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Last Friday, our plans to rent a car and drive to Sevilla for the weekend were sadly thwarted by the dieties of manual transmission. Tracie and I had been planning on this excursion all week, but I say "planning" in the loosest sense of the word. We hadn't actually gotten around to making those important reservations to rent one of the three automatic cars to be found in Madrid. Walking home from the travel agent, tails between our legs, we soberly considered other options for a weekend holiday. We investigated trainfare to Sevilla. Expensive but doable. Then we realized: this is Europe. We don't have to stay in Spain. We could fly somewhere! Why not spontaneously board a plane to Rome? Or Venice? Or London? Or Dublin? Or Lisboa? Or Berlin? Or Paris? Yes, that's it, PARIS! We were happy to find that airfare to Paris wouldn't cost much more than trainfare to Sevilla. So Saturday morning we climbed aboard an Iberia
avion and set off to France for the weekend.
Being the kinds of girls that we are (prone to flying by the seats of our
pantalones, as it were), we of course had no idea where we would
Buenas Personas
Benoit from Paris and Pablo from Argentina. Good people.stay once we landed, but we were feeling lucky. And lucky we were. On the plane we met Paulo, a friendly and generous
abogado from Argentina. He spoke lovely English and was amazed that we spoke Spanish. He gave us his own personal map of Paris, circled the important landmarks and metro lines for us, and offered us a ride into town with his friend once we landed. Once earth-bound, Paulo's French friend Benoit and his beautiful daughter Marine drove us to their home in Montparnasse where we were greeted kindly by his Brasilian wife Vania. While Vania served us guava juice and chatted with us in Spanish (the whole family is trilingual, speaking Portuguese, Spanish and French), Benoit called around Paris to find us an available and affordable
auberge. After securing one near the Seine river and the cathedral of Notre Dame, Vania insisted on giving us metro tickets, and Benoit and Paulo insisted on escourting us to our hostel. It is so wonderful to know that there are good people in the world. I feel grateful and honored to have met such generous people on my journey, and I hope that in some way I can pay that
The bird whisperer
At the Tuileries next to the Louvre. generosity forward to some other lonely traveler in the future.
After saying our first
"au revoir"s we strolled along the Seine. The weather was cool with a nippy wind, and the Parisians were dressed in springtime overcoats, sweaters and scarves. We wandered past the riverside bookstalls and artists, taking pictures of the various
ponts that cross the river, each with its own distinct personality and history. We got a glimpse of the Louvre and the Tuilieries and found ourselves watching a bird whisperer there. She fed the sparrows
pain from her hands as they hovered around her, fluttering and chirping. She talked to them gently in three languages.
We walked farther down the river to the famous Eiffel Tower, but it was closed for the day to climbers and only open to elevator riders. So we enjoyed a crepe with Nutella by the river in the shadow of
la Tour Eiffel. Ah, this is the Paris I remember.
We walked back towards our hostel, taking small detours along the way. We happened upon an art campaign of the bovine kind: all throughout Paris, painted cows can be found grazing the pavement. My favorite was the cow dressed
Crepe maker at the Eiffel Tower
He makes a mean crepe with Nutella, and he does it with a smile. as a windmill. I'm sure I'm not the first traveller to dub him the "Moo-lin Rouge" (GROAN! I know, I'm sorry, but I couldn't help myself).
Hunger was creeping up on us again, so we rested for a spell at another cafe. If
jamon tastes like Spain, then
saussicon sec sandwiches taste like France to me. I wouldn't have considered ordering anything else. Tracie was a quick student of the French language; she fearlessly ordered her own beer and sandwich in French. The waiters and waitresses were kind and patient with us and extremely professional. Most Americans think the French are rude to American travelers. Maybe there's some truth behind the stereotype, but in my three trips to France I've encountered nothing but kind Parisians. I'm willing to bet that the rudeness originates with the loud obnoxious American tourist who barges into a Parisian cafe, hollering
"Garsown!", demanding ice cubes in his soda, and complaining that things in France aren't just like they are at home. "Welcome to travelling," I think. The whole point is to try something different. So just try it! I think the French waiters appreciated that we were trying their language, their food and their
Moo-lin rouge
Paris currently has an artistic cow showcase on display throught the city. This vache was my favorite. culture. They were extremely polite, attentive and helpful. And what's more, they didn't make us feel the least bit foolish for the linguistic mistakes that we made.
