I’m sitting at my desk in our little apartment and the strains of guitar music are wafting through the large open windows. Juliann is relaxing and the boy is in bed, reading a Berenstain Bears book by booklight.
Oh, and I have a nice glass of Beaujolais in hand. I just returned from the local wine shop, Nicholas, where I picked up a bottle of what an old grad-school friend used to call “writing helper”.
Life is good here.
We’ve been in Paris for a little over three weeks now and the crush of having so many things to see is past. With only a week left before we head out for Normandy there are delightfully very few things we feel we have to see before we leave Paris, so we’re looking forward to a few extra “lazy” days over the next week.
A Vision In Glass
The guitarist outside on Place de la Sorbonne just segued from Metallica’s Nothing Else Matters to Take Five by The Brubeck Quartet. Well done, my friend. Well done.
Saturday we walked the brief distance to Ile de la Cite and went to see Sainte-Chapelle, Louis IX’s very expensive Manhattan Mini Storage unit for his Jesus fan memorabilia.
As with everything we’ve seen in Paris so far, it turned out to be breathtakingly beautiful.
We had arrived early enough that there was no line (Score! High-fives and chest bumps while the security guards look at us like we’re crazy) so we flashed our tickets and walked in. It was lovely, but nothing crazy. We knew, however, that the real deal was the second floor, so after a few minutes of admiring the gothic-arched ceilings and the lovely stonework, we ascended the ancient stone staircase and stepped out into what was one of the most beautiful cathedrals we’ve ever seen, and that’s saying a lot.
We spent a good half-hour soaking it in, taking way more pictures than necessary, and trying to politely stay out of other people’s pictures. Then we returned to street level and walked next door to the Conciergerie, formerly part of a 13th-century palace, which later became a very uncomfortable place for “enemies” of the French Revolution.
It was turned into a prison after the start of the Revolution and nearly 2,700 prisoners saw the inside of the Conciergerie. 2,600 of them had their lives ended by guillotine.
The most famous prisoner, of course, was Marie Antoinette. Sorry, Robespierre, you finished a close second. If you said something witty and pithy like “Let them eat cake,” perhaps you could have moved up in the standings.
But you didn’t, so suck it.
We ended up keeping our visit to the Conciergerie short as we were getting tired. For lunch we grabbed some sandwiches at The Croissanterie down the street, took a nap, and laid low for the rest of the day.
[Aside: Who knew that salami, brie and butter tasted so damned good? No, this is a serious question. WHO KNEW AND DIDN’T TELL ME?!?]
“Sailing Takes Me Away To Where I Always Doo Dee Dee….”
Sunday we delightfully had nothing planned so after breakfast and a serious Lego marathon we grabbed our host’s little sailboat and headed over to the fountain at Jardin du Luxembourg to catch some wind.
The day was breezy and bright and it was perfect for a sail. There were a good dozen or so boats on the water by the time we got there, and the boy was excited so we quickly got our boat in the water and gave it a gentle push. It wobbled a bit, then caught the breeze and lazily cruised to the middle of the fountain, arcing this way and that.
For a while it got stuck on the duck house, a little shed built in the middle of the water (because the thought of homeless ducks made someone sad, apparently?) and we had a few minutes of excitement cheering it on as it jerked to and fro, trying to free itself. It did and then resumed its cruise, eventually bumping into the stone rim of the basin.
We sent it out on a few more voyages then returned home for lunch. Afterwards we spent some time at the playground where Braeden had to be practically pried off the zipline with a crowbar, and then we treated him to an English-language showing of Ice Age 5,, popcorn and all.
It’s not actually called Ice Age 5, but that’s how I think of it: the fifth in a series of progressively crappier Ice Age movies, two of which I have been blessed-to-f**king-Christ not to have seen.
But I’m sure it’s coming. The boy knows they exist, so the clock is ticking.
Why can’t there be 5 Lego Movie films? Now that’s good cinema.
By the way, if you made it this far and you still have Christopher Cross’ Sailing stuck in your head, congratulations, we’re soul mates.
Anyway, he loved the movie and we chatted about it all the way to our favorite pizza joint, Luisa Maria, on Rue Monsieur La Prince. The very sweet, very young, very perky hostess recognized us, took our order pour emporter and bought us a couple of glasses of rose while we waited at a table outside.
In between seating tables she would come out to the sidewalk and lean up against a car just a few feet from us, smiling at us and generally being friendly.
We were seated for only a few minutes when a very well-dressed, slick-looking fellow in his twenties or thirties walked by with a woman on his arm, nodded hello to the hostess, and sat at a table down the sidewalk from us. The hostess smiled back at him but as soon as he passed her smile disappeared. She shook her head, glowering at the man’s back. Then she saw us watching her, the question plain on our faces.
