PARIS: May 13-19, 2009-Part IV

Day 5

Monday, May 18, 2009: My last day to be a tourist in Paris. I slept in until 8:30 and took my time getting ready and having breakfast, not going out until 10:30. I went to the Hotel Invalides, the military home for French vets. It was first established by Louis XIV for war veterans. Also here is the tomb of the greatest French vet of all, Napoleon.

The tomb is magnificent, of course. Everything about the little general is always big, big, big and his tomb is no exception. Below is a photo of Invalides, with its golden dome, which can be seen from almost anywhere in the city:


Hotel Invalides

Invalides had many parts and the first, under the golden dome, is the church. When you enter and walk forward, there is the railing around a large opening. If you look beyond this opening on the same floor, there is the altar. If you look above, you can see inside the dome. And if you look below, there is the tomb of Napoleon.

Looking up, the dome is painted with gold and various scenes. The altar was built by Napoleon. As soon as I saw it, it reminded me of the altar at St. Peter’s Basilica at the Vatican. The four black marble pillars twist around. Listening to the audioguide, sure enough it said that Napoleon had modeled it after the one at St. Peter’s. The church also attaches to another church where there are many flags from various countries, countries the French soldiers had conquered. This was so the vets living here could attend church there while King Louis XIV could attend in his church, and that way the king could (sort of) attend mass with the soldiers.

You must go around to the altar to find the doorway and stairs down to the tomb of Napoleon. The tomb is large, surrounded by (I think) 12 Winged Victories statues about 12 feet high. Napoleon is in a very large sarcophagus that looks like it is made of wood but is actually a red stone. Inside, he is in five coffins: tin, mahogany, two lead, and ebony. All around are large reliefs on the walls depicting various battles. It is rather fitting that Napoleon would end up here, both because he certainly was a soldier and that was the primary self-identity, but also that his resting place would be the former king’s church. Napoleon’s tomb is certainly the primary focus of the church. Also buried here is his son.

Tomb of Napoleon

Leaving the church, one can then go into a courtyard and around the courtyard are various museums. There is a museum of armaments with all kinds of weaponry – cannons, guns, bayonets, swords, lances, etc. There are also lots of suits of armor from different countries and different eras, including Chinese, and Japanese shogun armor (very cool). There was armor for horses and children.

Unfortunately, I was disappointed that the “modern” department and the Charles de Gaulle historical exhibits were both closed on Monday. I wished this had been noted in the Frommer’s book I read and online, because I always check ahead of time before going somewhere to visit. But apparently, just these two departments are closed on Monday. The “modern” department is for the period from Louis XIV to Napoleon III and has recreated rooms of Napoleon, uniforms and personal belongings, and a death mask. Charles de Gaulle is second only to Napoleon in terms of important historical figures in France, so I was disappointed again when I went to view that exhibit and it was closed. I asked the lady there why did I pay to come into Invalides if both exhibitions are closed? She asked if I saw the armaments. Yeah, but I think they should charge less than full admission on Mondays.

As I came back into the courtyard, I could hear some drums and marching and just then some French soldiers marched into the courtyard. Then a band came in and played some music.

French soldiers

I decided to go and view the World Wars Department – WWI and II from the French perspective. I figured it might be interesting. I have been to the Imperial War Museum in London where you definitely get the British perspective on the wars, the Blitz of WWII in particular. That really shaped the British mentality. They took a beating but they never surrendered. This was the museum where I spent a lot of time in the WWI exhibition because I don’t know as much history about that war. The British museum gave credit to the US for being instrumental in bringing an end to WWI. The US was rather isolationist then and finally entered WWI late when the war was at a stalemate, in the trenches. But it was basically the infusion of fresh bodies when the US joined the Allies that made a difference, particularly also because Russia had pulled out due to their 1917 revolution. Here at the French museum, the Americans are barely mentioned.

The WWII exhibition focuses mainly on the French Resistance. The exhibition has obviously been impacted by the French wanting to revise history. Viewing this, you would think there had been no collaborators in France in WWII. Ok, France was an occupied country. Nobody would blame people for just trying to survive. But don’t act like it never happened. Vichy France was the collaborative government. The Resistance was underground, but the country was occupied and had a government that collaborated with the Nazis. It’s like in Italy – ask anybody there and nobody has a family ancestor who was a fascist during WWII. In America, people joke around calling the French “surrender monkeys”. I was sympathetic to the French - after all, the Nazis rolled into their country and they gave up. Can’t say I wouldn’t if Nazis rolled into my town. But when I went through this exhibit, I just got angry. Americans still always say “We saved your ass in WWII” and “If it wasn’t for us, you’d all be speaking German.” Because I think we feel here that the French aren’t grateful enough for all the Americans who died at Normandy. Americans get very, very sensitive when the French criticize us and get all self-important. But as I went through this exhibit where they play up the French as heroes (Charles de Gaulle liberated Paris, not the Allied troops) and virtually ignore the American contribution, well, I just started to get really pissed off. Surrender monkeys, yeah! London got bombed back to the stone age by the Luftwaffe and you didn’t see them surrendering to the Nazis. Why weren’t they occupied? I don’t know – maybe because the English Channel separated them from Germany and Nazi-occupied France? But I know for a fact that plenty of people have swum across the English Channel. If a human being can swim the Channel, how is it such a big defense, particularly when the Nazis had Luftwaffe airplanes? I admit I don’t know the answer. But I think that you don’t learn anything if you re-write history to downplay your mistakes or failures. The French can’t face the fact that they gave up to the Nazis and the Allies freed them.

I was particularly offended at the exhibition’s representation of D-Day at Normandy. There are over 9,000 Americans buried at the cemetery at Normandy, but you would barely know it by the fleeting mention they get here. They acknowledge the D-Day invasion with a map that shows the two American units, two British, and one Canadian that landed at the beaches. There were multiple US armored, infantry and airborne divisions as well as the same for British and Canadian. Ok, there was some Free French, but if you took away all the US, Brits and Canadians, well sorry, the Free French couldn’t have done the job itself. That’s why France was occupied. Anyway, the exhibit did acknowledge that the D-Day invasion was commanded by American General Eisenhower. But then the focus shifted toward Allied bombing of French cities. Sure, the destruction of war is devastating. But we didn’t start it, the Nazis did, and we didn’t surrender to the Nazis, the French did. So their cities got blown up. Sorry, the French owe their liberation and freedom to the US and British and Canadians and even the Russians. The Allies freed France and defeated Germany. A friend of mine at work, though, has been to Normandy and she told me that the people there absolutely love Americans and appreciate what the Allied soldiers did for them back then.

