Windchimes

Over the ocean and back again

It's been a while since I've written in here, in the meantime finished spring semester, tried to read Moby Dick before my husband and I went to France (only got about half way through) and introduced my husband to Paris, some of Bretagne ("Brittany" just never sounds right to me) and some of my friends in France. We ate. And ate. And drank. I still managed to lose about five pounds, we walked so much. I will have to avoid the cheese sections of grocery stores here at home for a while, to avoid severe depression.

Paris was Paris. So many merveilles to see and so many people in a rush to get where they're going. We spent four days there (not counting the day we arrived and the day we left, since we spent most of our arrival day hunting our hotel, and we left early the day we left for Bretagne) and four days was plenty for me. Cliff could have probably done with another day or two.

After we found our hotel, we only wondered out enough to find dinner, then returned and rested from the nine hour flight, the RER and Metro, and walking around with our valises rolling behind us until we found the small alley on which our hotel was located. I thought it wouldn't be too difficult, because I'd gotten to know the area around the Alésia Metro station pretty well last year. However, that Metra station was closed for construction. Still, we only snapped at each other a couple of times while we searched.

A good dinner, the prospect of a good night's sleep, and the elation of actually being in Paris set in. We were two happy people when we settled in for the night. The next morning, we set out for Montmartre and the little Dali museum just a few steps from the Place du Tertre. We had the hotel phone number where a friend and former classmate was staying with her boyfriend the same week (we hadn't planned to be in Paris at the same time, but found out we would be right before flying) but the guy at the front desk told me there was no person by that name at the hotel. She had the phone number to our hotel, so we'd just have to wait on a message from her. Cliff hoped we'd run into them, since their hotel was somewhere around Montmartre, but that didn't happen.

I bypassed the Funiculaire, since that's where the Metro police got me with a 45 euro fine last year (due to some confusion I had with where I'd placed my carnet of unused metro tickets...I didn't crawl under turnstiles!) even though I'd just bought my carte d'orange. That's a much better way to buy metro fares if you're going to be in Paris for any amount of time, so much simpler and safer. The photomat at the metro station turned out a decent looking photo of me, too. Still, I now have an aversion to the Funiculaire, and besides that, it feels like cheating. If you want to experience Montmartre, shouldn't you know what walking up those stairs and steep paths feels like?

Riding the Funiculaire might have saved us a few euros this time, though, because we were greeted by two bracelet-making scam artists (my husband's name for them) on the level you reach before climbing the rest of the way to the Sacré-Coeur. Trying to catch our breath before the rest of the climb (I've GOT to quit smoking) they had us engaged in conversation and colorful threads looped around our pinkies before I could say, "non, merci." The guy who'd picked me for a pigeon told me the bracelets would ensure that we'd make five babies together. I told him we'd already made that many together, and five more wouldn't exactly feel like a blessing at this point. Probably should have refused to give them any money, but settled for talking them down to the amount they must have originally had in mind. I'm sure they made a killer profit on us.

So by the time we made it to the Place du Tertre (a little after 9:00) none of the few early-rising portrait artists who spend their days asking tourists to "hold that pose and keep that smile" could talk me into anything. Kind of a shame, I'd like to have a portrait done by one of them one day. I'd want to watch a few of them do some other portraits first though.

I found the Dali Exposition right around the corner I expected to find it, and we waited for it to open at 10:00. Cliff loved it, just like I knew he would, and had to buy something from the gift shop. He picked out a small 2007 calender, and I bought a tiny, but handy-dandy notepad. I love that place with the eerie music, the melting clocks and Dali's recorded voice talking to the visitors. It takes me ten minutes to walk up the stairs to exit the exhibit area to the gift shop, because the wall above the stairs treats you to pictures of Dali with moustache in various contortions, captioned by bits of interview-type questions with Dali's humorous responses.

