Paris

Paris

Whoever doesn’t love Paris upon the first day visiting is not my kind of person. I am sure that I know someone who hates it, but I would appreciate it if they didn’t share that opinion with me. It is likely the most enchanting city I have ever seen, and if I could figure out a way to afford to live there, I would. Why is it so addicting? I could muse on that all week and not come up with a single satisfactory answer. Yes, the food, the history, the culture, but none of that even comes close to capturing my love for that place. It has that certain je ne sais quoi.

My first visit to Paris was when I was 15. I had been struck with gastrointestinal distress in Rome, but I was better by the time we got to Paris though the rest of my family was ill by then. I remember not being impressed at the time. My poor high school French didn’t seem to be very useful, and wandering around by myself without a great deal of money wasn’t much fun. I remember eating in a Wimpy’s hamburger restaurant on the Champs Elysées, going to Notre Dame, and not much more. We stayed in the Hotel California (before the song came out) about a block from the Champs. It was across the street from the printing presses of the International Herald Tribune, and at 0500 they would unload giant rolls of newspaper ready for the ink. It would hit the pavement with a resounding “boom”, four or five in a row. So much for sleep.

So when we lived in Iowa and had a vacation to burn, going back wasn’t something that I was totally enthused about. Mary took French in high school and college but had never used it except in Quebec, so it was a dream come true for her. In the days when the Internet was in its nascent form, we assembled info from the French Office of Tourism. We found our apartment through a couple that advertised in the AAUW magazine, and we let Henri and Nancyhelen do our planning for us.

So as a historical overview, Paris was like many European cities, starting out as a Roman fort. In the River Seine, there were two islands where it all began, Ile de la Cité and Ile Saint Louis. As the Romans left and the Germanic tribes started to turn Latin into French, the city grew on both sides of the river. The gothic architecture that I associate so strongly with France started with Saint Denis. The gruesome story was that he was decapitated for some infraction, afterward he took his head in hand and walked north several miles and where he stopped is where the cathedral of St. Denis was built. It became the burial place for French royalty; so if you wish to visit Marie Antoinette, take the Metro to Saint Denis.

The Paris that we see now is not the Paris of Kings Louis I-XVI. It was a medieval city surrounded by a wall, and within that city were all the necessities of life. You would have butchers and tanneries and all sorts of noxious gases and fumes. Civic planning wasn’t something that occurred to anyone until the mid-19^th Century. It was then that Georges-Eugene Hausmann was commissioned by Napoleon III to start all over again. The city walls were destroyed and were replaced by the Periphique, the road surrounding the city. Long stretches of slums were razed and replaced with the grand boulevards that we associate with the City of Lights. The facades that are nearly identical from place to place were also part of his grand plan to make the city breathe again.

The cultural life of the city has always been paramount in its character. Benjamin Franklin made his reputation by being seen in every salon and boudoir in the city. Chopin loved George Sand there, Oscar Wilde died in a cheap hotel room, and Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald had their most creative years drinking until dawn and writing all day.  Stravinsky debuted “The Rites Of Spring” there, causing a riot. (I can’t imagine folks dressed like the guy in the Monopoly game tipping over cars and burning couches in the streets.)

Paris is a city of neighborhoods, and in Paris that means arrondisements. It starts in the middle, where the Romans started it all. The First are the city islands and north bank. They then circle outwards like a spiral, counting up to 20. As you go outwards, the Paris that we know is replaced by nameless apartments filled with Africans and Algerians and other products of empire. Paris has its share of the homeless and crime and filth, but it’s so charming in doing so.

On our first visit, we rented an apartment in the 5^th. It was on Rue de la Montagne, just down the hill from the Pantheon.  It was on the third floor of a building that was above a flower shop and an Italian restaurant. As you walked down the hill toward Notre Dame, you entered likely the oldest part of the city that wasn’t on the city islands. The streets that had been broad and straight became narrow and not on a grid. As you walk a bit further you can see the Seine with docks for the bateaux mouche, the tour boats that take you past the sites along the river like the great cathedrals, the Eiffel Tower and the Louvre. If you walk west from the apartment you go past the Sorbonne, or at least one of the many branches of it. It is called The Latin Quarter because of the presence of the university and the Latin that was spoken there. Just past this are the Luxembourg Gardens, with abundant flowers and fountains.

