbing on freaking Easter Island.
But they do have some good food in Paris, that is for sure.
Between the two cathedrals, we passed one of the thousands of outdoor crepe stands in Paris. This one was at the corner of quai du Marche Neuf and boulevard Palais, in a takeout window at Le Soleil D’Or Cafe. The crepes are big thin pancakes, 12 to 14 inches wide. The crepe person heats it up on a big round steaming hotplate-cum-skillet, slaps a big heap of the filling all over it, and then wraps it up into a wedge shape like a big slice of pizza. Filings can be whipped cream, sugar, nutella (very popular), or Grand Marnier (intriguing - but of course that is just a liqueur, I am not sure how it would be served), but no Crepes Suzette (which is also a recipe using Grand Marnier). I wanted to get a flavor that was unique to me, so I chose the creme de marron, sort of a sweet chestnutty paste with the consistency of an extra thick catsup (but a completely different taste in every way of course). We ate it standing on the busy corner.
It was good.
€3.50.
Diana outside of the Louvre
By 3:00 we had rather leisurely
accomplished most of our missions for the day: the Moreau
museum, two cathedrals, a return to the rue Cler market, and a noble
effort at a boat tour. All that remained for the day was
our fourth and final visit to The Louvre.We parked our butts in the Tuilieries garden, and ate the sandwiches that we had dragged around all day. The garden was pretty, even though it was barren due to the impending the winter. Today was the only day on the trip that we found to be uncomfortably cold, so our fountainside lunch was cut short. We finished our apple tart at a table near the Louvre's indoor snack bar.
We entered the museum proper at about 4:00, and finally gave up by 9:00 -- tired, burned out, aching joints, glazed eyes. We still hadn’t seen it all, but we had to cede our defeat and make a vow to experience the rest of the Louvre next time we come to Paris, whenever that might be.
We began by finishing the first floor, namely the Richelieu wing and a corner of the Sully. The Richelieu wing has the Objets d’Art galleries 1 to 34 and 62 to 96 currently open (35 to 61 are closed). So do the math: we saw 68 rooms worth of Objets d’Art. Some of this material was interesting, but a lot of the galleries were very sparsely decorated. I only made notes on a few things.
Down to the ground floor of the Richelieu wing, I absorbed galleries 1 to 21 and A to D, which are Oriental Antiquities. Adjacent to there were sculptures, Galleries 1 to 33 (French, 5th to 19th centuries). I liked the Anton Louis Barye pieces, dramatic combat scenes from mythology, many different ones. Also Jeean-Jaques (James) Pradier’s Satyr et Bacchanate, his Toilette d’Atlanta, his Les Trios Graces, and his Psyche. These pieces, along with dramatic works of sculpture in the Orsay, gave me some new insight and appreciation for the medium. Sulpture must work dynamically, or else it is no different from painting. That is to say, that in order to be effective, a sculpture must have something new to offer when viewed from any angle.
Sunset as seen from a window in the
Louvre
I also
decided that next time I go to Paris, I must first study up on Pan,
Mercury, Cupid,
Spyche, Jupiter, Venus, Diana, and Joan d’Arc. Half of the freaking art in this city is about these personages.
Continuing with the lower ground floor, I looked at the small Arts of Islam department (Galleries 1 to 13 and A). I wrapped up my first trip to the Louvre (part 4) with the History of the Louvre galleries (all in French and therefore free of meaningful context to me), and the Medieval Louvre relics (foundations of the earliest original incarnation of the building). I skipped eveything in both the ground floor and lower ground floor of the Denon wing.
Headed back to the hotel after the museum, we were so knackered that we got on a Metro train going the wrong way, for the first and only time on this trip.
Once again we were famished from a long day, and once again we decided to see what Place de Clichy could yield for us. Maybe this wasn’t the best idea, given Rebecca’s inability to choose last night, but there are so many restaurants there, and it is so close to the hotel, that it seemed to be a logical option. Sophie at the hotel had recommended three different seafood places at Place de Clichy, and we thought we’d make our last dinner in Paris a nice one.
