Paris Day Two (& Three)

Did not fall off the face of the earth, had some internet issues with Wanadoo (my ISP) and had a hell of a time working them out as every time I call for assistance they don't speak English and my 'computer french' is limited. All conversations ended with me yelling at them and them telling me to get someone who speaks French to call them back. It was not pretty! But finally fixed the issue MYSELF last night. So now back to our regularly scheduled programming.

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Back in the late 80's early 90's, don't ask me to pinpoint an exact time because I'm not good at that, I was a single mom attending college on a grant. I had no real plan, just to get through the ordeal with good grades. The state of California had a plan though, it was called general education and in their infinite wisdom decreed that as part of my studies I should take an art history class. Art History, that was a class that was over in that cluster of buildings on campus that I would never have gone near on my own. The first day of this class, like the first day of every class I've ever taken where I was given the choice, I sat in the back of the classroom. Well, classroom in this case being a giant auditorium with theatre seating. The first day seemed to portend exactly how huge a mistake this would be. There was seating for about 300 in this auditorium and there were probably 20 of us in the class. Once again, I took a class from one of those teachers that nobody liked, because I hadn't bothered to ask anyone before signing up for this particular section of the class. The class covered the basics. Early 3rd through late 17th or 18th century art; sculpture, painting, some minor crafts and sticking to mostly Greek, roman, Italian, French works. The format of the class was guaranteed to put you to sleep. We sat in our chairs while the teacher, who I think I actually saw maybe three times during the semester, sat up in the projection booth and flashed slides up on the giant screen. He would then describe the piece, the artist, the medium and why this was important. If the person was a well known master we would cover three or four of his works if not we would cover the one work of note for the artist and why this represented a watershed moment in art. Tests consisted of a slide being flashed up on the screen while we scribbled down everything we remembered about it. You can see how this teacher would be so incredibly popular. This is a class in which I would undoubtedly sit in the back and read something else for half of the 1 ¾ hours twice a week I was forced to attend. A blow off class if there ever was one. I actually had a strategy for these classes which involved studying the teacher and figuring out exactly how little I needed to do to get by. But I never needed the strategy in this class, from the first slide to the last, every class, until the end of the semester, I was transfixed. I would blow off other classes but never this one. Never before had I realized that there was a progression, a study, well, an art to art. It was like puzzle pieces fitting all together nicely in their places. In a class that was guaranteed to put you to sleep, I sat in the darkness of that theatre and scribbled notes furiously. I loved every minute of the class, though not every artist or medium. But it was an introduction into a world that was foreign to me. I still have the text book for that class. Yes there was a book. It opened my eyes to a fact that I’ve always known about music too. That they can teach you the notes, colors, techniques, strokes, styles, theory and rhythms, but unless you have a talent and a passion for it, it’s not something everyone can do. So there I was on Sunday, in the Louvre, seeing up close what I had seen in pictures in a book. Here was all the color, style and form I’d read about, the names, the works. I cried. Yeah, well, not like you didn’t see that coming. I cried. I’m standing in front of the Mona Lisa with a crowd of Japanese tourists and just dabbing at my puddling eyes. Go ahead, get in a good laugh. Walking down that long ass gallery in the Danon wing, of 13th thru 18th century Italian paintings and having snippets of lecture come back to me. It was incredible. Giant canvases, depicting, well lets face it, ‘mother and child’ and ‘the death of Christ’ were almost compulsory themes for these guys. I’m walking down a quarter mile gallery of different variations on the same theme. But the history, the size of them, the colors, and the history (did I say that already) it was awesome. I have to apologize to S because of how I’ve ridiculed his love of ‘piles of rubble’. To him those piles of rubble that mean nothing to me are a representation of a rich history. These were my piles of rubble. As far as collections