And I (I must admit) made quite a few. It's funny how the brain manages languages. Only three months ago when I arrived in Madrid, every time I tried to speak Spanish, French would creep in. My "y"s sounded like "et"s. My "o"s sounded like "ou"s. My "con"s would come out as "avec"s. But after three months of Spanish immersion, it was just the opposite. No matter how hard I would rehearse a French phrase, Spanish would sneak into my sentence. I don't know how many times I said "si" and "gracias" instead of "oui" and "merci" to a gracious Parisian this weekend. They seemed to understand, and we would share a laugh together over my mistake, as I apologized, "
je suis desolee.". Luckily the Spanish gradually faded out of my French, and more French words, conjugations and phrases started to pop back into my head. Crossing a
rue, I was suddenly struck by a verb.
"Tranverser!" I'd exclaim. It was a relief to find that the French I learned and spoke
Reenacting "Bleu"
I love the scene when Juliette Binoche sits at a Parisian cafe, watching the coffe climb up into her sugarcubes. so well 7 years ago isn't lost to me forever, irretrievably replaced by Spanish or other nonsense. It's in there somewhere, just waiting to be unearthed.
It was getting cold and we had a big day planned for
demain, so we retired to our sweet little
auberge near the Metro Saint Michel.
Bonne nuit. We woke up to a gray Sunday morning in Paris. Tracie got up early and ran in the rain along the Seine all the way to the Eiffel Tower and back, while I enjoyed the warmth of my bed for another hour. Around 10 o'clock, we had a
petit dejeuner of baguettes, croissants, and cafe au lait in our hostel. The coffee was subtle, smooth and delicious and the sugar came in cubes. I couldn't resist reenacting the scene from the movie "Bleu" when Juliette Binoche sits at a Parisian cafe watching the coffee climb up into her sugar cubes.
We arrived at the Louvre before the big crowds, and entered through I.M. Pei's trademark glass pyramid, excited about all of the wonderful artwork we were about to see. The Musee du Louvre is ridiculously big. Too big to explore in a lifetime.
Nike
The winged goddess of victory, Nike, at the Louvre. Far too big to explore in a day. We knew we needed a knowledgeable guide to help us get the most out of the experience, so we went directly to the audio tour desk to rent headsets. Not only were they renting out the traditional audioguides which allow you to type in a four digit number to get a specialized lecture on a piece as you view it; they were also renting out special "DaVinci Code" audiotours. In this tour, a man with a sexy French accent directs your steps through the museum, theatrically pointing out key elements of the book's central thesis and keeping you entertained with audioclips from the newly released Tom Hanks/Audrey Tautou movie. We ended up renting one of each type of audioguide so we could explore the book's angle without missing the rest of the museum.
The museum was fabulous. It has changed a bit since last I was there. For example, photos are now largely prohibited, save photos of the statues (which, unlike oil paint, won't deteriorate with exposure to light). The Mona Lisa has found a new home. While she used to live in the Grand Gallery (which the audioguide told us
Goddesses?
The winged headless goddess of victory, and the headed wingless goddess of travel. King Louis XIV used to parade up and down on his pet camel), now she's in a room off to the side of the gallery on her very own wall. She sits with that mysterious smile behind a pane of bullet-proof glass, behind an arched wooden railing, and again behind a velvet rope barrier. The people crowd in to see her.
She is why they come to the Louvre. They say she's the most widely recognized piece of artwork on the planet. Mona's got a great view from where she's hanging now. She looks over the visitors' heads at the famous "The Wedding Feast at Cana," the largest painting in the museum. I wonder what Mademoiselle Lisa thinks of the idea that at the wedding feast Jesus wasn't just an attendant, but the bridegroom. I guess she's got plenty of time to contemplate it from where she's sitting now.
I was a little wary of the commercial aspect of the tour, but the DaVinci Code guide was really quite fun and educational, and I would definitely recommend it to museum-goers, regardless of your thoughts on the book and its hypothesis. The tour finished at I.M. Pei's inverted glass pyramid
The end of the Da Vinci Code
These pyramids are the architect I.M. Pei's brilliant signature on the Louvre. Dan Brown will argue that it represents the biblical sacred feminine. in the basement of the Louvre, a stunning finale to a stunning tour.
We also of course saw the Winged Victory statue, and Michelangelo's Slaves. Absolutely stunning. We also made it up to the second floor of the Louvre and got a small taste of Monet, Poussin, and Vermeer. But, as I said, the Louvre is just too big for one day, and there was more of Paris to see, so we had to promise to visit Rubens, de la Tour, and Watteau another day.
