Paris Journals

Monday, 5 March 2001

Our plane landed about 9:20am at Charles de Gaulle airport. Customs was friendly and painless. We claimed our luggage, and looked for the stop for the RoissyBus to Paris. Already at the baggage claim I couldn't help noticing that the people looked different. Very pale white skin, dark hair, brown eyes or very light blue eyes. Soft and delicate features, and when severe, then sharp rather than rugged. Women with light sparkling eyes and graceful brows gently arcing down to the sides of the face. One older man, with pale skin, paling hair, the palest light blue eyes, and a faded beret. He and his wife looked like they were straight off the family farm, but a French farm that would look as different from American farms as they did from Americans.

After baggage claim, we were off to the bus. Stephanie, with her uncanny ability to scoop the one pertinent detail off a sign smothered in information, pointed the way to the stop. It certainly was a bus stop, but with so many kinds of buses, was it the right one? I asked the other people standing there, "Parlez-vous anglais?" They looked puzzled. I tried, "Parlez-vous francais?" Still puzzled, they murmured, "anglais…francais", and then one burst out, "Yes, we speak English". They were Americans too, on vacation in Paris for the week. They spoke no French whatsoever and they demonstrated a dynamic I myself would manifest again and again during the stay: the bilingual tongue-tie. Faced with the prospect of struggling to communicate in French versus the prospect of not being understood in English, I periodically found myself looking into someone's eyes and not saying anything at all. It's only for a moment of course, and then you stammer back into verbal reparte. But I'll remember the simple principle next time I travel: better to say something imperfectly than say perfectly nothing. And yes, this was the stop for the RoissyBus.

Rolling down the highway, we marveled at all the little differences in the look of this country. Houses and buildings along the route with their tiled roofs and wooden shuttered windows. The tiny fuel-efficient cars. People riding motor scooters out on the highway. And every truck a Mercedes. We saw our first glimpses of the Paris skyline and soon were deboarding at the Opera stop. A twin of the French farmer, with shrewder eyes, strenuously offered to snap a photo of us in front of the extravagant Opera—a memento which likely would have been far from priceless. We were on guard against hawkers and cons, as at any tourist destination, and thankfully never had any real trouble during our visit. Stephanie spotted the metro station (as she would do throughout the trip) and we descended the stairs for our first ride on the city's subway. At the ticket window, I successfully requested, in French, "deux carnets" (books of 10 tickets each). And now I recognized another dynamic. I understand French when I speak it, but not when French people speak it. The attendant pointed to the correct bill in my hand. Later on I managed to translate the number I remembered hearing and was pleased to find that she had been honest with me despite the excellent opportunity for free cash. More surprising to me than her honesty was my own ability to remember, for translation hours later, the sound of spoken words I had not understood. That night at the hotel I dedicated some time to reviewing French numbers.

We emerged from the metro, as planned, at the Hotel de Ville or City Hall, on la Rue de Rivoli. Just two blocks from our hotel, it would be our chief landmark, to be rivaled only by the Centre Georges-Pompidou which regularly popped up in front of us even when we weren't looking for it. Walking the short two blocks west down Rivoli, we took a right onto la Rue Saint Bon and entered the Hotel Andrea. In spite of what I've said about struggling with the language, which is all too true, I admit that one of the best parts of this trip for me was the opportunity for speaking French. And sometimes the necessity for speaking it. Although most Parisians speak at least a little English, it is not a place where you can get by on English without breaking a sweat. During college I had spent a summer in Malaysia with my parents. Kuala Lumpur felt like a whole different world, but the fact was that its citizens grow up speaking English, along with Bahasa Malay or Hindi or Mandarin. Not so in Paris, where I generally had to use a little of both languages to be understood. Using my French, which I had learned back in college and refurbished again and again over the years, was a thrill. Stephanie, who never yet studied French, was picking it up too as the trip unfolded. She was always ready with a hello and goodbye, which as we had heard and now saw confirmed, is a fixture of etiquette the French never do without, even when entering or leaving a simple foodmart.

After checking in and getting our key, we trekked up the four flights of stairs to our room, number 404. Clean, simple, comfortable, with two sets of tall windows overlooking la Rue Saint Bon. We opened the windows wide, no screens, all air, and gazed down the street at our corner of Paris. It's Paris out there! After freshening up, we took a walk around the neighborhood, up la Rue de Rivoli to le Boulevard de Sebastopol and back around. We ate dinner at an Italian pizza place on la Rue Saint Martin. The pizza was tasty, though it could have done without the pool of water in the center. Finding our way back to the hotel, we walked past a building we would see daily from now on, the large modern art center, le Centre Georges-Pompidou.

