And suddenly we were down to our last week. We knew that the month in Paris would go by quickly, and it flew. After returning from our whirlwind trip to Normandy, we had precious few days to finish off our checklist of must-do’s.
We realized as the days wound down that although we had many things on our to-do list, there were only a few things that we really, absolutely had to do before we left town. Upon our arrival, I was excited with all of the things I was going to see and do – so much time to accomplish so much. And I realized going into our last week that while I hadn’t checked nearly as many things off my list as I had initially expected, I didn’t care. We had done what we did when we lived in New York. We lived day-to-day, we got to know our neighborhood, we got to know the city a little bit better, we found our favorite restaurants, and we spent time doing the things that we loved. We didn’t live like the crazed tourists we usually are on our trips, running on 4 hours of sleep a night while cramming as much into every single second as we can. We just lived.
So many of my trips have been crazed because I didn’t know if or when I would be back again. But because we are choosing to make travel such a priority in our lives, and because I know we may many years of travel ahead of us, I don’t feel that way this time. Especially with Paris. This was my 10th visit to the City of Lights and certainly won’t be my last.
What did we decide to do with our last days? We made another trip to the Musee d’Orsay to visit the works of our favorite artists, we visited Sainte Chappelle for the first time for each of us (amazing!), we walked through the city – a lot, we went shopping, we shot photos of the sun setting behind the Eiffel Tower from the top of Tour Montparnasse, ate our favorite quiche at Café Le Flore, bought a bottle of my favorite perfume, and bought the latest CD of Enrique Iglesias so we can listen to that ridiculous song we love in the car on our road trips.
View towards Sacre Coeur from the balcony of the Musee d'OrsayOn the balcony of the Musee d'OrsayA Parisian gentlemanFlower shop in ParisSunset from the Tour MontparnasseNight view from Tour Montparnasse
We’ve realized that we are quickly running out of time here, and with a laundry list of things left to do. I’m never as productive with my time as I’d like to think I am. At least we emerged victorious from the last round of shoe shopping for Larry over the weekend. Yea for us! And we got to see a neighborhood that we had not previously been to on this visit, the 11th Arrondissement near the Bastille. It was not the well-manicured, looks-just-so, type of neighborhood that we’re living in. No Kenzo or Armani boutiques, no pricey hotels or restaurants. It had a lot more ethnic restaurants and stores, more graffiti, and felt just a bit more run down. We actually weren’t far from the Pere Lachaise cemetery but we were too tired after all the shoe shopping to trek over there. Oscar Wilde and Chopin will have to wait a bit longer for our visit.
Vélo (bicycle) + liberté (freedom) = Vélib. But not for us.
In the summer of 2007, Paris launched a grand undertaking in the form of Vélib. Vélib is a community automated bike rental system born of a symbiotic relationship between City Hall and JCDecaux, the French advertising company. JCDecaux has a contract with the city of Paris in which it has agreed to administer the Vélib program in exchange for free use of some 1,600 advertising boards around the city, and a share of the bike rental fees that it produces. You cannot walk around Paris without noticing the Vélib stations prominently featured at every Metro station and more – within the borders of Paris there are over 20,000 bikes at nearly 1,500 stations which are situated roughly 300 meters apart, and they are available 24/7. Vélib was an instant hit when it debuted and has only grown in popularity. The Vélib program is now being rolled out to many of the suburbs surrounding Paris. The idea behind the program is to increase convenience and mobility for Parisians, as well as provide a “green” form of transportation. The intent is for users to just take them to get from one spot to the other, or to run quick errands. You can subscribe to a one year pass for 29 Euro, and each time you take a bike the first 1/2 hour is free. I actually don’t know if they make money off of it. The bikes themselves are functionally designed for the program and certainly not the sporty lightweight mountain bikes that Larry and I are used to at home. But they get the job done.
Velib station in Paris
When Larry and I were here in July 2007, we noticed these community bikes parked all around town and decided to take a spin. Except we could not get the automated station to accept our credit card. Any of our cards. We went through the arduous task of selecting the type of plan we wanted (you have a choice of a 1 day or 1 week plan, which are 1 Euro and 5 Euros, respectively), agreeing to the terms and conditions, and inserting our card, only to be told each time that the card was not accepted. We got frustrated and gave up.