Through the wonders of the Internet, you can see the street view outside the apartment we rented, 20 Rue de la Montagne, Paris 75005. The this-and-that shop one floor below, the bistro across the street, a little further north towards the Seine, you see the police station. As you reach Rue Ste. Germaine, there is a market that occurred on Tuesdays and Saturdays, with all the veggies one could desire, flowers, and etceteras. Across the street from the market is the entrance to the rest of the city, La Metropolitaine, a.k.a., The Metro. This particular stop was Maubert-Mutualité. Home.

The metro is the transport of choice. It is clean and safe, there are often accomplished musicians busking, and is something I look forward to using. If you are wise, you purchase a “carnet” when you first get there, a proposition where you purchase ten tickets for the price of eight, or something the same. You go up to the window, “Un carnet, s’Il vous plait.” You don’t need to know a great deal of French, but know your numbers, up to twenty.” “Merci”, “s’il vous plait”, “de rien” (“you’re welcomed”), “au revoir”, and your numbers, that should get your through. It is easy to get an app to help out with navigating the Metro. I even had one on our ancient Palm Pilot years ago that would take your origin and destination, tell you how many stops and which trains to catch.

As I said earlier, it all starts at the center. Ile de la Cité is where every good tour of Paris has to start. The obvious landmark is Notre Dame. It is the grand cathedral of the French nation. As to when it was built, etc., I will leave to the guidebooks, but one story that stick with me. The Catholic Church and the French monarchy were in bed together for several hundred years. When the Catholic Church underwent schism in the 1300’s, one contending papal line was housed in Avignon for 70 some odd years under the protection of the French king. Time marched on through the Renaissance and the Enlightenment, and the influence of intellectuals like Rousseau and Voltaire, revolutionaries like Jefferson and Franklin, and the ineffectual monarchy created the conditions that gave rise to the French revolution. As the Enlightenment was at best an agnostic affair and the populace saw the Church as being the agent of the monarchy, the trappings of religion were destroyed all over the country and in particular in Paris. The effigies of the kings that guarded the entrance of Notre Dame were destroyed and the great church was turned into a stable. Over a decade or two, sanity prevailed but the damage had been done. The old heads are displayed at one of our favorite small museums, The Cluny. (More on that later.)

If you stop at Notre Dame, you will be like most tourists. But I expect oh so much more out of you. The hidden treasure of Ile de la Cité is a smaller cathedral, one that is more difficult to get to. In the Palace of Justice where judges try criminals, there is the cathedral of Sainte Chapelle, the private chapel of the kings. You have to go through security, past men holding uzis wearing body armor, and have your bag searched, but trust me, it’s worth it. The walls of the cathedral are the slenderest of pillars holding up the high vaulted roof, and between these pillars are the most gorgeous stained glass. If the sun is out, you sit, just sit. The lights dance as the sun moves, and a great deal of time can pass before the thought of moving occurs. On a later visit, we had the incredible pleasure of hearing Mozart’s Requiem performed by a chamber orchestra and small choir. It was a cool autumn evening and I was with my in-laws and wife. The angelic contained within the divine.

As you walk east, on the south side of Notre Dame by the Seine, there is a small bridge that crosses between this island and its sister, Ile Saint-Louis. If I had to live in Paris, it would be here. There is a nice bistro on the east end of the bridge that is worth stopping at only to marvel that you are actually within the presence of Notre Dame. You sit, sip wine, eat your cassoulet, and just be. As you walk down the central street towards the east, there is a must-stop and a must-continue-to-walk. The stop is at Berthillion ice cream shop. Get a cone of something closer to Italian gelato than Ben and Jerry’s. Delicate little cones (get a double, side by side scoops) and taste the sweet goodness. You can’t go to the isles and not do Berthillon’s.

