November in Paris

Sarah looks through the glass at the Peace Monument (erected for the millenium) on the Champs de Mars, the former Parade Ground of the Ecole Militaire. It is loosely based in the Western Wall in Jerusalem. Computer screens for visitors to write e-messages (in lieu of paper notes) are part of the monument. Napoleon was a graduate of the E.M. It worked for him. It shows the value of a good education.

Sarah enjoys the fall flowers at Luxembourg Gardens. The palace here now houses the French National Assembly.

December, 2005

Bonjour,

We had a great three weeks in Paris.

It was an experience of contrasts.

We were at the highest point, Basilique du Sacre-Coeur on Montmartre, and the lowest, the banks of the Seine.

We went from the sacred, the synagogue whose sanctuary was built by Gustave Eiffel (of tower fame) to the sleazy, the sex shops of Pigalle (from the outside only).

From the sweet smells of the flower stalls of Ile de la Cite, to the not-so-sweet smells of the sewers of Paris.

From the sculpted tombs of the French kings in the Basilique de Saint-Denis to bones of millions of French commoners in the Catacombs.

We ate the common bread, baguettes, (often) and elaborately prepared artistic pastry (too often).

We dined in Paris' oldest restaurant (a circa 1680 former rural hunting lodge that is now in downtown left bank as the city grew around it) and at their newest McDonald's in an ultra-modern area that is still in construction.

The sewers of Paris are best visited in the winter when the smells are down.

By clicking on the blue phrase in this sentence, you can see a panorama of Paris. Use the bar on the bottom of the photo to scroll through the city.

Signage, of course, is in French. Many signs I can read and understand right away; some signs take me some time, but I can figure them out; for some signs I didn't have a clue. We operate under Sarah's concept: If the information were important for us to know, it would be in English.

As Paris is small, (about 8 miles by 5 miles) we did a lot of walking, especially the first weekend before we bought the unlimited ride weekly metro/bus pass for about $17. (It's said that there is nowhere in Paris that is more than 500 meters from a Metro.)

Sarah at the Tour Eiffel.
After dark, it is illuminated. They may have originally illuminated it to keep birds and aircraft from flying into it. Today, of course, aircraft have radar so that now the illumination is strictly for the birds.

Our first evening in France we walked to the 1,000 foot high Tour Eiffel, not far from our studio apartment, and were surprised to see it start sparkling on the hour (for about 10 minutes). We didn't go up to the top of the tower since, due to heat expansion, it is six inches taller in the summer and I want to get my money's worth.

The fanciest (gaudiest?) of the Metro station entrances. This one serves the Louvre.

The next morning, our first full day in Paris, we took the metro to the Louvre and spent the day walking about five miles through its halls. The place is 'ginormous'. There were originally four separate palaces which formed a rectangle. One burned, so it is now 'U' shaped with a square building as the center section. When the palaces were connected to make the museum, stairs had to be built to connect floors which were at different heights. Sometimes one has to go up AND down stairs to move from one section to another. (A section is about ½ mile long, and often has two passages and several side-halls.)

The Louvre is a museum within a museum. As it is made up of several former palaces, many of the rooms themselves are works of art with gilded mouldings, painted ceilings, and lots of marble.

At the Louvre. 'A man with a Cat.'

We made it our priority to see the most famous works as well as those works mentioned in 'The Da Vinci Code.' The Mona Lisa, Venus de Milo, and Winged Victory are considered by many to be the Louvre's most noteworthy pieces. We returned to the Louvre during our last week to pay special attention to areas and items of particular interest to us: the Levant, ancient Egypt, and the Code of Hammurabi stelae, as well as the really large paintings that wouldn't fit in our living room. Mesopotamia wasn't bad, either.

I noticed that just because someone is famous, doesn't mean that all their works are good, and also, just because something is hanging in the Louvre doesn't mean that it is quality. In one particular painting, I thought that the only reason that the painting was hung was that they couldn't find the artist.

The Louvre only has old stuff, the newer stuff, after about 1850, is across the Seine at the Musee d'Orsay housed in a former railroad station. The following week we spent a day there looking at more modern stuff such as Renoir, Matisse, and Gaugain. There's Monet and Manet, too; one does lots of flowers, the other doesn't.