Now that we’re back for a longer trip, we decided to give them another chance. After having dinner at our favorite neighborhood brasserie, we went up to the closest Vélib station to check out bikes. And again could not get the computer to accept our credit card. The problem we had, and have had in other places, is that all European credit cards are implanted with a chip which is read by the machine, rather than the magnetic strip that US credit card readers generally rely upon. These stations were obviously designed to read the chip implanted cards, but could not read our plain ol’ magnetic strips. We tried a few different kinds of cards and gave up, vowing to return the next day with even more kinds of credit cards. One of them had to work, eventually. Defeated yet again by the Vélib man behind the curtain.
The next evening we returned with every type of credit card I brought to Europe with me. We were determined to make it work. And finally – the American Express came through for us! Go figure. Happily we chose our bikes and withdrew them from the terminals, and headed off in the direction of the Eiffel Tower. Riding these bikes is definitely not the same as my Trek at home – I felt like an unstable newbie who hadn’t been on a bike in 10 years.
We got to the Eiffel Tower quickly and enjoyed our ride down the Champs de Mars promenade and under the tower. Only the line to take the ascenseur (elevator) to the top was long. Very long. We had hoped that by going in the middle of a random weekday we would evade some of the crowds but our hopes were dashed. We are in full tourist season now.
We also couldn’t find a Vélib station to drop the bikes. Despite knowing there were several in the area, and despite running into them without trying on every other outing we’ve taken here, without knowing the exact location we could not seem to catch sight of a single one in the area. So, we decided to press on and take a little bike tour of the city. We crossed the Pont d’Iéna which runs just behind the Eiffel Tower, and rode up toward the Trocadéro area on the paths surrounding the Palais de Chaillot, where I happily collapsed on the grass and Larry took advantage of my exhaustion by snapping a picture.
Biking across the pontStopping for a few picturesTaking a rest
We were able to spend some time tooling around the rive droite before heading back across to the rive gauche and visiting Lady Liberty’s little sister. They are looking at each other across the Atlantic.
This adventure is a really interesting and educational experiment. It’s not so much of an education that I’m bored and wishing the teacher would move quicker through the material, like back in the day. But it’s a steady and ambling education as I observe and absorb the people, places, and things of our first stop. France. If not the first, at least one of the early lessons that occurred to me recently, while Lisa and I were sitting in a park enjoying a late breakfast of yogurt and pain au chocolat, was that while the country had changed, very nearly everything seems to be the same. Well, I shouldn’t say the same, but patterns so similar you would have a hard time telling them apart from a distance. That is, that while we have changed so much, the place, the people, and the things around us here in Paris are very much the same as living in New York.
Being on many rushed and event/landmark/eatery/attraction-filled trips over my lifetime, I have never had the luxury of time to absorb the similarities.
People
I’ve passed the grumbling Parisian woman as we squeezed by each other on the too-narrow sidewalk, I’ve heard the disapproving grunt of a well-dressed but surly looking man in the Epicerie when I was standing a little too far back in the aisle looking at the wonderful goods. I’ve seen the bus driver watch with cold detachment as a dejected runner failed to get to the stop before he unnecessarily rushed the bus away. I’ve seen the bad French you hear about.
I’ve also seen a crowd of teenage girls on a crowded bus watch vigilantly for an elderly woman to whom they could offer their seat, and, one by one all end up standing long before their stop had come. I’ve seen two shop keepers who didn’t speak a word of English gesture and sign their way through directions to a competitor down the road that might have my size. I’ve seen a girl in a copy shop who refused to charge us for the few critical copies of documents that we needed made. I’ve seen the most respectful and cordial communication and affection shown between otherwise strangers all over this city. I’ve seen incredible patience shown to loud tourists with poor manners that I certainly wouldn’t have tolerated in their place. I’ve seen a wide and rich swath of humanity and every role has a counterpart in the every major U.S. city. To be honest though, people are significantly more thoughtless and abrupt in New York than they are here. Perhaps I shouldn’t compare those, as the difficulties of living in New York invariably turn people cold and hard over time. Perhaps some of that occurs here too. A couple of months won’t show me that. But let me end this section with a story from early in the trip.
