The Great Affair

Cyprus Delight

2012-01-23T12:36:00.000-08:00

I went to sleep on Sunday night dreaming of breakfast - which I missed as I slept in on Monday morning. There is irony for you.

After a good shower and some cheese from our fridge supply, we drove up to Ktima Paphos (the old town perched on the hill) in search of the two museums we knew to be open on Monday. Having struggled to find a free spot, I parked in a cactus and we proceeded to the Byzantine Museum via the municipal gardens. Opposite was a shop called "Thesis". They were having a sale. No comment. We left our staff in a locker in the main entrance and the proprietor showed us the oldest icon – 1300 years old. "10 years younger than me," he said. The icons were beautiful – all painted directly onto the wood and using texture as well as colour, with intricate patterns carved into the halos. I was eavesdropping on some German women who seemed to know their stuff and were discussing each icon as they walked around. I think the gist of what they were saying is that the style remained remarkably consistent throughout the centuries of Venetian rule. The lost some of their credibility, however, when one of them described the Madonna and child collection as “ein Babyfest” – I know Christoph assures me there is no such word in German, but (a) that never stopped a German before and (b) I know what I heard. There was a room of vestments and Bethhad guessed correctly that my favourite would be the purple one, with gold embroidery. She picked out a crown to match, and it's sweet that she thinks they'll make me a bishop by the end of the fortnight.

Andreas, the proprietor, showed us the icons that he made himself and showed me my name saint, Katerina. "This is you, see, with the crown." They clearly appreciate me here. He told us how he started sculpting icons to make ends meet when it was illegal to have more than one job in Cyprus – so he didn't get caught be changed a letter of his name on the packaging. Then when I bought icons he insisted I have a free postcard of his church at Geroskipou, and said we must visit there. He also plied us with Cyprus Delight (think Turkish delight only definitely not Turkish) – "one for the road?"

We retraced our steps to the Ethnographical Museum, housed in a large still occupied home. Opposite Beth spied a vestment tailoring shop and went in to ogle fabrics. The lower level of the museum was laid out as a traditional Cypriot dwelling – a classic hot country rooms-off-courtyard set up.

They have quite the collection of farm implements and workshop items that show how labour-intensive ordinary life was until very recently.

This ingenious contraption is a hand-powered olive press, with the initial crushing done by the big rock bit and the oil finally collected using the wooden machine to the rear.

This is a chapel in a cave off the courtyard.

Returning to the car we we left in the large cactus, we climbed in (only slightly perforated) and followed the war in the streets over to the bazaar end of town, where we parked by the mosque in the Mouflattos area. A cafe on the corner offered a "mosque special" takeaway coffee.

The market was eerily deserted, except for the German ladies from the Byzantine Museum. The random cluster of postcard and magnet stands sent me on a payment odyssey to three stalls - which is how I found out that they were closing for a siesta. We had our own siesta at a cafe, outdoors overlooking Kato Paphos and the sea.

We enjoyed mixed kebabs in a leisurely manner then returned to the hotel to lounge in the common area. Beth got online and we watched the Big Bang Theory. I wrote up my journal! We ate from our fridge supply watching New Tricks. I ended the evening drifting off in the lobby as Beth asked, "Kathleen, are you being mesmerised by the lamp?"

Yes, Beth. Yes, I was.

Sunbeams and Rainbows

2012-01-22T07:39:00.000-08:00

Proving that weather follows me, there was a huge thunderstorm overnight and into the afternoon on our first full day on Cyprus. It rained intermittently all day, but it was punctuated by periods of bright sunshine against a dramatic grey sky and the wind sent great waves rolling in.

The breakfast buffet was promising, not lease the vat of mushrooms and onions that appeared every morning thereafter and seemed bottomless.

In the absence of sun, we spent some time after breakfast combining our thoughts on St Mary’s social events for semester two (Beth’s big project) and found our way to the pool. The only family in the restaurant with us by the time we left included a five year old boy who worked his way along the buffet table, threatening various cereals, until his tirade culminated with, “I’m gonna rearrange your face, punk!”

I went out for a drive in the afternoon to explore and look for a supermarket (almost all closed on Sundays, as it turned out). I drove out of Pafos and along the coast to Coral Bay where the waves were crashing in.

Looking for a supermarket, concentrating on the speed limit in Km, being aware of other cars and trying not to get lost all at once was a bit challenging, so I ended up getting list in Coral Bay. After a few more failed attempts at the supermarket search I have up, returned to Kato Pafos and happened upon a large and convenient supermarket, lights on and everything, but then watched several couples walk right up to the automatic doors and realise it was closed. I parked back at the hotel and decided to check out the tiny-looking “kiosk” on the corner by the hotel – lo and behold, it had a larger back section and I was able to pick up some supplies before returning to the hotel, forgetting to check on the way back if Beth had gone out and left the key at reception. Oops.

Beth returned just as I finished my very late lunch, and we decided to go for a drive – when my friend Alexis texted from a few miles down the road to say she was passing with her friend Becca and could pop in. We suggested we all went for a drive along the coast, and set off into Ktima Pafos, where Alexis and Becca showed us how to get to the market and a great viewing point. We ended up at Agios Georgios at the end of the peninsula after following a spectacular double rainbow against the slate grey clouds.

The clouds were beginning to dissipate over the Mediterranean and we were in time to watch the sunset while huge waves crashed against the harbour wall and the wind blew water uphill over the cliffs.

I stayed outside to take photos after everyone else sensibly got back I the car and out of the rain. Wimps!

We dropped the girls off at their 80s-themed, pink-velveted hotel. We then headed down towards the harbour to tour the newer part of town – new if you don’t count the Roman mosaics and biblical ruins, I suppose – and stopped for a stroll. The frozen yoghurt was in no way a contributing factor in this decision. But it was sugar-free and they mixed in real fruit to order! I had delicious black cherry and cemented my slow-eater reputation by having barely skimmed the top by the time Beth had finished – and she didn’t have much of a head start.

We grabbed ourselves food (or an approximation thereof) at McDonalds which was, to be fair, one of our only two takeaway options given the Sunday night closures, the other being KFC. They have something intriguing called the “Big Greek”, but I claimed some chicken nuggets as we went home to watch Hairspray.

Later that evening, we set about rearranging the furniture in our hotel room into a more pleasing and ergonomic configuration. We moved the beds to opposite corners of the room to create more floor space – finding, in the process, not just dust bunnies but whatever it is that eats dust bunnies. We hoped for mopping on Monday.

Eastern Journey

2012-01-21T06:20:00.000-08:00

Back in April last year I thought about the prospect of another harsh winter on the windswept coast, and decided to formulate a plan to cope with it. I spent a few days mulling over my options, and abandoned all pretense that it would be bearable when Beth suggested escaping for sunnier climes. Thinking of the warmest places in Europe and with a mind to the entertainment of two biblical studies researchers, we settled on Cyprus, which Beth (for unknown reasons) conflated with Sicily for a few weeks... So by the first of May we had a flight to Pafos booked and had selected the most insane-looking hotel I could find. Thus, we found ourselves at last hurtling towards Edinburgh Airport on a dreich January morning.

Just made luggage weight limit – 19.6 Kg! I was remembered by the mobility assistants though disconcerted by PA announcement describing me as a “Major Romeo” (Beth’s suggestion “Mobility Requirement”)

Got fasttracked through security again and taken up to aircraft in lift. Snow forecast. It was very windy and they took their time letting us on board, so we sat there swaying gently in the breeze and hoping the lift was solid. On board we found a free row and the flight was fairly painless, with our four hours taking us over Germany, via Prague, Sofia and Izmir to Pafos at sunset.

After a quick trip through the tiny airport we found the bus for the car hire place. An equally rapid stop there had us on the road and speeding towards our hotel (by way of a diversion that was to become very familiar over our fortnight on the island). We found the hotel without a problem, despite my repeated attempts to indicate with my wipers; the Nissan Tiida had the controls on the opposite side to my car. I almost mastered the foot brake.

The hotel was a beautiful monstrosity – we agreed that when we stop finding the décor entertaining it will be a very bad sign. Roman title, Greek frescoes, Egyptian papyri, Swiss chalet doors – and walls all frescoes, mirrors or furry leopard print. Coooooool.

We decided to eat at the buffet in the restaurant before unloading the car. After unpacking we watched some of our DVDs… Start as you mean to go on, I suppose. Let the relaxation commence!

A random snapshot of a visit to NYC, 1 July 2003

2011-05-03T06:38:00.000-07:00

Our second day began with a rather mysterious phone call at 5am, which cut off before we could see who it was. During the remaining couple of hours of sleepy time, many weird dreams involving cheese tap-danced their way into my head. I embraced the feeling of triumph upon managing not to scald myself in the shower, even if there did follow a manic search for my deordorant (there follows, in my notes, an insulting paragraph on American deodorant, which I have excised to spare controversy!).

We proceeded to have an uncharacteristically unhealthy breakfast of both a muffin and a cinnamon cake-thing. After much vigorous tooth-brushing, we set about organising a central America-compatible mobile phone [NB: I was on my way to a summer in El Salvador at this point]. Ironically, it took four phone calls and two editions of the Manhattan yellow pages to get the right number.

What to do? We decided not to go to the Stock Exchange, having been warned about the queues. So much to see, by boat, bus or subway - the world is our small, not very fresh oyster. Time for a few words of spontaneous prayer, watched by a sceptical Dodo:

"If I die on this trip, dear Lord, please don't let them Fed-Ex me home. I saw Castaway, If some courier gets shipwrecked, he'll be eating me for weeks. Except... that didn't happen in Castaway."

Eventually we decided to wander along to the Empire State Building via Greeley Square. I gave the lecture on Horace, as was my duty, but since we were heading East on 34th, "Go west, young man," just confused the issue.

Looking at the Empire State Building, 1 July 2003

2011-05-03T06:07:00.000-07:00

How would it have felt to be part of the construction team? From New Jersey, its midtown surroundings look like mere foundations of buildings yet to stack up. The Empire State Builing towers above them all, delicate and elegant, but it looks lonely up there.

From the top, the whole of New York City's five boroughs are visible, and a couple of dozen miles beyond on a clear day. I think I would worry more about those clear days than poor weather. Even with the crush of summer tourists, the top of the Empire State Building can seem eerily quiet, especially after the noise of the city at ground level. Each day, for months on end, to ascend to the manmade world's highest point and to see the entire metropolis spread out below?

On one level it must have been awe-inspiring, to see a unique view and to be among the first of millions. However, I suspect there must have been an equal sense of isolation, in a very real sense departing the city before the main rush hour and remaining quite separate from the life of the very city they were working to serve. The story could have been written by a modern-day Victor Hugo, a thousand Quasimodos in the world's greatest belltower.

Arrivals and Departures: Sailing into Kristiansand, 13 Sept 2003

2011-05-03T05:41:00.000-07:00

I spare a moment to wonder - is this all there is to travel? A series of arrivals and departures which serve as rites of passage, marking the traveller's transition from expectation to reflection; in between, the brief parts of the trip in which things actually happen? Maybe that's all there is to life, and why we refer to life as a journey. More time spent in transit, while relatively brief events shape the spaces between. Can life be viewed as a relentless stream of anticipation and consequence?

Burts Back on the Baggage Carousel

2010-10-19T05:54:00.000-07:00

Finally off! Somewhat unexpected. Until last night, I half thought we might not get away. Multiple illnesses, one bereavement – not your usual run up to a holiday. Except in our family. Have discovered that I’m the calm one in this family, which is not exactly comforting. Mother tutting loudly at whiff of queue-jumpers while Dodo voiced concerns about how he didn’t feel anxiety at the prospect of being on holiday, and the unusual absence of anxiety was making him anxious. He then dissolved into a quivering wreck. I truly am the glue that holds this whole amateur tap dance troupe together.

After walking three miles to the gate, we got settled at the rear of the mob, probably a trademark of budget airlines and bussed in for this purpose, who were slouching redundantly at the closed gate. We had to climb over a few to get onto the plane… Three hours later we were coming into land enjoying some cheerful bickering about the glacial speed of Dodo’s photography over gorgeous sunny Lisbon.

It turns out that, for a slightly pained and sensitive arthritic, going limp for the landing is a real joint-saver. Unfortunately, it also makes other passengers wonder what you’re doing. On disembarkation we walked even further than we had in Edinburgh to collect our bags.

Don’t even ask about the familial trauma that ensued when we tried to get the bus. The short version is that we looked up the right bus, found where it left from, got on the bus and got off at the right place. No misdirections or obstacles. The long version involves the loss of the Dodo who evaporated somewhere around the taxi rank, my mother befriending a porter by barrelling towards him down a steep incline with her luggage trolley, my abortive first attempts at Portuguese including an amused bus driver and a rummage for change, M and I feeling really bad about displacing the two Portuguese ladies who have up their seats, insisting that we sat down, me getting buried under all the family hand luggage, near conflict when I said we weren’t getting off at the wrong stop, and my father rugby tackling an unfortunate Scandinavian. I wish I made that last one up.

On the plus side, Lisbon seems very exotic, with its yellow Mediterranean light and big chunky palm trees everywhere. On the way in we passed at least give really great Art Nouveau buildings and – slight culture shock here – a full-fledged Guimard metro station entrance.

After checking in and getting settled, we went to hang out on the roof for a while. I got a foretaste of how this holiday will proceed – with my mother shoving me towards any Portuguese person crying, “Help us! Help us!” Am not entirely convinced that she knows I’m not actually fluent in Portuguese.

Wonderful view from the roof, in great light, while the moon rose over Alfama. We watched a pigeon clearly having a problem with heights. And enjoyed the view.

After a short break we stopped at tourist info for leaflets en route to the Hard Rock Café, where we stuffed ourselves, sitting onstage in a converted theatre with a pink Cadillac suspended over our heads. “You always wanted to be on the stage,” Dodo quipped.

After some night-time pictures, we ended a suitably surreal day with a hunt for the bathroom light switch, a head trapped in the lift door and a strange coffee-making method due to the lack of a kettle.

In Defence of Sightseeing

2010-04-20T03:38:00.001-07:00

The air was heavy. A red mist began to rise around my head. I had a vision of myself vaulting over the child below. What kind of stupid man would block the bus exit with his buggy and refuse to budge? If one cannot respond to a kind request, I fumed, what hope is there for humanity?

Then it happened. I tutted. Loudly.

My mind flashed back to a similar bus situation, four weeks earlier, as the blue-rinsed commuters telegraphed their disapproval of one woman's pram-wrestling boarding of the number 81. It struck me: I had become a little old Parisian lady.

This kind of self-discovery, to my mind, puts Marco Polo to shame and is the holy grail for the introspective travel writer. Especially as it's about me. Except for one thing: all of the above took place in the shadow of the Sacre Coeur.

Thousands of independent travellers share a horror of the overfamiliar; we want to emphasise our thorough appreciation of a place and its culture, gain an insight into the people - and we would not be caught dead up the Eiffel Tower. It seems self-evident that the worst parts of any destination, the most money-grabbing, tourist heaving aspects, will be found in impressive proportion within viewing distance of any major monument. Much of it gives the impression (not entirely inaccurately) that tourist are a bottomless pit of money. At Notre Dame one may enjoy waving bits of paper before the nose if one stands still for more than thirty seconds, the aforementioned Tour Eiffel boasts unrivalled queuing, while at the Louvre a prospective admirer of the Mona Lisa will no doubt appreciate the tranquility afforded by four hundred jostling elbows. Worse still, we find ourselves surrounded by pale imitations of ourselves in the form of novelty T-shirt wearing, socks-with-sandals sporting, tacky fridge magnet purchasing tourists. I choke on the word.

The disappointments and inconveniences of major tourist sights are well documented, and the reasons for avoiding such tourist-crammed areas are considered and well-meant (as well as a little snobbish). When one wants to gain a deeper understanding of the local people and their lifestyles, there really isn't a lot you can do about it when yelling your crepe order over the heads of an idling tour group.

In a city like Paris, however, non-touristy sights are thin on the ground. Nowhere in the world have I encountered such a density of - gulp - attractions, but the annual turnover of tourists within its twenty arrondissements more than compensates. More to the point, had I gone to Paris as a student and not visited any of the tourist destinations, what would I have missed?

I may have missed out on the beautiful Pantheon with its confused ecclesiastical heritage, or the view from the Pompidou Centre. When you've got postcards to send anyway, why not buy them at St-Michel with everyone else, where genuine Parisian students hang out and you can witness a political demonstration or two?