We left the museum in search of a good meal to fuel our pending climb up the Eiffel Tower. At a Louvre-side cafe, I ordered a salad with
chevre goat cheese on toast. This French salad always reminds me of my dear high-school French teacher, Madame Dillinger, who introduced me to the joys of
chevre on my first trip to Paris. I do miss her and I wish I could tell her all about my world travels now. The food filled my head and my heart with fond memories of a beloved teacher and friend, but did not treat my stomach so kindly. By the time we paid
l'addition, I was turning a
Artistic Architecture
I took this picture somewhere around step #534 as I climbed the Eiffel Tower. I thought there was something amazingly beautiful about the geometry of the structural elements. little green at the gills.
We headed off slowly towards the Eiffel Tower, walking through the Tuileries, the beautiful gardens at the Louvre. By this time I was downright sick and I had to sit down. Despite all of its refined beauty, I puked at the Tuilieries. When I recovered sufficiently to continue on, we walked down the famous Champs Elysses, where Lance Armstrong has secured the yellow jersey of the Tour de France the past seven years in a row. Despite all its history, I puked on the Champs Elysses. After another rest, we walked on to the Eiffel Tower. When the discomfort began again, I thought I might make it three for three, but I managed to climb the tower with no further incidents. Tracie gets a huge gold star for the day. It goes unsaid that hanging out with a pukey friend takes some of the glam out of Paris, but she was incredibly kind and understanding of me and my digestional predicament.
So, back to the glam. While most visitors waited in long
queues for the cable cars up the Eiffel Tower, we took the scenic route. The climb to the first platform is
View from the top
The reward for climbing 700 steps up the Eiffel Tower: lovely panoramic views of Paris and the Seine. 329 steps to an altitude of 95 meters. Tracie, the marathon runner, powered up the stairs without hesitation, but I admit I was a little winded when I reached the 1st level. We stopped to take a good look at the city. The tower offers amazing 360-degree panoramic views of Paris. After a decent recovery, we chugged up another 371 stairs (making a total of 700) to the 2nd level platform (which is as high as you're allowed to climb on foot). Up there it was windy and cold. We learned how the tower sways in the breeze and how during the day the metal on the sun-exposed side expands, causing the tower to lean away from the sun in day time then return to neutral on a diurnal cycle. My stomach started acting up again, so I sat down for a spell on a bench to recover, in shelter from the wind. Before long, the rain came. We crowded into a cable car for the ride down where we came across some of the rude American tourists alluded to previously. They were some young college punks doing a "10 countries in 10 days" type of Europe tour. Trying to
Notre Dame
Paris is in bloom. be tough guys to impress some Canadian coeds, they insulted and demeaned the elevator operator and dropped almost every foul American slang word I've ever heard.
Je suis desolee, Francia. I apologize on their behalf.
Taking the metro back to avoid the rain, we discovered that it's a trickier system to navigate than the metro we're used to in Madrid. In Paris, lines cross and fork, so you have to be certain that the train you board is one that is going to stop at your desired destination. We made it to Notre Dame without incident, but the rain was still pouring. So we ran into the nearest cafe to escape the weather and refuel from our rigorous travels. The Parisians were also waiting out the storm, sipping their cafes and watching the rain fall. We had cafes and crepes and we heard the bells ring at Notre Dame as the sky finally started to clear. "
Il fait beau!" exclaimed a young French lad to his parents. We followed their lead and stepped out into post-rain
rue.
We crossed the Seine only to find that the beautiful cathedral was closed for the day. We nonetheless enjoyed the gargoyles
The smell of roses after the rain...
...in the garden at the Cathedral of Notre Dame. and the belltower and the stained glass from the outside. Roses were blooming in the garden next to the cathedral, and the rain had brought out their odors and colors. It was absolutely lovely.
Finally we roamed some sidestreets, smelling the foods of Paris: onion soup, steak au poivre, croque monsieurs, fondue, creme brulee. This trip just didn't offer enough time to sample all of the French culinary wonders. These treats will have to wait for another trip.
The day and our weekend trip in Paris had to come to an end. Monday morning we climbed aboard our return flight to Madrid.
Au revoir, Paris, je t'adore. I will be back to see you again, I promise.
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Jill
non-member comment
wonderful!
That is great that you were able to go to Paris for the weekend. You are really making me want to go to Europe! We'll have to all travel together when the kids are a little older!