September 17, 2010

• Paris - Part 1

  We returned yesterday in the late afternoon and I uploaded my pictures from my camera to my home desktop.  530+ pictures! Still loving my Japan-bought new camera and 32GB memory stick.  There are so many good features on it in addition to what I'm used to having it do.  I still need a small tripod for some night/extreme-distance pictures, but I'm loving the Twighlight-Burst setting (takes multiple pictures and "averages" them) and the Panoramic feature.  That feature enabled me to capture some of the grandeur and scale of some of the more outrageously elaborate baroque/rococo rooms in Versailles and the Louvre.

  But enough talk about them, let's have a look.

  Our first day, I took as our orientation day, which means, of course, starting on the Ile de la Cité, the origin of the city, and Notre Dame.  Way, way back, pre-Roman times, the two islands on the Seine (Cité and St. Louis) used to be a smaller grouping of five islands, and an old Celtic tribe -- the Parisii or the Quarisii -- lived on them and the marshy area that the Seine wound through.  The Romans came through and thought the islands were perfect for portage and supply chains along the river, and so conquered the area for themselves, and called the area Lutecia.

  Over time, the Islands were joined together into the two now present on the river, and as Paris' fortunes have risen and fell over time, most of it originates on these islands, as both the city and the country grew around them.  Notre Dame sits on the old Roman ruins, and you can actually see some of them in the archaeological crypt.  The church itself is a beautiful example of high French Gothic architecture.  Z-man was surprised at how small it was, and indeed it's by no means the largest church in Europe, but it looms fairly large in popular imagination, so his "disappointment" isn't really shocking.

  

  

  

  

   

  

  We walked a little around the areas just north and south of the islands.  If you're standing on one of the islands and facing the direction the river flows in (west), the part of the city on your left hand side (the south) is known as the rive gauche, and the right (north) is rive droit, i.e. the "left bank" and the "right bank."  Although Z was mildly disappointed at the scale of Notre Dame, he was most certainly floored by the cakes and breads in the patisseries and boulangeries we walked by along St-Germain-de-Prés.  Flawless, fruit-topped cakes and rainbow colored macaroons, and beautiful breads and rolls were a siren's song to him, and he vowed to have at least one croissant or pain au chocolat a day, which I think he actually did.

  The city started on the islands, but by no means was it confined there.  The left bank was built up first.  Vikings got the better of the city at various times, and often pillaged the well-off churches and monasteries that had been built there.  After fortifications on the Ile de la Cité were built by the founder of the Capetian dynasty, the Vikings were pretty much thwarted in Paris, and the city started to rebuild on the right bank.  The right bank is where the Louvre palace was built, and where the museum of the same name resides, and this is where we spent the next day. 

  We visited the Paris Tourist office on rue des Pyramides and got a 6-day museum pass as well as a Paris Visite, a transportation pass that gets you on busses, metro, RER (a train system), and even the funiculaire at Montmartre.  The transport card "isn't that great a deal," most sources agree (when comparing it to the Navigo cards), but it's easier to get than the Navigo rechargeable card, given that since American credit cards don't work on Paris recharge machines, one must rely on coins in order to pay -- the machines don't take bills, which is a total PITA. 

  The museum card, however, is a fantastic deal, and not merely if you're visiting dozens of museums.  But the museum card lets you bypass ticket purchase lines, which were ubiquitous and lengthy everywhere we went -- I was surprised by how many tourists were still in the city, including American ones.  We're talking Disney World levels here.  The time I spent able to view the museum rather than wait on a queue was worth the pass alone.

  Oh, and Z-man is a bit, um, ADHD with art.  Not a statue fan, but was good enough to let me drag him through many, many galleries of sculpture, which is sort of one of my favorite mediums.

  

  The Venus de Milo, a statue with one of the best PR reps in the world:

  The Venus de Milo's great fame in the 19th century was not simply the result of its admitted beauty, but also owed much to a major propaganda effort by the French authorities. In 1815, France had returned the Medici Venus to the Italians after it had been looted from Italy by Napoleon Bonaparte. The Medici Venus, regarded as one of the finest Classical sculptures in existence, caused the French to consciously promote the Venus de Milo as a greater treasure than that which they had recently lost. It was duly praised by artists and critics as the epitome of graceful female beauty; however, Pierre-Auguste Renoir was among its detractors, labeling it a "big gendarme".

  

  These two are of a statue I'd forgotten about, but was blown away by the first time I saw, and on this second view, I'm still blown away.  It's of Hermaphroditus, son of Hermes and Aphrodite, who had the unfortunate luck to be found appealing to a water nymph named Salmacis, who lived in a fountain.  Her advances were rebuked, but alas, whilst slipping into the fountain for a dip, thinking her gone, she pounced and pleaded to the gods to never be parted from him.  Wish granted, and the two merged into a single being.  The poor schlep, for his part, prayed that anyone drinking from the fountain would also wind up dual-sexed.  Wish also granted.  Not sure how that helped.

  Anyway, the statue is stunning to me for a few reasons.  One is that the padded mattress s/he lies on is, of course, solid marble, but it looks like if you lay down on it, it would be soft and pillowy.  The other is how amazingly rendered the body is.  When you see it from the rear, the hip curvature really does seem to be struggling between female and male, and at first glance, you'd take it for a sleeping female nude.