the Louvre is not so much of a big deal. The big draw of the Louvre is its historical significance to the French as a building and their pride and joy as a museum. But really the collections are sparse, though there is enough there to give you a little taste of everything. On Sunday I learned that as much as I love those paintings, my real love is sculpture. I could’ve spent hours in the galleries of Greek antiquities and French sculptures. I got to see the ‘Venus de Milo’ and ‘Winged Victory’. I got to see ‘The Captives’. I got pictures! Unlike those stuffy uptight people at the Guggenheim, at the Louvre you can take pictures til your hearts content. Flash pictures too. I got a picture of the Mona Lisa, or rather S did. (That’s why you bring really tall people with you to these things, so they can get photos over the heads of all the other tourists.) The Mona Lisa is not such a big deal. Well first of all she’s a rather small painting and secondly she’s hanging on the wall and there’s a box around her with polarized glass. The glass in front of the painting is tinted so that the sun cannot damage her and so that you cannot actually tell the true colors of the painting. And if you take photos you can’t use flash or you get nothing but flashback for a picture and if you don’t use flash the picture is too dark to see and if you set the shutter speed slower and open the aperture big enough to get a good shot you need three or four people around you to block the other tourists or they move you and you get nothing but blur. So, the conclusion is, go see the painting, but forget trying to get a decent picture of her. Yes, I did have my usual difficulty with the size of the building. There were moments that I made S head for the exits. But once there, went back for more. If somebody finds a cure for that, please let me know. I wish I could get past it but I can’t. It’s like a generalized and bizarre form of my claustrophobia. Anyway, it was a great morning. We headed next to Notre Dame. Another ‘short’ walk up the seine this time. Notre Dame was anti-climactic. It’s a big church, ok cathedral. Alright it is the heart of Paris and it is a marvel of medieval engineering. The interior is so vast that it can hold up to 6000 worshippers. One of the best features inside is the 7800-pipe organ. For a small fee and a lengthy wait in line you can climb up to the 387 steps of the north tower which will bring you to the west façade and some of the scariest gargoyles you’ll ever see. One curiosity you can see outside of the cathedral is ‘point zero’. ‘Point Zero des routes de France’ is a bronze star set in the pavement of the square in front of the church. Distances from Paris to every part of France are measured from this star. Small line of tourists there, all wanting to get their pictures taken at point zero. Really the outside gothic features are far more interesting than anything inside, I think. Well, except for maybe the windows that are best viewed from the inside. We got there in time for mass but ½ way through I needed to wander. Yes, you see, while the mass is going on in the middle, tourists are quietly (supposedly) milling around the exterior, it’s very distracting. Plus the cathedral is in the middle of some massive renovations (See previous notes about off season sightseeing) and the interior and exterior are mostly hidden behind tarps and scaffolding. But you get the general idea. The area across the Sein from Notre Dame though is a maze of tiny streets and buildings full of shops and restaurants. Even for a Sunday, when almost everything is closed, the place was bustling. Loads of special shops, all sorts of artisanal wears, some quite pricey. Definitely not your typical souvenirs, though we did buy the obligatory Eiffel tower key chains. We had lunch in this cool little café where I had the best Crème Brule of my life, bar none! It was absolutely perfect. As we wandered back to our hotel for a rest and to regroup it began to rain on us. Now as narrow as these streets are you figure you just walk in the lee of the buildings to stay dry right, wrong. It was actually raining straight down and there was no place to hide from it. It was weird like some suddenly weird twilight zone episode or something. It starts raining and it’s like we have wandered away from all the shops and all the people. We can’t duck into any shops because there aren’t any or they’ve all rolled up the welcome mats and there’s no place to go. We suddenly find ourselves alone in this deserted maze of streets. We walk for a bit and then squeeze into a doorway for a bit, walk a bit and find an awning to shelter under. By the time we reached the hotel we were both soaked. My wool coat weighed about 50 lbs. We hung up our wet things and curled up on the bed for a nap. Two days of walking for miles