We left for Paris on
Friday at noon, and made the roughly 5 hour drive all packed into a
very small, very French car. Post-Sheep-Head Grace was too tired to
make conversation, and elected instead to stare out the window at the
French countryside and listen to some quality, Slavic-brass-inspiredtravel music. Between naps, Margaux, her friend Pierre-Louis (who was
staying with us for the week preceding the trip), and I munched on
soft, junk-foody pains au chocolat and flicked through a few pages of our reading until the car careened around a corner and we all had to put down out books.
We arrived in the
city after dark, and dropped Pierre-Louis off near his metro station,
then made our way to the largest and most luxurious apartment I have
ever been in. It was glorious.
No wonder the Jacobins revolted. |
Too tired to go out
on the town, we spent the evening at home with a friend of the family
who owned the flat, and awaited the arrival of Margaux's friend Zita,
who took the train in to spend the weekend with us. The family
skyped Alice, their other daughter living in New York, who was
baffled by the popularity of the greatest holiday of them all
Halloween. It's not a
widely celebrated holiday in Europe (to my chagrin), but we did get
the whole weekend and half of the week off for Toussaints, so a girl
can deal.
The
next morning we headed off to see the sights in a city that had
largely been deserted by native Parisians, fleeing for the holiday
weekend. The huge, wide avenues were still packed with people, but it
became very apparent, very quickly that in Paris, one is more likely
to hear English than French.
They just don't make 'em like they used to, kids. |
After descending the
tiny, dizzying spiral staircase, we made our way down the
Champs-Elysées.
Perpetually hungry, the girls stopped for chocolat chaud and
croissants at Brioche-Dorée
(think French Dunkin Donuts) Somehow, in a city of cafes, this is our
chosen venue. What would Jean-Paul Sartre think (not that I actually
care at all what that man thinks. Get a job! Stop being a Soviet apologist! Be nicer to your wife! She's way cooler than you!). Satisfied, we continued our stroll down the road to the Place
Vendôme, hopped onto the
metro, and headed back home, where the girls rounded out the night
with a fierce game of Mario Kart.
The Opera |
Day three. Sunday.
We went to mass at the Église
de la Trinité and
jogged over to the Musée
Nissim de Camondo, the
home of a Turkish family of Jews who settled in Paris and have one of
the greatest collections of 18th
century furniture and art I've ever seen outside
of like, Versailles. There was a Japanese cabinet that I had some
serious envy for. After the museum, we skipped over to the Jardin
des Tuileries, and looked at some statues (one of which looked like it
was dabbing. Tragically I did not take a picture. Next time folks.)
At this point, it was way too late to even think about tackling the Louvre, but we did make time for the gift shop. The number of historically inspired perfumes I had to keep myself from buying was astounding.
At this point, it was way too late to even think about tackling the Louvre, but we did make time for the gift shop. The number of historically inspired perfumes I had to keep myself from buying was astounding.
Notre Dame |
After the Louvre, that behemoth, we popped on over to Notre Dame, and then to my favorite place in the entire city
“What
is Shakespeare and Company? We've never heard of this.”
This
is the question I faced from every single Frenchman when I told them what I wanted to see in Paris. Apparently, as wildly popular
as it is with Americans and Brits, Shakespeare & Co. is virtually
unknown to the French. A quick jog over the Seine, this two story,
cramped bookstore is
the re-iteration of a bookstore
founded by Sylvia Beach in Paris
in 1919, where authors like Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald,
Ezra Pound, James Joyce, and T.S. Eliot (to name, like, a
few)
flocked in the years following the First World War. By far, my
favorite spot in the city, although this isn't the original location.
In 1962, after the death of Beach, George Whitman's store Le Mistral
(then the hottest place in Paris for literary figures to hang out)
was renamed in honor of her. Very, very, very cool.
I feel, ya, Ern. |
Wary
at first of this weird, tiny Anglophone bookstore that I was VERY
enthusiastic about visiting, the girls eventually understood its
appeal when they saw the piano and the typewriters and the beds and
cots and couches for reading and writing poetry. It's magical. Even
if the picture I took of it is less than stellar. After a huge dinner
at a very dinky Greek restaurant, we turned in for the night. I was
too excited to wait until I got home to read my new books, so I
flicked through the pages of T.S. Eliot on teh metro. I didn't realize how lovely
the English language could sound until my family said that the
opening lines of Prufrock
were beautiful, even if they were nonsense to them.
“Let us read and
let us dance; these two amusements will never do any harm to the
world.” ~Voltaire
|
You have to get your
book stamped. Its the RULES.
|
The Louvre |
BEHEMOTH |
Gainsborough, aka my dude. |
Seriously, Jacobins. I hear you, |
After the Louvre,
which we somehow sped through, we hit up Sainte Chapelle, private cathedral of the French royal family. It recently underwent an 8 year long renovation because the windows were so covered in pollution and grime that the light couldn't shine through them. It's almost a completely different cathedral now than it was the last time I visited 8 years ago.
I didn't
take any pictures. I'm sorry. I'm a bad traveler. But honestly, that
space is so overwhelming, and my measly little iPhone camera can't
handle the kind of definition needed to do it justice. So I've linked
to some actual, nice, quality photos for you to enjoy. We ended the
day by strolling on the quais of the Seine. The next morning, mass
again for Toussaints, this time at Notre Dame, a visit to the home of
Victor Hugo, and a return trip to Tassin-la-Demi-Lune. I'll return in the Spring to hit up some cafes on my own time. Until then.
Notre Dame |