The must-avoid looks good enough, from the outside that is. The name of the restaurant is Taverne du Sergeant Recruteur. The story supposedly is that the Sergeant would get a recruit sloppy here and shanghai him into the service. They’ve been playing on this chestnut for decades. I don’t know if I am wrong or others are, but TOURIST TRAP is written all over it. When we went there, the only French spoken was by the waiters and only when they talked to each other. At a neighboring table, a woman who was a tour guide to a bunch of little old ladies told almost her entire life story to her rapt audience, well above the din of the packed house. Another American guy at the table opposite leaned over with an audible groan as she launched into another self-serving tale and expressed the need to either shoot her or himself. The meal took quite a while to make its appearance and I only remember that I wasn’t impressed. Towards the end, we hear the thumpety-bump-bump of someone falling down the tiled stairs into the basement about ten feet away from me, something you would never have in the US because it would have had yellow stryper tape all over it. A man’s voice yells, “My God, she’s dead!” A gasp rises from the dining room, and I get ready to launch into action. From the bottom of the stairs comes a woman’s voice, “No Herbert, I’m fine, help me out of here.” We left with a fair amount of dinner on our plates, glad to leave the horror show and happy to be in the streets.

On the north shore is the rest of the first arrondisement. This is where you find the Louvre, Les Halles, and the Pompidou Centre. The Louvre is a place that I think it an imprisonable offense if you don’t go, though for me it’s not my favorite museum by a long shot. The key to the Louvre is to avoid the interminable lines by getting your tickets elsewhere. At the Metro stop you can purchase the Paris Museum Pass, giving you entrance into this and many more must-see-ems. You walk past the unwashed, stupid hordes like your merde doesn’t smell, present your pass and you’re in. Once in, realize that you can’t see it all, you can’t see half, you can’t see a miniscule part. Go see Winged Victory, go see the Monets, go see the Mona Lisa. The problem with the latter is that you aren’t the only ones who wish to see it. It truly is tiny and you are competing with Japan. The entire nation. They are shorter, and they are pushier than you.  You will find yourself swimming against the yellow tide. They leverage you up against the wall because they don’t mind subways in Tokyo while all of that human flesh makes us afraid of losing wallets and groping and general ickiness. Surrender now and go someplace else.

Out in front of the Louvre is a place where Parisians go, the Tuleries Gardens. The French know how to do gardens. Not a leaf out of place, flowers arranged by color, beautiful women wearing their scarves just so sitting on benches reading Sartre. Continuing onward you approach Place de la Concorde and Champs Elysees. You have to see it, without a doubt. You have to walk it, all the way to L’arc de Triomphe, that monument that allows the French nation to forget that Napoleon eventually lost. You must make this walk. But I won’t tell you about it, guidebooks will do it better and I have other pêche to sautée.

As you approach the arch from the south, consider turning right instead. Just past L’Opera and next to Gare Sainte-Lazare you will find shopping heaven. There are two department stores to beat all department stores, the place where you can be as au courante as you like, Printemps and Galleries Lafayette.  They are next to each other and indistinguishable from my perspective, but I am sure my wife can straighten me out here. It’s a total waste of my time to wander the men’s section because I am not French. I can’t buy shoes there, they don’t do size 13. Seriously. Frenchmen are trim at the waist, ride bikes up alpine roads, and play soccer. American men eat cheeseburgers, have big butts that you show movies on if you wear white pants, and have no ability to know how utterly goofy they look. Any self-respecting Frenchman would commit suicide if he were told to inhabit an American’s body. I am serious, I have waited in line looking as Euro as I could. The guy taking money for whatever would say to the others, “Merci, merci”. I get to the front of the line and hear, “Whaddya want?” Never have I been greeted in French.

I digress. My favorite story about Mary’s Printemps experience was that at the top floor we happened upon a salon. I could see her face light up. “Okay, go!” I told her, knowing she was about to enter nirvana. I wandered about, looking at clothes cut for a few folks that I knew that would eventually join Beta Theta Pi or some sort but not me in this lifetime. Anon Mary emerged aglow, hair actually looking quite French. A gay guy named Guy (I love that alliteration) had transformed her, and as we walked to dinner, she floofed and swished all the way in a manner I have not seen before or since.