Tuesday, 6 March

We came downstairs to the ground-floor reception area for breakfast, as we would at the start of each day. Six small tables with wooden chairs were arranged in the rear half of the room; in the front half, the reception desk, perpendicular to the front wall with its large windows onto the street. A sideboard was stocked with croissants and petits pains, jam, and coffee, orange juice, tea, and hot chocolate. New black plastic chairs were being uncrated that morning as we ate. (Stephanie had mentioned to me a moment before that her wooden chair was rickety.) Place settings were laid out on the tables, in singles and in pairs, according to the guests' reservations for breakfast, made with the receptionist on the night before. It took me a while to grasp this process of daily reservations, since it was my understanding that breakfasts were part of the package. For the first few nights, I thought the receptionist was asking whether we wanted breakfast at 7 or 10am, and I made a point of learning to say in French, "We'll have breakfast at 10 o'clock". Midway through the week, I discovered the receptionist was asking if we wanted breakfast and was telling us that it was served only from 7 to 10am. We had been arriving punctually at 10am-—exactly at closing time! From then on, we descended the stairs closer to 9:30.

On this day, after our 10 o'clock breakfast, Stephanie and I headed for an historic cemetery just beyond the Bastille district, called la Cimitiere du Pere-Lachaise. It was a beautiful sunny day. We walked down la Rue de Rivoli, which then becomes la Rue Saint Antoine, to la Place de la Bastille: a huge plaza and traffic circle anchored by an imposing column with a gilded angel at its peak, commemorating the three day revolution of 1830. La Rue Saint Antione and the traffic circle are lined with brasseries, the apparent successor to the formerly ubiquitous cafe. We were on the lookout for cafes all week and would, in fact, find only one classic specimen by the end of the trip. But for now we scoured the streets, checking all the signs above doors and on awnings. I had read in my travel guide about some of the different kinds of eateries available in Paris. Cafes for coffee and a small snack, brasseries for a larger menu and alcohol, restaurants for a full meal. What made sense in the guide book made less sense on the street. We glanced from one awning to the next, and every one seemed to read "Cafe Restaurant Brasserie Bar", with all four names strung together. Cafes or not, they all have outdoor as well as indoor seating, and we were amused to see how they arrange the outdoor chairs in multiple rows, as if in a movie theater, all facing the street. The first time I saw it, I looked across the street to see what sort of performance might be unfolding. But the city itself is the show. And the confused pastiche of labels on the awnings turned out to be a moot point for Stephanie and me, because once we negotiated our alimentary preferences, we mostly ate Chinese. With no classic cafes to slow us down, we continued our march to the cemetery.

From la Place de la Bastille, we walked northeast up la Rue de la Roquette, a multi-ethnic street lined with small shops and eateries of all kinds. We paused at a Chinese grocer. This was my first purchase since the “deux carnets” incident at the metro station and I was relieved to see the digital display on the cash register. We were back on the street in no time, with two bananas and without incident. The long Rue de la Roquette eventually...dead ends...at the gates to the cemetery.

Within the gates, the cemetery itself is a small city of sepulcher-lined streets and paths. We gazed up the gentle slope of cobblestone streets and trees and tombs. But before going on about the cemetery, I want to mention the public toilets just inside the gate. It was a row of four stalls whose doors (the ones that extend to within a foot of the ground, as they would in an indoor rest room) opened directly to the outdoor sidewalk. We were relieved, nonetheless. And it was free of charge, which we soon learned was a rare luxury in Paris. Now we started our walk, winding and crisscrossing our way up the hill. We treaded the cobblestones for hours under a sunny blue and white sky. The tombs were like little houses along the streets, each with sloping roof, iron double doors in front with windows in them, and usually a rear window to let sunlight illuminate a small shrine inside. We paused near the top of the hill, to rest on one of several park benches. As we ate our bananas, we listened to the crows, remarking on their long low voices—baritones to our alto North American crows. I gazed down the hill and through the trees and thought I caught a glimpse of the towers of Notre Dame.

Eventually, we had seen all we could handle of the city of the dead, including the modest grave stone of Jim Morrison and the banistered shrine to Abelard and Eloise. Sated with tombstones and sore-footed from cobblestones, we practically ran for the gates, and back onto the lively streets of the Bastille district. Back down la Rue de la Roquette, stopping in several stores along the way to see what French people buy, we made our way to a brasserie for lunch. We ordered a ham sandwich. It was simply buttered French bread with ham, but tasty all the same. Large windows looked out onto the street. Crowds of people flowed down the sidewalks, and squadrons of motor scooters swept around the traffic circle. Paris is pretty cool. Except for its toilets. Stephanie tried to use the ladies room and found that in this brasserie, ladies have to pay. Not men, just ladies. An older French woman, lunching with her husband, noticed Stephanie's distress. Fighting gender inequality in her own small way, the lady persuaded the manager to let Stephanie in for free.