Even with the offensive re-write of history, I did still enjoy the museum because it does have a lot of artifacts from the wars – uniforms, helmets, a soldier’s coat still covered in mud, guns, an Enigma German code machine (3-cylinder), items used by soldiers like mess kits, radios, and these things are always interesting. There were propaganda posters from Allied and Axis countries. Now I had seen pictures of evil Japanese but had never seen an evil FDR.

I went and had some lunch, then headed off on a long walk to the Eiffel Tower. This was much different than my visit had been in March of 2007. Now it is really tourist season and the Eiffel Tower is surrounded by not just tourists but all the hawkers selling cheap trinkets, and gypsies. After walking to the Trocadero metro stop and finding all the entrances closed, I had to take a walk down the Avenue of Howie Mandel (no, it was the Avenue Georges Mandel) to get to the next metro station. I took a ride to the Printemps Department Store but it was so overwhelmingly big (five floors of expensive designer stuff and full of people) that I was too intimidated to stay and took the train back to my little hotel neighborhood. At this point, I finally succumbed and went to get a cappuccino at Starbucks, where they also had a lemon cheesecake that I couldn’t resist. Last thing I wrote in the journal: “It’s 10:00 p.m. and it’s still light out!”


Goodbye, Paris!

PARIS: May 13-19, 2009-Part III

Part III: Day 4:

Sunday, May 17, 2009: I started the day at 7:30 – got up, showered, dressed, had breakfast, and left around 9:15 a.m. for Sacre Coeur. This church sits at a very high point in Paris. I didn’t realize how high until I had to climb the stairs out of the train station. First there were the usual couple of flights, but then there were the spiral stairs. They seemed to go on forever and I finally had to rest part of the way, swearing I would count them when I came back down (104 spiral steps). Then I had to consult the map – it is comical how bad I am at reading maps and figuring out where I’m going. But I did manage to point myself in the right direction and start walking. I knew enough just to not walk downhill and probably eventually I’d find the church. It did start raining and I had to break out the trusty umbrella again. But as I kept walking, I did eventually see signs for a funicular, which having been to Montreal and ridden one previously, I knew is a little car that rides up an inclined railway. So I assumed that the funicular would be there to take people up to Sacre Coeur. And I was right. I looked up to my left and saw, up past a little lawn and garden, stairs upon stairs leading up to the church of Sacre Coeur. Wow, I knew it was going to take me a little while to get up there, but I really wanted to not ride up on the funicular. I wanted to walk up and approach it visually myself. So I just took my time, rested on the way, and started walking up. It is a pretty church from outside, and when you get to the top and turn around and look down, there is a very nice wide view of the city of Paris. I could see off to the right the Montparnasse building, which I went up to the top of on my first visit to Paris. It does stand out as being towering over everything else because Paris has deliberately avoided building skyscrapers in the city. I looked down to the garden below, and watched all the tourists climbing the stairs on the way up.

Sacre Coeur

I liked looking at the church from the outside. Below it, before you actually reach it, there is a wall with three arches and there are fountains in each. The church is white and reminded me a little of a Muslim mosque or something like it, with the shape of the domes. There was no charge to go in, but there were a couple of guys at the doors with baskets taking donations for something, so I gave them 2 euro. I suspect they were a union or something. Once inside, I was disappointed. I expect few people say this about Sacre Coeur, but I have been spoiled by visiting so many Italian churches full of frescoes by the great renaissance artists and stained glass and marble floors. When you have been to the Vatican and the Duomo in Florence and St. Mark’s in Venice, Sacre Coeur is a letdown. I looked up to the ceiling of the dome expecting to see painting, but just saw gray stone bricks. It’s not painted or decorated with mosaic. It’s just plain. So I started to walk around the church, and there are the usual little alcoves and altars around the church. Some have particular saints in them, and you can light candles. But it all seemed rather crass to me. All the candles had signs, 2 euro for little ones, 10 euro for big ones, take a saint card, leave a couple of euro. I think I would just rather pay an admission to the church to pay for upkeep rather than be hit up at every altar. Just takes away from what is supposed to be a sacred prayerful place. After going back outside, I decided not to visit the crypt for 5 euro. I figured there was no way it was going to be better than the church, and the church wasn’t that great. The best thing about it is that it is beautiful outside, and the view is quite nice.

I decided that I was going to go out to Versailles today, which is about a half hour train ride. So I knew I would have to find a restroom, sigh. There was a sign outside pointing to the left down the street, “WC”. In Europe, that means restroom. So I followed the arrow around the corner and down a ways there was a door with “WC” over it. I imagined this was going to be the worst kind of public restroom experience ever, but when I went inside there were actually attendants. There were free stalls and apparently some that cost money, so I decided to risk it all in the free ones. Well, it wasn’t horrible at all, just a tight squeeze. Each stall had a toilet and a sink. The only thing missing was towels or a blower to dry your hands, but otherwise, I was very pleasantly surprised it wasn’t the horror I was expecting. So then I headed on back to the Metro, counted the 104 spiral steps down, and took the Metro over to the Invalides station which is where you can get the RER C line. The RER is the commuter rail that goes outside the city. The train to Versailles is only 2.90 euro each way. Hanging around waiting, a couple came up and asked me if this was the train to Versailles. Judging by their travel book, I guessed maybe they were from Greece. I reassured them it was. It is about a half hour, and yet again at one of the stops a band of gypsies got on our car and played some music. But they got off to change cars at the next stop. I arrived at Versailles at about 12:15 p.m. and it is easy to find the Chateau from the train station.