Continuing the spiral eastward, you head upward in elevation and downward in culture. Montmartre has been a place where one could find what one wished when one desired. Noted for its Folies Bergere and Les Deux Magots (where Hemingway drank while he wrote), I can’t speak to the history of much as I don’t find it terribly interesting. American alcoholics escaped prohibition and found cheap housing in post-Great War France in this neighborhood, but I’ve never seen much reason to look further. What I think is more interesting is what’s at the top of the hill, Basilique de Sacré-Coeur. It is if the grandiosity of the Gothic era meets Monet’s impressionism. Instead of peaks and spires, you have domes. A mosaic of Christ in the inner dome is in softer colors, with gentler sweeps of hair and beard. The Catholicism that I was raised with is more apparent here than either the barbaric gargoyles of Notre Dame or the fantastic kaleidoscope of stained glass of Sainte-Chapelle. This is the Jesus with halos and stigmata and visible-from-the-outside hearts ringed with thorns. This was no symbol like the vacant cross of the Protestants.  This Christ bled for you.

Well, this wasn’t an accident. When the basilica was built, it first of all cleared out a whole bunch of low-income folks. It was built in the aftermath of the crushing defeat of the Franco-Prussian war, demolishing the pride of Napoleon’s children. The French government had abandoned Paris when the Prussians occupied the city, and after a peace was struck, had moved back into Versailles. A move by the army to recover a cache of arms in Montmartre caught the locals by surprise, and an instant rebellion was born. Rabble-rousing socialists seized the opportunity of combustible poverty and unrest and thence mushroomed into the Parisian version of Communist Soviets, the Communards. The false spring of revolution collapsed as quickly as it arose like a spoiled soufflé. Tens of thousands of rebels were killed or deported, and a neighborhood was razed.

The empty space left behind was filled quickly. Conservatives are always religious in France, and the Sacre-Coeur was an offering of penitence to an angry God who had favored the Boche this time, and a way for the Church-Regime alliance to have a win-win. The Church had a monument to the bishop who had been captured and killed by the agnostic socialists, and the state gets a place to honor the soldiers who died fighting Prussia. What we get out of it is a great view. This vantage point gives us the best view of The City Of Lights, even better than the Eiffel Tower in my opinion. From the esplanade in front of the church, there are paid binoculars where you can focus in on Le Louvre, Notre Dame, the great downtown version of Sears, La Samartaine, and to Les Invalides and the Arch of Triumph as you scan west. Descending from here are a series of stairs that circle downward like Maureen O’Hara descending Tara’s steps, meeting on a platform then circling downward again to the next platform. All the while you see statues and sculptures and pigeons by the thousand. Please watch “Amelie” and you will get the effect of the drop in elevation.

Our next stop makes us go back into the center city, into the 4^th arrondisement. This is where you find La Marais neighborhood. This has traditionally been the Jewish neighborhood, and it is particularly notable for one fact that I only discovered by experience. Paris can be quite boring one day of the week, that is, Sunday. All of the tourist spots that require an entrance fee close up and most of the restaurants do too. This is true everywhere but The Marais. Parisians know this, too, and the place comes to life with good places to eat and art museums, etc. It is also reputed to still be an inexpensive place to live. If you know your French, you know that marais means “swamp”, so I guess the Jewish community knows land that has a good chance to appreciate. As you go a bit further east from here, you will see the space left behind by La Bastille. That’s because it isn’t there. Just a big square. Imagine if you will a grand fortress and prison where only about seven people were liberated and two soldiers died and now we have an excuse for waiters to race in the streets carrying glasses of champagne. My suggestion: if you drive past take note, but otherwise there are better things to see.