was beginning to take its toll. Now, why were we walking everywhere you might ask. Well, it’s simple see, we drove to Paris so we had a car, but parking is at such a premium that once we managed to find a place to park (1/2 mile from the hotel) we decided to leave the car there. Driving to sights would have meant a struggle to try and park the damned car everywhere we went. Taxis are available but scarce and expensive. They do have some great bus tour company’s like they did in Barcelona but we had our own agenda. Besides this was only the first visit to Paris and we were just scoping stuff out. On Sunday night, after our nap, S wanted to go back to the Eiffel tower to see it at night all lit up. Me, I was one giant sore muscle from neck to toes. Also if I went with him, I’d be sitting in the cold while he took the elevators to the top for photos. We decided he would just go without me, go check that the car was still there, then head to the tower. 15 minutes into his absence it began to pour down rain again and a few minutes later S came in. He had gotten to the car and back and no farther. A while later it stopped raining again and he decided to go for it. Upon his triumphant return an hour and a half later, he confirmed that I would have hated it. Hundred’s of people standing in Disneyland style lines waiting for the lifts, then crammed in like cattle for the ride to the first level and then line up and wait for the next lift to the top level and repeat for the ride back down again. He did, however, manage to get some fabulous night shots of Paris and of the Eiffel Tower. Many of the shots from the top are a bit blurry though due to winds that must have topped 40 mph up there. Between that and shivering with cold it was difficult for him to get a steady shot. We had no real plans for Monday except that we didn’t want have to drive back in a fired up hurry on Sunday night so we stayed the extra day. I wanted to stroll down the Champs Élysées and the Rue de Rivoli and be a lèche-vitrine, a ‘window licker’, um window shopper. Then I had the idea for the great passport adventure. You see S was out of passport pages, yes your passport comes with 24 pages with 4 squares per page for stamps and his was full. We had investigated a couple of weeks back what he needed to do to get more pages. Basically it was fill out forms, drop of forms and passport to the consulate in Toulouse, they would forward it to the embassy in Paris, who would add pages and return it to the consulate. This process would take three weeks. But suddenly we found ourselves in Paris on a Monday and wouldn’t it be easier to get it done there in an hour? As it turned out the embassy was just on the other side of the Louvre. We drove there, parked a couple of blocks away and S walked to the Embassy. I had to stay with the car as we’d already checked out of the hotel and ‘the Precious’ and S’s laptop and our luggage were now in the trunk of the car. S was out of there in an hour and a half with new pages sewn into his passport and I had an opportunity to window shop since we ended up parking right on Rue de Rivoli, how convenient was that, I could peek in windows and keep one eye on the car. Paris in the springtime, what could be more fun! We’ll have to come back next month though for the tulips and to do a walking tour when it’s warmer. I would also love to go just a bit north west of Paris to Giverny to Musee Claude Monet, his home where he painted the water lilies. I bought a ‘Lonely Planet’ guide to Paris and there are tons of things in there to do and see. Come see us, we’ll do Paris, but bring comfortable walking shoes. Below is a large (sorry Blogger) photo gallery. You will not see too much of Missy as she absolutely hates to have her picture taken, but S is in some...hmm...well he's in some I previously posted and in some I have yet to post. I have tons of pictures but I’ll try and spread them out over the next day or so.

This is the really LONG gallery in the Denon wing. It contains 13th - 18th Century Italian Paintings. Walking shoes at the ready.

This is one of the French sculpture 'gardens' in the Richelieu wing. It's actually a courtyard with a glass roof.

This is in the Greek antiquities room in the Sully wing. I'm not sure what this is called but I love it.

A view of the whole room. Some great sculptures in here.

Aphrodite or better known as the Venus de Milo.

This is the main entrance to the Louvre. It has huge lines, but we know a secret entrance with no lines at all.

The 'Hotel de Ville' or the Mairie of Paris. Basically city hall.

A not very interesting picture of Notre Dame. I have others of detail and stuff, but for later.

The Eiffel at night. S took one of the whole thing from below, but I like this one better.

Looking across the Seine from the first level of the Eiffel.