There's a reason that the Musee D'Orsay is a popular destination - its collection - and while Versailles can be downright unpleasant with its surfeit of tourists, once you get past the gritting of teeth and grumbles of, "Someone should really do something," the apartments really do provide an insight into the ambitions of Louis XIV. While travellers may be justly disinterested in the doings of the tourist masses, there's little point in getting snobby towards those who have a genuine interest in and knowledge of local history.

People travel for all sorts of reasons. I find it quite wrong to suggest that going to "see things" is in any way an invalid proposition. There are good reasons for travellers to be interested in people and character, but many of us have more physical interests, particularly those with a passion for architecture. In the style and decor of a church many travellers can read insight not only into the current population, but into the priorities and preoccupations of long-dead designers and craftsmen. In this spirit I chased down the Lavirotte-designed public toilets at Madeleine - perhaps off the tourist trail themselves; certainly under it - and the Opera Garnier, my spiritual home and favourite building in Paris. And I don't care if it is crawling with tourists. It's magnificent.

Much is dependent on outlook. One can find oneself immersed in a city, speaking the language, surrounded by locals, and still gain no insight into the society. Equally, one can queue for the Louvre with a thousand tourists and be motivated by a love for their extensive collection of pre-19th century art, ancient Babylonian decor, or Levantine religious sculpture. Is this wrong? Is it shallow to be concerned with anything beyond the local community, or to be primarily interested in other things? An interesting question.

I confess that I do own quite the tacky fridge magnet collection - but I still haven't been up the Eiffel Tower.

Final visits and comfort tourism

2009-08-22T17:23:00.000-07:00

Ladies and gentlemen, the Opera Garnier.

Most of you know now that I have returned from Paris due to ill-health. This makes the last few days very chaotic and haphazard, so I will condense the weekend's events into things I actually did. For the most part, that means the Friday. I was in a lot of pain and didn't go to class that morning, but in the afternoon as I considered my options I decided to indulge in a bit of "comfort tourism", and gravitated to my favourite building in Paris.

The Opera Garnier was built by Charles Garnier in an original and extravagant style which he dubbed "Napoleon III". Here's the bust of the architect outside.

Inside, there is a lot of decoration, but I don't find it over-the-top. I mean, it is over-the-top - it's opulent and involves a lot of ornamentation - but it's anchored by simple, sweeping shapes and columns and the colour and detail is tempered by an expanse of pale marble. The facade alone looks monochrome, but is, in fact, constructed from 23 different types of marble.

It is also, of course, the inspiration for Gaston Leroux's novel about the phantom. When you see the level of detail and ornamentation reflection in the proliferation of mirrored surfaces, one can understand

Now, that's a candelabra.

The grand staircase from below.

See that statue just to the left of the central opening? These are its casual feet.

I love it. And there's nothing quite like an auditorium, especially an opera house like this one, in which most gallery seats are in boxes. From one such box I saw the ballet La Dame aux Camelias last summer.

The ceiling hosts a spectacular and Parisian Chagall mural, controversial not, as you might think, primarly because of its incongruous style, but because it's pretty much glued on over an earlier one and, as far as I understand, no one knows how to remove it without damaging the one underneath, but they also know that the glue will need to be replaced at some stage.

Talking of spectacular ceilings, I think my favourite parts of the opera house are the following two ceilings in very small anterooms off the main ballroom.

It's like someone packaged up my aesthetic and gave me it for Christmas.

Now the view from the terrace over the Avenue de l'Opera. This, to me, is Paris. Home sweet Paris.

Even being really tired on the Monday night (yep, we're jumping all over the place in the timeline), having eaten with Matt and Alissa, when I changed buses by walking across this square I felt quite at home.

This is the very shiny grand ballroom.

And from above, as it is best seen, the grand staircase again.

Many mysterious and unexpected sights to be seen! Wow, I feel like I'm writing a terrible 30s children's book.

The costume department has a display by the entrance.

I have one just like it at home.

Then on the Friday night I had the most wonderful French meal with Alissa and Matt - steak frites with sauce bearnaise, crepes and chocolat chaud.

Not everything in Paris is sophisticated. This, for example, is a disturbingly inexplicable advert for a summer horror film festival. I had to wait for a bus here every day.

Finally, this is the view over the cemetery - from my bedroom!

Chilling in every sense but the literal

2009-08-05T12:13:00.000-07:00

I've been taking it easy as much as possible, which of course means that I have walked a lot further than I have been intending. It's also started to get hot - today and tomorrow are supposed to clear 30, after which we'll get a storm and a bit of relief. Roll on le bon weekend, je dis.

These people look familiar... on Tuesday, after class, Mary and I had arranged to meet Matt and Alissa for undefined activities that involved the words "sit", "garden" and, for some of us, "beer". Here we ran into them as the university offered un petit cocktail to its students.

After a brief discussion, we split into two groups - "me" and "the rest of them" - to acquire some lunch (I already had a sandwich) and to reconvene at the corner of the Jardin du Luxembourg for some civilised lounging. This is a building right on that corner.

We sat in the shade on benches and metal chairs and hid from the sun. I was apparently as attractive to a passing wasp as the mosquitos which feast on me constantly in this city, as it hovered for several minutes, only deflected when I walked up to a distracting flower bed and ran away quickly, saying, "ow ow ow ow ow" all the way.

In due course Alissa was dispatched for some wine.

I had quite the adventure on the buses - in the bad way - as the others went off to St Sulpice. I took a bus down to Gare Montparnasse thinking I could pick up the 88 to go home from there. Unfortunately I realised after some wandering around looking for it that the 88 passes the TGV terminal rather than the main station. Having schlepped down there, and I mean schlepped, I still couldn't find the stop, nor could I find where I was on my trusty Paris Circulation in relation to the terminal. I couldn't work out where the bus had stopped the other day, on my way home from the 15th. I had to walk all the way home from Gare Montparnasse, when I was already tired and dehydrated and not sure how far it really was. :( about sums it up.

Sore and tired the next morning, I managed to dress inside out and had to run back to change! Even with one considerable delay, I arrived quite early and found an open pharmacy. I can't tell you what a miracle that is at that hour of the morning. Mozzie cream! In any case, I wasn't sure that the word I thought meant mosquito was actually the right word (it was), so I launched forth into an explanation of the "little animals that find me delicious". Apart from making the pharmacist double over with laughter, it didn't achieve much as I had to give up and go to class. I present to you, however, a photo of just one of my many bites in case you think it was not worth the trouble.

Afterwards I ran into Matt, and subsequently Alissa by some extraordinary coincidence. Alissa took care of the mozzie cream problem as she needed some too and was far better prepared to explain. Then I introduced them to the cult of the pizza en cone, having preached it vigorously the day before.

If you enlarge it, note the sign in the background that suggests that convenience is yours as you can eat it anywhere - on the metro, while walking, in a taxi, on a bike...(?)

Afterwards I went to the very hot Tuileries to try again for the Orangerie. The white dust that covers these parks (and some tourist spots such as the Louvre) is very unforgiving in the heat, and I felt like I was baking. Here's the view in both directions down the Grand Axe, that lines up the mammoth monuments from l'Arc du Caroussel at the Louvre to the Arc de Triomphe and now La Defense.

After lounging in the gardens trying not to dehydrate, I went in to visit the waterlilies (nymphea in French, which is much prettier) by Monet. They were lovely with some really intense and unexpected colour, and gave a good sense of the late impressionist influence on later painters like Chagall. I took a picture while the gallery was temporarily deserted as I was hoping to capture the depth of the blues, but I failed.

There is a lot more wonderful art, I'm sure right up my street, in the museum, but I was completely wiped out and thirsty by this point and since I'm a student here I get in free. I can always return. It was a pleasant place to spend an hour and a half, just gazing into the eight huge Monet canvasses.

LOST (in France, sans polar bear)

2009-08-02T13:27:00.001-07:00

[Friday's blog is coming. There are certain unfortunate events to which I wish to do justice but cannot at this late hour. Bedtime is fast approaching.]

Sunday... the first Sunday. The day of rest. I slept in and got the first really good night's sleep here before heading off to church at a leisurely hour. En route I passed the Tour St-Jacques:

Church was in Tamil, which was really interesting and since everyone spoke English, unsurprisingly, it was not that difficult. I was also a bit dumbstruck to find that I actually knew two of the songs, lyrics and all. I have led a varied life. Apparently.

After church I stopped in a cute little unassuming cafeteria (producing a line in choose-your-ingredients pasta and panini) where I ordered a turkey ham panini that I'm pretty sure was just regular ham. Paused to consider where that would leave me in relation to Leviticus, but hopped off that train of thought before arriving at the station marked, "Welcome to Madness: Population, YOU."

I would not necessarily note lunch in such detail but for the remarkable bathroom which lay behind the unpromising green door at the rear of the cafe. Shiny, no?

A mentally-resetting conversation with a German family later (I took comfort in the fact that they were really impressed that I was Scottish, studying in Paris and speaking what, in the context of bus directions, seemed to pass for fluent German), I arrived at Place de la Concorde.

The picture above is looking across the river to the Assemblee Nationale building, with the dome of Les Invalides in the background. On the bigger version you'll be able to see the twin spires of St Clothilde and, as always, Tour Montparnasse.

Place de la Concorde is pretty much a glorified roundabout these days, but it is so vast that there is a remnant of tranquility about it. The one drawback is the lack of seating, which turns the square into a giant tourist grill on hot days. Despite the name, though, it has a violent history, as the scene of many executions during the revolution and subsequent terror. It's very strange to walk across the square and to find yourself standing in the box that marks where Louis XVI was guillotined. Ugh. There's a lot about the revolution I don't approve of, much of it centred on the hacking and chopping.

Here's an odd thing: the lamps are supposed to put one in mind of things maritime, but to me this just looks like a cactus.

I mean, it's even green.

How powerful do you actually have to be before you can choose your own antiquity to have installed and gilded in your honour?

These statues at the four corners symbolise major French cities. I think Strasbourg has a bit of an ego problem here.

Several generations of monoliths.

On rue de Rivoli. I had decided to go to Place de la Concorde to visit the Orangerie on free museum Sunday, but having seen the queue stretching the breadth of the gardens I decided that my legs were worth more than €6.50 to me. Instead, I set off along rue de Rivoli for a few streets.

Then began a lengthy tour through the 15th arrondissement as I ended up on an unusually rattly bus that drowned out the stop names, so I missed my stop, got out at the next one intending to find my way back before realising that I had no idea (even with two maps) how to get back and unable to find myself. I waited for the next bus in the same direction, and, as the route looped instead of backtracked, had to go to the terminus at Porte de Versailles before changing onto a bus going in the opposite direction and eventually finding my way. Here is where I first got lost:

And here is where I found myself, at last waiting for the 88 bus to take me home.

My other unfortunate experience was down at the terminus of the other bus, as, when he pulled the bus forwards, the bus driver and I had a slight collision. i.e. my head with the wing mirror, which is just too low for the high modern pavements... Incident summarised thus on facebook:

So Monsieur Quatre Vingt Huit goes WHACK with the wing mirror on my head and
he's all "je suis desole!" and i'm like "hnnnn?" - True story.

That's about it for the day!

The curious cat was a victim of drowning; or, an illustrated lesson in button-pressing

2009-07-31T14:59:00.000-07:00

Hopping on our local 88 bus and changing more or less as planned, we arrived at school in excellent time to have a look around before our oral tests. Now, these are not exactly high-pressure examinations - just a wee chat to see which class we will end up in. On the way in we ran into Aaron, another St Andrews student, and subsequently Matt and Alissa who were recovering from a demenage (removal - that's French!) immediately followed by a day on the train getting to Paris.

I had a test of bizarrely short duration, which on reflection I attribute to the fact that Stephane, my teacher last year, had taken detailed notes on the progress of his students and they pretty much knew where they were going to put me, which is as he said last summer.

Here's a picture of the courtyard that I really like, so much so in fact that I poached it from last year.

We had to pick up our bursaries - I know it's not the school's money and certainly not that of those handing it out, but I still felt awkward taking that much cash and counting it out as they requested!

Right outside the office there was an accessible toilet. I embraced it, not literally, but almost, given the extremely low loo in our flat and the fact I am missing my toilet frame quite badly. The seat was angled and high and my curiosity was piqued by the various buttons next to the seat. After flushing as normal I decided that the thing to do would be to test these buttons, in the spirit of science and experimentation. History rewards the thinkers but celebrates the doers, I felt.

There was a bidet function which was predictably squirty at a low level, accompanied by a bottom drying button that blasted air upwards for brief periods. All very sensible and toilet-appropriate. Then there was the button marked "shower". I pressed that one and stood well back, just in case. This little nozzle whirred forth and water began to flow down into the toilet bowl. Bemused by the description of this function as "shower", I leaned forward, at which point a jet d'eau that would rival Geneva's hit me right in the face and continued right up the wall.

I am told that from outside, my squeals and eventual soaked appearance were quite funny. I am sure I am going to suffer some sort of post-trauma and develop a fear of toilets, showers or buttons in due course.

In the book shop at reception they were advertising this book, which to my mind asks a very important question.

Just up the rue d'Assass is a very fine establishment into which we wandered, seeking sustenance. The proprietor, as it turned out, spoke fluent English and was interested in us as Divinity students. Not for a moment did I imagine that my first long-ish conversation in France would consist of someone asking if I knew whether Murphy-O' Connor's books on Paul had been translated into French, and someone who not only knew that he taught at the Ecole Biblique but who had known him growing up. If that sounds like enough of a small-world anecdote, you would be mistaken, as it transpired that he had lived in Israel for many years and was taught by Carmelites, something which made him vaguely aware of the community in Haifa in which Mary worked.

Something else that I discovered in this cafe I have taken up with evangelical zeal. I do not want to give too many details of this original creation, lest it be appropriated by too many who would not appreciate its wonder, but let me just say: Pizza. Cone. Veggies. Mmmm.

After a short ride on the 94 bus, we joined the upper tour at Madeleine. Passing the Opera again, I took this picture of the cafe at which we stopped the day before.

Ah. Trinite church was a favourite site on the commute going back home last year, but was under renovation at the time. Now it appears that you can go in, so I must do that this year. Best seen, in my opinion, up the street below.

A glimpse of Sacre Coeur from the Blanche area.

A really interesting frieze on a building by the Barbes-Rouchechouart metro station, which I kept trying to locate last year.

A couple of destination-representing statues on the Gare du Nord.

The commentary looped a couple of times here, and we heard part of the story about the siege of Paris in the Franco-Prussian war, during which the Parisians had to eat rats and Maxim's served elephant from the zoo. Apparently it was hoped that large hot air balloons could be sent outside the city and returned with cattle to eat. Unfortunately, we never heard if they got their cow. Seems a long wait for a beefburger, to me.

Below, to my shame, is a perfectly decent picture of Place de la Republique avec my finger. Oops.

Around the St Martin area, in the east,

Gratuitous Opera picture, because I like it and will bring it up given the least cause.

Before hopping on the final section of the loop, we stopped for refuelling at St-Michel again. Here's a picture of the rue de la Huchette, which I frequented last year but never once photographed.

I had my first crepe with nutella and banana, while Mary tried the nutella and whipped cream.

Here's Mary's photo out the window.

Before we left, we had a partially intelligible conversation with the Greek table attendant. We spoke to a lot of Greeks the first couple of days.

Walking back from Denfert Rochereau, a task for which I was entirely too tired, I spotted this broken mirror out on the pavement and decided it was there just for the benefit of passers-by with cameras. Welcome to the rue Victor Considerant, slightly fragmented.

Just like the photographer. I slept ten hours after this.

A very not-like-the-way-Cliff-did-it summer holiday

2009-07-30T13:23:00.000-07:00

After a long and tiring day, we needed a lazy morning, and it was almost 12 by the time we set forth. Mary had suggested an open top bus tour, and I discovered that the four-loop city tour ran within a few minutes of our flat. We set off through our local cemetery (don't judge; it's one of the three main ones) and, after a grappling match with the ticket machine at Raspail metro station, we stood on the pavement and awaited the lime green bus.

Not only did Mary think that the buses were a great idea, she thought that they were my great idea. Everyone's a winner on this trip.

Mary's photos of the first day are far more exhaustive, partly because I myself was exhausted and partly because I had seen a lot of things last year and was selective, for me. However, you will see none of them until I can make blogger and my browser cooperate.

(update: browser not cooperating, however alternate browser now being used for blogging. Vague memories emerge of same last summer. Aaah! Mosquito! 'Scuse me while I close these parentheses.)

