I’ve been sort of wondering how I should go ahead and write about my trip to Paris. The obvious thing, I think, would be to sort of tell the story as it happened, chronologically. But Paris was so much more than a series of events, or even a series of places or tourist attractions, I’m not sure telling it that way would do it justice. What I left Paris with, more than a story with a start and a finish, is a myriad of impressions, of all my senses; including my sense of humour and my sense of dramatic imperative. If Paris were a perfume, they would have to work hard to incorporate the notes of roasting chestnuts (which is actually kind of gross, if you ask me) along with cigarette smoke and the overwhelming scent of some indescribably delicious baked good which could be emanating from any one of a dozen storefronts nearby. If Paris were a sound, it would be that particularly irritating European two-tone ambulance siren, but it would also be the sound of French-Algerian hip-hop, and the sound of the word “bonjour!”. The taste of Paris: for me, strong coffee, onion soup, and that really sweet white wine I ordered by mistake. For the eyes, of course, a feast; but mostly for me it’s wide, luxurious boulevards, lined by those particularly Parisian sandstone-colored buildings with their dark slate-colored roofs and ornately embellished facades. But it’s also the flash of gold leaf in the sun, the letter “N” (placed there everywhere by the biggest egomaniac in history: Napoleon), and your first glimpse of the Eiffel Tower. Paris is a city of contrasts.
It has been said by many that Paris is the most beautiful city in the world. Debatable, to be sure. In my own personal scorecard, Venice still beats Paris as most beautiful. But, Venice is a city which is frozen in time. There are no cars there, and the Venice of today doesn’t look a whole lot different than the Venice of 500 years ago. Paris, on the other hand, is a modern, vibrant, living and lively city where the beauty of yesteryear lives side by side with the beauty of today, and the reality of today, which is sometimes not so beautiful. The Eiffel Tower is beautiful the way it was built 130 years ago, but it’s also beautiful lit up as it only could be in the 21st century.
Traveling to Europe, Mark and I have found, the best way to beat jet-lag is to overcome your fatigue on the day you arrive, and try your best to stay awake until the local bedtime. This trip was no exception.
We were staying in the Paris district know as “The Marais”. In “the 3rd”. People who have been to Paris will know what that means. In the future, whenever anyone I know is going to Paris, I will tell them that they should stay in that neighborhood. Steps to everything, Metro stations, restaurants, nightclubs, ancient monuments. After we dropped off our luggage, having survived the obligatory hair-raising Parisian taxi ride from the airport, we decided to embark on our usual exploration on foot. We determined the direction of the Arc de Triomphe, and started walking in that direction.
You know how when you get a magazine, you’ll usually flip through the whole thing from front to back really fast and just sort of glance at the pictures, before starting over and actually reading the articles? Well, this sort of describes our first day in Paris. It was no more than 10 minutes after leaving our building, I turned my head and there was Notre Dame Cathedral. A few minutes later, we found ourselves at the gardens of the Tuileries, an enormous park at the entrance to the Louvre. Before I knew it, my feet were treading on the famous Champs Elysées. I was looking at Cleopatra’s Needle, and the unbelievably huge Arc de Triomphe. And all within and hour and a half of our feet hitting the sidewalks of Paris. Of course, the first few hours in a new city are always kind of nerve-wracking, particularly a city where they speak a different language. So, even though we were strolling down the Champs Elysées and admiring the Arc de Tiomphe, on one level we were still very much the weary travelers, who had been awake for 22 hours and really had no idea where we were or what we were doing. We had yet to make that singularly most fear-inducing transaction: Ordering Food in a Restaurant. And, as is apt to happen when, as I said, one really doesn’t know where one is or what one is doing, we ultimately made a bad choice when it came to where we should eat, and, for that matter, what to order. But, we did make it through the meal without the waiter scoffing at us or throwing change, and although the food wasn’t very good we at least left the restaurant with a general idea of how things work and the knowledge that we would indeed be able to muddle through.
So, after a meal where I ate half of a nauseating Croque Monsieur and Mark learned the valuable lesson of what it means when the French label a mustard as “strong”, we started to make our way back to the Marais and to our apartment. Now, there was an ancient Irish saint named St. Brendan the Navigator way back during the Dark Ages, but since that time the Irish have not really been known for their navigational skills. So it should come as no surprise that I ended up getting us fairly well lost on our way home. Before I knew it, we had been walking for what felt like hours and we found ourselves at Gare de l’Est. When I asked a kind lady how to get to our street, she exclaimed (in French, of course) “Oh no, that’s too far to walk, you must take the Metro!” Nevertheless, we determined the general direction in which we were supposed to be heading and walked anyway, finally finding our apartment and collapsing, exhausted. Soon thereafter, we decided that 7:30 Paris time was close enough to bedtime, skipped that evening’s episode of Ordering Food in a Restaurant, and slept, ready to start the next day and really start reading the articles.
We were joined the next day by my friend Gary, who had been delayed because of bad weather. So we were three, and each of us had a list of “must-see” places and things. It was a pretty long list, so the next few days were spent in a whirlwind of sightseeing, picture-taking, people-watching, and, of course, Ordering Food in Restaurants. But at the same time, it’s just about opening your eyes and ears and trying to absorb it all, this whole Being in Paris thing, trying to be a Tourist and a Traveler simultaneously.