Long story short (for once): someone who doesn't really like seafood was also once again unable to be adventurous in any capacity at all, and we ended up at a second-rate Italian place (Casa Nostra, on rue de Douai, right off of the rue de Clichy, by the Pathe movie theater).
Eating for Italian a third time was a rather unimaginative dining choice, and I was doubly annoyed by it because Casa Nostra is not even an especially good restaurant.
I have made a certain someone promise, swear, testify, and vow to work on this particular quirk should she end up coming to Japan with me in 2008. A lesson in open mindedness and the value of culinary adventure has been learned, and this particular difficulty will not be an issue on future voyages.
Or so I have been promised.
For an expensive €32.50 Euro we got a vegetarian pizza for Rebecca, and a plate of penne pasta for me (with olives, anchovies, crushed red pepper). Our usual Kir aperitif and half bottle of house wine completed a meal that was very similar to the one that we’d had the previous night, except for that the quality of Tuesday’s dinner was two notches better and €10 cheaper.
Rebecca also broke the pizza rule.
No pizza in France was the rule.
Walking back to the hotel Atlanta Frochot, we opted to not give the nearby absinthe bar a second chance, but we made note of the huge line to get into the 11:30 late night show at Moulin Rouge.
Thursday, November 29
Fruit stand.
And so it
ends.We ate our last identical and ritualistic breakfast of croissants, bread rolls, sticky pastries, orange juice, grapefruit juice, and (for Rebecca) coffee.
With only an hour to kill, I suggested a quick travel-grocery shopping trip at rue Abbesses in Montmartre.
€6.42 for several bars of 86% cacao dark chocolate and some water at Champion.
€9.40 for our last two baguette sandwiches and a fresh twisty bread with little bits of chunky ham baked into it.
€4.50 for a Camembert, carefully prodded by the cheese shop owner when I told her it was for consumption demain (tomorrow).
She was careful to select just the right one.
Walking around our neighborhood for the last time, I snapped pictures wildly.
Having been careful about use of the four memory cards and two cameras that were with me, it was now time to pull out the stops and shoot from the hip.
Let’s see what I can grab in the final hour.
These kids are a riot.
We walked past a school, and noted a
large group of students, at least
100 of them, across the street. When we walked by their school,
they started throwing things at us!We were almost hit by either a rock or a roll of hard bread. The kids were all yelling and shouting. We might not have been the primary targets - we might have been caught in the crossfire when some kid or teacher had been entering or leaving the building. But then again these kids have pretty lousy aim - we were well past the door when the projectile zoomed towards my skull.
Rebecca responded by doing something that I have never seen her do in the five years I have known her: she gave them the finger!
Do they have the finger in France?
The kids didn’t respond.
What the hell is it with these French people and their protests and revolutions?
Just during the week we were there, we had to contend with the Metro strike, whispers and half-heard conversations about some rioting in the suburbs, a threatened museum workers strike (damned glad that didn’t happen - unless of course it means that, like the Metro strike, all the museums would have been free!), and now these students getting pissed off like it is May of 1968 all over again.
Liberty, Equality, Fraternity?
How about: Protest, Revolution, Riot.