We swung through la Place de la Bastille again and back up la Rue Saint Antoine and la Rue de Rivoli. Stephanie was short a pair of pants, so we waded among the clothes racks of a couple of small shops until she found a nice new pair. They were dark green, with a pleated look below the knee. And they appeared to have good seams. That night, we ate at a Chinese restaurant with good soup, mediocre entrees, and a rude waitstaff. On our way back to the hotel, we walked past le Centre Georges-Pompidou.

Wednesday, 7 March

Early morning rain and then sunshine again. Today was our day for groceries and the Musée du Louvre. After breakfast, the first order of business was to stock up on a few provisions (water, juice, snacks) to keep in our hotel room. Unfortunately this was the one day of the week that the little grocery store on our street closed its doors. We asked at the front desk for directions to the next nearest "alimentation". We followed the directions until we got lost and found the next next nearest one. A delicious aroma of Near Eastern cuisine wafted through the doorway. Mmm, they must have a fine deli in there. The aroma turned out to be the shopkeeper's lunch, but the store carried all the basics we needed. C'est tout. Grocery shopping completed, we were taking our time back in our room getting ready for the day's outing.

And now we learned an unwritten rule at the hotel: the morning belongs to the maids. Answering a knock at the door a little before 1pm, I was greeted by a maid annoyed at finding the room still occupied. We had been out twice already, for breakfast and grocery shopping. But evidently we kept returning at just the wrong time. Grasping at vocabulary words, I assured her we would be leaving shortly. She couldn't help uttering in frustration that all the rooms are supposed to be completed by noon. Apparently this rule is hard and fast and the maids must work hard and fast to satisfy it. We planned to surrender the room for the mornings from then on. Now pulling our gear together, we exited and headed down the street to see some art.

We were still at that stage where you keep saying to yourself, "This is Paris!" I have nothing but praise for those moments of demi-disbelief, and this was one, as we took an early afternoon walk down the street—to the Louvre. We walked the eleven blocks from our hotel down la Rue de Rivoli to the edge of the palatial U-shaped museum. Then another six blocks to the front end of the building. I wanted to make a grand entrance from the Jardin des Tuileries, the park which adjoins the palace. It's the best way to enjoy the ceremony of space and design evolved over the Louvre's 900 years of continual construction and renovation. Looking west across the Jardin, we could see the Tour Eiffel in the distance, and further off, the gargantuan ferris wheel built for the millenium celebration. And east, the mouth of the great U, the gardens and walkways of the Place du Carrousel welcoming us to the Louvre.

Down the escalators, beneath I.M. Pei's glass pyramiad, we found the ticket booth and the subterranean hallways to the various wings of the museum. I can tell you where we entered, but not how we ever found our way back out again. We began in the Sully wing and proceeded through the Italian collection. After strolling for a while, we saw a sign pointing the way to the Mona Lisa. It is possibly the only work of art in the Louvre having its own directional signs. Stephanie took immediate action. She began following the signs, faster and faster, with an urgency we would not feel again until our later hunt for the restrooms. In and out, up and down the stairs, a wrong move here and there and back on track. And then, behold: a large crowd of people obscuring the view. This was the Mona Lisa. Winding through the crowd we found a good enough vantage point. What a sweet smile. Mona Lisa reprints in books never did anything for me. But there on the canvas I saw a lovely face composed in charm and contentment. Stephanie and I, like most everyone there, wanted photos of the painting. As I usually do, I turned off the flash on my digital camera to use the ambient lighting and avoid causing a distraction. Meanwhile a lightning storm of camera flashes crashed around us. But here is the funny thing. The Mona Lisa is framed under glass. It took me about eight photos to get just one without any glare from everyone else's flashes. And ironically, all their flashes were for nothing. Anyone using a flash was guaranteed a big glare right in the center of the photo—their own flash reflected in the Mona Lisa's glass!

We spent a long time in the Antiquities section. It always amazes me—the delicate little things that would go missing or broken within weeks at my house but which have been retrieved in fine condition from the living room of someone's 4000 year old, volcano-demolished, sand-engulfed home. We examined the tiniest thumbnail sized ceramic cats and frogs in the Egyptian collection. The same kinds of things people buy ceramics of today. And there was food too, real food: 3000-year-old fruit. For the rest, I remember only bits and pieces. When we browsed the Medieval collection, Stephanie paused to draw from one of the paintings. I love it when people soak up their visual environment like that, finding usable material anywhere and everywhere.

