Wednesday, 16 October

PARIS

One Last Whirlwind Tour

With our Mona Winks information eagerly clutched in our hands, we set out for a Historic Paris walk, beginning at the very anticipated Notre Dame. So we went to the Metro station, bought two great Formula 1 passes for $6 each for unlimited use on the subways all day, and went straight to the Metro stop the closest to the Île de la Cité. Swimming around the floods of Japanese tourists, we stood in front of Notre Dame's façade, reading aloud the extremely fascinating and educational information from Mona Winks. Luckily, Rick Steves had earned our favor once again, and I know we learned far more about the cathedral than the average tourist who snaps a picture and says "It's pretty."

Notre Dame, even from the back, was smaller than I thought!

Outside we waited our turn to stand at Point Zero, the center of France from which all distances were measured, marking time until there was an opening after the swarms of Japanese tourists took their pictures. Since they had just stood there dully, I decided to do a far more animated pose for our shot, and that caught a lot of their attention...what an easily amused culture! Our next stop was the Deportation Memorial behind the cathedral, but we arrived just as it closed for lunch, so we'd have to come back later.

So we instead resumed our Historic Paris Walk on the Left Bank, experiencing a few more recent cultural icons. There was a tiny, half-timbered[127] house next to a tiny church with a odd history--imagine how the `butcher' street would have been covered in blood 500 years ago. Doug was able to decipher a plaque on the walls which told the real estate history of the block. We looked in wonder at a `gay '20s' Parisian bookstore that Doug would have definitely hung out at if he lived here[128]. Shakespeare and Co.'s English language paperbacks were stacked to the ceiling; perhaps we would have bought one, but we recognized most of the books already, and figured we could get them for a tenth of the price in a thrift store back home. We also learned quite by accident that there was a Chili's in Paris when I noticed a flyer on the wall for the Berkeley Alumni Group to meet there--we knew where we'd be going for dinner that evening! Some of the other highlights of that walk were the typical (yet so French) college students walking around the Sorbonne University, an artsy iron-barred Metro stop that screamed "Gay Pari", and the skinniest house in Paris, which went up some five floors but was barely 5 feet wide.

One of the only places I had eagerly awaited and was not disappointed with was the St. Chappelle, the cathedral of glass. Back on the Île de la Cité and enclosed in the Justice buildings, we first had to wait in a very long line to go through the metal detector...was that for the government building or for the cathedral? Our first stop once inside, however, was not the cathedral, but the bathrooms, and the one in the Palace of Justice was odd indeed. The door had the universal man and the universal woman on the door, and there was more than one individual stall inside. It didn't make any difference to me whatsoever, since nobody else was there and Doug and I probably would have gone in together anyway. But it was an interesting cultural observation.

The St. Chapelle blew us away. Though it was a steep $6 each to go in that very petite church, nothing else could compare with the amazing beams of colored light that emanated from the upper, `bourgeois-only' floor. We could see why the Parisians would have thought it heaven on earth, and why only it would be worthy to hold the supposed `Crown of Thorns', for which the king paid more than the church itself! We were also amazed that the remnants of clouds were keeping it from its greatest--how could it be much better? The serenity of the chapel left something to be desired, however, when we were susceptible to the loud hum of the air blowers that were cleaning the glass on the non-sunny side. Course, even though the Renaissance peasants were not allowed upstairs, the lower floor was really no slouch either, what with its gold gilded support beams and textured wallpaper. Down there we got one of our splurge souvenirs: a pack of European Gothic architecture playing cards for a steep $11. But now we wished we had gotten the Roman set, or perhaps the French military uniform set, too.

Quite ready to eat lunch at that point, we started looking everywhere for a p,tisserie, to buy a fresh baguette to go with the meat, cheese, and snacks we had gotten at the little shops on Rue Cler that morning. Normally there is a p,tisserie on every corner...so who was hiding them in the middle of frickin' Paris!?! We asked around, and a man directed us to the one he went to...but (as my notebook attests) 300m down the street my a**! Finally we found something kind of close with a very rude woman who had only sad wheat baguettes and a loaf of white something or other. We bought the something or other for a steep $2 price[129]. But we got our little picnic in the park behind Notre Dame, gathering a few pigeons and a few rays of warming sun.

After that the Deportation memorial was open, the two of us and a small handful of Japanese tourists lingered inside. This was a small memorial to honor the dead from W.W.II--300,000 dead French to be exact--and a small lighted crystal for each one of those 300,000 lined one hallway that was unfortunately now barred off. Around it were etchings in the walls, mostly in French but in other languages, too, (in a font that looked like knife slashes) displaying a few contemplative words of wisdom. Not an uplifting thing to see, but reflective and interesting.