Sarah sits where trains once rode in the Musee d'Orsay, a former railroad station.

The newest stuff is at the Centre Pompidou. We went to the gift shop, but I've seen enough modern art squiggles. The building itself is a point of interest. The plumbing, ducts, etc are brightly colored and on the outside as part of the design of the building.

The CLUNY Museum of the Middle Ages has stained glass, the ruins of the Roman baths, and the famous series of unicorn tapestries.

After seeing so many statues, I've decided to have one made of myself. Being a realist, I'm using the statues in both the Louvre and the d'Orsay as guides and I'm looking for a good body to represent me. While I'm at it, I'm looking for a good looking head, too.

Sarah ponders on the rue de Rossiers in the Pletzel. Should she buy the 'best falafel in the city,' the 'best falafel in the world,' or the 'best falafel on the block'?

For our second day we walked across most of historic Paris along the Champs Elysee from the Napoleon's Arc d'Triomphe to the Cathedral of Notre Dame taking a side trip to rue de Rossiers, the heart of the Pletzel, the old Jewish Quarter since the 1200s. While in the Pletzel we tasted traditional Parisian falafel and bought lots different kinds of kosher sausages [and some pate de foie gras (@ $75/pound, not very much)] for our dinners back at out apartment. We had decided to 'eat French' while in Paris; sausages and sauerkraut are traditional foods of the Alsace-Lorraine region.

Sarah on the Champs-Elysees.
The Arc de Triomphe is the largest monument of its kind in the world. Napoleon did things on a big scale.

It has been interesting shopping for food the Parisian way. Although there are supermarkets, most stores are specialty shops (fromagiere, boulangerie, patissiere, etc). Some streets have several boulangeries. Our street has one at each end of the block, but we preferred the one about a block away. (Bread prices are fixed by the government. It's been that way since the French Revolution. Remember how Marie Antoinette got into trouble with bread.)

Sarah relaxes in our apartment.

Because we chose a residence hotel consisting of only studio apartments with kitchenettes and housekeeping, we ate all of our breakfasts and most of our dinners in our apartment and almost always brought a bag lunch while touring. With all of the walking, we actually lost weight while eating well. The cold weather also helped suck the fat out of our bodies.

After a picnique lunch, Allen makes some French friends. No kissing.

Next to Notre Dame, at the Seine, is the Memorial des Martyrs de la Deportation dedicated to the 200,000 French citizens, mostly Jewish, who were deported to concentration camps with the assistance of the Vichy government. Most of the non-Jewish deportees returned, only 3% of the Jews survived. There are plaques (in French) at the entrance of the pre-war schools memoralizing the students “of this school” who were sent to their deaths by the Vichy government because they were Jewish.

Entrance to Congregation Don Isaac Abrabanel

There are many synagogues in Paris. Some, like the one above, are obvious, some like the one next door to our hotel, are difficult to spot. We walked past it for a week before Sarah noticed a man with a yarmulka kissing the doorpost. We looked and saw a mezuzah embedded in the marble. We went to Orthodox services there one Saturday morning and to a Reform/Conservative service at a nearby synagogue on a Friday night. We noticed that among the men, there is less hand-shaking but more kissing than in the U.S. Neither of the services had English, but we felt right at home with the Hebrew.

Sarah at Basilique du Sacre-Coeur. It's built on the highest point in the city. There is only one vineyard left in the Montmartre neighborhood which was home to several of the famous Impressionists.

At the bottom of Montmartre is Pigalle, known for its (s)exotic shops. The Moulin Rouge is down the street. Shows cost about $100, but you get food.