“Every week, a different woman!” she exclaimed with exasperation, then she threw her hands in the air and stalked back inside the restaurant. Juliann and I chuckled and sipped our wine.
Ahhh, the French.
The Pompi-Pompi-Pompidou
Monday we wanted to do something that Braeden would enjoy since he had been so patient and so good through all the museums and cathedrals to which we have so far dragged him. We decided on the Pompidou Center, which by all accounts had a good deal of fun stuff for kids.
The Center didn’t open until 11 am, so Braeden and I took our time with breakfast and Legos while Juliann had a little time to herself to visit Shakespeare and Company, a famous local bookstore that she had been itching to visit.
She was also on the verge of finishing her copy of Dark Places and had been looking for an English-language version of Hugo’s The Hunchback of Notre Dame, and she thought Shakespeare and Company would be a good bet.
She turned out to be right and she happily returned with a crisp new copy. She couldn’t say enough about her wonderful experience at the bookstore, and she’s been talking about it ever since. I have a feeling we’ll be making a family visit soon.
We took the short bus ride to the Pompidou Center, which turned out to be an ugly but interesting-looking building right next to Saint-Gervais, the cathedral in the Marais we’d explored on our guided tour a week or so earlier.
The sight of Saint-Gervais bought us an immediate “Look Daddy, flying buttresses!” The kid loves flying buttresses. He can’t read or write but he knows what a flying buttress is and what it’s for, so we’ll take it. We’re still working on the alphabet.
We sauntered in and figured we’d do the adult stuff first, so we stepped onto the very cool exterior escalators (with amazing views, of course) up to the 4th, 5th, and 6th floors to check out works by Picasso, Matisse, and a special Paul Klee exhibition they were running.
We had checked out a few Matisse works at MoMA in New York, but the only Picasso I had seen before were a couple of sketches.
We were blown away. We walked into a room full of his paintings and by the time we left our heads were spinning. Picasso has been imitated, revised, and done to death by others over the past 50 years, but his works still stand out as unique and fresh as the day he created them.
By the time we got to the Paul Klee exhibition the clock was ticking on B’s mood. He was great through the Modern and Contemporary floors, but a four-year-old can only take so much art, so we unfortunately had to blaze through what seemed like the entirety of Klee’s work.
It was enough, however, for me to decide that I need to see more of Klee. His marionettes and the work he did after the Nazi party came to power in the 30’s were particularly striking.
We took the outside escalator back down to the Children’s Exhibit, and J and I stopped, crestfallen. We had expected to see “Children’s Museum” type stuff, with things to play on and with, but we were greeted with a cardboard 3-dimensional cityscape that looked like it wasn’t really designed for the beatdown that a tempestuous 4-year-old who had been patiently looking at art all morning was dying to dish out.
We gave it a whirl anyway, which ended up being a good decision because we all had a lot of fun.
The French artist JR, who creates larger-than-life collages and photos on buildings around the world, was the featured artist. The kids were given a large sheet of paper to decorate with stamps and then directed into a photo booth where their artwork was used as a background. Their photo was taken and then projected onto various “buildings” in the cityscape, and we wandered about, watching for Braeden’s face to appear. We all had fun and got some great pics as a result.
Masterpiece in hand, we left the Pompidou Center, hopped a Metro train and headed home for lunch and a nap. I hit the gym (which should be the subject of a whole post…the people at Reebok CrossFit Louvre are wonderful folks, but I miss my home at CrossFit 203) and we sat down for our usual family dinner around 6:30 pm.
This Beaujolais is outstanding, by the way. I know you were wondering.
I went a little overboard and spend 9.50 euros, which is way more than you need to spend in a country full-to-bursting with delicious $6-a-bottle wines, but it was the second-cheapest bottle they had at Nicholas and I just couldn’t get the cheapest bottle. I couldn’t.
Anyway, I’m halfway through the bottle, I’ve been writing for an hour and a half and it feels like I’ve only been at it for 90 minutes. It’s like magic, only scrumptious.
I’m trying to stick to posting new stuff every 3 days, but that means that every three days I’m writing for 3 hours at night. It’s possible that it would be better to write for an hour a night, but I have a feeling that once we leave France that there will be less to write about anyway. You can only say “Spent all day at the beach. Worked out. Ate food,” in so many words.
Au revoir for now. Next post we’ll be talking about today’s trip to the Musee D’Orsay, which was excellent enough to merit another visit.
You stay sexy, now.
look forward to these everyday! Feel like I’m there.