We stopped at the St Michel area, a favourite of mine, for lunch and a change of buses. After some browsing, we settled on spaghetti bolognese at an Italian restaurant. We were served by a German-speaking Greek waiter, who asked us, "If you're British, how come you can speak French?" We explained that you had to study it in school and we were students in Paris, but he was clearly still mystified as to why we would even bother. The other waiter walked up and placed sparkly hats on our heads, which we wore while we finished eating, though no explanation was ever offered.

Back on the (other) bus, we drove into eastern Paris. Very interesting route. I saw several new places to me even though we passed familiar sites like Bastille, where there was a boogying octogenarian wearing a bejeweled t-shirt that read, "Papa Danser".

The first major site we came to south of the river was this library - the Bibliotheque Nationale (named after Mitterand, the great builder of contemporary France, but I don't know where his name fits in, really). There's something megalithic about the four huge corner towers, even though they are meant to evoke open books. Meg compared them to the library in the library episodes of the most recent series of Dr Who, which didn't encourage me to visit - count the shadows...

We drove past the road to Bercy village, a revolutionised development of the old warehouse district.

Things were already starting to get a bit odd, with the commentary broken up by a rotating playlist of approximately ten songs that blasted randomly between anecdotes. Taking a leaf out of my tour-guide book, the guide turned to the helipad on the central taxation department.

"It is closed now, for security reasons." [pause to think of terrorist threat, then..] "Imagine a secretary gets out of his helicopter, you are driving below, and then there is a gust of wind and he is sitting in the seat next to you."

On the "grand tour" we were driven up the Champs Elysees to see the flaneur culture in action (when people go out strolling to see and be seen), before swinging the double-decker bus around the Arc de Triomphe which, for what I can honestly say is the only time in my life, made me feel like Cliff Richard. The commentary told us the familiar history of Victor Hugo lying in state, the unknown soldier and allied troops marching into Paris under the arch, then terrified everybody by telling us about daredevil pilots flying under the archway.

After I gave Mary my potted history of the Palais Chaillot while a chanteur de jazz yelled, "JE T'AIME!" in my ear rather alarmingly, we viewed the Eiffel Tower from every conceivable angle, and I must admit it was a lot of fun to have a contained group of people suddenly realising how mind-bogglingly huge it seems from below.

We got off at the Opera Garnier to ogle my favourite building and to recharge before taking the 68 bus (my old friend) down to Denfert Rochereau.

Look what we found in a shop there:

Yep, that says Jura.

Pausing for a drink and an excuse to use the loo, we ended up at the same cafe at which Tina and I enjoyed a pre-ballet meal last summer. Conjuring up a vague memory of prices having deterred me from Coke Lite, I ordered jus d'ananas, pineapple juice, with which I also remember having impressed the waiter last summer. He seemed to react, again, as if I were a great sommelier who had ordered an obscure yet excellent vintage from his own grandmother's vineyard. Unless his grandmother has a terrace in the Phillipines, the label of the juice bottle says this is not so. Even more strangely, when Mary asked me what I had ordered and both he and I replied, "Pineapple juice," something in his look congratulated me for my grasp of English. The waiters on rue Auber must have really low expectations.

After our €5 pineapple juice (seriously, you should see what they charge for a coffee), we explored the loo. I was excited that it was a proper Parisian cafe toilet with the phone cubicle, a la Charade. The light system in the loo was interesting - the bit that was glowing, almost inviting you to press it, turned out to be the flush. A few litres of water later, I found the switch lurking in darkness behind the door.

When we actually got on it, our bus terminated three stops down - another quintissential experience. There was, however, another just behind, so it was less of a frustrating experience than it might have been. I plonked Mary down in an appropriate seat and introduced her to my former commute - view of the opera, pyramid at the Louvre and Ile de la Cite included.

Denfert Rochereau is totally disorientating. This is my conclusion from first day. The key problem is that one swings around it for an ill-defined period of time, after which one screeches to a halt and is dumped along on side or another with an almost identical view of the misshapen islands within. Once we knew which way was north, we walked down rue Daguerre with the plan of picking up something to eat in the 8 a huit, but didn't even get that far before succumbing to the temptations of a traiteur asiatique and (in Mary's case) the supermarket full of wine across the street. We also stocked up on some delicious looking fruit.

Sore. Very sore, after the buses and their stairs. It was also much later than we thought.

Sleepy!

Nothing Ventured, No-one Pained...

2009-07-29T08:51:00.000-07:00

Dragging oneself out of bed at 5am (ish) to set forth on a month-long study programme seems a self-punishing way to go about things. Really, one should have a limo pick one up at a decent hour and be conveyed to parts foreign on a cloud of candyfloss, but these things are so difficult to arrange at short notice. On three hours of sleep, I washed in running water (thus ensuring that I would be ritually pure come sunset) and Mary and I set off.

We parked some way from the terminal building to start with, a problem compounded by the need to walk the length of that building, out the other end and into terminal two. Naturally the gates were back in the other building. Glasgow Airport has grown since last I was there. Mary was concerned.

"Do you think the flight was so cheap because we're walking there?"

I had wanted to opt for priority boarding given my current mobility, but without the proper diagnoses and actually needing a wheelchair. it seemed petty. Nevertheless, I thought I might as well ask. I was given a brief lecture on how I "should have told them at the gate" in a not-very-helpful tone, but she still let us go through with the priority line, which was nice. I was a bit taken aback by the tone. However, I decided to be really nice and voice my appreciation, which made me feel pretty good which made me feel pretty shallow which made me feel like I should stop reflecting upon it. We agreed that it was worth asking, especially when we got to go straight to the back of the plane and ended up with three seats to ourselves.

We were just settling in and getting our bags into the overhead compartments when we heard the announcement,
"Good morning ladies and gentlement and welcome to this Easyjet flight to London Luton..."
I looked at Mary and said, "Luton?" I was a bit confused. "I hope that's a mistake."
"Ohh!" came a cry from behind me. "Paris! We're going to Paris!" [tannoy crackles back on] "Sorry, ladies and gentlemen; this is of course our flight to Paris Charles-de-Gaulle..."

Flight was fairly uneventful apart from a very nice member of the cabin crew stepping on my foot while I was dozing and discovering that the hand soap in the loo moonlighted as a moisturiser and an air freshener.

We had taken our time getting off the plane and after watching everyone else rush past in a flurry of "me-first", it was somewhat satisfying to find that everyone had been loaded on to a bus and was now waiting for us, when, naturally we would also be the first off the bus. First signs of the Parisian attitude in the tarmac director guy who waved off passengers dismissively as if they were ready to accost him at the first opportunity. Magic.

After a smooth taxi-run in, we arrived at our flat which, while the settee covers and bits of the kitchen could be cleaner, will do us quite nicely. After a few failed attempts to get the internet working, we discovered that all you need (apart from love) is a single successful attempt. Encouraged, we struck forth in search of food, both being quite hungry by that point. We staggered reasonably cheerfully down a main food and shopping street behind us before collapsing even more gratefully into an ambiguously Turkish establishment for a sandwich grec (me) and a panini. Best food ever. We admitted that we'd both had cold feet about the whole thing - the past few weeks being ever so stressful - but really felt we had to get on with it. Now that we're here we seem to have perked up with the excitement and the change of scenery!

Wandering the rue Daguerre:

Looks like there are quite a number of appealing places to eat around here, and a local 8 a huit (supermarket). Mary and the proprietor are already great friends, and we think he lived in Scotland for a year. Small world, Paris.

[pics to come]

Tour de France, Petit Palais (again), Bizarre Reminiscences and Notre Dame's Crypte Archeologique

2008-07-27T06:30:00.000-07:00

This was the final day of the Tour de France. Predictably, we could not visit the Petit Palais the next day, so we fought our way out of the metro station onto the Champs Elysées to join in with the festivities briefly.

That last picture is of me waiting a few minutes for them to change the receipt roll so I could buy souvenir water bottles.

With the streets cordoned off, it was not clear how one got to the Petit Palais without a Tour ticket. I asked a policeman who directed us round the back on what could easily have turned out to be a wild goose chase. The place was swarming with police and associated vehicles.

I found a ribbon that appeared to be the last frontier between us and the museum, and after asking again a policewoman lifted the tape and let us through.

The benefit of going to all this trouble was that the museum was quiet and a pleasant visit ensued, even if it was awfully hard work getting tickets to the permanent collection and not to the special exhibition also!

I’ve already blogged the museum in-depth here, so it will suffice to confirm that we actually went by means of this photo.

He likes glass.

Heading across the Pont Alexandre III for the bus, we nearly fell victim to the common shiny-find scam, but resisted admirably. Said scammer looked awfully disappointed, especially as he had approached someone who was, bizarrely, able to cheerfully confirm that said shiny-find was gold. Perhaps if one genuinely found such a shiny-find one would not be so keen to hand it over for a couple of euros.

Moving on.

We hopped on a bus to Saint Michel where we had agreed to meet Meg and all headed over to the Greek place she and I had discovered with Kenny our first week. Thankfully, I had marked it on my map then, as even with that assistance it took us a while and we were nearly kidnapped by a dancing man in a sombrero en route.

It was as good as we remembered and provided fuel for Meg who proceeded to soliloquise about my apparently freakish good memory, before testing it with the very odd question, “What was it you said about naked men?” This is, undoubtedly, the most alarming thing she has ever come out with.

As we painstakingly reconstructed, it turned out that the exact phrase was, “Yeah, where are the naked men?” in helpful conclusion to Meg’s neo-feminist rant in the Musée d’Orsay about equality in post-1800 art. Of course, she got away with it while my single contribution was overheard by a shocked group of American ladies in matching hats, none of whom would see ninety again. You can’t take her anywhere. In my defence, I had just escaped death by revolving door.

Before we moved on, we popped round the corner into St Severin again, which was still pretty.

After lunch we visited the Crypt Archeologique under Parvis Notre Dame, which contains the excavated remains of the Île de la Cité’s hunchback-era community. This includes the house of Nicholas Flamel and the Foundling’s Hospital, where I got very irritated with the nuns who refused to look after babies until St Vincent-de-Paul baptised them.

The museum, which began with a look at the development of Paris through the ages, was interesting – indeed, Meg wasn’t wrong when she said it would have made a good early visit – but incredibly hot. We were all dripping by the time we left, and I mean that literally.

Being pretty sapped by all that, we parted from Meg and walked a bit further across the river, where we passed the Paris Plage, the beach on the quai made from trucked-in sand.

Then we passed the Hotel de Ville.

Back on the metro, I decided to take us by a scenic route. Or rather, the scenic route, as there aren’t many. We came above ground at Bastille, to see where the canal feeds into the Seine, then joined line 2 which goes above ground for a few stations in north eastern Paris. I wanted to see the Egyptian-tiled cinema at Barbes-Rouchouart again, so of course a train was passing us at the time. I’m honing a feeling of cosmic persecution as I feel it may serve me well, artistically.

Catacombs and Coffee shops

2008-07-26T22:25:00.000-07:00

By the time Meg-of-the-cursed-rail-travel turned up at Denfert-Rochereau (as I write this she is in the sixth hour of a journey from Durham, yet to reach Berwick, without her planned travelling companion), Jo Ann had enjoyed a Chinese lunch and we were ready to tackle the catacombs.

We located the queue, only to be informed, by a very forceful man with no other apparent function, that the last entry was an hour hence and there was little chance of us making it to the entrance in time. It was not entirely clear whether he was going to prevent our trying, so while Jo Ann distracted him with pouts and French tales of sadness (Mais c’est mon dernier jour à Paris!), the three of us sneaked in, followed by a group of Australian girls who had been walking all day. The next forty minutes were consumed with constant estimates of the number admitted per minute, and attempts to divide by this the equally indeterminate number of persons in front of us. We realised we were going to make it and spent the final five minutes making fun of the man who tried to dissuade us. I never said we were nice people.

Our catacomb visit began with ninety-three steps down a very disorientating and unevenly treaded spiral staircase (we all know how I love those, and naturally they all sent me down in front). It was a long way, but once down there we had the opportunity to read boards in English (you don’t take this for granted after a month in Paris) so we knew that the bones came from most of the old Parisian cemeteries in the central arrondissements and included many influential and notable, if not famous, Parisians. See, there’s no shame in being used as decor… though, later, when I told my companions that when I died I had no objection to my skeleton contributing to a chandelier, there was some choking and spitting out of drinks. Can’t think why. These people are so sensitive.

A long and slippery walk brought us to these carvings, made in near total darkness, from memory – the story was only slightly spoiled by the ending, where the unsung artist got killed in a cave-in. And may I say to the curators, when you have hundreds of tourists underground and would like to avoid panic, it is best to avoid phrases like “cave-in”.

We split into the sensitive and less-sensitive pairs; no one will be surprised to hear that Jo Ann and I were the ones who were third and fourth last out, having spent extra time bonding with the dead and exclaiming, “Cool!” when they made new patterns with femurs. Here’s an atypically well-lit corner.

There’s not a lot you can say about the catacombs, other than to note that for those with arthritis of any kind, it’s the kind of thing you want to do on a good day. There were eighty steps up, less than the down staircase, but as it was about a metre in radius, there were only two people behind us and one of them was jangling the keys and calling encouraging things like, “Don’t go too quickly!” while speeding up, it was a bit of a slog. However, the metro had done us good and we displayed a commendable recovery time, after which we decided that a coffee shop was better than taking on the rush hour.

Shortly staggering onto a boulevard, the task of choosing a coffee shop was hampered by Jo Ann’s unsuccessful attempt to buy churros from a stand where the proprietor was inexplicably but completely determined only to sell them in sixes. Her attempts to bargain he seemed to find hilarious, and suggested that maybe we all wanted to share. As Jo Ann turned to the rest of us hopefully, we noticed that the light was a convenient green and crossed the road in haste.

Jo Ann and Meg disappeared, briefly, in opposite directions seeking shoes and/or baby clothes, leaving the Burts in charge of the coffee shop choice. We had a traditional French café on one side and Starbucks on the other. Starbucks?, we thought. Pah - clearly we must select the French option. Five minutes later, put off by the price of an orange juice and the outdoor seating (outdoor, since the smoking ban, means squinting to discern your interlocutor through a nicotine haze), we marched collectively through the doors of Starbucks. As is my wont, I handled the transaction beautifully and fluently while ordering completely the wrong thing. But as “the wrong thing” was, in this case, a mango tea frappucino, it was a happy accident, as most of mine are (barring the car crash and the shoulder dislocation). Jo Ann ordered the same, but was very clear that she wanted it blended twice to rid the drink of nasty ice particles. Our inquiries were well-rewarded, as we were treated to an extremely entertaining and (after two hours with corpses) funny monologue about ice and Starbucks prices and the entitlement to good service. Here’s Jo Ann sipping critically to assess the quality of the blend.

The disadvantage of dragging parents round Paris with you is their availability to friends who relish such an opportunity for parental quizzing. Accordingly, the rest of our time at Starbucks was spent reliving my childhood activism to a decreasingly incredulous Meg, after she expressed doubt that I had always had such a defined sense of autonomy and political accountability.

The bus journey back to the 17^th included an unscheduled stop at the Seine, where we were all kicked off the bus so the driver could go home (it happens). We took the opportunity to wander over the river on the Pont Royal.

While we were taking pictures, we missed the next bus, and naively returned to await the next one. Let me tell you, this is a view we had for some time, as we peered at the number of every passing bus.

Some hours later, we stopped again to change buses on Avenue de l’Opéra, and this picture was taken, which is suitably representative of the street and made me realise that I hadn’t taken any pictures of the scene of my most frequent bus changes.

When we got back to Guy Môquet, we staggered into my local Chinese restaurant, having abandoned more ambitious plans in the sweaty 81 bus. It seemed sensible.

Commuter rage and Montmartre (again again)

2008-07-26T04:02:00.000-07:00

What you have to understand is that I put a lot of thought into it. I wanted to buy my visiting parent a weekly carte orange, at €16.80, but after asking whether they had a start date my friendly local metro ticket dealer informed me that there was no point in buying him a weekly card as the only ones now on sale were for the next calendar week, beginning the day of his departure. Thinking that the daily card would not be worth it in the short term, as we would need two tickets on the evening of his arrival, I went ahead and bought a carnet – ten single tickets – thinking that we’d probably get a one-day pass for the Monday, which would bring the price to a reasonable total. The process wasn’t stressful, exactly, but it did involve the man in the window (in the metro station, not in my mind) switching to English as soon as he caught an accent. This would not have been a problem except that the metro staff can have this weary, eye-rolling way of doing that which grates, especially when you’re not asking them to suffer the indignity of the English language for you. I happen to speak decent French, thank you very much, I thought, and I know very well how to conduct this conversation in your language. Um, vive la France, bye.