On our second day in Paris, we found the nearest grocery store with the combination of decent size and reasonable price (as opposed to the very gourmet Grand Epicere which is the former and not the latter) and loaded ourselves up with the staples and treats necessary for setting up house in our little rented apartment. Behind us in the check-out line was a gentleman who watched with some amusement and surprising patience as our massive load of consumables rode down the conveyor toward an every growing tally of little green digits. When l’addition was complete, I reached out to swipe my credit card in the most logical of the card reader’s two slots, but was stopped by the man behind us in line. He said in broken English, “you must use this one, here,” pointing to the other slot. I smiled and managed a poorly pronounced “merci” and slid my card through the one he indicated. It didn’t scan. I tried again. No luck. As I went for a third, the girl working the register said something to the man. He looked at me sheepishly and pointed to the other slot, the original one that had seemed right to me the first time. We laughed as I scanned the card and completely the transaction. He said “Sorry.” I said, “no problem at all, thank you for trying to help.” He smiled and said “I was so proud to know, and then I was wrong.” We laughed and patted each other on the shoulder before parting. Good guy. Just trying to help. He could have been annoyed with us seeing his milk, bread, and cheese, against our week’s worth of groceries (the kind of bulk they simply don’t buy as a quick trip to the store is a daily stop). He could have watched the “silly American” suffer as he thought I was scanning my card the wrong way, and chuckled at the confusion. But instead he reached out to me. Even though he wasn’t right about the scanner, he was right as a person trying to be helpful and I appreciated it regardless of outcome.
Places
Paris has the Eiffel Tower, New York has the Statue of Liberty. Paris has the Seine, New York has the Hudson and New York Harbor. Paris has Notre Dame de Paris, New York has St. Patricks’s and St. John The Divine. Paris has the Louvre and Orsay, New York has The Met and Natural History.
As much as there are such significant cultural and historic differences between them, living in a foreign place, rather than just staying for a week or so in a hotel, lends itself to contemplation and then realization of the commonalities between large historic cities of the world. All of them have tourist attractions and churches, gardens and parks. All of them have stores, restaurants, libraries, charming streets and dirty streets. Each has good neighborhoods and bad, strengths and weaknesses — and all of them have compressed humanity filling every door and window, nearly every crack in the jungle of stone, glass, and concrete.
Roaming around Paris on various aimless explorations we’ve made, as well as on the many errands we have run, we find life here surprisingly ordinary and similar to ours in NYC. The difference, and perhaps the whole worth of the experience and reason to continue this adventure indefinitely, is in the details.
Things
The brands of automobiles and motorcycles, many the same, many different. The brands of food and consumer goods, many the same and so many different. Each and every little difference has been the focus of our attention. We have been seeking out the subtleties in our food selection (rule #1 is to never buy the same thing twice), in our approach to landmarks and attractions (to take the time to see them from a non-tourist angle, from a slower more in-depth perspective) and our wandering, to let ourselves get lost and found over and over. We’ve happened upon some of the most beautiful little streets, shops, views, and corners while exploring.
While the bulk of life in another country, on another continent, is surprisingly very much the same, the details are interestingly very different. And I’m finding that that’s where the beauty and value of travel lies — especially in this long-term travel which Lisa and I are both enjoying so much. Over a lifetime with my creative pursuits (songwriting, poetry, short stories, photography, etc.), and professional career, I’ve spend a great deal of time studying the details of things both objectively and subjectively, to write about them, understand them, and find a fresh perspective on them from which to create something new, or at least a work of my perspective on it. As you can imagine, like a kid in a candy store, this is my kind of trip.
We spent the morning working on our various projects, but by mid-afternoon we were itching to get out of the apartment. Being an overcast day with gray, useless light, the next thing we thought of was a museum. As we hadn’t been to Orsay yet this trip we grabbed our cameras and headed out.
For something so seemingly relaxing and non-active, museums take a lot out of you. After three hours of ambling through a place we’re usually ready to sit, or sometimes fall, down. We also find that in most museums, fortunately, those three hours are plenty to see the “important” or otherwise notable or attractive pieces — obvious exceptions being the bigger museums in NYC, D.C., and here in Paris. Orsay is a former train station, as Lisa mentioned in another post I believe, and a feature of that past is a cavernous main hall that is quite a sight to behold. Most of the museum’s sculptures stand in the main hall, giant figures among the many ant-like figures roaming around them in the clothing of either brightly under-dressed tourists or desperately fashionable Parisians.
As you can see by the picture of the grand hall below, the museum was sparsely attended while we were there. We were glad to be able to take our time and stop in front of our favorites, rather than wrestling with the mob from place to place.
We began with the temporary exhibitions, as they weren’t there last time we were here and may not be next time we come. One was an event marking the centenary of the death of painter Ernest Hébert (1817-1908) which consisted of his and his contemporaries’ paintings of Italian peasants. While portraiture is not my favorite type, his depictions were very impressive. One of my favorites was a little peasant girl. Cute as cute gets.