I spent about an hour in the line to get into Versailles. It started to rain and I needed my umbrella again. Today was a day I was just one of the horde of tourists, and I really noticed them all today. I heard only one American, a guy in line for an audioguide with an accent from down south, talking with the women he was with and saying that he wished he had prepped better and read some history before coming. But mostly today was a day I noticed a lot of Italian tourists because their obnoxious behavior made them noticeable. It started with the ones standing behind me in the entrance line. The woman just talked too loud all the time; her husband hit me in the head with his umbrella, though he did apologize. Since I was in the line for an hour, it grew ever longer behind me so that it then snaked back like a corral line, so it ended up that everybody next to me was actually behind me. There was a young girl, probably about 10-11 years old, wearing a skirt with her bare legs and no coat and a short sleeved shirt and she was all huddled up with her mother because she was cold in the rain. A Japanese girl with her backpack on who was up in front of me in the line went over to her and held out her hand with a little plastic packet in it, pushing it toward the mother like she wanted to give it to her. It was one of those little plastic raincoats in a bag so the mother took it and said “Merci” and put it on the daughter, and the Japanese girl smiled and got back in line. I thought that was nice.

Once I got inside, I told the pleasant and helpful ticket girl that basically I wanted to see the Court Dress and Pomp Exhibition and I wanted to go out to the Trianons and the Hamlet. In order to do both, I would have to buy the full ticket for the whole of Versailles, which cost 25 euro. You could buy one just for the chateau and the court dress, but not for the trianons. Or you can buy the trianons but then I couldn’t go to the court dress exhibit. So I just decided to buy the full ticket. I didn’t have any other plans for the day, and decided if I finished up early at the trianons, I could always go into the Hall of Mirrors or something if I wanted to. She also directed me to the “Petit Trains”, which would take me out to the trianons. I think they cost 6.50 euro round trip. They’re not really trains. They are just what looks like little trolley cars on wheels hooked together. But I knew that walking all the way out to the trianons and back was going to be too far for me, knowing I still had one day of vacation left, so I shelled out for the Petit Train too.

So first I visited the Court Pomp and Dress exhibit. I just love all the glorious dress and outfits from the royal courts of all ages. It is fascinating the importance that people attached to the clothing and all the ritual involved. The French court at Versailles in the 1700s was a time of particular extravagance and extremes when it came to dress. The exhibition had clothing from several European courts because, at that time, the best of the special clothing made for the courts was mostly made in Paris. Sort of like now even – Paris is where all the sought after haute couture designers are, and they were then as well. Hours and hours and hours of labor went into creating just one gown or jacket, with all of the sewing and then the minute details in beading or embroidery or lacework. The dress that one wore to be presented to the King and Queen of France was a dress that was worn only the one time, and it was supposed to be black and white. Here is an example of one of the dresses in the exhibition:



The very wide frame was the French fashion, pretty extreme. Also in the exhibition, of course, were jewels. Not only royalty wore jewels but also, if you were going to appear at court, you must have jewels to wear. Some of the outfits for the men, such as coronation suits, had diamonds for buttons. The exhibition also had portraits behind each costume showing the person wearing the outfit, sometimes also wearing the jewels on display. Imagining myself at Versailles. . .

Lady Richlieu of Dorchester

Then it was time to take a ride on the little train out to the area called Marie Antoinette’s Estate. It stops first at the Grand Trianon. This is where you may also catch the return ride. I stayed on for the ride to the Petit Trianon and got off there. This is a smaller, less formal little palace. There was an entry vestibule with a staircase, and rooms off each side. One of the rooms had one wall of windows and, opposite, a wall of mirrors. This was called the Cabinet of Glass. Reminded me of the Hall of Mirrors in the chateau, and I remember learning then that mirrors were quite expensive back then so having a wall of mirrors was impressive. It does lighten up a room too, with the outside light reflecting back. Out back there was a nice garden and, at the end of it, the French Pavillion. This is just a round building which really is one room and it was a place for the Queen to have a nice meal. I continued to walk and came to a building containing the Queen’s Theatre. Marie Antoinette had acted when she lived in Vienna and took comedy classes to perfect her French. She had this theatre built here and she actually performed in it and, more often, watched plays and performances. Continuing my walk, I then wandered through the English Garden. This was created by Marie Antoinette as well, modeled after English gardens of the time, with little streams, paths, lawns, purple and yellow flowers growing in the fields and different types of trees, and there was a soft breeze, and the sounds of birds. This was really a very pleasant and leisurely walk. Off in the distance, I could see a building with a thatched roof, so I knew that was the direction to go to find the Queen’s Hamlet.

The Hamlet is a little English village that Marie Antoinette wanted to “provide country amusements for herself and her children”, as the brochure explains. Twelve cottages were built (not all of them survive), surrounded by vegetable and flower gardens around a little lake. The lake has swans in it. There is a little farm, and there was a working dairy, with another little house where the Queen and her children or visitors could have their refreshments, which came from the farm and vegetable gardens and dairy. I took a walk around the farm where there were cows lounging lazily in the meadow, goats which seem very curious and would look right at you and walk over if you call them, a peacock, hens, a rooster who crowed right at 4:00. Hmm. There was a large house for the Queen, and other little houses that contained a kitchen, a guard’s house which, honestly, made me think of Snow White’s house of the seven dwarfs, which had beautiful calla lilies growing out front, and a mill house with a water wheel in front. It’s all just like stepping back in time. Walking past the mill house over a little bridge, I heard all this splashing and looked over the side of the bridge and there were fish literally jumping around in the little lake below. It really was a little fantasyland. How indulgent, but I can understand why the Queen wanted such a place and how much she must have enjoyed it. Marie Antoinette was a “foreign” queen, from the Austrian royal family, when she was betrothed to Louis. She was always suspected and never really accepted in France, and it is understandable that with all the pressures of court life, the Hamlet was an escape for her, where she could just relax and enjoy her life with her friends and children.