By the time we got down from Montmartre, it was time for lunch. As much as I love eating while in France, I can't remember what we did for lunch then, or if we just put it off. I think we went back to the hotel and found a restaurant or bar nearby, but we did so much with the rest of the day, I don't know how we would have had the time. Cliff decided he should at least go see the Eiffel Tower, so we got back on the metro and headed for the Bir Hakeim station. Viewing the crowds of people queuing to ride the elevator up, he decided against going to the top, especially after finding out he'd have to pay even to climb the stairs. Having walked up Montmartre earlier that day, I was just as glad to see the outside of the Eiffel Tower from such close proximity. I've been up there once before anyway. Cliff had already decided this would not be our last trip to France, so I guess he'll try going up next time. He says he can't let me outdo him like that. So we ambled across the Champ de Mars to Les Invalides. I told Cliff we could see Napolean's tomb in one of those buildings, and the Musée de l'armée, but we decided to save that for another day, and walked back toward the Seine. Walking along the Seine from the Eiffel Tower to Notre Dame (or vice versa) has gotten to be a sort of traditional pilgrimage for me. It seems that so many of the places I want to see go along that route, so the distance never seems long.

Between the Eiffel Tower and Les Tuileries, a young lady walking around and beside us suddenly bent down to pick up a plastic ring painted gold, then made a pretense of asking if one of us had dropped it. I told her (in French) it wasn't ours, she kept speaking to Cliff in (mostly) English, telling him she wanted to give him the ring "comme cadeau" followed by the plaintive, "but I have nothing, Monsieur." I told her she should keep the ring and give it to someone else "comme cadeau." Somewhere between the Tuileries and Notre Dame, a young man tried the same ploy. Considering how things like this always go on around tourist areas, no matter where in the world they are, I suppose we got away without being accosted by too many such entreaties. I'm a sucker for them sometimes, but after a few, I start wondering about the stories I hear. Still, I guess it can't be an easy way to make a lot of money.

I hope all this doesn't make it sound like any of this detracted from my enjoyment of Paris much, because before long I found myself once again at a table in the Tuileries, sipping a menthe-à-l'eau. Probably one of the most expensive menthe-à-l'eau's in France, but the surroundings are so gorgeous, and the emerald-green liquid in the glass somehow seems like some magic spectacles in the land of Oz, and the sidewalks along the Seine, my yellow brick road. Two British guys sat at a table next to ours. I heard one of them wonder out loud where the nearest Metro station was, so pointed him in the direction of the Tuileries station. That started a nice, but brief, conversation. They asked us if we'd taken a taxi anywhere yet, and told us it was a harrowing experience. I suppose they'd find it even more harrowing than I did, although I have no experience traveling on the opposite side of the road from what I'm used to. When we got up to head for that station, however, I couldn't find it amid all the construction currently underway. That was a little upsetting for me, since that particular gate into the Tuileries had started feeling like an old friend. I hope I'll find it where I've found it before next time I go. I hope the guys at the table next to us managed to find it or a station close by.

I pointed out the Musée d'Orsay, but Cliff nor I felt like going through another museum yet, especially such a big one. We kept walking along the Seine, past the Louvre, past L'Institut de France (that houses L'Académie Française, among other things), past all the open-air bouquinistes on the banks (difficult to keep walking there...), past the Pont Alexander III and on to Notre Dame. We visited the Mémorial aux Déportées behind the back garden of Notre Dame, always so moving to me with the poetry inscribed on its walls. Happily, they have English translations readily readable below the inscriptions, so I didn't have to translate. They want you to be quiet in there anyway. No mobile phones allowed. After that experience, we sat in the jardin publique for a little while, enjoying music from a saxophone player and a guitar player just on the other side of the hedges. Understandable, how couples sometimes forget anyone else exists in such an environment. I'm old (or something) enough to just smile and look forward to getting back to our room. The music added a perfect touch to the late afternoon, with so many roses blooming around, and so much rich viewing. Well worth placing a few coins in the saxophone case.

I want to write about our little excursion around the Latin Quarter and the ride on the Bateaux Mouches that rounded off our first full day in Paris, but that, as well as writing about the rest of our séjour, will have to come later. Right now it's time to grab some lunch and look up a few answers to questions I had after reading Twain's "The Story of a Speech." My first Twain class starts in an hour and 45 minutes.

J.H. Larrew
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