I have great moments to remember. The freak hailstorm that came down as we were on the first level of the Eiffel Tower, kids were laughing and the cacophony of a million golf balls pelting a huge iron tower all at once. The moment when my friend Gary got pickpocketed by a couple of “Gypsy” kids in the Marais: maybe not a great moment, per se, but it sure will make for great storytelling, which is surely worth $100 sometimes. I think my favorite Paris “moment”, though, was one afternoon when Mark and I were riding the Metro. A small, kind looking man stepped on and said in a loud but totally-not-panhandling way, “Mesdames et Messieurs, bonsoir, et bon voyage,” and began playing the accordion. It was the soundtrack to every black and white MGM romance ever set in Paris, some sweet French ballad as familiar to every Frenchman as “Misty” is to us, as identifiably Parisian as a dijeridoo is Australian. But this was real, this was Paris, as I rode along on the Metro with a slight smile across my face.
Our lists included, of course, things like The Eiffel Tower, the Louvre, Versailles, and Notre Dame, and we did all those things and more. First on the list was the Eiffel Tower, which included two minor sub-categories: Riding the Metro and Standing in Long Lines. Riding the Metro went OK, once we mastered the technique of buying a ticket, which involved not only Foreign Language, but computer know-how, as well as a little bit of Why-the-Fuck-Won’t-My-Credit-Card-Work. Once we figured all that out, it was a breeze. The Eiffel Tower was cool, an obligatory stop, it seems, for any tourist in Paris. What I will remember most about the Eiffel Tower is its size. Seeing pictures of it in books, movies, magazines, and everywhere else, you really don’t get a sense of its scale. It’s huge. Bigger than you ever imagined. As were the lines to go up. We could either wait in a huge line to walk up the stairs, or an enormously huge line to ride in an elevator. We opted for the merely huge line and walked up the stairs. Just getting to the first level is the equivalent of walking up 21 stories, and I thought poor Mark was either going to throw up or have a heart attack halfway up.
At the Louvre, the lines weren’t quite as bad, and we pretty much made a beeline for the Mona Lisa, like half the other tourists in the place. There we were, whizzing down corridors filled with priceless treasures: sculptures from Ancient Rome, paintings by Old Masters and Renaissance geniuses, more Blessed Virgins than Carter’s got pills, following the signs for Italian Painters and “La Joconde”. The famous “Winged Victory” stands majestically at the top of a staircase as people zip by with their IPhones in full-on camera mode. We crowded into the Holy of Holies, the room housing the Mona Lisa, we behind a crowd of onlookers about 5 deep, and she behind a thick sheet of presumably indestructible Plexiglas. Now, I have been fortunate enough to have traveled in my lifetime, and I have seen some things which we have all seen in history books and magazines and so forth for all of our lives. Some of them are truly awe-inspiring. Seeing the Acropolis in Greece, for instance, or the Coliseum in Rome. When I saw Michelangelo’s David in Florence, I knew why it was the most famous statue in the world. But for the life of me, I don’t see what all the fuss is about the Mona Lisa. Nice painting. Famous artist. But I’ve been frankly more impressed by stuff I’ve seen at the Walters art museum in Baltimore.
Seeing Versailles was an experience. We were originally going to opt for the guided tour thing, and made our way one morning to the tourist agency. The lady there was super nice, and explained to me in very clearly enunciated, slow textbook American-Public-School French that they were sold out, but we could get there by ourselves using the trains. I only include this bit of narrative because I was soon impressed by my own ability to understand everything this lady said to me, and successfully found our way to the proper train station, the proper train, and ultimately to Versailles! This was in sharp contrast to most other occasions, when I would try to address the person in what I thought was perfectly pronounced French and they would inevitably reply to me in English. “Bonjour, pour trois personnes, s’il vous plaît.” “Certainly sir, right this way please!”
But I digress. Versailles. How does one describe Versailles? Take the most opulent thing you can think of, and then multiply that by fifty thousand. Double that amount and add twelve. That begins to describe Versailles. Everything is gilded, sculpted, painted, frescoed, or covered in rich fabrics. The gardens go on forever. To walk from the entrance to the gardens to the end in a straight line would take an hour. And that’s in just one direction! Endless overstated luxury and ostentation. On the one hand, it was amazing to look at and beautiful, but at the same time it made one mindful of why the French had a revolution. I mean, no wonder they ended up chopping off all the heads of the Aristocracy when they were living like this as people were starving in the streets.
What else will I take with me from Paris? I will remember the hours we strolled through the famous Père-Lachaise cemetery. I’ve always been drawn to old cemeteries and this one is a doozy. I loved just wandering around, discovering the cool sculptures and darkly beautiful atmosphere, but also the rare experience of peace and tranquility in the middle of Paris. I will remember visiting a huge Paris flea market, in “the 18th”, which according to the guide book was “one of the poorer parts of town”. Looked pretty much like any other part of Paris, as far as I was concerned. Just as nice but maybe with less high-end retail shops and more community centers. I will remember the Parisians, seemingly impervious to cold or rain, sitting unflinchingly outside at the café smoking cigarettes and nursing a coffee for hours. I will remember the little pit-bull puppy who only wanted to lick the face of a poor beggar sitting on the sidewalk. The beggar, by the way, wanted nothing to do with the puppy. And laughing with the waiter who said that he had been speaking English to us for two hours, now he must insist that Gary order his dessert in French, forcing Gary to suffer his way through it.
So, there are many things that I will take with me from Paris. A sense of style, a sense of history, a sense of romance, and a sense of a people who don’t take life too fast, or too seriously. A taste for the good things in life. It was an experience I will treasure forever.
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