House at the Hamlet

I then walked back to the Grand Trianon. This is another little palace, though it is bigger than the Petit Trianon and much smaller than the Chateau. It has a really nice outdoor walkway with pink marble columns and archways on each side and a black and white marble floor, and also has a beautiful garden. Here I could catch the little train back to the Chateau. I sat down on a bench to rest and wait, and watched people. There were a bunch of Italians who I had seen when we went through security to enter the Grand Trianon. One of the women had become really petulant with the guard because he wanted her to open her backpack so he could look in (they will not open bags themselves). This has just become normal procedure these days, at any airport or museum or tourist place like this, and really, my motto is just cooperate and don’t hold up the line. The guy is just doing his job. I had originally seen these people in the entrance line to the Chateau and they had been loud and pushy there too. Then three people rolled up on Segways. A Segway is the perfect means of transport for the grounds of Versailles. One guy was the instructor, teaching a couple how to use the machine and maneuver it.

Then the little train arrived and I got on, and it waits there a few minutes for other people to come. Another group of Italians arrived, these ones older, probably in their upper 50s or early 60s, and they were obnoxious too, really loud. They got on different cars on the train, and then one guy kept pounding on the window of the car in front of him where his friends were. Finally, he opted to get out of his car and get in theirs. Finally, off we went over to the Petit Trianon to pick up some more tourists. There is a little place to line up and there were people waiting there in a line that was long enough that I knew we wouldn’t fit all of them on our train. So then a couple, probably in their late 60s or early 70s, they walk up and must think the people are standing in line for their health because they just decide to jump on the back car. Because they were old, I think the people in line didn’t protest because I know they saw them do it. So off we went again for a little ride around more of the grounds of Versailles, with people walking, riding bikes and Segways, and sheep grazing in the fields as we drove by. By this time, it was sunny again so it was a nice little ride. The last stop was the Grand Canal, which is supposed to be like a little Venice. Some people got off here so we were able to pick up more. Some more Italians tried to get on the back car but this time, the conductor caught them and made them get in line.

We rode back to the Chateau, and I was shocked to see that it was after 5:00, and I had been so involved in my touring Versailles that I had forgotten to even eat lunch. So I walked back to the train station and caught the return train to Paris. It was a full train, too. Across from me was an older Australian couple. Paris is just full of people from all around the world.

PARIS: May 13-19, 2009-Part II

Part II: Day 3

Sat., May 16, 2009: Breakfast this morning was crowded because I got up later. A lot of Germans, and one German guy with long, blond hair who was making sure he got his 7 euros worth of food. He kept going back to buffet table again and again. . .

Riding the Metro in the morning, sitting opposite me and also across the aisle were two Italian women with two little girls, looking to be about ages 4 and 7 or 8 maybe. I guess I have been to Italy enough that some Italian words I can recognize. The smaller girl was complaining that she had a headache and, as soon as she said that, the other one said, “Me too.” They were both slouching down in their chairs, looking none too happy. Since the day was just beginning, I thought these mothers have a long day ahead of them if their little girls are already whining with headaches and don’t want to be here. Good luck.

I had some disappointments on this day. First up was the Musee Carnavalet Histoire. This is a museum all about the history of Paris. I love history and was looking forward to learning all about the city. Well, everything was in French. There were no audioguides in various languages or even a map in English. The guy at the front desk spoke very little English, and when he shook his head that there was no English map, he did offer me a Spanish one instead, apparently thinking the languages are similar and Spanish would do just as well? This museum had free admission so must be subsidized by the government, I assume. But since all the written exhibit materials were in French only and there were no translations, it was not conducive at all to visits from tourists. Therefore, it was empty of people, except for the staff. There were three people at the front desk to handle the hordes of visitors, and one or two people per room. But no visitors. So the staff basically only has themselves to keep each other company. I was starting to chuckle to myself about the French way of making employment for its citizens. At the D’Orsay, there had been two people to take your tickets – one who takes the ticket and one who apparently just keeps that guy company all day. Here at the history museum, there were many more employees than visitors and they were unable to interact with any visitor who didn’t speak French. It was unfortunate, because I took a walk through the museum and the exhibits looked like they would have been very interesting to me, and I think I would have learned a lot of history. I am always interested in the French Revolution and Napoleon and the monarchy but, alas, I could not learn anything here.

So I left the history museum a bit disappointed. Going back up the street, next to St. Paul’s Cathedral were a row of Paris rental bikes, all lined up. These were all what my brother used to call “dry machines” – that is, like his old bike, they have back fenders to keep road dirt and water from splashing up onto your back and clothes. They also have headlights and wire baskets. You can rent the bike at one station and return it to any other station in the city. I saw a family riding some of these bikes later at the Tuileries.


Dry machines

As I walked by the bikes at St. Paul’s on my way back to the Metro, I heard a little kid crying and, after looking around, saw a little boy about 4 years old standing in the corner up against St. Paul’s. His father was a few feet away, waiting him out. But the kid hadn’t yet given in and was continuing to cry into the corner. I guess people the world over put their kids in the corner.

Since the history museum was a bust and it was only 10:30 in the morning, I decided to go to the Musee des Arts Decoratifs. I wanted to see furniture and textiles and also wanted to see the Museum of Advertising that was supposed to be here. It was over near the Louvre so I headed off to the Tuileries gardens. I enjoyed the museum. It had a lot of furniture from the 1700s to very modern pieces which look like art more than furniture, because I questioned whether you would really be able to use some of it as furniture. In my opinion, you haven’t made furniture if you make a chair that is too uncomfortable to sit on. Maybe you’ve made art, but not furniture. But then again, I love looking at Frank Lloyd Wright’s furniture, but I have read that it is incredibly uncomfortable to sit on. There were lots of beautiful armoires, some very gorgeous and artistic, with inlays and other decoration. Now there is a piece of furniture that is no longer really popular in America, with all the closets we build into our houses instead. I think that illustrates the American ideal of function and economy over beauty. Peggy has a large armoire in her bedroom, and I noticed in the houses of her friends in Italy that storage is in cabinets, drawers and armoires. Peggy basically has one closet in her house.

There was one gallery that was very good, all red – clothing, furniture, linens, etc. My favorite here was the Red = Communism room. There was one wall with French political posters for Socialiste, and the other wall had posters of happy Chinese communists – a man with a gun, a woman with a bayonet, smiling, equal, in their Mao suits. Of course, there was also Lenin, and Che Guevara.