There are lots of historic churches and cathedrals in Paris. They are some of the very few things for which there is no admission charge. [Versailles charges $.60 to use its toilets. (and they were nothing special)] In addition to Cathedral Notre Dame, several more were of particular interest to us: St. Sulpice (because it is featured in both 'The Da Vinci Code' and in the opera 'Manon,” which we saw at the Met shortly before we left New York), particularly their gnomen; Sainte-Chapelle (because the walls are almost all stained glass (it's like being in an enormous kleidoscope); and the Basilique Royal de Saint-Denis (because it is the first of the Gothic churches and for the sculpted tombs of many French kings that are contained in its necropolis )

NOTE: There is a fee for Sante-Chapelle. It is in a courtyard of the Ministry of Justice, which used to be a palace. We picked a sunny day to be there thinking that the stained glass would really glow. The really bright sunshine washed out the colors on the south side and, by contrast, made the windows on the north side look as if they hadn't been cleaned since being installed in the 13^th century. However, it was an optical illusion. When the sun went behind a cloud (Paris is not where one goes for a sun tan.), the windows on both sides glowed with deep, rich colors. The windows depict stories from the bible in thousands of squares. Of particular interest to us were those showing Moses with bright yellow horns. [This common theme comes from a mistranslation of the biblical passage describing Moses' face beaming when he decended Mt. Sinai. 'Beams' were mistranslated as 'horns.' The term 'halo' is often used today for this beaming effect.]

During the French Revolution, many people, including Marie Antoinette, were held at the Ministry of Justice, then called the Conciergerie after the kings moved to Versailles, awaiting trial and their turn to be 'made a foot shorter' by the guillotine.

NOTE: Several people sent me e-mails about conditions in the St. Denis area where thousands of cars had been torched during the several weeks prior to our visit. We asked at tourist info about the safety of visiting the area. We were told, “You don't have a car; you don't have to worry.” When we visited the area, we did notice that there were more non-Europeans in the area than in most other Paris neighborhoods and that the prices were better than in our neighborhood [which was not ritzy (we visited the Ritz, so we know)]: Sarah used this as a rationale to buy as much pain de chocolate (at about 1/3 the price) as she could store in our freezer.

Sarah shops at the Rue de Grenelle Market near our apartment.

The St. Denis prices were even better than those at the Rue de Grenelle Market which is held every Wednesday and Sunday about two blocks from our apartment. The market was a good example of the French approach to food. The products, fish, meats, cheeses, produce, etc. were artistically arranged. Birds, for example, were often semi-plucked so that the feathers appeared as decorations. It's been a long time since I've seen animals hanging on hooks at the butcher.

Patisserie shelves are filled with edible works of art. They are not for scarfing. They are designed to be the piece de resistance after an elegant meal. They are usually brought as gifts to the hostess by dinner guests. A single serving can cost as much as an entire supermarche pie.

ALAS, POOR YORIQUE
Allen examines some of the bones in the Catacombs.

The Catacombs, to where the bones of millions were relocated when the old cemeteries were closed, are old quarries and stretch for 300-400 kilometers. They are under almost every neighborhood. The cemeteries were cleared for health reasons, they say; maybe it was early urban renewal: Why waste valuable land for people so few remember? The bones are neither identified nor kept together by person; they are arranged by cemetery. Famous dead people got better treatment.

Napoleon, a very famous dead person, got much better treatment. He has a very impressive tomb. The chapel that was built for it dominates the skyline looking east from the Tour Eiffel. It is part of a complex that is a former veterans hospital built by Louis something or other. There is also a museum showing how France won WW II. We helped, too, they say. The part that houses the WW I museum is closed for renovations, so I don't know who won....maybe the French.

Chateau de Versailles. This is where you would enter if you were a guest. If you're here for a tour, it's the little door to the left. [In addition to a hefty admission fee, they charge to use the lavatory.]

Those were some of the high points of our visit. We were busy every day of our stay. We left Paris only to go to Versailles, about a half-hour train ride away. It's the palace that set the gold standard for European royalty. It's huge. There are several tours. We took the package deal which also included rail transportation from Paris. Being winter, the gardens were not in bloom and the fountains were not squirting. [We squirted; it cost us a buck twenty.]

Versailles' famous "Hall of Mirrors." Something seems lacking. Maybe it's the mirrors.

Disappointingly for us (and probably other visitors as well), the famed 'Hall of Mirrors' was behind plywood for restoration [until 2007 (they say)]. A small section was left uncovered to show its opulence; but the grandeur of the room is lost when it is filled with scaffolding.

On the bright side, we did get the off-season discount price.

To see 'Iceland,' the beginning of this trip, click here.

Au revoir,

Allen & Sarah