Our next stop, as would be on any Whirlwind Tour of Paris, was the Louvre of course. Already getting worn-out but still eager to see the most famous art museum in the world, we decided to walk there, absorbing a great deal of Parisian street culture along the way. Flowers, fruit, and my favorite, cages on the sidewalks sporting ducks and chickens! Grab the wattles! After seeing a particularly cute one, I instinctively "awwww"-ed, and one French pet store owner made fun of me for that, by "Awww"-ing in falsetto. Oh well, I guess they aren't used to that.

?!?Where is that entrance to the Louvre?!?

After all those baggage checks, we couldn't believe the laissez-faire attitude the French had about their priceless art. Many of the paintings you could just reach up and touch and nobody would care, and the appalling amount of people taking flash photographs was never restrained. The worst was of course the Mona Lisa[131], which was behind a plate of glass with a polarized and tinted pane of glass three feet in front of it. The most famous single painting in the world, I really wanted to take a good look at it, and after I patiently waited my turn to get to the front of the mob, I was rewarded only with bright flashes of light reflecting off the glass and into my pained eyeballs. Doug grew irritated by this immediately, and explained (to me, but loudly enough for the Far East to hear), "Why do stupid people take flash photographs...don't they know that it will be a picture of a flash reflecting off the glass and not of the art?!?" But to no avail. I did get to study it in between eye-focusings, and found it pleasing, but, as most people probably say after they've seen it, nowhere near the praise it has received.

Instead, my favorite art lay in the more neglected wings. The most impressive painting for me was David's Napoleon, a canvas the size of our apartment with the most vivid colors I have ever seen oils to be. Go figure, but what always impressed me the most were the whites...how could an artist before the age of cameras know so much about light?!? I was also amazed at the detail of the painting--Napoleon's mother was not actually there when he proclaimed himself Emperor, yet she was painted in...(again only making more apparent to me Napoleon's incredibly tasteless display of his own failing ego). It was a true masterpiece. In fact, all of David's other paintings were phenomenal, and yet were virtually ignored. Also, Da Vinci has in existantance only five oils, and all five were there in the museum, yet only Lisa gets the affection. To think that Raphael's Madonna with Child was so much lighter[132] and appealing. Ah, the public tastes.

Some of my other favorite displays were the centuries-old Winged Victory and Venus de Milo, who, although missing their arms, were definately not missing any of the bewildering expressions and movement carved into their statures. I also adored the final room on our tour, with the topless Liberty and the raft with squirming and decaying bodies floating into the sea that were absolutely saturated with French romanticism. Once again, as we read our RS info aloud a woman interrupted up with an urgent request for one of our great brochures (insert `blowing on fingernails and polishing them' again). Overall, it was a truly impressive tour, but of course we didn't scratch one-tenth of the surface there. But two solid hours were definitely worth the half-price ticket of $5/each, so we moved onward.

For our last evening in Paris we took the Metro to Chili's, just off the Champs-Élysées, hoping to find a better deal on dinner. Unfortunately, the food was nothing like our beloved American Chili's, and we were disappointed again, watching how the haggard and cold waitress was arguing with a customer who didn't like his food. I thought the French liked it when you did that. Well, at least we got our money's worth, because the charge on our card for that meal never went through. It's about what it was worth.

Afterwards we visited the two most famous monuments again, this time under the peaceful blanket of darkness. At the Arc de Triomphe we watched the traffic whiz by, mesmerized by the huge French flag and hypnotized by its slow whipping in the evening wind. We also took the metro to the Eiffel tower, which was far more impressive at nighttime. How can it be white? Bundled up in our coats and sitting on a bench on one corner, we quietly sang a two-part version of the Star Spangled Banner, relaxed and content.

It was also at that point that I noticed that I had somehow absorbed some of the French around me, because when we bought a postcard and stamp for our friend Robert[133], and I somehow asked for a stamp, listened to the clerk who asked which kind of stamp I wanted, and answered him...and it was all in French!?! I looked over at my husband, who's mouth was agape. Did I just do that? But I don't know a word of French! I also did the same at the subway station the next morning, saying something like "Deux billets, s'il vous plaît." before I really knew what I had said. Funny how intuitive language can be.

It sure was ironic that we were getting comfortable in France just as we were about to leave. We sure had loved our month-long vacation and all we experienced...

But we were truly ready to go home.