But along came the day’s second disappointment – the exhibition on Advertising had closed the week before. Denied again. Just seemed like it was going to be that kind of day. I hoped in the back of my mind my plan to visit the Catacombs would not go awry.

After the museum of decorative arts, I decided to get some lunch and took a walk through the Tuileries. A woman was walking towards me asking, “Do you speak English?” I recognized from her clothing she was a gypsy (long grubby dress, kerchief around her head, quilty winter coat on) and knew enough to stay away, hold onto my purse, just keep walking like I did not understand her cause I don’t speak English and I’m not a tourist. A couple of days later, I saw more of this scam at the Eiffel Tower. They have a card, like a religious card, that is in English that they want you to translate for them and when you stop to do that, while you’re helping her your pocket gets picked by her partner.

Adventures on Line 4 of the Metro: After lunch, I took a long ride on the Metro to get to the Catacombs. It was far along line 4, at the Denfert-Rochereau stop. I could tell riding this line I was probably getting to where Parisians actually live in the city, maybe less affluent Parisians. The train began to fill with Africans and Muslims. At one stop, two kids got on, probably one 10 year old boy and the other younger. Once the doors to the car closed, the little one began to yell in French, giving a speech, I think sort of telling a story. I guessed maybe it went something like, “I haven’t eaten in three days. . .” When he was done, he walked over to the lady next to me and held his hand out. She shook her head, so he put his hand out to me and I shook my head (I never, ever, ever give money to beggars, no matter what). He didn’t beg from the men in the car. At the next stop, they got off, as this car was not paying off. I assume they are gypsies and their parents have sent them out on the street to work on Saturday. They obviously don’t view their children the way we do. We take care of our children, provide for them. We don’t send 9 or 10 year olds out to beg. Later, on the way back, another guy got on the train. He reeked of booze and urine. He held his hand out to the woman next to me, she shook her head, held his hand out to me, shook my head too. He didn’t bother with any story like the kid did. Just need to smell him and you know his story. He did try to beg from a bunch of teenage boys on the train but nobody was willing to give him any money. After he got off, then a crazy guy got on the train. He had on a suitcoat and had a computer laptop bag and he looked at people and spoke in French which, of course, I didn’t understand. I don’t know, is he about to tell a story for money? He put down the seat next to me and spent an inordinate amount of time brushing it off before he finally sat down. That’s when I started thinking ok, maybe he is a little crazy. He put each hand into his suitcoat pockets, then took his hands out and in each hand he had little matchboxes. He started talking and started to wave his arms and hands all around, shaking the matchboxes like maracas and talking. Since I didn’t know what he was saying, I wondered – is he a performer, like a magician or something? Like he’s going to make the boxes disappear? Then I remembered a magazine article I just recently read by Teller (of Penn & Teller) and other magicians, one of whom began his career basically as a pickpocket. They said that when magicians do sleight of hand, this is based upon the way the human brain works. The eye watches the hand and the magician moves the hands in an arc because the way the brain works, when the person is watching the hand moving in an arc, they can’t register the other hand picking the pocket. Apparently, if the distracting hand moves in a straight line, the brain can see the other hand and what it’s doing. So as long as you move the distracting hand in an arc, the eyes and brain will be fooled. When that thought popped into my head, I decided to hold my bag and stop watching his hands waiving around. Well, he kept up with this waving and shaking the matchboxes and talking and now I could tell from the way the other people on the train were looking at him (because I figured they understand what he’s saying) that really he’s just a nut-job. He finally got off. My ride on line 4 was full of all kinds of interesting people.

Walking through the Metro tunnels on this day, I could hear Pachelbel’s Canon in D being played on the violin. Now I could tell, it wasn’t Met orchestra quality but it sounded good. She wasn’t playing any bad notes. How can you have so much talent, yet be playing in the subway with your violin case open, hoping for 50 cent euro pieces? I remember when I went to London the first time and we stayed with Peggy’s friend, Suzan, and one of her daughters played some violin music for us one night after dinner. She was just a young girl, I think around 15 at the time, and she hit a few bad notes, some not so smooth patches, and she had been studying violin for seven years. So I think it must be an incredibly difficult instrument to play and master, so how many years of study did this woman have to be able to play like this? (Yes, you know Pachelbel’s Canon in D. Everybody does. Enjoy this “Pachelbel Rant” on You Tube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JdxkVQy7QLM)

Well, I did reach the Catacombs in time to get a ticket. It cost 8 euro. There is a sign before you go in, translated into other languages including English, which warns, “The catacombs make a big impression on children and people with nervous disposition.” And if that doesn’t work, there is a sign warning there is no coat check and no toilet and it takes 45 minutes. Do you still want to go? Ok, go ahead then. First, a lady at the window sells you your ticket. Then you take a step to the right where there are two guys, one who checks your ticket and another guy who is just keeping him company. Then you go down a spiral cement staircase that seems to go on forever, is very small, and I was trying hard not to get dizzy going round and round.

Finally, once I got to the bottom, there is a small room with some pictures and historical information to read. It seems that some years ago, in the late 18th century, the cemeteries were teeming with too many dead and were blamed for causing rampant disease in the city. Paris decided to empty the cemeteries and mass graves that were within the city limits and relocate all the bodies to the underground quarries, which became the Catacombs. They would dig them up and move them at night. I cannot imagine doing that job. Just think about it.

After the history room is a staircase with a sign in front of it that says the Catacombs are over 500 meters and if you have a problem while going through, call for help on the nearest call box. I went up the stairs and looked down a long, dark, narrow tunnel, low ceiling, dirt and stone floors, with just a few lamps up along the walls to give a little light. Too scary to go alone, so I decided to wait for a few other people to go in too. It turns out that there is no guide to walk you through or give you facts and information about the Catacombs. You just go through them by yourself. Along the way, wherever there were openings to other passageways, they were blocked by iron bars, so you cannot go off the trail that has been set out for you and you can’t get lost. After walking for a long time, we began to see some interesting things – someone had built a sort of little castle, and then there were some altar-type places along the way. Then we arrived at a place where there were three guys sitting around on chairs, chatting with each other. They did not acknowledge us at all, so I don’t know why they were there. More French employees doing nothing. But next to them I saw that we were at the entrance to the “Ossuary”, which is a final resting place for human remains. A sign asks that you please not take flash photos.