  

  But when you see the other side, you can see male naughty bits, and the prone figures masculine traits are just visible on the torso and arms. 

  

  The Louvre was, famously, also a palace prior to it's reintended purpose.  If you didn't know that before, you'll know it afterwards.

  

  The Louvre also houses the Mona Lisa.  They changed its location from being on a side wall to it's own display wall, and they put an no-go-zone bubble around it, which absolutely sucks.  You used to be able to get quite close to it.  No longer.  I expect they'll install a 1€ telescope in there someday.  Bleah.

  It's popular, to say the least.  Z was not amused.

  

  Sunset at the Louvre, and the little arc in the courtyard visible.

  

  Interior shot of the pyramid of the Louvre.

  

  The next day, we went to Versailles.  This chateau was as large as Z-man imagined, I'm happy to report.

  And shiny.  So very, very shiny.

  

  I was at Versailles once before.  It's an interesting place, about which the Sun King once famously said, "I can most be myself."  Vomit-inducing levels of ego, but at the same time, I'm impressed that that much ego could fit inside one man.  But at various times, especially when the underclass revolted, this is where royalty and monarchists retreated away from Paris, when things got just a little too hot to handle.  Louis XVI was forcibly removed from here and brought to Paris for execution, during the French Revolution of 1789 (the "first" one).

  Anyhoo, the famous Hall of Mirrors was being renovated my first trip here, which was disappointing.  It's done now, however, and I was able to see it in all of its splendor.

  

  Ahhh, and then there's this little gem.  In some act of cosmic balance to even out my audacity to have French food in Kyoto in December 2009, there is an exhibition at Versailles of sculptures by contemporary Japanese artist Takashi Murakami.

  

  I didn't actually mind it all that much, but Z was infuriated.  For him, this was less a "you got your chocolate in my peanut butter" moment as "what the hell is that thing doing there?"  Though he agreed that the works themselves were pretty great, but he'd rather have seen them elsewhere. 

  So, now I think there needs to be a complete Murakami Versailles.

  

  Another thing I'd not done in Versailles was visit the Trianons, Petit and Grand.  They were other living apartments on the chateau.  Because I guess you just need more?

  

  

  What I had done before, and really loved, was visiting Marie Antoinette's little Hamlet.  A tiny, bijou, and entirely fake village is on Versailles that is supposed to be a sample of idyllic French country life. 

  There's not nearly enough poop or syphilis.   Also, note the clouds.

  

  

  There are gardens around each of the few houses.  They are still tended, incredibly fertile, and it took more willpower than I'd care to admit for me to keep from eating stuff off them.

  

  

  

  Voila! Le Déluge.  We were soaked in this downpour, away from any interior space.  Only crappy little French Fake Village awnings and balconies.

  

  This is the Grand Trianon.  Charles de Gaulle was holed up here for a while during WWII. 

  

  Gardens and land. So much of it.

  

  The next day brings us to 9/11! My birthday! And Dr. Rogish was able to come visit for the weekend, which was so nice.  I had someone to be 40 with.

  So what does one do in Paris to celebrate this additional step toward mortality on one's birthday? Why go to the catacombs of course!

  

  I took comfort that everything in the catacombs, and in Paris in general, is older than I am.

  Since we weren't that far away, and since the museum is not large, we went to the Musée Rodin.  Poor Z was really quite done with sculptures.  But there's one in this museum that is probably one of my favorite works of art of all time, "The Secret."  The flesh-from-stone he managed to evoke, the hands' sinews and bones, and the way it's positioned by a window and lit by natural light and just glows blows me away every time.

  Here are the gardens of the museum, the building of which used to be his residence, and frequently housed other artists at various times.

  

  Yes, that's "The Thinker" in the background.  The Stinker and the Thinker.

  

  This is "The Secret."

  

  I loved this bust too.  The expression is priceless, perfect.  You can see Dr. R having a discussion with her too. 

  

  And here are two bronze French literary giants, Victor Hugo in the foreground and Blazac in the rear.  Which sounds naughtier than it is.

  

  And here's the Place de la Concorde, a vast open space with a giant obelisk from Egypt, fountains, beautiful baroque lampposts, and the place where Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette lost their heads.  Many, many aristos and "enemies of the people" lost their heads here (although not the site of the most guillotined people -- that's actually closer to where we stayed around Nation and Bastille).

  Z-man was amazed by the vast open space, and I told him to picture it with a raised guillotine and hundreds of very pissed off, very poorly-off revolting underclass, screaming angry things at the next aristo to get the chop, or possibly watching Marie Antoinette go to meet her maker.

  

  Dinner was at the Absolutely Fabulous Buddha bar.  I think it's gotten a bit more touristy than when I remember, but I was only there once before for cocktails.  Dinner was good, if nothing to write home about.  But I thought I'd give it a shot.  The interior really is splendid, and the do make good, but very expensive, cocktails.

  

  And at the end of the evening, which I, alas, did not take pictures of, we went to Harry's New York Bar, one-time hangout for expat-era Hemmingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald and definitely has that early-20th century vibe to it.  American college pendants hang around the place, and on the bottom floor there's a piano and more tables and a bar.  Some of the finest cocktails I've had, and one of the best Manhattans I've ever had (I had three.  Possibly four.).

  So, that's part 1.  Part 2 later.

  • 11:41 am
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