In retrospect, it seems vainly principled, but we continued the conversation, him in English, me in French, until we had debated all the possible options and I had completed my purchase. We will return to this theme of my patience with other human beings shortly.

On Friday evening, I had set forth to Porte Maillot, to retrieve Dodo, and had to endure en route the events described here. This was bad enough. Then, as I approached Porte Maillot, my iPod ran out of battery power. Oh well, I thought, I won’t need it on the way back. Just at that moment I got the following text message.

“Forgot to collect bag. On bus back to airport. Go home.”

This didn’t do much for my mood, and nether did the three hundred steps at the Porte Maillot RER station on my way to the metro.

On Saturday morning, once reunited and well-slept, I had decided we would ride the Montmartrobus and do a wee tour of the Butte before meeting Meg and Jo Ann at the catacombs in Montparnasse. Small problem. Every time you get on a bus you need a new ticket. So I decided that Saturday, not Monday, would be an awfully good day to get the day ticket. Bigger problem. They don’t sell them in the automated machines and the window was unmanned. Ah.

Problem solver that I am, I decreed that we would use one ticket, go along to Jules Joffrin metro where the Montmartrobus begins, and try that station. In due course, we got a day ticket and boarded the Montmartrobus. That was easy. It was the getting off that was the problem, and led to my little temper problem. A man was standing in the narrowest part of the bus, right in front of the doors at the centre, with a buggy. This buggy was wedged in between the two pillars. When I said, “Excuse me,” I thought he might at least move. But no, he stood right there unflinching and waited for me to climb over. Which I did, but we missed the stop. That was bad enough, but what I wasn’t quite expecting was the cool wave of rage that washed over me as I stood, fuming, in front of the doors. When we got off at the next stop, I allowed myself a little tantrum with foot stamping before we continued sightseeing. Four weeks before I had rolled my eyes at those Parisian commuters whose expressions betrayed disgruntlement and disapproval at anyone who got in their way, and here I was – one of them. I allowed myself a moment of horrified introspection before deciding that paintings were really far more interesting.

I remembered that I hadn’t taken a picture of the water tower before, which, along with Sacre Coeur, is a major landmark in Paris.

We explored the upper part of Montmartre, hanging out around Sacre Coeur (where, once again, I encountered the busker in a cowboy hat who seemed to sing nothing but bouncified James Blunt covers), appreciating the portrait artists who actually take no for an answer when you reject them cruelly, and browsing the paintings in Place des Tertres. The best part, again, was St Pierre, with its fascinating stained glass, and this time I took some pictures.

There was a genuinely artistic modern crucifixion scene.

And this is my favourite – there are scenes from the life of Peter all round the sanctuary, and this is his walking on water.

Descending in the less-than-thrilling funicular, we passed some friendship bracelet sellers who seemed convinced that what I wanted was one of their creations (they were quite lucky, given my recent experiences, that they didn’t get my nails dug into them when they tried to grab my wrist) and inched forward, much distracted by shop windows, to Abbesses once more, where we revisited St Jean, my favourite church in Paris.

We also got lunch at the bakery with the meringues, and treated ourselves to a big strawberry one which actually lasted more than three days. We ate under a tree in Abbesses and watched as no less than four young couples stood around the metro station, DK guides open to the map pages, in a weird sort of frozen performance art. None of them realised the other three were doing exactly the same thing or looked exactly the same, which amused me no end.

Heading down via the dreaded Montparnasse station to Denfert-Rochereau, we rendezvous-ed avec Jo Ann in the big lion-adorned square (loved the lion).

Galeries Lafayette

2008-07-23T07:30:00.000-07:00

With me both sore after Versailles and busier with class, I was glad of another easy day. Jo Ann had left word with Tina that I was expected at the Chanel counter of Galeries Lafayette, shopping for to do. Galeries Lafayette is the most iconic of the three (with Printemps and Samaritaine) famous department stores in Paris, and Jo Ann had been the sole interested party as I kept bringing it up on the list.

At 2, Tina and I arrived and quickly located Chanel. Thirty minutes later, we managed to meet up – naturally Chanel has two perfume counters in the Galeries. Why we didn’t think of that I don’t know. We proceeded to shop for clothes for Jo Ann, and if that doesn’t sound like fun to you then you don’t know shopping. Our conversation was dominated, yes, by complaints about the temperature in shops and how we would propose to fix the problem, but then that’s the kind of people we are. And there was some discussion of the lift, how to get in it, how to summon it (pressing the button helps, we found, after ten minutes) and how to survive a breakneck basement lift plunge. I had scientific data on hand.

The highlight was the beautiful Art Nouveau inspired interior. And yes, that, and not the shopping, was what put it firmly at the top of my list. At least I’m consistent.

Canal St-Martin

2008-07-22T07:18:00.000-07:00

A relaxed Tuesday provided appropriate occasion for a canal visit. We all went our separate ways in the afternoon (in my case to meet with a French singer-songwriter who wanted an English lyricist – a gig I got and enjoyed) but agreed to meet by the Canal St-Martin in eastern Paris later. I even coaxed Kenny out and we met Jen and Val near a laid-back bar-cum-club at Jaurès. Meg and Jo Ann soon followed, and we happy few hung around on the terrace until we were done with watching Jo Ann toss her hair at the Pompiers going past – a worthwhile experiment that does not reassure about the attention on the job of the average Parisian fireman.

Having found some food, we all lounged on some benches by the canal and enjoyed the cool of the evening.

When we all split up, I was going home alone and made the decision to head east to the nearest metro station, Colonel Fabian. This soon transpired to be a silly idea. I had not realised that my route would take me through a residential area of pedestrianised walkways and tower blocks, which felt half deserted and kind of unsafe to begin with (always listen to your instincts, I say – to other people). When I came across a mixed group of people playing table tennis in a courtyard, including several old ladies, I decided it must be all right, and probably was under most circumstances, but I soon left the courtyard far behind and, in the late evening, the shadows of the tower blocks closed in. I found myself in fairly dark, narrow walkways further shaded by trees and peppered with scary-looking youths in hostile standoff. Colonel Fabian itself, a great big traffic-clogged roundabout, seemed fine, but paranoia had set in and I was happy to get moving on the metro.

I don't enjoy my own paranoia, but it really made me notice that, despite some of the hassles, it was the first time I had actually felt at all unsafe in Paris.

Montmartre (again), St Denis and hardened criminals (again)

2008-07-21T03:41:00.000-07:00

Jo Ann arrived last night for a week-long visit, and we all met after class in the courtyard. Poor Jo Ann had a nerve-wracking start to her trip when she arrived after one to find the courtyard deserted – only after panicking and trying to phone Meg did she realise that she hadn’t reset her watch properly and we were all still in class…

Once she had recovered, Jo Ann, Meg and I determined to take the metro to Hector Guimard’s classic Art Nouveau metro station at Abbesses, in Montmartre. This we did, and emerged to see and take pictures of this Parisian icon.

Directly opposite Abbesses, on the square, is the remarkable church of St-Jean-Evangeliste.

The church was built in the late 19^th century, heavily influenced by both the Art Nouveau movement and Islamic art – yippee! Two of my favourite things!

The doors are permanently thrown open, which gives the church an unusual air of openness, but unfortunately means that one hundred years of soot and pollution have built up on the inner surfaces, which just need a good clean. Nevertheless, it became my favourite church in Paris, and I returned.

Being a church of St John, it had beasts of the apocalypse in the stained glass around the roof, and this unusual window that I saw after becoming very concerned by Meg’s sudden cry of, “Skeletor!”

There were also less typical Gospel scenes in bold colours.

As well as gorgeous tiled altar- and chapel-pieces.

After sitting in the church, enjoying the atmosphere, as Jo Ann explained in detail the link between squat toilets and urinary tract infections, we decided it was time for lunch.

Our plan was to wander down to the Moulin Rouge, via the very Amélie-related Rue Lepic.

On the way, I was disturbed by a rotisserie called, in English, the Chicken Family. This is on the same level as the cheerful, child-like painting of the cow on our local butcher’s shutter. Not at all reluctant to think about where their meat comes from, the Parisians. I’m a bit squeamish about the whole thing. Despite this, we were tempted into a bakery for a fougasse – a delightful doughy bread thingy with bacon or olive filling – and, in Jo Ann’s case, for the largest meringue known to man.

We may have been eating, but we had set out looking for crepes, and crepes we were determined to find. For three euros or less. Down at the Moulin Rouge we found an appropriately classless establishment which, for €2.50, provided us with nutella- and banana-stuffed crepes. We were on a sugar high, and sat chatting and giggling in front of the Moulin Rouge for a good half hour, despite Meg’s disappointment that it didn’t actually have an elephant.

From Blanche, we took the metro up to St Denis, one of the suburbs, mirroring underground the legendary journey of St Denis himself. He was martyred on Montmartre – hence the name – but was said to have picked up his severed head and walked with it to St Denis, a couple of miles north, where he supposedly wanted his basilica to be built. Why the story didn’t have him walk further for a more impressive feat, I don’t know, but that’s where the Basilique St-Denis is, anyway.

The basilica is reputedly the impetus for the entire Gothic movement in church architecture, as the first of its kind built anywhere. It has all the checklist items of the Gothic style, but is so wonderfully light in comparison to some other northern examples I’ve seen.

It has some colourful and surprising stained glass, and some that looks quite Celtic. I’d be interested to know more about the basilica and its development.

I now bore you with more photos of the basilica…

There was a pigeon trapped inside the church when we were there, whom Jo Ann named Virgil for reasons unknown, and she suggested I compose some sort of Virgil-related book. I’m thinking of a children’s book series where the statue of Jesus comes to life and talks to the pigeon, who is, naturally, rescued, as his eye is on the sparrow and a pigeon’s much harder to miss.

Or something.

From Meg’s blog, here:

On our way back home, we had an interesting experience. Jo Ann saw a Sephora store (a fancy make-up and perfume shop), and she wanted to go in because they let you sample everything inside. Well, Jo Ann decided that she was going to do a make-over on me using some of the samples, and she started with some very vibrant turquoise eye shadow. About halfway through, one of the sales clerks came over and checked on us. She said that what we were using wasn't one of the samples, that Jo Ann had opened new makeup. Jo Ann apologized in French, and I said that I'd buy it if we needed to do so. Luckily, we didn't, but after that the fun was gone from the experience. We all felt a little guilty and decided to sneak out of the store one by one before creating anymore mayhem. After we had all safely escaped, Kathleen looked at my very, very brightly shaded lids and said, "Meg, you're wearing contraband on your face." I don't know, but I think there's something about Kathleen that draws the security people and causes us to get in trouble wherever we go. Maybe it all goes back to that time that she was picked up for drug dealing (a mistake, of course).

I’m not going to comment on the last part. Harrumph. I only add that I had nothing to do with the make up thing, though I was carrying around a bottle of Clinique cleanser that I didn’t want as the staff were keen to try out their hard sell technique in different languages… I had no problem, morally, sneaking away first, and in fact suggested I sacrifice myself by testing the escape route. Once clear of the doors, I hid behind a pillar until Meg appeared. “Pssst…”

So Jo Ann found us both back there, and having escaped we didn’t feel too silly until we realised that it would all be on security camera. Ah.

Kenny and I picked Jo Ann up at the bus stop later that evening, and we three went off to the Hard Rock Café, where we had a very hungry, tasty and John-Mayer-involving evening, and I (at length) managed to talk them into selling me a shot glass. Long story. Not that interesting.

Versailles

2008-07-19T01:31:00.000-07:00

The sad thing about my day is that I haven’t been as sore as I was today the whole time I’ve been in Paris, to the point that I couldn’t bend my left knee and put any weight on it, which made the cobbles and uneven surfaces a nightmare, and had me taking all the stairs one at a time – the worst day for arthritis. I’ve had plenty of days here where, even where stairs aren’t fun, I can walk normally, or where walking on the level isn’t a problem. I’m used to being mobile and I hated that feeling of being so slow and debilitated, but at least I can hope it will pass, and it’s not usually that bad. How typical that the one day I was to be on my feet so much and to such enjoyment, I was hobbling about.

Our day trip began at a ridiculously early hour, meeting for the RER to Versailles at 8. In the early morning, everything was funny, though I’m sure were I to repeat them here they would be less so. Much hinged on puns and staring at each other.

We didn’t have to queue for tickets as they were bought on Thursday, as I lay in bed. Here are the girls by the front gates:

Mostly this will be a series of photos. Versailles is Versailles: it’s a big palace with lots of pretty stuff and too many people. Despite the crowds, we enjoyed our day. The only places I was overwhelmed by crowds were the upper levels of the palace, and since the hall of mirrors and Marie Antoinette’s apartments were up there – my two big sightseeing desires – it was worth it. The grounds, on the other hand, were spacious enough for everyone, if never quite tranquil.

First, the chapel from the lower level. It’s an intriguingly designed section of the chateau, as it cuts down through three levels of the building.

Among the many rooms stuffed with interesting paintings, I like this detail with the globe – Western Europe accurately portrayed according to my synaesthesia. Seriously. Except for Switzerland, which in my synaesthesia is (as was still hilarious at 9.30am) neutral.

Most of the royal apartments could only be described as “sumptuous” – I don’t know an equivalent French term.

The famed hall of mirrors was, as promised and between the surging tour groups, fabulous.

And a last glimpse from upstairs, in the form of Marie Antoinette’s bed.

Downstairs, Meg and I (who had lost Alissa and Tina by then, assuming them to be ahead) explored the rooms marked as the Dauphin’s and Dauphine’s, though most seemed to be labelled as Madame du Pompadour’s or Madame du Barry’s, so unless they were all flatmates, I suppose the rooms must have been used for different purposes at different times. In any case, this bed belonged to Madame du Pompadour, who is now forever associated in my mind with the Doctor Who episode “The Girl in the Fireplace”, one of my favourites.

Outside, Meg and I quickly located the golf cart hire booth, and waited for Tina and Alissa, who soon sent me a text message saying, “We’re behind you!” Sure enough, they were inside the house in the Dauphin’s suite, and we had a complicated and ultimately unsuccessful conversation through gesture.

When we managed to reconvene, we set forth in our very own golf cart, waved off by Juan, as Tina and I tried to get used to facing backwards and trusting Meg to warn us when the bumps were coming (we nearly left the cart the speedy way). With Meg in the driving seat and Alissa with the map, the power quickly went to their head.

“Just so you know,” announced Meg, “We are not operating under a ‘no man left behind’ policy. If you fall out, we will be leaving you.”

“And we may back over you a few times before driving off,” added Alissa.

I was not reassured.

I was charged with photography, starting with this view of the rapidly shrinking chateau.

A couple of scenes from the expansive grounds.

The cart and its passengers, before I jumped on to make sure they wouldn’t go without me.

I took a brief video of the golf cart experience.

My favourite part of the day was visiting Marie Antoinette’s retreat, the Petit Trianon, a mansion with a sculpted English garden and even a faux-country hamlet.

At the hamlet, there was a fish-filled river, with some very scary fish that even chased the ducks away.

We also visited the Grand Trianon, a smaller version of the big chateau still used for entertaining foreign visitors, and I loved the view through the terrace.

Once the sun came out properly (and burned me, despite my factor 50 with reapplication), we waited till the fountains were turned on before heading home.

Musée Carnavalet

2008-07-18T23:55:00.000-07:00

As Meg and I hurtled northwards through the Marais on the perpetually overcrowded 96 bus, practising our French, we let our minds drift to the exciting afternoon ahead.

We had determined to go to the Musée Carnavalet, a museum presenting to visitors the history of Paris through art. The collection is housed in two 17^th century mansions in the Marais, and is particularly known for its 19^th and 20^th century collections, including some particularly fine Art Nouveau.

Admittedly, the museum was free, so we can’t fault them there, but at no point were we informed that the second mansion – containing the 19^th and 20^th century and Revolution collections – was completely closed and none of the collections therein were available for visiting. This was disappointing, and would have affected my decision whether or not to visit; again, I couldn’t help feeling that yet again, the aim was to get as many people in to spend money in the gift shop, and if this affects their view of Paris or disappoints, who cares? It’s the only thing here that constantly irritates.