One thing that is inevitable in a city of such antiquity is the problem of dealing with the dead. With the prohibition in Catholic countries in particular against cremation, two thousand years of a city’s existence tends to have a lot of dead bodies accumulate. Generation after generation were buried and when all the graveyards filled up, they would be emptied and the process was started again. From the emptying of the cemeteries and by moving the remains into the mines and sewers under the city you have the famous Catacombs of Paris. Grim thinking, but necessary before I launch into my next point of interest.

As you head east out of the Marais district, you encounter one of my absolute favorite sites in the city, Pere Lachaise Cemetery. As only the rich can afford to be buried in a place where you can be guaranteed not to be eventually cleaned out for the next generation of the dead, they built family mausoleums that were meant to last a very long time. Pere Lachaise is a city of the dead, right up there with Ricoleta in Buenos Aires and the above ground cemeteries of New Orleans. There is row after row of marble houses containing entire families, often whose names are known even to the likes of me. Without much effort, you find the graves of Yves Montand, Edith Piaf, and Sarah Bernhardt. There are a few graves with special meaning for me.

To start with my favorite, I adore the music of Chopin. My father also loved his music, and some of my earliest memories are of Dad fighting his way through a Polonaise or Étude. As I aged, my appreciation only grew. With my adulthood and the marvels of CDs, I now own the complete piano works of Frederic Chopin. (My Dad would be so incredibly envious.) Chopin was born in Poland but moved to Paris to follow his music career. The piano was less than 100 years old, and he was celebrated as its master very early in his life. He developed a relationship with George Sand, who was not a man as you would expect. Her nom de plume was male so her writing would be taken seriously. His career was cut tragically short by consumption, like all great artists of his day. He died at age 35.

His grave is the most tragic sculpture of a weeping angel. This monument is almost always adorned with bouquets of roses. I saw the pictures since my infancy. As I grew to appreciate him more, I knew I needed to make a pilgrimage to his grave. As I got there the first time, almost enraptured as I searched for it on a map, it was behind corrugated metal. Under repairs. I tried to peer between the metal plates, to almost no avail. I could see it was stone in there. I have not returned to Pere Lachaise to actually see it yet, but I will God willing.

When we arrived the first time, there was a controversy on both sides of the Atlantic. Jim Morrison is also buried there, but as you don’t buy your space there, you rent it, apparently the rent was past due and he was about to be evicted to somewhere else. It also had been a source of conflict for the local police, as people were in the habit of holding midnight parties there, drinking and doping and grafitti-ing. In light of this, we left Chopin and found Morrison’s grave. It was hovered over by a bored looking gendarme. There were several people there, none of them looking particularly counter-culture. Just a small tombstone. Behind me, I heard middle-aged women talking. “Who was he, do you know?” “I think he was a drummer in the Rolling Stones.” I resisted the urge to act incredulous then launch into a detailed history, but not everyone is going to get The Lizard King, even if explained in detail. (In something I just learned from Wikipedia, punk rocker Stiv Bators will spend eternity there because his ashes were scattered over Morrison’s grave.) As it turned out, nobody was evicting Jim for whatever reason.

One last grave needs a story. Oscar Wilde was gay when gay wasn’t cool. Because he had a relationship with the Marquis of Queensbury’s (i.e., the guy who codified boxing) son, he was eventually convicted of being a sodomite and spent several grueling years in prison where his health and wealth was destroyed. He died alone in a squalid Paris hotel. He was buried in Pere Lachaise by the grace of a very rich female admirer. The grave was a very large marble block about the size of a small trailer, carved in the style of Egypt, as that was all the rage at that time. There was a pharaohesque male figure as part of the carving, one with a rather outstanding male member. This offended the grave keeper at the time, so it was knocked off and spent several decades as a paperweight on his desk. (I am not sure where it is, presently.) As you approach the tombstone, you see it covered with lip marks. It is tradition that any woman must kiss the stone, preferably wearing lipstick. I sat at the base of this monument for quite some time, enjoying being in the presence of one of the finest wits of all time, and I strongly suggest you watch the movie, “Wilde” starring Stephen Fry.