After that exhibit and some of the surrounding content, we decided to get a late lunch at the Cafe on the top floor. As we ate, we considered possible plans of attack. As we have enough time to return at least once or twice before we leave for the south, we decided to take our time on the top floor (impressionists and others) like we haven’t been able to do before, on shorter, more concentrated trips.
Orsay houses a few of my favorites by Van Gogh and others, and most of them are on the top floor. We took the next 3 hours to make our way through them. It was wonderful. I highly recommend it, as it necessarily comes with the highly recommended slow travel method we are experimenting with as well.
As always, though, after four and a half hours in the museum, we were ready to call it a night. We may have to rush the other floors on our next visit as we have many other museums to visit during our last weeks in Paris.
When we got home and settled in I looked out the window to see the crescent moon setting in a path toward the Eiffel Tower. I grabbed my camera and tripod and set up on the balcony to capture some nice long exposures for the collection. See below (click to enlarge).
Musee d’Orsay Main Hall
Musee d’Orsay, main hall
Peasant Girl
La méridienne ou La sieste, Vincent van Gogh, 1889
Londres, le Parlement Trouee le soleil dans le brouillard, 1904, Claude Monet
Bal du Moulin de la Galette, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, 1876
One of the many self portraits, Vincent van Gogh, 1887
The French variety of pain, that is. Le Pain. Bread. Larry and I are quite enjoying it. If you are planning a trip to France at any time in the near future, just memorize this phrase: “Je voudrais plus de pain, s’il vous plait.” Trust me, you’ll be glad to have that bit of survival French under your hat. Everyone in France has a routine of going to the local boulangerie or epicerie to buy their daily baguette. It’s just what they do. Every day, without fail. First thing in the morning or in the evening on their way home from work. And while we Americans may wonder aloud at the daily pain that may be (pun intended), let me argue the other side of it. As Larry put up on his facebook page the other day “Fresh bread every day is what America’s missing.” We are quite enjoying buying our baguettes and other daily carbohydrate laden delights (pain au chocolate is my personal favorite, of course). This morning Larry even trudged down to the local boulangerie at 7 am for warm baguettes fresh out of the oven. I could get used to this.
Larry suffering from a carbohydrate and yeast induced high (I don't know that suffering is the word -Larry)
If The Shoe Doesn’t Fit, Get Smaller Feet
We have also discovered the pain of shoe shopping in Paris for an American male with size 13 feet. When Larry decided to leave his old Cole Haan loafers back in the states because they were ready for that big shoe rack in the sky (they weren’t in such great shape to begin with, and then they had to survive his abuse during our entire miserable move), we thought, no problem, we’ll just buy some in Europe. Except we forgot the fact that the average French man is 5’8″ with a corresponding shoe size. We’ve spent a lot of our time over the last few days trying to find a shoe store that sold shoes that would fit Larry’s big paws. We haven’t been so successful. Every grand magasin (large department store), a Mephisto store down the street (“Mephisto ne fait pas” – “Mephisto doesn’t make them”, asserted the sales lady there), and many other shoe stores in between have all said, “45 is the largest we carry.” Size 13 US is roughly equal to a 47 -48 in Europe.
We were so close to success on Monday we very nearly thought our problem solved. Friendly sales people at one shoe store directed us to another around the corner to a store that carries grande pointures (large sizes). Sure enough, up on the sign it advertised “36 á 50” – Larry’s size with room to grow! While the selection was not large he found a couple of lukewarm possibilities, and the friendly older French woman who has probably worked there her entire life ran upstairs to retrieve our hoped for solution. Larry had requested a 48 and when she brought the two different pairs he requested, one was clearly too small and the other was “parfait” according to the sales woman. She again went upstairs to retrieve a larger size in the too small pair. However, Larry liked the first pair best but thought they were too large.
Here is where a broader French vocabulary would have been helpful. I studied it in college and in business school and was fairly conversant at one point but my days of being a lazy American and expressing myself only in English have pushed most of my French language skills into that cloudy part of my brain that I can no longer access. Professor Federico would be so disappointed in me. Thus we are left with my vocabulary of a few hundred survival words, which works just fine in grocery stores and when ordering meals and buying movie tickets, but is apparently not enough to express myself in the intricacies of shoe fit and sizing.
