When my guitarist/roommate/buddy Tripp and I made a brief visit to England to play some gigs and party with a producer we met in Texas, it was the dead of winter, which in London is dark and cold. Still, it was a marvelous trip, but making my first fair-weather visit to Europe was something I was looking forward to. In addition, after some seven years of studying the language in school (and technically my declared minor) I'd wanted to go to France, and now I had my chance. After a brief connection in Liege, Belgium, I was on a fast train to Paris.
Anybody who has known me for more than an hour knows my proclivity toward cartography, and whenever I would get bored in French class, I could always lose myself in one of the two maps guaranteed to appear in my textbook; one of "L’Hexagone" the nation of France itself (nicknamed due to its shape), and the other of the City of Lights. All these hours of mindless staring left a general plan of Paris inside of my head. And, although my command of the tongue is probably no better than a five year-old native, the ability to conduct all of my conversations without a lick of Anglais made me feel remarkably comfortable and confident, with an ease that I have not felt since I left the USA. Also, it may have been a factor in the absence of the infamous Parisian attitude being thrown at me, although I’m certain they knew I was a foreigner. (With the strange exception of the Turks, they always seem to know.)
Another costly destination, I decided only to stay for three days in the French capital, enough time to see the sights I really wanted to see. Like I said, I basically had the layout committed to memory, so after checking into my decent hotel in a not-so-decent neighborhood, I made my way to the Metro and rode straight the Place de Charles de Gaulle, where the Arc de Triomphe sits at the end of the Champs-Elysees. I think my favorite thing about riding the subway in a new city is boarding a train on the outskirts of town, making my way to a popular station then taking the steps to street level and being greeted for the first time by something you’ve only seen in movies. I remember Tripp and I emerging from Westminster, and as we surfaced, we were greeted with Big Ben. It was like, “Whoa…there it is, man!” The same thing happened when I exited at Times Square for the first time in New York, and it happened when I was presented with Napoleon’s Arch. Unlike many of the landmarks I’ve observed, the Arc de Triomphe was actually bigger than I expected. But, I still nixed paying admission to get to the top…that was reserved for Paris’ most famous landmark.
When I got to the Eiffel Tower, I found a mind-numbing queue snaking before me, due to the failure of one of the two elevators to the top. Disheartened, I was about to take my place in the long line when I saw a little sign that said, “L’Escalier”. With no wait whatsoever, I bought a ticket to climb the stairs to the top. In reality, you’re only allowed to take the stairs a couple hundred feet up to an elevator that lifts you the rest of the way. Still, it was a nice sweaty climb, saved me time (and money) and ascending step by step within the framework made it feel more intimate. Taking the stairs also had the unforeseen benefit of getting me to the observation deck in the sunshine, before a thunderstorm rolled in. The tempest itself commenced shortly after beginning my descent, which concerned me a little. I questioned how safe it was to walk inside the tallest metal structure in the country with so much lightning around. One would think that the Iron Lady of Paris gets struck frequently, and they’d have some sort of lightning rod at the top to divert the charge, but not wanting to take any chances, I didn’t stop to take any pictures on the way down.
Between downpours, I had just enough time to take refuge at L’Hotel des Invalides, built by Louis XIV as a home for disabled and elderly veterans, but now home to the Tomb of Napoleon and the French Army Museum. In addition to housing the remains of the Emperor (shipped there from St. Helena after he expired in exile) there are also tombs dedicated to two of his sons and Marshall Ferdinand Foch, French commander during the First World War. The Army Museum was more interesting than I expected, particularly the Napoleon relics, including his horse, preserved and presented in a glass case, a la Chairman Mao.
After the deluge, the clouds made way for a brilliant azure sky, and I began walking along the Left Bank (Rive Gauche) of the Seine River. I crossed over to the Right Bank (Rive Droite) to snap a picture of the Place de Concorde, and one of the four obelisks known Cleopatra’s Needles, stolen from Egypt by Napoleon’s Army, one of which can be seen in London. I continued my walk along the waterway, past the National Assembly and onto the Ile de la Cite, a small island in the middle of the Seine, where Paris began, and home of the famous Notre Dame Cathedral.
I’d contacted a Parisian friend of a friend via e-mail, but he was out of town (or said he was out of town), and in lieu of meeting him in the city, he gave me some suggestions on where to eat. I took him up on his advice and went to two places that day. For dinner, I went to Aux Crus de Bourgogne and had their namesake dish, Bourgogne Beefin a Red Wine Sauce. After that, I went to the World-Famous Berthillon Ice Cream stand to satisfy my sweet tooth. By that point, it was getting late, and I’d had a full day, so I took the Metro back to my hotel and made a plan to sleep in.