We will continue to circle clockwise through the city and cross the river once again. We next go to the 5^th arrondisement, the location of our apartment. As you walk toward the Seine, if you head a little west you may encounter the Cluny Museum. It was placed on the site of Roman baths and subsequent to that a monastery. What I love about the Cluny is that it preserves the middle ages, or the Moyen Age in French. You will see the disembodied heads of the original kings of Notre Dame, the remains of the caldarium of the baths, and the Lady and the Unicorn tapestries. I have a phenomenally clear memory of our visit there as we heard a band of medieval musicians perform the songs of the itinerant musicians of the day. My personal memory was that we were sitting behind this young woman with incredibly luxuriant blonde hair drawn into a very long braid, watching her head bob with the music that varied from joyous to mournful, primitive drums and early stringed instruments and recorders. Lovely.

Traveling west along Boulevard Saint-Germaine you will come to La Musée Orsay. This contains many, many items from French art of the last several hundred years such as textiles, furniture, sculpture and painting. At the very top floor is the née plus ultra of the museum, the Van Gogh paintings. It has the most extensive and best collection in the world. Take my advice here, please. You don’t have to start at the bottom and work your way up to the fourth floor. That’s what everyone does. By the time you get there, you will have to fight a crowd. Start up, go down. Then you have you and Vincent, just you two, and nobody to interfere. But a trip to Paris without a trip to the Orsay is incomprehensible. Skip the Louvre. Don’t skip this.

I save for last something that I really don’t have a great deal of connection to, the Eiffel Tower. It was built as part of an exhibition in the late 1800’s. Like the Sacre-Coeur, it was roundly reviled as not being Parisian, and there was a movement to get it removed ASAP. Well, you don’t need to be told the rest of the story. Anyway, from the base, it covers a phenomenal amount of territory. You can take an elevator to the first level or take it to the top. It’s expensive, and I’ve never been able to rationalize it. One chunk of advice, though. Rick Steves has written about a nearby neighborhood as being a wonderful place to stay and visit, thereby utterly destroying it. If Steves likes it, stay away, on the whole, or at least, expect it to have been ruined.

There are places to see just outside of town, the most popular would be Versailles. Take the RER (the commuter train that you pick up just on the south bank of the Seine from Notre Dame). It’s a bit more challenging than the Metro but still doable. Go see the gardens and the boudoir of The Sun King, and the fake peasant village of Marie Antoinette. See the Hall of Mirrors where the Treaty of Versailles was signed. But by all means, get there before 11AM when all the tour buses arrive. You must beat them, or you will swim in the same yellow sea you encountered in the Louvre. You can also go to Giverny (Monet’s gardens) by rail, though I’ve never been. I also strongly suggest you go to Saint-Denis in the northern suburbs near Charles De Gaulle Airport, where you see the effigies and tombs of the French monarchs going back hundreds of years. You can get there by Metro.

My last place to tell you about is everywhere. My favorite thing to do is to walk, totally without destination. I have happened upon Chanel’s original shop, the Israeli embassy (armed to the teeth), and the biggest map store I have ever seen found during taking cover from a driving rainstorm. (I was wearing a hat that had gotten utterly destroyed from the rain. I remember a beautiful young woman with a dress saying, “Votre pauvre chapeau!” as I walked past, (“Your poor hat!”).) You don’t need a destination. Wonderful meals can be had from bread stores. You buy a ham and butter baguette and a cheap bottle of red, sit in front of Shakespeare’s English bookstore on the banks of the Seine overlooking Notre Dame, and you have an unforgettable meal. Paris doesn’t have to be expensive, and it doesn’t have to be an aerobic exercise of seeing sights. Get on a double-decker tour bus open to the air, and ride.

There are so many adventures to be had in this city, I don't think you could ever wear it out. If I had to live in only one place for the rest of my life, it would be here. I haven't even mentioned the food, but I don't have to. Find a bistro, order a bottle of your favorite type of wine, and remember that French food is more than boeuf bourguignon. They also do a great job with sausages and kraut and beer and desserts like Floating Island. Don't wait for me to point you in the right direction. Pick something whether you can translate it or not and enjoy. Except don't order the cheval. That means "horse".