I asked Madame if we could try the 47’s in the shoe Larry had on and Madame informed me that “a 47 would not work, the 48 was a perfect fit”. It was not a question, or a matter of opinion, it was merely the fact. I tried again. Again, she corrected me, and told me that the sock was the problem. Larry was not wearing regular socks and just had the chausettes that the stores keep on hand for customers to use when trying on. With a regular sock, she said, it would be a perfect fit. Except Larry didn’t plan on wearing them with socks given we’re on the verge of summer and that Larry only wears socks to work and church in the summer. “But he won’t wear them with socks” I tried to explain. “It’s required that he wear socks, it’s store policy.” she informed me.
Obviously my flawed French was failing me. Madame was “the expert” at shoe size and fit and she was resolved. “The 47 will not work. The 48 is the correct fit. It is not a question.” She broke off in rapid fire French – something about the arch of his feet and the width – I have no idea what she said but can assume it had something to do with the fact that his feet were too wide and his arch too high for a 47 to work. I think she also said something about him stretching the 47’s if he tried them on because his feet were obviously too big for them. Then she put all the shoes back in their boxes and put them in the back of the store, saying (I think) something about if we didn’t like them, it was not a big deal “ce n’est pas grave“. We both sat there a little shell shocked. Apparently in Paris, the customer is not always right. At least we got to admire the beautiful Paris Opera Garnier while we were in the neighborhood.
Opera GarnierOpera GarnierOpera GarnierOpera Garnier
Now I have done serious internet research to find places that sell les grande pointures and we have a few well-stocked stores in the Bastille neighborhood to try. Of course the brands they carry are all American labels, because apparently only American men have big feet. This time we’ll ask for a 47 first. Hopefully we get a sales person that speaks a little English.
Heat Wave
Saturday, Sunday, and Monday turned out to be quite the Parisian heatwave. For those of you who paid attention in the past when there have been screaming headlines about deadly heat waves in Europe, any time the mercury in the thermometer goes above 90 degrees, it’s a deadly heatwave by European standards. Continental Europe generally doesn’t get that hot in the summertime, and for that reason, many, if not most people, do not have air conditioning. Including our landlords. I think it was only in the mid-80’s but it was quite humid and that, combined with our 6th floor location, made for a pretty steamy apartment. Larry does get credit for being the ingenious inventor that he is, as he crafted our very own air conditioner by freezing water in old 1.5L Coke bottles and placing them in front of the fan. The result was a very pleasant, very cool breeze aimed directly wherever we chose.
We did our best to spend as little time as possible here (though we couldn’t escape it too much given the subways or buses didn’t have air conditioning either) and decided one night that it was the perfect time to take the Bateaux Mouches – the pleasant open-air tour boats that march up and down the Seine day and night. We decided to take the metro to Place de la Concorde and take pictures as we walked the rest of the way along the river to the Bateaux Mouches dock.
Sunset looking down from Place de la ConcordeObelisk at the Place de la ConcordeFountain, Place de la ConcordeLisa trying to get a perfect fountain shotPont Alexandre III and the Eiffel TowerSun goes down on the Seine
We ended up taking a 10 pm boat so it was nearly dark when we started. The full tour takes a little over an hour and goes past all the beautiful spots of the city, including Notre Dame, the Eiffel Tower, the Louvre, and the Musee D’Orsay (my personal favorite, both for the spectacularly gorgeous building (which actually used to be a train station) as well as its contents).
On the Bateaux MouchesAssemblee NationaleMy favorite, the Musee D'OrsayLa Louvre, passing tour boat
We walked home in the dark, across the Pont Alexandre III, by far the most beautiful bridge in Paris, and past the Invalides, enjoying the beautiful stillness of the sleeping buildings and trying to inhale every detail so that it’s permanently imprinted on our DNA.
Pont Alexandre III, Eiffel Tower in the backgroundPont Alexandre III, InvalidesLooking across the Pont Alexandre III to the InvalidesEntrance to the Pont Alexandre III, Lisa as a tiny speckGuardians of the PontRelaxing along the PontInquisitive guardianPeek-a-booHanging around, foreverWalking home from the cruise near midnightNighttime brilliance
We’ve just realized that we’ve been here nearly 2 weeks already. Nearly halfway done with the Paris portion. I knew when we got here that a month was not going to be enough time, and of course, it isn’t. Larry, asked me the other day about the dream I’ve always had of living in Paris, “One month isn’t going to count, is it?” I informed him, no, of course not. It’s just a long-ish vacation. For it to count to me we would have to be here at least a year. Of course my preference is to have a second home here that we can come to whenever we want, but that’s some time down the road. I’d settle for a houseboat on the Seine, too.
Le Cid enjoying his dinner and some fresh air
I’ll have to re-learn French if I’m ever going to be allowed to own property here.