In any case, the rest of the museum was fascinating, and Meg and I spent a lot of time in a tiny gallery devoted to religious art, where we got (sort of) chatting, in a multi-lingual sense, with the museum attendant. That makes the Musée Carnavalet and the Louvre joint winners of the “best non-threatening museum staff” award, as both had a very pleasant atmosphere.

There was indeed some great art, but I thought the most interesting part (in the absence of fin-de-siécle and 20^th century stuff) was just seeing inside the mansion that was open. There were many very individual rooms, and it was a bit different to the usual stately home proportioned buildings that are usually open to the public. Also, seeing inside a 16^th century Marais home let us into a bit of Parisian history that isn’t as accessible as the Haussmanian.

And I just loved this collection of old shop signs.

After the museum, we sat in the gardens for a while.

Then we headed out onto the streets of the Marais, where we found some pleasant squares and visited the Jesuit church there.

Père-Lachaise

2008-07-17T10:58:00.000-07:00

My day started with disappointment – or rather, the night was occupied with activity that foreshadowed disappointment. No, it wasn’t a general election; I had come down with a stomach bug that I was vaguely aware was going around. When my alarm went off, I wasn’t even asleep. That’s how much it kept me awake. I only slept another 45 minutes or so, after waving goodbye to Kenny with my little finger (a great effort), but I wasn’t getting out of bed just yet. I phoned home for a brief moan and ate a bit of bread for breakfast, just about all I was going to keep down.

I felt better even by mid-morning, as is the trend with this thing, and decided that some time in the afternoon, I was going to go out. Of course, I spent the next three hours trying to pick somewhere less challenging but in an area that I hadn’t explored yet. I succeeded in making a new priority-priority list (to augment the priority list that was created to augment the list), and from this decided to make bus riding a feature, heading down to the Seine and hopping on a bus to the 20e arrondissement (never been there before!) for the world-famous cemetery Père-Lachaise.

These plans never go smoothly, do they? I watched bus 81 depart without me from across the street, and when I got to the bus stop expecting another bus in seven minutes, it promised me a wait of nineteen. I wasn’t in a rush, but that was enough to send me into the metro – except that while I was working out a metro route, the bus arrived. So I returned to the original plan and took the bus down to the Palais Royal stop, where I should have found a stop for the 69 bus. There was no such stop in either direction.

Changing buses became a sightseeing excursion. Sadly, I had been all over this area on Friday looking for the 81 stop (will I never learn?), so the novelty was less novel than it might have been. I gave up opposite the St-Germain l’Auxerrois church and hopped on the 67 instead. This seemed to follow vaguely the same route for a few stops before crossing the river and going more or less precisely where I didn’t want to go. I was giving up hope of coming across the 69 and had the guidebook out, cross referencing the Left Bank section with my list of the list of the list, when at the Hôtel-de-Ville stop, the very last one before the Seine, we stopped at a shelter with a big blue “69” on the side.

I boarded the (very warm) bus a few minutes later and failed to find a seat. This would not have seemed so bad had I not already been queasy again after sitting over the buzzing engine on the 81, but since the first two stops in traffic took 15 minutes, I got worried. Someone finally got off the bus and let me sit down at Bastille, from whence it was a much faster journey. Excuse the digression. I happen to think that every detail of my day is fascinating.

I marched straight through the gates of Père-Lachaise, whereupon a bug flew directly up my nose. After some spluttering, the offending creature was ejected from my nasal region and my exploration could continue, if not quite unhindered by wildlife; the whole place is full of bugs. Not in a nightmarish, horror-film way, but definitely in an “ooh, tasty human!” sense.

A quick tip if you’re tackling Père-Lachaise: take the back gate in. It’s an expansive place, and that alone makes it tiring, but it also runs steeply uphill from the entrance. If you are to have any hope of finding the well-known graves, you’re going to have to climb over things and double back a lot, so get a good map and tackle it from the top. I didn’t do it this way – I had a map, but I started with a vigorous uphill walk for ten minutes or so, which didn’t make me terribly keen to venture downhill again, no matter whose grave I might trip over in the process.

All that said, it’s a fascinating place and shouldn’t be missed on a longer trip. The graves tumble up and down the hills without any decipherable order beyond the rough sector boundaries like a city of the dead. Each tomb is a monument to an individual or a family that has been built with all the character of a house. Gated tombs stand intriguingly ajar, drawing you in with brightly coloured stained glass at the rear, to yield only empty plant pots and cobwebs.

For the morbid, this is all no doubt a veritable theme park of death, and it’s certainly an odd sort of fun, but it does provide interesting fodder for reflection. The shinier tombstones are recent, and there are fresh flowers on most of these, while the tombs of the famous are tended by tourists and admirers who feel an unusual sense of responsibility to their heroes’ mortal remains. In between there are hundreds and thousands of tombs with their doors locked and rusting, cobwebs draped across their doors, glass broken to the elements. This is also a city of the forgotten.

It’s this healthy balance of remembrance and forgetfulness that makes the classic European cemetery so enjoyable to visit. The most human fear seems to be that we will be forgotten. Everything we strive to achieve – significance – screams this. Of course I want to be remembered; I want to be a writer, which is, after all, the most neurotic, narcissistic and insecure vocation. Yet we are all to be forgotten at some point; if we are remembered, our graves are forgotten. If our graves are known, our deeds are obscure. If our deeds are recorded, our personalities will be lost. If anything remains after that, what do we care? We’re dead. Well dead. Totally dead. Kaput. Shuffled off this mortal coil. Washed up, cashed in, and checked out.

All this death talk is giving me a yearning for Hamlet soup. You know, a consommé devoutly to be wished?

Grooooan. Okay, okay.

Of course, nobody comes to Père-Lachaise because they’re interested in the forgotten. We go for the famous people we never knew. Amid all this forgetfulness and personal remembrance, the majority are there in celebration.

In my case, it was darling Oscar who brought me to Père-Lachaise. It’s unusual for me to actively like dead people (so difficult to strike up a conversation), but I certainly like the voice speaking from his work, whether his plays, novel, short stories, poetry or essays. A verbal polymath with incisive insight, and unconventional but genuine integrity, Oscar Wilde sought to live beautifully and generously, if certainly not easily.

Despite his remarkable body of work, during his lifetime one could have forgiven Oscar Wilde for developing a persecution complex, and for this reason it is so nice (I really can’t think of a better word; Oscar, forgive me) to see his memorial, donated by an artist fan and covered – and I mean covered – with lipstick kisses, Wildean quotations and messages from fans. All of this is condoned by the cemetery, of course, and it’s just so Oscar. I went skipping around the cemetery from that point.

My route was somewhat demanding, so I didn’t find all the graves I was curious about. My only two requirements were Oscar Wilde and the commune memorial, but on top of that I found a few others. I didn’t get a picture of Collette’s tomb, though that was the first I saw, near the entrance.

For a publicity boost to kick start burials, the cemetery management had Heloise and Abelard, La Fontaine and Molière moved here. These are the tombs of La Fontaine and Molière:

Just over from Oscar, I had a lost generation moment with Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas.

The only artist I tracked down was Corot:

And a final celebrity in Sarah Bernhardt:

Most of these I found myself nearby in my more purposeful quests. Even so, I was pretty tired by the time I got to the far corner having barely scratched the surface. I made it to the Mur des Fédérés. The glory days of the Commune ended here, in Père-Lachaise itself, where Adolphe Thiers’ ruthless order to kill the remaining supporters culminated in a frantic chase through the graves until they were rounded up and shot against the rear wall of the cemetery. The wall is now a memorial, with many of the key players buried in individual graves facing the wall.

No single event or period haunts Paris like the Commune. The mediaeval is domesticated, the Renaissance papered-over, the Sun King appropriated, the Revolution muted, Napoleon sanitised, 19^th-century skirmishes forgotten (Les Misérables, anyone?), and one must hunt for my beloved Belle Époque. Only Haussman has fingerprints everywhere. The Great War has scarred the city’s churches and is writ large in the Parisian taste for very modern stained glass, the Occupation in living memory and spoken of in hushed tones. Only the ghosts of the Commune walk the streets of Paris unhindered, and they are everywhere; in the cafes of the Left Bank, in the churches of the Right, barricading the streets of Montmartre, in the half-dismantled Imperial monuments, and here in Père-Lachaise.

Running downhill to the memorial, facing each other across the paths, are the memorials to those killed in the resistance and deported to concentration camps.

There are at least eight or nine of these, and I found myself unexpectedly angry. It’s okay; I hadn’t just caught on to what the whole war was about, but over the past couple of years I’ve been an unfortunate witness to a surprising and appalling amount of ridicule of France and the French that inevitably focuses in on the war and covers disingenuously predictable and historically indefensible ground. It’s not something I’m typically tolerant of or laid back about (I think I scared a teen backpacker in Waterstone’s once), but above all I would like to send all those people to Père-Lachaise to stand before these memorials and ask why the loss of these lives leaves them somehow unmoved.

On my way down the hill I happened upon this family tomb.
I did a double-take, as I missed the final "t", and read it as Famille d'Enfer - which I read as "family from hell."

The metro journey back was unexpectedly scenic, with the line running above ground through much of the 20e and 19e arrondissements. I could even see the Canal St-Martin from up there!

Petit Palais

2008-07-16T01:03:00.000-07:00

Meg and I hopped on the bus after class, having decided to go to the Petit Palais, the Beaux-Arts museum known for its fin-de-siécle collection. The museum was one of two pavilions created for the great fair given in Paris in that era, and faces the Grand Palais from across the street. This is a view of the Grand Palais from the other side of the Pont Alexandre III.

And a couple of pictures of the bridge itself.

A great statue of Winston Churchill – I think it’s better than the one in Westminster as a portrait.

The Petit Palais.

Inside, it’s definitely my favourite thing so far. I planned to buy a book with pictures of everything, should such a thing exist, and to my sorrow it did not. So I have a nice book with pictures of some of the key works, but sadly not everything I really loved. Meg and I both adored the religious art at one end of the big gallery on the first floor. There were three works by which we were most impressed, but we’ll get to that.

The special exhibition at the moment is on Flamenco. It was interesting, though despite an appreciation of dance, being a Spanish art enthusiast I would have loved to see more general Spanish subjects. There were free performances of dance and music in and out of the museum all afternoon.

The building is a great exposition building of the fin-de-siécle, and features ceiling rosettes that were painted by established artists and combine the usual fantastical ceiling stuff with scenes that represent Paris.

It makes for an unusual and refreshing atmosphere in the sculpture gallery, particularly, where this sculpture – Woman with Monkey by Camille Alaphilippe – was my favourite.

Speaking of refreshing, the first gallery of paintings was probably my favourite. It was stuffed full of portraiture and different scenes, all freed from the Biedermeyer straitjacket. Alfred Roll chose to depict his subject, genuine master builder Adolphe Alphand who was responsible for the Eiffel Tower’s construction as well as the exposition buildings, in his natural habitat, the building site.

I could probably post half the art gallery on here, but I’m not going to and nor do I have pictures of everything! The religious art at one end of said gallery was fascinating, both well-executed and really unusual in topic, so Meg and I spent some time there. Subjects included the Good Samaritan inspired by Spanish art, Christ in the valley of tears (seen in the background of the close-up), and this sculpture by Louis Ernest Barrias of “The First Funeral,” the burial of Abel by Adam and Eve.

Eve and Abel are classic, Bernini-perfect figures, while (to evoke a sense of the primeval) Adam is recognisably depicted as an ancient Gaul.

And one final sculpture – the fall of Icarus by XXXXXX. I was impressed by how the speed of the fall was captured, and struck by how much I liked the sculpture in the Petit Palais.

Bastille Day: post the third

2008-07-14T12:57:00.000-07:00

I’ll keep the final Bastille Day instalment brief. You don’t want to listen to me; you’re here for the pretty shiny things.

Alone, Kenny having chosen a bath over fireworks, I made for Trocadero late evening, along with the rest of the city, and found myself yet again with an incomparable metro experience, as hundreds of people surged off each metro train and began the steep climb to the surface from one of the deepest metro lines. People were even taking pictures of the scene, so remarkable was it. I, meanwhile, was sandwiched in between two families with buggies, so have no record other than memories which will haunt me into old age.

Quickly dismissing my chances of seeing anything where I hit the surface, I moved swiftly east along the river until I could see over the Palais Chaillot and could see the Eiffel Tower.

Well, the fireworks were spectacular, and undoubtedly the best fireworks I’ve ever laid eyes on, and all I can do is pass on a couple of videos of the event. They’re only a few seconds each, mostly.

Afterwards, we all discovered that for security reasons, they had closed the metro stations closest to the display on the right bank, so I walked east along the river to try the next couple. I soon found that they were also closed, which left my only option heading north to the Étoile. I ended up walking about two miles back and forth at midnight while yawning, and have no need to go back to the 16e…

In case you’re wondering what the combined effect of all these differing merriments was, here’s my bus at 8am the next morning.

Bastille Day: post the second

2008-07-14T12:26:00.000-07:00

After the défilé, Meg and I just about managed to beat the crowds to the metro, and worked our way down to Les Invalides, where we hoped to see at least the church at this massive military hospital complex, before lunching in the garden of the Musée Rodin.

As we ascended from the metro, I espied a military helicopter coming into land in the park, and caught some video for a Daddy-specific purpose. Seeing a second, I switched the camera back on, and caught two further helicopters coming in. Unfortunately, I was standing under a big floppy tree, and we all know what helicopters do to wind currents. About 45 seconds in you can hear me getting whacked in the face.

Les Invalides has a huge golden Dome that can be seen for miles around.

Inside, there is a splendid Louis XIV interior.

This great church of the Sun King was appropriated for Napoleon’s tomb, and he lies in a terribly immodest casket (what would you expect?) in a great hollow in the floor. They call it the crypt, but at any rate it’s a crypt with a skylight.

We have Napoleonic outfits, should you want to see the very coat in which Napoleon stood.

The altar – and, to be honest, with a great big pit dug out of the floor I have to wonder why it even needs an altar any more – is lit through eerily orange windows in each side.

My favourite part, however, was the new memorial to the Great War in one of the alcoves.

Alas, the Rodin garden was closed for the holiday, so all we could do was gaze longingly upon the entry stickers that were plastered over civic property for several hundred metres in all directions.

Instead, we found a shady park in which to sit.

Bastille Day: post the first

2008-07-14T11:13:00.000-07:00

Finally, I got to experience Bastille Day in France!

La fête nationale marks the storming of the Bastille prison, symbolic of the triumph of the people, rather than the release of the seven prisoners, including the mad English ones. While the Bastille is long gone, the event commemorated lives on as a symbol of French democracy in the collective imagination. And France, more than anywhere else, knows how to throw a national party.

Le défilé militaire, the military parade, takes place on the Champs-Elysées and up past Place de la Madeleine, where Meg and I found ourselves.

Despite the predictable crowds (and a ten minute queue just to get out of the metro station), we found a spot where we could just about see, and it was a beautiful day if we had to be hanging around outside. Meg had brought cards so we played a game of Fish, Go Fish, or Poisson (depending on your cultural leanings). In addition, we heard a familiar accent from behind Meg and, using all her friendliness and social skills that I so lack, found that they were a Scottish and English couple who now lived in South Carolina, wanted to go to Provence to see lavender, and had a liking for Victor Hugo. Small world. We chatted to them for a while before the parade got underway.

Even before the marching began, there was a fly past by the air force. Here’s how it looked from where we were.

Thrilling, non?

Here are a few pictures of the marching.

There were several marching songs going on.

The foreign legion (greatly applauded) even brought a band.

At home with Victor Hugo

2008-07-13T14:23:00.000-07:00

The morning (or, more accurately, the bus) took me to Étoile, where I had a lengthy stop during which to contemplate the Arc de Triomphe.

Meg and I met for church at St Michaels, off the Rue Faubourg St Honore, an Anglican church with services mostly in English, but also French and Tamil. It was very welcoming and quite small, with many of the regulars away for the summer. We got to meet a few people from all over, and got more accurate advice on our Bastille Day plans. More to the point, and slightly embarrassingly, I gleaned a couple of titbits of rural wisdom from the sermon that will help my thesis. It was also a really good service and sermon, which is perhaps the main point.