| I am starting to think that in spite of the
guillotine and all, maybe
the French Revolution was not such a big deal. That sort of thing
is recreation for the French. They have a revolution every few
years, blow off some steam, get it out of the way, and then carry on. That’s what they do for fun here. Transit strike, school protests, riots in the suburbs, all happening in the week we were here, and yet the place never felt dangerous. This is just what these people do. Protests, revolutions, riots, and maybe the odd sit-ins keep ‘em happy. And yet, in comparison to the complacency and the unearned sense of entitlement that my own countrymen exhibit daily, it gives pause for thought. I wonder what would have happened if people took to the streets when George W. Bush stole an election, launched a criminal war against Iraq, or... well... his crimes are many, and he has managed to get away with them all. Perhaps the fou French and their protests can teach us something. Our last Metro ride took us to Gare du Nord, where we switched from the Metro to an RER train back to the airport. The train was mostly empty. On the longish ride, we made some other observations. There is not a lot of litter in Paris, but there are lots of trashmen and cleaning people. I am not sure if they were cleaning up copious trash with success, or if French people just don’t litter much. There is a lot of graffiti everywhere though, especially as seen from on the RER train to and from Charles de Gualle airport. Every damned building. French people are just kind of no nonsense. Everyone was friendly, except for scary breakfast lady. Everyone whom we tried some bonjour and merci with reciprocated in English when they could, and didn’t give us any attitude. Americans tend to say that the French are rude, but I didn’t find this to be the case. It is more that they’re aloof. The waitresses or people in stores don’t go out of their way for you, and maybe don’t make an effort to anticipate your needs. If you need something you ask for it, if you haven’t asked for it you’re not going to get it. Ask for your check, ask for water, ask for help. Otherwise they leave you the hell alone. Lassez-faire. People just let each other be, not just restaurants, but in general, as a way of life. Until it is time for a riot. There are also no SUVs here. As it should be. Lots of smart cars, mini coopers, bicycles, scooters, walking, motorcycles, and publicly funded bicycle rentals. The Metro trains run on time. The longest wait we had for a Metro train was 6 minutes, and that was late at night. I only saw two gas stations, and one of them was a random pump on the sidewalk for a quick scooter filler-up. |
|
We got to the airport efficiently.
I bought some Cuban rum at duty free, and also some exotic Creme de Casis and a bottle of a certain Martinique rum that I haven’t seen at home. Duty free really is cheaper for some things, but can be the same price or more expensive for other items. You just have to be aware of the prices at home for whatever you’re buying.
Depart Paris, American Airlines flight 41, Terminal 2A.
Depart 2:20 p.m. / arrive 4:45 p.m. / Flight time 9 h 25 m.
As was the case on the flight to Paris, the flight home was mercifully almost empty.
In fact, I had two entire rows of seats at my disposal: the center row of three seats sufficed for naps, but when it was reading time, I discovered that the overhead light was broken. So I switched to a window row of two seats for reading... and then went back to the center row for more shut-eye. Having been cramped into a single seat next to some fat stinky person for eight hours while crossing the Atlantic in the past, I was appreciative of this arrangement and savored it.
I had €3.82 left, including the remains of leftover Euros from Spain in 2005.
We put a few souvenirs (shoes, graphic albums, booze) and a few expensive meals on credit, and paid for the hotel in advance before we even arrived.
So for the most part, the €438.09 in cash that I stared with got us through the whole trip.
Total trip cost:
$1601.61 each
plus $244.70 (Rebecca souvenirs)
and $145.21 (James souvenirs)
Ate up my hammy bread thing on Friday at home, the Camembert at the rate of a bit a day through Sunday, and made the chocolate last for almost a month.
By that time, this document was written, and with all of the writing done, the photos sorted, and the treats consumed, the Paris trip was truly over.
| |
Tydirium
Multimedia Left Orbit Temple Tiki Road Trip Big Stone Head Send e-mail to James Last updated on December 31, 2007 |
All material
on
this
website
is © Copyright 1994-2008
by James A. Teitelbaum. All rights reserved. Unauthorized use is a violation of applicable laws. |
| "Tiki Bar Review Pages", "Tiki Road Trip", "Tydirium Multimedia", "Left Orbit Temple", "Chester Century", "Big Stone Head", "TiPSY Factor", "Johnny Clash", "Tiki TV", "Cocktail Snob", and "Blue Harvest Magazine" are trademarks of James A. Teitelbaum. |