From here, there are more tunnels but, once I went in, I realized the walls of these tunnels are made of skulls and bones, piled on top of each other from the floor up to the level of my head. They are packed in very tight, and arranged quite neatly, with rows of skulls separated by rows and rows of big bones, probably femurs, until the top is just loose bones. Some skulls have holes in their heads, and I wondered if the people were killed by these injuries or if this is damage from moving the bones. This atheist had the urge to bless myself as soon as I walked in – an automatic remnant of my Catholic school experience, a way to ward off evil as I hoped the dead were really gone and their spirits not hovering here getting angry at our intrusion, treating their final resting place like it’s some tourist trap, which is exactly what we were doing. These narrow, dark tunnels reminded me of the movie “Alien”, that it would be so scary to make a story about an unhappy spirit down here going into a visitor and living again and coming back out into the world all angry and evil. It was totally freaky to think how the walls surrounding me were made out of people, literally. I have never been surrounded by human skeletons. I wanted to be careful walking, and this got trickier the farther in we went. The ceilings began to drip water and make the floors slippery. I did not want to slip and grab the walls to keep from falling.


Catacombs of Paris

Some of the walls had signs identifying where these particular remains had come from and when. I could not read them since they were in French, except for one that said these people had died in fighting at the Tuileries in 1792. I think that was when Louis XVI was being held prisoner at the Tuileries Palace after the revolution. Wow. Lots of people died that day. I thought, we all end up like this, just skulls and bones are all that’s left. But these people, thousands of them, all nameless now, each one had a life, and I wonder about them, when I look at a skull in the wall, who were you? Makes me feel insignificant too. Someday, when the last person who has a memory of me is gone, then I will be gone too. Catacombs – very worth the 8 euro price of admission.

But then there are the spiral stairs to climb at the end, a long way up and exhausting. I had to rest on a bench before exiting. The guy there at the end didn’t search my bag, and I thought anybody could just take bones if they wanted to. There is no one to watch you in there. You exit in an entirely different place, about 45 minutes after entering. A truly unique experience. The sign was right – I think it would be difficult for children and people with “nervous disposition”, and is a weird and strange enough experience for the rest of us. I started to wonder how long it takes for bones to become dust. They used to tell us in church on Ash Wednesday “Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.” Some of these bones have been here for centuries, so how long does it take for our bones to turn to dust?

With all of the beggars and thieves and subway musicians and human remains I saw today, I actually feel pretty fortunate. I’m grateful for the life I have today.

PARIS: May 13-19, 2009-Part I

Part I: Days 1-2

After I had visited Paris for three days in March 2007, what had been a very pleasant introduction to the city, I knew some day I would return. Having visited at the end of winter, I wanted to return in the springtime when I hoped the gardens would be in bloom, and I also wanted to stay a little longer. For this trip, I scheduled five days “on the ground” in mid-May.

I think that due to the recession I was able to obtain a very good airfare for May. I flew on Aer Lingus, the Irish airline. I had flown with them before and had a positive experience so decided to fly with them again. I wasn’t disappointed. Their economy cabin is pretty comfortable as far as economy class goes. I think their seats are a little bit bigger and they have a little more leg room than the American airlines or Alitalia. The plane was clean, the staff pleasant, the food not bad, the entertainment system and headphones all worked. So no complaints here. We left from Boston fairly close to on time and, other than having to stop in Shannon (for what had been booked as a direct Boston to Dublin flight) to let some people off and pick up new passengers, things went as scheduled. Not unexpectedly per usual, I was surrounded by crying babies, one in my row and one in the row behind me. I didn’t watch any movies going over. I did manage to sleep, with my sleep mask and classical music on the iPod. Later I listened to French lessons and Rick Steeves’ travel podcast of his Louvre and D’Orsay museum tours and historic Paris walk. Listening to the D’Orsay tour actually paid off when I visited and saw most of the art works he talked about. I had a couple of hours to wait in Dublin before being off to Paris.

Once arriving in Paris, I got my bag and then used the public phone to call the Paris Shuttle service (http://www.parishuttle.com/). This actually worked out exactly as planned. I had bought vouchers online on Expedia for $50 round trip. That is $25 each way door to door from Charles de Gaulle airport to my hotel and back. I thought this was a pretty good deal, given the euro exchange rate, what the cost of a taxi would be, and that in the past I have paid over $30 each way for the same type of service. I didn’t want to take the Metro while schlepping my luggage. And, as I spent a lot of time in the Metro over the next five days, this ended up being a good choice since I would not have been able to manage carrying the large bag up the stairs. While a couple of stations I went through had escalators, most of them didn’t. Unlike in London where you can get a direct airport train which is very convenient, I wasn’t aware of such a train in Paris. So, with Paris Shuttle, I was supposed to call an 800 number from a pay phone once I was at the airport and the shuttle would pick me up. When I called, they told me to go to Departures Door #12. There I met a woman from New York and a man from Ireland who were also going on the shuttle. The shuttle did show up within about 15 minutes and off we went. Charles de Gaulle airport is very large and, on the way out, we passed the Concorde, the supersonic jet, just permanently parked. I chatted quite a bit with the Irish guy. He was staying in Paris for six days and enjoyed traveling quite a bit. In the US, he said he had been to Boston, Chicago and northern California.

Flying over to Europe is usually on a red eye flight and so my flight had left Boston on Wednesday at about 5:30 p.m. I arrived at my hotel in Paris on Thursday at about 3:00 p.m. Paris time (which would have been 9:00 a.m. back home). I was staying at the Hotel Chopin which is on the Boulevard Montmartre. It is at the end of an enclosed passageway called the Passage Jouffroy, which has shops on each side. This ended up being very nice because the hotel is actually very quiet, being removed from the street noise. The people working the desk over the length of my stay were all very nice and pleasant. The hotel reminded me of the “Kitty Hotel”, the Hotel della Stella Pina in Venice, not high end, small, old and maybe a little bit musty, with thin walls. But it was clean and certainly affordable at 84 euro a night right in the heart of Paris. This equates to about $107 a night. During my entire stay, I never found a bug in my room. The maid came every day and left the room clean. Nothing was stolen. The hotel had a 7 euro breakfast buffet (all you can eat) until 10:30 every morning. It is about a minute to walk to he nearest Metro stop (Grands Boulevards on line 8). I had my own bathroom in my room. This hotel was totally acceptable and affordable and I would recommend it to anyone looking for affordability and convenience.