After the service we traced my steps back to the bus stop at which I alighted, in the process seeing a grumpy guard at the US or UK embassy (hard to tell which – they’re right next to each other) yelling at a tourist for taking a picture. Now, you may require permits in several totalitarian regimes, but France is still a free country as far as I know, and since they put the embassies on all the maps and you can’t see in, I don’t see what the problem is. I, for one, have a problem with such institutional flexing and posturing, but restrained myself from giving the man with the gun a good ticking off. I get uppity in the face of those self-possessed individuals of questionable authority.

One bus and a metro later, the seventeenth-century and sophisticated Place des Vosges was ours. Well, ours and some other people’s. Most of the time, I could imagine that putting the benches in the shade would be a good thing, but with a chilly breeze we wanted to be in the sun. We gave in and ate lunch in the shade, while talking about Oscar Wilde; perhaps an odd conversation topic when sitting in front of Victor Hugo’s house.

Oh, yes, Victor Hugo. I’m quite the fan, and this was our destination, his residence for sixteen eventful years and a preserved museum of his time there. It was a bit thin on personal info if you didn’t know much about the author (or we think it was; there was very little information available in English), but the draw of course was the chance to see where he lived. I wanted to see it, but didn’t have terribly high expectations. It’s a house, right? It’s not my preferred era of décor, and how personal could it really be?

Well, I was pleasantly surprised. The rooms were distinctive, and while they obviously belonged to their time period, they pointed more towards individual taste. There was a lot of red, which I liked, and particularly red patterns on white, like in this room.

I was a fan of much of his furniture, such as this patterned bookcase.

This chandelier so totally did not go with the décor, and I would have put it elsewhere, but Meg was right to draw my attention to it as something I would like.

There were many pictures of his family, most notably of his grandchildren, whom he spent the later part of his life tending to after his daughter’s death. This inspired him to write his collection of poetry entitled, “On Being a Grandfather”. There was also the “famous” portrait of VH, famous in the sense that it graces the “author” box on all the recent editions of his books.

I nearly squealed when I saw that his bedroom was deep red with dark wooden furniture, as this is my dream bedroom.

I absolutely loved his wooden furniture. Though, for the record, I think the rest of this room is hideous.

His Chinese room was an eccentric and overstuffed collection of oriental theme park goodness.

His view wasn’t too bad, either. I could live here.

Here’s Meg and Victor, deep in conversation. She’s asking why he needed to digress so much during Les Misérables, he’s explaining why it was essential to the scope of the novel and how it’s just nice to listen to his narrative voice.

As we looked around the last room, someone took a picture with flash, and as I was holding my camera (not remotely near my face, nor even switched on), one of the attendants told me not to take pictures with flash. I must have looked completely bemused as he repeated it more slowly, though still in French, when I began to catch on. And got to meet my target for this week, which was to work in each of my vocab phrases somehow in a conversation with a real French person. The problem with (and beauty of) this approach is that, towards the end of the week, I had to resort to starting random conversations with real French people, to varying results. In any case, this conversation (or argument) swept up the rest. Now, I am aware that I could just have nodded in an irritated manner and proceeded unhindered, but after La Defense I was feeling touchy and in need of vindication. And slightly ready to take on people who were liberally and inaccurately exercising their dubious authority.

In translation, then:

He: No flash!

Me: I don’t have flash on.

He: (sigh) No photos with flash!

Me: Flash is not on.

He: You may not take a photo with flash.

Me: I did not take a photo with flash.

He: You took a photo with that camera; it flashed!

Me: I did not just take a photo.

He: There was a camera flash!

Me: Well, it was not mine!

This proceeded for less than a minute in such a fashion, before he shrugged and said (in English), something like “it’s all the same”, the significance of which I don’t know. In any case, if only to have conversations centred on the phrase, “Pas flashe!”, I thoroughly recommend taking on Parisian museum attendants after this week of museum going; only in the Louvre were they remotely relaxed and un-threatening.

Down at Place de la Bastille, the concert was beginning. We descended into the metro and headed home, Meg with the Fireman’s Ball to come that evening.

Montmartre

2008-07-12T14:22:00.000-07:00

After a relaxing morning, Kenny and I were supposed to be heading with the others to a jazz festival including Jen’s favourite band. By the time the bus came and we were on it, however, I realised I wasn’t going to be fit to sit places and be cheerful, all at once – I’m still feeling quite bashed around from Thursday – so I gracefully diverted and hopped on the Montmartrobus for some easy sightseeing.

I rode the bus up to Place du Tertre, where the artists and tourist gather in a wonderful show of codependence. It’s interesting to walk around and see the art, some of it wonderful, innovative work, or at least skilled, and some mass-produced and overpriced. It’s a lively place, and not so overwhelmed by its tourists that it has lost all atmosphere.

The church of St-Pierre is at one end of the square, and I remembered it from a previous visit. It is a small church, but with character, having had its bombed out windows replaced with legitimately artistic, modern, mosaic-like portrayals of the life of Christ in bold colours.

I remembered trying to light a candle in this church ten years ago and burning my finger. Chuckling inwardly at my youthful stupidity, I dropped some coins in the offering box and picked up a tealight for old times’ sake.

Yes, I stuck my thumb in the flame. Let’s move on, shall we?

There’s quite the view from the top of the Butte.

Having wandered around it, it seemed an appropriate time to do the big sight of Montmartre – the great big cream cake of Sacre Coeur.

It was a case of shuffling inside, really, then being ushered around in a circuit, anywhere but actually into the pew area. There were people in the pews, but it wasn’t apparent how they got in there, except that a man was standing by a velvet rope (I’m not making this up), making value judgments about whether each person was a suitable person to be allowed in to pray or whether they looked too much like a tourist. I’m not kidding – it was a church with bouncers.

I determined to ponder this while looking up at the big Jesus mosaic above the altar. I sat down. I looked up. At this point it became clear to me that from the seats allocated to those on the “tourist” side, I was never going to have a clear view of anything more than Jesus’ left hand. I thought a lot about privilege and monopoly while sitting there. I thought a lot about Gentiles and the chosen. I thought that the chair was pretty uncomfortable and I should get moving again.

One brief but fulfilling conversation with a shopkeeping nun (in French) later, I was outside once more, and went wandering. I covered most of the upper portion of Montmartre.

Montmartre still has a (tiny) vineyard.

I happened upon these street performers who were finishing up Waltz II from Shostakovich’s Jazz Suite, one of my favourites, and for a few coins they were happy to play it again!

I happened to overhear one tourist remarking to another that humans are rather ill-suited to the task of walking downhill, and I spent the remainder of the downward portion of my journey pondering this.

Back on the Montmartobus, I was reminded that this was not necessarily a city in which the urge to hang back was seen as mere politeness – a very nice old lady patted my hand and said, “C’est terminus,” obviously assuming I wasn’t getting off the bus.

La Defense and the Louvre (a.k.a. hardened criminals)

2008-07-11T14:14:00.000-07:00

Today, Meg and I took on the system. In short, we fought the law, and, as we should have been musically warned, the law won.

We wanted to do something modest in preparation for an evening at the Louvre, so we thought taking the train out to La Defense was a good option. Silly we.

Consulting the official RATP metro map, we determined that La Defense was in Zone 2, and our passes were valid for the journey. The RER took us out there from the centre in a matter of minutes, and we ascended to our nearest exit. If only we could find it… we tried a very foul smelling lift, two escalators and considered jumping a turnstile before returning to the platform and finding the right one.

We strode confidently to the line of ticket inspectors, without our scam antennae registering (shame on us). They gleefully checked our travel passes and our guard informed us that we were not authorised to travel to La Defense. We whipped out the metro map and asked for an explanation, which was somewhat hard to apprehend.

Guard: “This is zone 3.”
Us: (with map) “It says zone 2 here.”
Guard: “No, the RER is ALL zone 3.”
Us: “The entire RER is zone 3?”
Guard: “Yes.”
Us: “So, Invalides, Pont de l’Alma; these are all zone 3?”
Guard: “No, that is zone 1.”
Us: “Where are we?”
Guard: “Zone 3.”
Us: “But the map says it’s zone 2.”
Guard: “That’s the metro map.”
Us: “The RER is shown in zone 2 on the metro map.”
Guard: “This is zone 3. Look at the RER map.”
Us: “It’s in zone 2 on the RER map.”
Guard: “No, no, if you had a BIG map” - (expansive gesture) - “you would be able to see that it is in zone 3.”
Us: “This is YOUR map!”
Guard: “Meh.”
Us: “So, can we get out?”
Guard: “You pay me a fine and I give you a ticket and you can go outside, see la Grande Arche, enjoy la Defense…” (really trying to sell the experience)
Us: “Then what?”
Guard: “What?”
Us: “How do we get back into Paris?”
Guard: (Gallic shrug) “Ngh, ce n’est pas possible.”
Us: “It’s not possible??!”
Guard: “No, this is zone 3, your tickets are for zone 1 and 2. Ce n’est pas possible.”
Us: “What about the metro?”
Guard: “Ce n’est pas possible.” (I was ready to resort to violence at this point, and even Meg looked ready to deck the guy)
Us: “Can we take line 1 into Paris?”
Guard: “Oh. Yes. Now, usually we charge €25 for each person, but for you I will charge only one fine.”
Us: “…?”

The sad thing is, our experience of Paris has been pretty positive, and I really like the place and have enjoyed meeting the locals, but this left us with the distinct impression that the city was willing to misguide visitors to get as much money out of them as possible. And it’s not like it’s a cheap city to start with. I’m writing a letter.

La Defense is a large area of modernity in a very historic city, with the skyscrapers and big businesses clustered around a huge archway, also filled with office space. Here’s Meg looking winsome.

La Defense was not worth €12.50 each, but it was on the list, and we did want to go, for reasons of comprehensiveness. It may only be 19 years old, but the Grande Arche looks like it could do with some love.

There’s a view back into Paris along the Champs Elysées, with the Arc de Triomphe bite size in the distance.

This is the view that people come to see, but I thought the view the other way was more interesting, and gave us a fleeting sense of life beyond Paris in the Île de France.

Behind us, Paris; before us, all France!

So, naturally, we got back on the metro and I took my computer to Meg’s to upload some photos. Ah well. Conquest can wait.

In the evening we went to the Louvre, which is open late and free to under-26s on Friday.

Meg got in last week as they were waving younger people through, but unfortunately they were checking IDs so she decided not to pay to get in. I went on alone.

I won’t bore you with everything I saw. I’m going to make a Louvre photo album for those interested in some of the archaeological stuff I saw. I wanted to see the Spanish collection, which lay at the other end of the massive Italian collection. My route took me through a gallery with a rather impressive ceiling.

I also wandered by the Mona Lisa.

I have to admit, I still don’t quite get it, but this time I saw the Mona Lisa (in rather better surroundings these days) I noticed two things. One is that the colour is better than it looks in reproductions. The second is that, at least “in person”, the painting does seem to exude a serenity that is easy to miss without seeing it close up. Generally, I like it more now than I did.

I saw the Venus de Milo again, entirely by accident – it’s hard to miss, though I wasn’t actively trying to avoid it or anything.

The Louvre has one of the best – possibly the second best – Egyptian collections in the world, and as it was en route to the Levant collection, I toured those galleries.

Of course, I was really excited (in that sad way) to see real artefacts from Tyre, Sidon, Byblos, Phonecia, and all those places. I was struck by the great age – three to four thousand years – of these miniscule pieces of Egyptian jewellery, and the grander necklaces and headdresses, as it’s hard to imagine them actually being worn by people that long ago. They had a huge collection of Persian stuff, including walls and walls full of decoration from the palace of Darius and even entire pillars from Susa and Persepolis.

I emerged from deep within the pyramid (again, Dan Brown, the numerology of the panes of glass was off) to a wild and fascinating sky, and a not-deserted but serene square. I was reluctant to leave but did eventually – not before taking a good number of pictures.

I had a hard time finding a bus, so it took me an hour to get home, after walking halfway up to the opera to find a bus stop, discovering my bus had terminated for the weekend, catching one to Gare St-Lazare and taking the metro from there.

Les Arts Decoratifs

2008-07-10T14:13:00.000-07:00

I made a mental note today to beware of pride – I got a “très bien” from my French teacher this morning. I thought I’d share a couple of brief videos from my commute, to demonstrate why I prefer the bus.

Discovered a new sandwich place around the corner from L’Institut and – even more importantly – discovered their olive and bacon focaccia. After handing on the remnants to a hungry Jen and sending her and Kenny off to Sèvres-Babylone on a minor pilgrimage, Meg, Tina and I set forth on the bus to meet Alissa at Les Arts Decoratifs, the design museum in the northwesterly arm of the Louvre. The reason for our visit was a much anticipated exhibition on the colour red, “Aussi rouge que possible,” a subject very dear to me and to Alissa.

We found the bus stop, checked the map, verified the direction of travel and awaited our autobus. Said bus arrived, and we boarded, warm with the certainty of our swift arrival. The driver didn’t quite seem to empathise with those for whom an emergency stop might be somewhat inconvenient, for example, those of us standing and clinging to poles. Most people just merged with theirs unfortunately, but, thanks to my piano-honed death grip, I swung wild-eyed around the pole, wrenching my already painful knees in the process, and skilfully avoided hitting my head on the plexiglass partition. My hands held on as the backlash came. I slid down around the pole again and crashed into the other side of the plexiglass. Oops. Initially, I attributed the pain to my knees, but soon discovered that my shoulders, elbows and even wrists had borne the brunt.

To add figurative insult to literal injury, it came to my attention shortly thereafter that the stops were not ones I recognised. In fact, the first stop I did recognise was Denfert Rochereau, and I knew that was in Montparnasse, which is in the fourteenth, some way south of where we started. I ushered us off the bus at this stop and we looked for another to catch a bus going back – of course, since this bus had stopped at the bus stop we definitely needed, who was to say that this bus would be any better? A few miles later, we boarded the correct bus and made it to the Louvre, albeit with a few Marilyn Monroe moments over the metro grates. See, this is why I wasn’t wearing a skirt in the city.

Our first port of call was, of course, the red exhibition. I was disappointed that the text on the boards was really interesting but, vocab-wise, just beyond my total comprehension. France is as bad as – or worse than – the UK in not providing museum texts in other languages. To relax us, the woman attending the upper level obviously thought we were suspicious (the only people in the gallery) and tried to follow us the whole way along. Despite this, and though it was small, I enjoyed the exhibition which covered the natural origins of red – we sacrifice the cochineal beetle again – resonances in art, and every kind of design, as long as it involved red. This encompassed mediaeval tapestry, the London bus, beautiful red-draped chairs from this decade and, um, Elmo.

In fact, the museum as a whole was enjoyable, if slightly on the thin side as go actual exhibits, with the key problem being our complete inability to find our way around. And it wasn’t us. I had to get in lifts to even find out what floor I was on, there were no signs beyond (conflicting) lists of each floor’s contents and every level was dominated by huge areas of dead space with at least seven interconnecting doors across it. Bizarre. So it was one of the worst presented museums I’ve been in, which was a shame as its topic and collection were interesting.

I didn’t want to get too deep into the older stuff in case I never made it out, so I left Meg in the middle ages and made a beeline for the art nouveau. Via the toy gallery.

Naturally. I’m not all that into French stuff, compared to the Glasgow School or the Secessionists and Jugendstil, as it seems to me to be one level of abstraction below the others. There are more literal flowers and tree trunks in the Belgian and French art nouveau, compared to stalks and contours elsewhere. They did, however, have a Guimard bedroom suite which made me happy. As I ogled, Tina and Alissa caught up with me. How did they know where to find me?

The museum had collections of Art Deco and several small floors (in the attic) of furniture design arranged by decade of the 20^th century. We were sad not to be allowed to touch things, but they provided a single room with a few chairs that could be sat on.

Once we were done with the looking and the sitting, the next challenge was to find the exit. The museum, as I have said, is not well signposted, and none of the lifts go to all the levels, so this was far more difficult than it should have been. The final blow came when we found the only exit from our section and it funnelled us out onto the street a couple of hundred metres from the shop. To get to the shop we had to re-enter the museum through the main entrance (security checking our bags again). Something went wrong here.

Problems aside, it was an interesting museum and I liked the redness. There was also a great view over the Tuileries from the upper levels.

To finish off the day, I watched this delightful sunset from our kitchen.

Madeleine and the ballet

2008-07-09T14:12:00.000-07:00

So tired! And yet I woke absurdly early, naturally. My body just doesn’t know when it needs sleep.

These are our first words to each other this afternoon - contrast our experiences with the teaching at L’Institut:

Meg: “My teacher made me recite everyone’s names and it was really embarrassing.”
Alissa: “My teacher made us watch Mr Bean and had us describe what he was doing.”
Me: “My teacher threatened to cut my head off, then he stole my pen.”