My plans were thwarted by hotel housekeepers, vacuuming the rooms next to me at around 7am. “Oh well, I thought…there’s plenty of Paris to see.” Since it was a pleasant morning, and my working class neighborhood was not far from it, I decided to make my first stop the last stop for lots of famous Parisians, Pere-Lachaise Cemetery. Fortunately, I’d had the foresight do download a .pdf map of the gargantuan graveyard to my iPod before I got there, so I was able to find most of the folks I was interested in paying my respects to through the maze of tombs. After finding George Melies, the pioneering director portrayed by Sir Ben Kingsley in the movie Hugo, I had to visit Oscar Wilde, if for nothing than to see the resting place of a man who had the last words, “Either these curtains go, or I do.”
After that, it was writers Honore de Balzac, Marcel Proust and Gertrude Stein (which took me some time because the name on the stone is Alice B. Toklas), painter Georges Seurat, entertainers Sarah Bernhardt & Edith Piaf, Polish composer Friedrich Chopin, and perhaps the most visited resident of them all, one James Douglas Morrison, frontman for iconic 60’s psychedelic group, The Doors.
Drawn to a restaurant after visiting her tomb, I had a lunch of goose liver pate, steak frites and cognac superieur at “Sarah Bernhardt”. Since I’d been roused from my bed so early, I still had plenty of time to visit the premier art museum in town, and arguably the world, The Louvre. On the way, I walked by the Pompidou Center, a strange modern building that’s “inside-out”.
I have to say, the Louvre didn’t impress me much. First of all, it was incredibly crowded, and dealing with school groups and tourists in Bermuda shorts shoving you out of the way so they can take a picture of a painting they’ve seen a million pictures of is annoying. While the Venus de Milo was nice to see in person, the piece de resistance, Leonardo’s Mona Lisa, is small…stuck behind layers of unsightly acrylic and constantly crowded by numbskulls with Nikons.
What did impress me was the Musee d’Orsay, which I visited on the following day. Located in a picturesque former railway station, the museum may not have the bragging rights of the Louvre, but it’s less crowded, and the art is more accessible, making it more enjoyable. Like at the Louvre, I still had to wait in line for a while, and while I was herded between the velvet ropes, a group of Chinese teenagers blatantly cut in line. For me, after being in China, this was not surprising, as standing in line is just not in their nature. But a couple of French guys behind me were quite upset. They tried their best in broken English to communicate with the Chinese adolescents who spoke no French.
-“Euh, Pardon, we are standing here!”
-“Ok” (Chinese kids do nothing)
-“Euh, but that is not fair!”
I told the gentleman (in French) about how the Chinese just don’t know how to stand in line. We all had a good laugh about it while the teenagers continued to push ahead of people. This marked the first time I talked trash about someone in a foreign language they didn’t understand (other than English). It made me wonder how many times the Chinese have bad-mouthed me without my knowledge.
My last day in Paris began with a walk though Montmarte, the historic red-light district, and home to the famous Moulin Rouge. Then I went to the Sacre Coeur (Sacred Heart) Cathedral, built in 1871 to honor the tens of thousands killed during the war with Prussia that I mention in my Berlin blog.
Perched atop the Butte Montmartre,the highest hill in the city, a climb to the dome of the cathedral affords a beautiful view of town, and from a different perspective than the Eiffel Tower. My only unpleasantness in Paris came outside the grounds, where there was a group of West African men swarming people in an attempt to tie a strand of yarn around the wrists of tourists for bonne chance (“good luck”) then demand money. This scam is not isolated to France, and people have tried this on me from Cambodia to India, and so on. But, one man was aggressive, and despite my repeated refusals, grabbed me by the arm. This is when I violently pushed him away and got loud. It was the only time in Paris I felt the necessity to act in such a stern manner.
Otherwise, as mentioned, I felt very comfortable and relaxed in Paris. But, I must say, Paris did not strike me as the romantic city I’d always imagined. Instead, it is a hectic and dirty world capital, ironically lacking the charm of most other European locales I’ve visited. Even so, it was well-worth the visit, and I’m happy I got the chance to finally walk the streets I’d memorized from my French textbook all those years ago.
On my last night, I went for a stroll through the Latin Quarter, still searching for the romantic Paris I’d envisioned. I came upon a bar with a giant orange neon sign that read, “TENNESSEE”. Naturally, I had to check it out. I couldn’t get an answer as to why the place was named for and decorated with paraphernalia from my home state (it’s run by Brazilians) but they were happy to have a genuine Nashvillian in their establishment, and they made a mean Mojito.