Thurs., May 14, 2009: After spending all that time just getting to Paris, I was somewhat tired but didn’t want to totally waste my first day so I went to the Musee Grevin which was about two steps away from my hotel. This is a wax museum. It is full of French celebrities and sports figures, most of whom I didn’t know. But I did recognize a few others, such as soccer player Zinedine Zidane, opera diva Maria Callas, Formula 1 race car driver Michael Schumacher, and American basketball player Tony Parker. After you pay for your ticket, you enter a staircase that is quite elaborate. It is decorated like a palace, very ornate, with a big chandelier. There were some political figures, including French president Sarkozy, German Chancellor Andrea Merkel, Russian dictator (er, Prime Minister) Vladimir Putin, the King of Morocco – hey, there’s no American president. Not Bush or Obama. Interesting. There was surrealist artist Salvador Dali, artist Auguste Rodin, artist-inventor and general renaissance man Leonardo Da Vinci. There was Renoir sketching “Dance in the City” with Degas watching.

What I was most interested in seeing here were the historical figures. Of course, there was King Louis XVI, looking out the window of his prison cell, perhaps down at the square where the guillotine awaited him. He was the king deposed during the French Revolution. There was Queen Marie Antoinette on trial, the shadow of the guillotine behind her. Of course, there were plenty of the French revolutionaries. And probably the greatest and most famous Frenchman of all time, the little general, the man who became emperor, Napoleon Bonaparte. At its height, Napoleon’s French Empire covered most of Western Europe.


Napoleon and family, in wax

After the Musee Grevin, I explored the neighborhood a little. There were lots of little cafes, sandwich shops, the Hard Rock Café, McDonald’s and Starbucks (is this Paris or home?), and then I went down to the Metro to buy a five day pass for 28 euro. Good deal. I could use the Metro as much as I wanted for five days (they only sell 1-2-3 and 5 days or else I would have bought 4). This is called the Paris Visite pass. Had I bought it before I went to Grevin, I would have gotten 30% off my admission, so buy it first because it comes with coupons that you might be able to use on your sightseeing. I had checked the internet before my trip to see if I could buy it cheaper in dollars off Expedia or other travel sites, but they were selling it for $50 and the 28 euro translated to $39 so I decided to just wait and buy it in a Metro station. It’s a little ticket that you feed into the turnstile, and then wait for it to spit the ticket back out and take it with you so you can continue to use it. After buying the Metro pass, I went and had some dinner in a restaurant near the hotel, and then headed back to the hotel. I was tired, but noticed right away that it doesn’t start to get dark in Paris at this time of year until about 10:00 p.m.! I was going to have to pull the curtains to fake myself into thinking it was nighttime. As when I had visited Paris before, the hotel TV had only French TV stations (no satellite with English) so I had come prepared with “The Sopranos” to watch on my portable DVD player. But that first night, I did fall asleep pretty easily.

Fri., May 15, 2009: I had slept really soundly due to exhaustion. Now it was time to begin some serious Paris sightseeing. I headed downstairs to check out the Hotel Chopin’s breakfast. They had various cereals, fruit, yogurts, croissants and jellies, a machine that made fresh squeezed orange juice, coffee. That first morning there was a guy having breakfast who looked just like G. Gordon Liddy. What would G. Gordon Liddy be doing at the Hotel Chopin? Taking a day off from nefarious deeds?

My first stop, the Musee D’Orsay. It is in an old train station and you can tell when you enter. The ceiling is high and arched and you can see the sky through it. In this long gallery are many ancient statues. I bought a combined ticket, 12 euro for the D’Orsay and also the Musee Rodin if you see both in the same day. After my tour of the D’Orsay, I thought that was a more than reasonable price to see all these masterpieces in just the one museum, let alone a second museum.

The D’Orsay - what a feast if you like impressionists, and I do. Whenever the Portland Museum of Art brings an Impressionists show to town, I am there. There were works by Monet, Manet, Pisarro, Degas, Van Gogh, Toulouse-Latrec, Renoir. I am no art expert, just an amateur viewer, but I have found that I always like most anything I see by Monet. Here, my favorite was his series of paintings of the Rouen Cathedral. He did over 30 paintings of the same cathedral, with the daylight being the only thing to change. This was how he showed the reality of the same object was ever changing depending on the light it was viewed in. This is really what Impressionist painting is all about – light and color. It’s very intriguing to me that he never grew tired of it, looking at and painting it over and over because it looked entirely different to him. Confirms that creative types and artists have a brain that works differently from mine. Manet – the D’Orsay has the famous painting “Luncheon on the Grass”. It caused quite the uproar because there are two men in suits having lunch on the grass with a naked woman. There were beautiful scenes by Pisarro; dancers by Degas. I particularly like Renoir because of the way he paints light. I simply do not understand how one can paint light onto a canvas. I like some of Toulouse-Latrec’s paintings; they are intriguing. He did many posters for the Moulin Rouge dance hall, which appear different to my eye than his paintings. There is just some weirdness to me about his paintings, almost like he was hiding in the corner spying on his subjects. He painted dancers and whores, like he identified with the outcasts of society. He spent a lot of his time in the Montmartre section of Paris which was full of the artists and bohemians. And then there is Van Gogh. Even my inexperienced artistic eye can tell that Van Gogh saw the world differently than the rest of us. And it appears to me that his paintings are not all the same style, that he evolved and didn’t always see things the same way. I liked his self-portrait that is in the D’Orsay, which was the last self-portrait that he painted. He managed to convey life and sadness in the eyes, maybe torment that had exhausted him. The background that surrounds him is all swirls, like a tempest all around or in his head that he could not escape. After seeing the rest of the museum and even stopping to have something to eat, I walked all the way back to see it again.