I think I’m in the right class…

I gathered together my Meg, and we launched forth on the metro up to La Madeleine.

When we alighted and ascended (as one tends to do on the metro) I was desperate to find the Lavirotte-designed public toilets on the eastern side of the square. It wasn’t hard, as the entrance was lavishly tiled (assuming, of course, that one can tile lavishly). Sadly, we were unable to take pictures of the interior, but we can confirm that it was a very pretty public toilet, if a public toilet and not a masterpiece of Art Nouveau (in my humble opinion). Still, I felt it was a good mix of functionality and flourish.

From the steps of the Madeleine church – covered with flowers – one has a great view down to Place de la Concorde and the Assemblée Nationale opposite, which mirrors the façade of the church. The dome at Les Invalides also peeks over the rooftops.

Madeleine is a favoured venue for society weddings – and it knows it. It has a bit of a severe atmosphere, as it was designed as Napoleon’s temple to his army, based on Greco-Roman temples (hence its north-south orientation) and was dedicated as a church when completed after Napoleon lost to the Prussians and thought better of the army glorification. It does the “stern church” thing well, which really gets up my nose, and I was offended on behalf of Meg’s shoulders that she had to put her cardigan over her sleeveless top. I feel that God’s seen Meg’s shoulders often enough and if it’s suitable for wearing on one side of the church door there’s no reason to stop anyone wearing it on the other. So it’s possible Madeleine and I just got off on the wrong foot.

The huge doors were supposed to show the ten commandments – and they were definitely commandments – but there were only eight scenes. We never quite got to the bottom of this, and would welcome any insight.

Inside, the orientation of the church made the light unusual, and I thought unsettling. There was a lot of dark marble, and where there would normally be chapels, you could tell that the original design had been for imperial art as there were large stone alcoves in which plain white statues were placed. It’s funny – I remember Madeleine in black and white, or more accurately brown and white, but definitely monochrome, and that’s the way it was designed.

The organ is reputed to be one of the best in Paris, and Saint-Saëns and Fauré were both organists at Madeleine at one point.

So, no, I didn’t really take to Madeleine, though it was interesting. We circumnavigated looking for the apostles, whom we found, and for mouthwatering displays of food in the square’s upmarket shops, which we didn’t, alas.

Home to relax, I got changed and read some more of Alexandre Dumas fils’ book, on which the ballet was based: La Dame aux Camelias, or Camille as it’s usually rendered.

After meeting at the bus stop, Tina and I ate just across from the Opera Garnier, one of my favourite buildings in the world and by far my favourite in Paris.

We ate pasta and crème brulée while waiting for Meg and Alissa to appear on the opera steps, where we met them to go inside. I think it was a good deal; €20 for seats in the opera boxes on the third level, and we got to tour the building before taking our seats, when one would normally pay €8 for the privilege. We got a ballet too.

The ballet was really enjoyable, with wonderful costumes and music by Chopin. My only complaint was that they got the date wrong on the sign in act 1: the estate sale did not take place on 16 March 1847 in the book, it was 12 March. Just to clear that up.

During the second interval, Meg went on a phantom hunt after I made the mistake of telling her that box number five was the phantom’s box. She returned, thankfully, having taken a picture. Of the box, not the phantom.

All in all, it was a great evening at the ballet.

On the Rive Gauche

2008-07-08T14:11:00.000-07:00

After class on Tuesday, I had decided to do a couple of things that had been at the top of my priority list for a few days. Meg and Kenny both liked the sound of my plan, and so we all headed for the nearest suitable bus stop, my newly beloved mode of transport featuring heavily in my plan. We had agreed to meet at the girls’ place for a meal with a former St Andrews professor at 6, so we made the most of the intervening time.

Up at Saint-Michel (less rain this time), we ran into an interesting political rally, about the problem of visas for immigrant workers.

After a book shop stop (grammar book for Meg, Camille – the ballet we were just about to see – for me) and a food stop (we discovered a pleasant and cheap Greek/Turkish place, just off the tourist drag), we hit Saint-Severin, an appealing left-bank church. It was light and spacious, with a “forest” of pillars behind the altar and modern stained-glass windows representing the sacraments in colour!

Best of all, there was an American youth choir from Iowa rehearsing as we arrived, and they sounded great. As we considered leaving, they began the concert proper, so we spent a very pleasant half an hour to forty minutes listening to their variety of pieces. Here’s a brief clip or two.

See also Meg’s post for more on the choir.

Not far from St-Severin is the famous bookshop Shakespeare & Company – responsible for publishing in days gone by (such as James Joyce’s Ulyssees) and now an iconic left-bank centre for the literate, English-speaking Parisian.

We spent a bit of time there, with Meg and Kenny revelling in the children’s section upstairs.

Then, outside, we hunted for the oldest tree in Paris (identification uncertain) which is reputedly to be found in the garden of St-Julien-le-Pauvre. Sadly, the church was closed at that time of day, so we’ll have to return, and we decided to head over the Seine to the Île-St-Louis.

On the way, we walked across the eastern tip of the Ile de la Cité and saw the underground Memorial to the Deportation, commemorating the 200, 000 French people deported east during the war.

The Ile St-Louis was part of the original mediaeval centre of Paris, and still quite separate in character from the rest of the city. It is small, however, so we covered most of the island quite quickly, before finding the local church of St-Louis.

Inside, I decided that this was probably my favourite church so far, aesthetically. It was light and simply designed, with white and gold (I like that in a church) and vaguely modern side chapels.

After the church, we quit the island and after an absurdly long commute by bus and metro (which did, after all, involve a fair bit of hanging around at Place de la Bastille), we got to see the girls’ flat in the 18e, a former shop and generally quirky space, and had a good evening.

Lundi Church-Hopping

2008-07-07T14:10:00.000-07:00

We learned a new word in French class today: “une blague”. It means “a joke”, which is what our teacher was doing on Friday when he told us we would have a test this Monday. He wanted to make sure we studied. Then he told us we would have a test on Thursday, and maybe he was kidding, but maybe…

After class, I needed to prioritise the laundry (and do actual work while doing it), which meant not only doing it but shopping for the necessary soaps and things. Sigh. A kink in the sightseeing schedule was necessary, and I planned to hop off the metro, see Madeleine and head on home. However, the general plan to wander to the nearby Saint Sulpice was just too tempting, and one church near a convenient metro station wouldn’t kill me.

A short bookshop stop yielded grammar books for some, a very useful complete map of Paris in portable form (with bus map!), and afforded my new zebra wallet the opportunity to fall apart. Sulk.

The church was particularly pleasant, and, I decided, the one with the nicest atmosphere of those I had been in so far.

The very first side chapel has a large Delacroix painting of Jacob and the angel, in which were gathered many apparent students of the French romantics. I don’t have anything against them, but I would much rather have wandered the rest of the church. I do like the energy in Delacroix’s work, though.

We saw the brass line through the church, somewhat inaccurately immortalised by Dan Brown in the da Vinci Code.

It is NOT the Paris meridian, which actually passes outside the church, it is NOT any so-called “Rose Line”; it was a sort of light calendar. A window long since blocked up, alas, would shine a beam of light onto the line at noon (I think) and at the winter solstice the golden globe on the top of the obelisk would glow (in the sun, not mystically). Just to clear that up.

Apparently Catherine Deneuve lives on Place St-Sulpice. Sadly for her, her view until 2012 is likely to consist of scaffolding and building equipment as they continue to renovate, and in some cases even finish, the church. Even so, we found a way through to the fountain at the centre, and Alissa had the opportunity to scare some pigeons.

We all decided that while we were very busy and important, we could probably manage another church, especially one as close as St-German-des-Pres. You see how this works? I’m sure entire days in Paris are lost this way.

St-Germain-des-Pres is a hotch-potch of styles, as one of the oldest churches in Paris, subject to the usual occasional updates and additions, with a soupçon of war damage. I liked it; I liked the bold colours and patterns, and to date, this is probably my favourite French church in terms of design, though St-Sulpice still has the edge on atmosphere.

Outside, I went looking for a Picasso sculpture dedicated to Apollinaire that was supposed to be around the church. I was unsure whether to expect a cubist or more naturalist work, and at first I thought I had found a cubist Picasso until I realised it was a Zadkine.

Picasso was nearby, in the garden next to the church.

Also nearby were the dual cafés of the intellectual XXth century, Les Deux Magots and Flore. Think some of the beats and add Simone de Beauvoir.

Then it was the metro, and after banishing a weird stalker-type person with the clever use of my friendly but intimidating grocer, I got to the supermarket and cleaned the clothes!

Free Museum Day!

2008-07-06T12:27:00.001-07:00

On free museum day, I was surprised to find the metro almost deserted, but certainly not sorry. It was a relaxing trip, even if I missed a train that meant I was worried about being late for Meg at 9. Thankfully, I arrived at the Musée d’Orsay at 9.10 and Meg was just behind me, so it all worked well. We joined the queue, which was long, but as soon as the doors opened it moved quickly. It was a good day for the museum, as it turned out, as we didn’t have to wait for everyone to buy tickets, though the revolving door nearly crushed me when it turned out that no one was moving forward on the other side.

Death averted yet again, we found ourselves in the main hall of the Musée d’Orsay, surrounded by great sculpture.

The galleries progress more or less chronologically, starting on the ground floor, with most of the impressionists on the top floor. We toured the pre- and early-Impressionists, including some very pleasant Pisarro and Sisley landscapes.

Upstairs, there were far too many great paintings to take in properly, and I admit I was a bit overwhelmed, but we kept a good pace and systematically covered everything, which gave us time to concentrate on the ones we really liked or found interesting. I finally saw my Caillebotte painting of the floor planers, which is possibly my favourite impressionist painting if I really had to pick one. I was struck again by how much better Monet is in the flesh – I love his work but always feel you need to see the real thing to get any intensity or depth. My favourite of his in the museum was the sunset over the houses of parliament in London. We spent a bit of time in the Van Gogh gallery as we are both Van Gogh enthusiasts. Unfortunately, so is the rest of the world, so it was a crowded scene over which blared the less than artistically relaxing warnings to watch for pickpockets.

My favourite painting in the Musée d’Orsay, or at least the one (given its relative obscurity) that I would go just to see, is Eugène Burnand’s ‘Les disciples Pierre et Jean courant au sepulchre le matin de la Résurrection’ – The disciples Peter and John run to the tomb on the morning of the resurrection. I love their expressions and the colour, and I remembered it from ten years ago because of their vivid expressions and the feeling that these were plausible people, not just pietistic representations.

The last stop was the Art Nouveau section, which holds a few good pieces of design art and a complete panelled room by Charpentier – I think. There are Lalique pieces and a few by Guimard, including his Metro sign.

I grabbed a sandwich outside, and we perched on a wall near the Seine to eat. Some giraffes went by on the roof of some cars. Nobody else blinked.

Meg and I examined the near-impossibility of getting to the Pompidou Centre easily – changing metro lines twice was necessary, thrice entirely possible – and decided to go one stop on the RER to the Museum of the Middle Ages instead.

We alighted at Saint-Michel, where it took us ten minutes just to find our way to the surface, and breathing the air again, walked the couple of blocks to the museum. Having spent the past week looking at “two for €1!!!” deals on postcards – which just isn’t going to cut it – I nearly leapt into the air at the sight of a stand promising ten postcards for €1. Meg decided to get some too, I added a small, metal and purple Eiffel Tower to my ten, decided to go for twenty instead, and as we laid culture aside for only a moment, naturally it was in this state of artistic indignity that one of St Mary’s illustrious scholars happened upon us. The very first things I bought in Paris that were not edible! (Or hand soap)

We were all heading to the museum, so we located the entrance, which was a large mediaeval gate (of course) leading to a courtyard. We thought we didn’t have to queue, but when had we elbowed our way through the gift shop – ooh! – to the entrance proper, we were told that we needed to get a receipt so they had visitor statistics. That done, the first galleries were stuffed with Islamic art from North Africa and Spain, which is just the kind of thing I like. I’m not always into the middle ages in art, so this definitely won me over. They had stained glass from various chapels, including some original fragments from the Sainte-Chapelle, and a considerable number of icons, statues and tapestries. We spent a while trying to come up with a narrative for the unicorn ones, and I still call them unicorn tapestries, even though we all agreed this was unfair as the lion always appeared with the unicorn and was largely ignored. This may have been somehow related, however, to the fact that some of the unicorns looked surprisingly like goats with horns attached to their forehead. Not the majestic creature we have perhaps been led to believe. In the middle of these various scenes, each sharing the animal motifs – plus those of monkeys, lambs and crying bunnies – there were women in different outfits, culminating in a spectacle of early fashion, complete with her own tent, treasure chest and designer lapdog, prompting Meg to draw a comparison with Paris Hilton. Who, as far as we know, is yet to appear on a tapestry.

There were some badges bearing the St Andrews cross and fleur de lys, which appear to be pilgrim badges and we are very intrigued by the possibility that they are indeed from the St Andrews pilgrimage. There are fleurs de lys all over St Andrews – including St Mary’s and Holy Trinity, I believe – and the figures on the badges looked very like those on the town crest. We plan to find out when we get back.

There was even a private chapel – we decided we’d like one each – and a rich selection of sculpture and altar screens. It was a fascinating museum dedicated to a period of art that I don’t typically find all that fascinating, and I declare it to be an excellent collection.

I was really sore, despite all the movement, and didn’t think I could cope with the three changes on the metro to get to the Pompidou centre, so I left that for another day and Meg went on alone.

A pied in the 7th arondissement

2008-07-04T11:51:00.000-07:00

Solo exploration in my commute yielded the reward of an extra escalator at Saint-Lazare, which leaves the staircase quota for the change at one, maybe two staircases before the five million steps at Rennes.

Our teacher (dubbed by my friends, "the cute one"), started today by pointing out the Americans in the class and humming the Star Spangled Banner until they caught on. We all seemed to have forgotten it was American Independence Day (most of us had the excuse of not actually being American), and it was quite funny to watch realisation dawn. Slowly.

Fun class with a lot of language practice, and I can feel that my brain is starting to shake the dust off and get used to the school schedule again. One of my classmates suspects that Stephane is not really French and may even be American, partly because he makes fun of the Americans (in a nice way). I suspect this just indicates that he is French, but time will tell. It’s an intriguing theory.

I was one of les médécins sent through to the opposite classroom for the oral exercise, and it was nice to break out of the usual classroom-hall mould (already!). The Brazilians actually got the ecossaise thing because their word for Scotland is pretty similar to the Spanish (Escocia), which is pretty similar to the French, so it was nice not to have to explain. One of my classmates had not one imaginary problem but several – head, abdominal, legs, one then both feet – was taking medication for all of them and I had to admit to our teacher that I didn’t know what to do for her as she had so many problems! It doesn’t sound hilarious, but we were in stitches. (oh, ho ho)

The teacher announced un petit cocktail after class, which got everyone excited until he added that they were cocktails sans alcohol. We were even less thrilled about the test on Monday, but it should be fine. In reality, there was quite a lot of alcohol in the cocktails.

Lunch was a bargain. I popped down to the cafeteria to get une baguette jambon buerre, like the day before, but was pleasantly surprised to find that instead of that they had ham and cheese, and – even better – they were selling off the sandwiches. A Friday thing? I don’t know, but they gave me a second baguette for €1. At €1.80, I already think the cafeteria is a good deal, but two baguettes for €2.80 is really good.

From Solferino, we found Rue Sainte-Dominique which cuts across the seventh to the Eiffel Tower (still quite a way away, but we saw a few things en route). Here is an ominous and not-at-all posed picture as we set off.

We passed the French Ministry of Defence, and a patisserie. One was more interesting than the other.

Happened upon a large church, the church of Sainte Clotilde. Was large and sort of neo-Gothic. Austere was how the English language guide described it, but in reality the stone was light and the interior felt more airy than austere. We found, in a stained glass window, St Hilarious (okay, it was actually St Hilarius, but it’s still funny). What was hilarious was the grim expression on his face. Saint Hilarious is henceforth adopted as the patron saint of this trip.

Next stop: Rue Cler. To get there we crossed the park north of Les Invalides and south of the Pont Alexandre III, with the great glass dome of the Grand Palais looming across the Seine.

We paused in a park attached to the grounds of Les Invalides (well, we walked in a circle inside it, stopping briefly on one of the benches) before orientating ourselves with the help of some big metal tower-like thing (imagine the Blackpool Tower, only bigger).