Van Gogh's Irises

Van Gogh church

Above the first floor’s sculptures are the second floor balconies and here there were many sculptures by Rodin. Here there is a giant marble version of the Gates of Hell doors. These call to mind for me the Ghiberti doors in Florence. They depict scenes in Hell from Dante’s Inferno. Above it all, looking down, is Rodin’s famous The Thinker, contemplating Hell. The Thinker was also made into a large standalone statue. When you see him this way, without Hell below him, you must imagine what he is thinking about. Also in Hell is Ugolino eating his sons. Apparently Ugolino was a political traitor which is why he ended up in Hell, imprisoned with his sons who he finally cannibalized. Many figures from the Gates of Hell were also made into large independent statues which I saw at the Musee Rodin later in the day.

Also at the D’Orsay – Whistler’s Mother, which is an American painting. I must admit, I don’t understand why it is so famous or a masterpiece. It is actually called “Arrangement in Grey and Black” and, knowing that, it makes sense. It is basically all grey and black, with a little bit of white in her hat and the brown floor. So if the point was to just use two colors, which are really the least colorful of colors, then ok, it does that. Maybe Peggy the art major can explain it to me.

Then I wandered into a room where the lights were low and what was in the center of this room but a painting of, basically, a woman’s business. And I guess it is from the viewpoint of a guy who is about to get personal with her, so to speak. I was rather struck by this, that it is a masterpiece with its own room in the D’Orsay, but I rather appreciate that I think. It’s just totally in your face, not painted in soft veiled tones or romanticized. It’s totally realistic. Some would just see this as filth but it is actually kind of attractive in its straightforwardness. Sort of like the artist just thought women are beautiful and he was going to paint them just the way they are and fuck you if you don’t like it. Cool. The name of the artist is Gustav Courbet and the painting is called “The Origin of the World.”

Also at the D’Orsay is a miniature model of the city of Paris, which you must look through a glass floor to see. And there is the Salle des Fetes, which is a large and very ornate ballroom full of mirrors and chandeliers. There were also rooms exhibiting Art Nouveau furniture and decorations. I like the Art Nouveau style, along with Art Deco, so I enjoyed walking through these rooms imagining that I had been rich living in the 1920s in a house where the rooms looked like this.

After the D’Orsay, I went over to Bateaux-Mouches, by the Pont de L’Alma, to take a cruise on the Seine. The cruise was about an hour long and cost 10 euro. They leave about every 45 minutes. While I was waiting for the cruise to leave, a lot of tour buses showed up full of tourists. One was full of children (so I went outside) and one was full of Japanese (or maybe Chinese) tourists. It is like you are invisible to them. They only see each other. I was standing in front of the boat store window when suddenly a bunch of them wanted to look at the stuff in the window. They all just crowded around me, closing in. It was like they were going to engulf me. Crazy. Then two gay Italians got on the boat. One had his gelled hair in a bun, tight red pants, a jacket with big red flowers on it, pointy boots, and big designer sunglasses. He was kind of snobby actually, talking constantly on his cell phone, which I thought was rather rude to his companion. The ride was nice, but it rained, so I was getting enough use of the umbrella I brought with me. The Japanese/Chinese tourists kept running around screaming at each other. Then some French people were smoking right next to me. There is still a lot of smoking on the streets in Paris, but not so much inside the restaurants anymore. The cruise was a nice rest for an hour after being on my feet for a while at the D’Orsay.

After the cruise, I then went to visit the Musee Rodin. By the time I arrived, it was sunny again, which was nice because the large Rodin statues are in a very lovely garden at the museum. There are beautiful trees and roses with the statues throughout. Very, very nice. Here The Thinker is in bronze in the middle of the rose garden. Rodin made molds so that more than one copy of his works could be made. So also in the garden are the Gates of Hell, in bronze. Here, in the garden, is the work Balzac. I read that the critics hated this statue, but I liked his face. Inside the museum was a marble version of Rodin’s The Kiss. Originally, this was supposed to be part of the Gates of Hell, but then Rodin didn’t think it fit in with the other scenes. These were two people who were married to others but fell in love, had an affair and, of course, paid for it by being damned to Hell. I never looked closely at this statue until seeing it in person and, actually, it is the woman who is all passionate. The man is rather blasé. Look at his hands.

The Kiss

At the Musee Rodin there was also a room dedicated to Camille Claudel. She was a student and lover of Rodin’s, but he had another woman that he wouldn’t leave, either his wife or longtime companion. Claudel created a piece called “The Age of Maturity”. I wish I had taken a photo of it because the Claudel room had two versions of it, an early version and the final version. Online, I can only find pictures of the final version. It was very interesting how this piece evolved. I found the earlier version more powerful, emotional and desperate, maybe because it seemed to depict an actual painful event from the artist’s life. The later version was perhaps how the artist used that event to create a piece that was more universal, but less personal, more conceptual. The later one appears to represent a man leaving life. He is being pulled away by an old woman and a younger woman is kneeling behind him and her body is thrust forward and she is reaching for him with both hands. So maybe this is youth trying to bring the man back from Death? But in the earlier one, the young woman is kneeling back and the man is turned away from her, but one of his arms is reaching back and literally pushing her away as her two hands try and hang onto his arm. And the man is not so much being pulled away by an old woman as he is walking into the outstretched arm of the other woman and appears to be willingly going with her as she is sort of welcoming and cradling him. It’s an entirely different feel between the first and second versions. In the first, he is definitely and willingly leaving her and she is destroyed and pathetic trying to hold onto him. In the later one, he is being taken from her, being pulled away by the thing, and he is just sort of resigned to it. I found the first one to be more painful and emotional to view. I liked it better.

After the Rodin museum I returned back to the hotel. On the way, I picked up a baguette sandwich at a shop nearby. These little places have specials they call “formulae”, I think, which is sort of like what we’d call a value meal. You get a sandwich, drink and dessert. I got a “salad” sandwich (lettuce, mozzarella cheese, little tomatoes), a fruit punch and an éclair. The baguettes there are better than here, perfectly crunchy on the outside and soft on the inside. So I took that back to my room to eat. I didn’t sleep quite as well the second night, it just stays light too long.

(to be continued. . .)