Finding an appealing café (with excellent black felt-patterned wallpaper) right next to the Rue Cler, we stopped for drinks before we could gather the strength for the sophisticated shopping of said street. The Americans toasted Independence Day and I was quietly British. We took the opportunity to examine the guidebook and, in Alissa’s case, to pull out and annotate her copies of my list and Jen’s. We mused on the sewer tour and I responded to Jen’s (I thought) straightforward question – what was the difference between the sewers and the catacombs – with the entirely reasonable answer that one is filled with raw sewage and the other isn’t. Alissa is now convinced I have a zipped folder of mean person inside me somewhere. (Extracting files…) I merely note, in response, that we had to drag her away from the flower shops all afternoon. I don’t know what bearing that has on anything, but it seems like something a mean person would say.

Jen found some dumplings, Tina and Alissa decided to share some cheese from la fromagerie, and I ogled the trolleys much favoured by the Parisian supermarket shoppers – but these were in vivid pattern or even (ooh la la) in bright and shiny gold! I was not willing to spend €43 on something I couldn’t take on Ryanair, and restrained myself from even going into the expensive linen shop, but we had fun walking up and down a stretch with stalls and outdoor stands while we followed cute puppies that we noticed on the way.

The Avenue Bosquet was intimidatingly affluent, and we were obviously riff-raff, but it was enjoyable nonetheless. We were very close to the Eiffel Tower by this point, so it was no use for navigation, and we entrusted our destination and persons to Jen, who had the map. At the end of a residential street we spotted Eiffel’s grand projet and soon arrived directly below the pointy thing.

After standing around for a while and looking up, while trying to pretend we didn’t speak English (it becomes necessary), we took some pictures, many at crazy angles, and I nearly fell over when I was crouching and leaned on the amazing moving bollard.

Then, put off by the crowds but happy to have seen the tower at close quarters (it’s my intention to go up one evening), we crossed the street, passed through a water-spraying mini carnival – with the worrying sign “new safe ice cream – special heat treatment” in neon – relived carnival-related blue-vomit incidents, and walked along the river to the RER station.

Jardin du Luxembourg and the Pantheon

2008-07-03T12:59:00.000-07:00

After class and a sandwich on Wednesday, Meg, my classmate Su Han and I decided to walk over to the Pantheon in the Latin Quarter. Our route took us through the Jardin du Luxembourg, the main park for this part of Paris, between the 5th and 6th arrondissements. It is known for its sculpture, both its permanent collectionof civic pieces and its installations. I was most intrigued by this creation: legs in a plant pot. I really like the plant pot, but I can't quite get past the legs.

Less confusing and more pleasing to my eye was the giant head on one side of the central fountain and lawn.

The centrepiece of the Jardin is the Palais du Luxembourg, a former royal residence (and sometime prison - so goes the history of most Parisian palaces). In front of it there is a large pond on which the children and young at heart sail remote controlled boats. You can hire these for 30-60 minutes, so I see an outing in our future!

You may notice, as we did not, the large grey cloud hovering over the palace. Well, as we neared the Pantheon the heavens opened and within a few seconds I was soaked through again.

I began to dry off inside, and was surprised that I really didn't remember the interior much at all. It was bigger and lighter than I thought, even with the rain outside. If you are looking for some deeper reflection than 'big' and 'light', I recommend Meg's post on the Pantheon.

The centrepiece of the Pantheon is the replica of Foucault's pendulum, his pioneering and ingenious experiment that demonstrated the rotation of the earth.

Although Meg and I agreed we would love to see the original floor-to-gallery windows that made the Pantheon so unusual, I enjoyed the paintings that replaced them. This is a luminous depiction of St Genevieve's death.

There were paintings of war, kings and saints. My favourite paintings were the above and the depiction of Joan of Arc. Downstairs in the lower level they buried many great French artists, thinkers and heroes. Here's the late Victor Hugo (he keeps popping up).

Having spent hours in the Pantheon, we were done for the day, and walked through the Latin Quarter, past the Sorbonne, to the metro.

Paris... when it drizzles

2008-07-02T13:08:00.000-07:00

Il pleut.

I welcomed the rain as a harbinger of cooler weather, while Meg mourned; it may just be impossible for us to be happy concurrently. The girls marched on while Kenny and I sat around with Val at L'Institut, then took the metro to catch up with them at Saint Michel. This is the way to do that. And here is Kenny with his namesake, at the Fontaine Saint Michel.

Passing the iconic Shakespeare & Co bookshop (on the List!), we were heading for a good falafel place. Unfortunately, when we got there, it wasn't. There, that is. The walkers were famished so rather than try to agree on something else, we let Jen lead us to another falafel place she knew, this time not in the Latin Quarter, but in the Jewish district in the Marais, which was a bit of a trek. However, the falafel at the end was a worthwhile reward. We ate at L'As du Fallafel, "always imitated, never equalled", according to the sign, which was recommended by none other than Lenny Kravitz. Honest; there was a sign in the window.

It was absolutely pouring by the time we made our way back to our original church target, St-Gervais-des-Protais, and half of me was soaked to the skin while the other half was definitely damp.

St-Gervais is an interesting church; one of the oldest in Paris (and Jen's favourite), it has something from every era, up to the present day. There is a very new window over the organ, and several bits are from the 20s after a German shell hit the church in the Great War. Meg has a bit more on the church here.

Soaked and all walked out, I went home and promptly collapsed for two hours before we had Tina over.

The Ile de la Cite

2008-07-01T11:50:00.000-07:00

Getting the metro from our stop at 8.15 is not something we plan to repeat. Two packed trains went by before we decided we needed to just push our way on and get crushed with the other sardines. Then, because Kenny knew the way from the Saint Sulpice metro station, we stayed on the train until Montparnasse Bienvenüe, where we hiked four to five miles to change lines. Montparnasse will not be on my travel plans again any time soon.

It was hot down in Saint Sulpice, so I arrived all sweaty for my oral exam, more than one hour after we departed Guy Môquet. It went fine, however, with me not being too impressive. My comprehension is good in French, and my reading is fine, but I wanted to work on the oral without a ton of new stuff coming at me from all angles.

Then Kenny, Tina and I hung out in the courtyard and waited for those arriving for tests at eleven. Kenny had gone for water and Tina was taking her test when former St Mary's student and current Institut Catholique student Val appeared.

Here are a couple of views of the main courtyard.

The girls arrived in good time and we spent the rest of the morning sitting in the shade, exploring the campus and registering. I therefore registered as a student at L’Institut in three hours, whereas registering at St Andrews has taken more than three months…

Everyone else (sob) had bursaries to collect so we dashed up to the finance office, from whence there was a good view of the rooftops and the central courtyard. I have a picture of Meg that looks like she’s saying, “I’m gonna learn French. I’m gonna learn it good.”

After lunch, Meg and I struck forth for Notre Dame, leaving everyone else in the courtyard. I should acknowledge that Meg has written a far more detailed description of what we saw and has put the effort into learning all the history, so for an enlightening experience, I heartily recommend her post here.

And now, I waffle. I mean, begin.

We emerged, sun lotion free, alas, from the Cité métro station into the blazing sunshine. Armed with our wits (patchy), our beauty (considerable) and our guides (Blue and Rough), we found ourselves in Place Lapine, which is dominated by the headquarters of the police, and prompted Meg to make several uncharitable suggestions as to why this was an appropriate place for me.

Avoiding a few mad cyclists, we were presently in view of Notre Dame. Or, Notre Dame was in view of us. One of those. We think we were pretty. We took pictures. I’m not going to show you mine. I will, however, show you Notre Dame.

Anyway, such is the addled brain of une étudiante etranger in Paris.

Despite the disappointment of a Quasimodo-less Notre Dame, I had to thank Victor Hugo for his impassioned defence of the eponymous façade in his novel, as its present condition is greatly improved from that of his era, and largely due to his publicising of its state (I believe he would say “vandalism”). I also read it recently on my way through the novel, so this time when I came face to façade with Notre Dame de Paris, I had a far greater understanding of the layers and alterations.

Ten years ago, Notre Dame was the first sight I saw in Paris, and while I remember extremely well the moment we rounded a corner on the left bank and straight ahead, behind several postcard stalls (by which I was, shamefully and inevitably, distracted), I remembered very little of the interior, apart from it being on the dark side.

Venturing inside, we completed a circuit of the sanctuary, while making a mental note of the treasury, as Meg’s Blue Guide promised some exciting relics including a crown of thorns and a piece of the True Cross. I loved the stained glass in the huge rose windows.

There was an interesting frieze of the resurrection appearances.

Opposite this was an intriguing resurrection scene. Is it Jesus? A king? What does the “H” mean?

When we worked our way back to the treasury, we saw a number of shiny things and appealing modern vestments, along with the occasional monstrance, but there was little sign of the promised relics. We ran into a young American who was also wondering where the cross and crown were, but none of us had a clue. On our way out, we met him again and he told us, having asked, that they were only on view on Fridays. We all agreed that it would seem more honest to give this information before enticing tourists inside with the promise of excitement in return for their €3. Especially churchy people, one would hope.

We agreed to come back some time for mass, and also made a mental note that there was some kind of sound and light show every night except Friday at 9.30 that would be worth investigating.

I was expiring without enough water, never mind the risk of sunburn, but we decided to keep going and to do the big things rather than the more obscure memorials and gardens on the Île de la Cité. This put the combined ticket to Sainte-Chapelle and the Concièrgerie next on our list. Both are part of the Palais du Justice. First, though, we stopped for a strawberry crépe and some more water. The crépe was yummy, the water necessary.

The queue for the Sainte-Chapelle was alarming, but we committed to it and Meg read from her guide about the various features of the chapel and its history. We got tickets for the chapel and the Concièrgerie in combo, which set us back €10, but was cheaper than doing them separately.

The chapel is on two levels, the lower, darker level for commoners, and the upper level for the royal household. We entered the lower level, which is painted in vivid colours and is very pretty, presumably to compensate for the designation “commoners”. It also contains an upmarket gift shop, which I would guess probably wasn’t an original feature.

Up and up a spiral staircase we climbed – up and up and up and up and… Now, I don’t like spiral staircases, and going up them is one thing, but I wasn’t looking forward to going back down this one. In any case, I – along with everyone else, thankfully – nearly fell back down it after emerging into the high Gothic sanctuary.

The walls are filled with stained glass from a few feet off the ground to the ceiling, and while of course this takes some serious pillar action, the supports between the windows are carved into clusters of thin columns, so the whole place feels delicate while of course being a substantial piece of churchery.

There was a large group of people clustered in the centre of the sanctuary, and this turned out to be the English guided tour, so we tagged ourselves on to that. It was worth listening in, even if our guide’s credibility was somewhat tarnished by her assertion that Numbers was a book of the Bible that contained many stories about the kings of Israel.

The windows, for the most part based on the Pentateuch, were interesting as well as pretty – especially the Genesis one. There was also a window containing stories of saints and miracles, and one with the story of King Louis – later Saint Louis – who commissioned the Sainte-Chapelle.

When we got down the spiral staircase without incident, and found our way out of the courtyard (trickier than it sounds), we were in the front court of the palace. The Concièrgerie was just around the corner. It was used as the palace many centuries before being appropriated as the main prison, which was then used to imprison many of those killed in the revolution, including Marie Antoinette.

I had a moment of weird realisation when I thought about the kings of France holding court in the hall we were actually in. I don’t know why I thought this was so odd or amazing, given the number of historical places I’ve been and indeed lived, but it struck me when we entered one part of the building. In this same room, we found a pillar with Heloise and Abelard carved into it on all sides. Here they are with their letters.

We explored the exhibitions on the different types of cell and saw Marie Antoinette’s cell, now made into a chapel.

We didn’t hang around on the steps where the condemned waited to be dragged off to the guillotine – it was just ooky.

Then it was out into the women’s courtyard, where prisoners were loaded onto carts.

By this point I had decided that as interesting as the Concièrgerie is, it was never destined to be my scene. As much as I like the principles of liberty, equality and fraternity, I have a fundamental problem with the French Revolution, which I would say hinges on the subsequent Reign of Terror and their tendency to decapitate people. In no circumstances do I approve of chopping people’s heads off, but to chop people’s heads off because they are rich – now, that I really have a problem with. Especially in the context of equality. So, in general, I found the Concièrgerie interesting but seriously creepy.

By this point, I had arranged to meet Estelle back at the flat to hand over the money, so I had to return. I found some sun lotion in our local pharmacy, but the only thing with an SPF factor on it was factor 50. So I will henceforth be well protected. Pale, some might say vampire-like, but well-protected.

After we did the money, Kenny and I decided we were beyond cooking and shopping seriously, so we decided to grab something cheap locally and stock up on essentials. Estelle left us a very handy set of detailed directions to our nearest supermarkets, boulangerie and cheese shops, etc., so we knew our supermarket was right at the end of our street, barely a minute away. Very useful.

Between the two Japanese restaurants, that will require further investigation but that neither of us felt up to handling with our ill-revised language skills, there lies a Chinese buffet place, and we gravitated to this, not least because of its cheapness. It was perfectly tasty, however, and very filling, so this got us through the shopping. We tried to control whims, but somehow ended up with a packet of cola flavoured Mentos anyway. Ah well.

Arrival in France

2008-07-01T11:49:00.000-07:00

Arrived without incident at airport – well, I say without incident… The pilot was enjoying the descent into Beauvais, which seemed to be achieved by periodically slamming on the brakes, before roaring into life again. Even I was beginning to feel a bit queasy by the time the runway approached. The landing is usually the best bit for me – once back on solid ground I’m just itching to get off the plane – but this was the exception. We whacked off the runway, then repeated until the pilot felt like he was ready to make the commitment to earth.

The “Burt” sign was waiting for us – but our driver was not. He did turn up, but none of us realised he was there until he sort of squeezed in between us all and asked, “C’est vous?” We rolled our cases along to wait for him to appear with the van. He seemed disturbed by our three addresses (I got a confirmation on the three address reservation two days after we arrived, oddly), and proceeded to look them up on the map while driving along the motorway – arrrgh! It wasn’t the most relaxing drive, but it went smoothly and I was dropped off first. Naturally, it was while trying to find the way into my one-way street while on the phone still trying to get directions to the other place that he lapsed into Spanish, and I realised that we could just have had Meg speak to him. But you live, you learn, you die of some horrible and avertable crisis in the process.

Because I wasn’t sure how to get inside, I asked him in French if he would wait for a moment until I got inside. “Ouai, ouai,” he intoned. I turned back to the door of the building and heard at once the slamming of the van door. Le vroom. Wheeling round, I saw the van disappear down the street. Oh well.

There was no intercom or doorbell, so I phoned my landlady's mobile. She seemed awfully pleased to hear from me, and was very positive about me coming to Paris, only she didn’t seem to realise I was outside.

“I’m here!”
“Where are you?”
“I’m outside.”
“You’re in Paris?”
“Yes… I’m in your street. I’m standing outside number eight.”
“But you’re not coming until tomorrow!”

To cut a long story short, and to avoid the back and forth of “Aren’t you arriving on the first?” – “No, in the emails I always said the 30^th", I will merely say that she was in the middle of cleaning for us to arrive and was worried about the state of the flat. But realising her mistake, thankfully she was very nice and there was no problem about us moving in unexpectedly!

She decided that the easiest thing for us all would be to finish the essential cleaning and leave us with enough space, then she and her boyfriend would come back the next day while we were at class to clean properly, as per their plan. We could then sort out all the money and everything then. This worked out well, though her poor friend had arrived for a ten minute drink on the way home from work and was put to work! They wouldn’t let me do anything, which was nice but while it wasn’t my mistake I felt bad watching them run back and forth between the bedrooms!

Kenny arrived later that night amid a flurry of text messages involving Google maps and the metro. I had to go down to meet him as he was having trouble getting in (it turned out we had the code written down as 28 instead of 20A… oops – my ears were popping on the flight. That’s my excuse.) The housekeeper of the building had spotted him trying to get in and was concerned, so he was trying to explain he was staying with someone in the building, but couldn’t remember her name; however, as soon as I turned up and told her who's place we were staying in she lit up and let this suspicious youth enter.

The flat is lovely – it has a good size kitchen and dining area with an actual oven (a rarity for Paris) and two sizeable bedrooms. The couple are very artistic, and they have wonderful (or at least interesting) art everywhere. In sum, while things didn’t quite start smoothly, it’s good to be here and we seem to be lucky in our landlords!