By the time we emerged again from the glass pyramiad, evening had descended on the Louvre. We exited to rue de Rivoli to find a place for dinner. From the time we dressed at the hotel that morning, today had been evolving toward a special dinner. We hadn't explicitly planned it, but it was in my mind and maybe Stephanie's too. We both dressed more formally than the previous nights. Now walking east down Rivoli we saw, at the intersection with la Rue Boucher, a Chinese restaurant we had passed on the way to the Louvre: le Restaurant Changhai Hang-Tcheou. It was more upscale than any place we had eaten thus far. Just right. Inside it was elegant and cozy, a refuge from the chill drizzle which falls with March nights in Paris. We enjoyed a delicious meal and felt relieved and happy at the courteous and attentive service. The menu even included our favorite dishes from home—wonton soup, called "potage au ravioli", and General Tso's chicken, called something like "poulet impérial". We rounded off the meal with vanilla ice cream, which in France always means French vanilla. This was the food and the service we had been hoping for since our first night in the city.

We strolled back to our home at the Andrea. Remarkably, tonight we did not walk anywhere near the Centre Georges-Pompidou.

Thursday, 8 March

We awoke earlier today than previous days. By now we had learned the 10am breakfast ended rather than began at 10. These breakfasts downstairs were a delight. Since the tables were set up in the same room as the hotel's front desk, we enjoyed people-watching while we ate. One young American woman in the lobby was pining for sunshine, on this, another partly rainy spring day, and exclaimed how bored she was. Stephanie and I have had many good laughs since then at the idea of being bored in Paris, rain or sun. Keeping to our plan to evacuate the room for the mornings, we headed out right after breakfast. Our first destination was Notre-Dame cathedral. Beyond that, we hadn't decided yet.

We walked east to l'Hotel de Ville and then south across the bridge to l'Ile de la Cit" and Notre-Dame. This was our first time crossing the river Seine, which divides the city in half. The Ile de la Cit" is a small island around which the river flows, returning the favor by dividing the river momentarily in half. The Seine is muddy brown. I wouldn't want to swim in it. But Paris' old buildings lining the river do make you want to gaze up and down the river, visually tracing it's path through the city. Arriving at Notre-Dame, we joined a line of tourists entering the ancient edifice. The line did not enter, as we assumed it would, the cathedral proper. Instead it entered and ascended the north tower, thus honoring the Parisian tradition of sending tourists to the top of everything.

The stairway spiraled upward. But let me clarify: This is not a spiral staircase, with a railing open to the surroundings and with a donut-hole down the center allowing one to peer up or down. No. This is a closed stone hallway winding tightly upward by countless steep stone steps-—a spiral stairway that narrows as it rises, nothing ahead but curving stone wall and steps, curving tighter and tighter; nothing behind but curving stone wall and steps and a line of tourists blocking any chance of regress. Do you see what I’m saying? Yes, I am claustrophobic. I focused hard on moving forward as my heart pounded. I couldn't believe I was having such a miserable time seeing a classic tourist attraction that no one ever at any time anywhere in the world had mentioned could be a living hell! "Whatever you do, steer clear of the towers of Notre Dame Cathedral"—Why isn't that in the guidebooks?

Finally we broke into the daylight. I knew we would have to enter another tower (the south tower) to descend, but at least for a moment we could enjoy sunlight and open air. We shot a few photos and then Stephanie, with her uncanny wayfinding skills, found another doorway, and another stairway, to go up higher still. She was already on her way up, and I followed, my heart keeping rhythm with my primal fears. Again, into the light, now on tiny fenced walkways-—but the view, the view was all that mattered. I had thought only modern skyscrapers could command such a view. I was looking down on the city as if from a plane. I may have taken Stephanie to Paris, but she took me to a part of Paris I never, never, would have seen on my own.

Once we were back on the ground—yes, that’s what it felt like, like being back on the ground—I could have sworn that I felt light-headed from the change in altitude…though it was probably just from the change in heart-rate. What do you do after an amazing experience like that? There is no question: You relieve yourself immediately, at the first toilet you can find. While it might technically be possible to piss off the top of Notre-Dame—and in fact, that sounds like a characteristically French sort of thing to do—we held it instead.

In the evening, we took the metro to the Trocadero stop in the 16th arrondissement. Stephanie knew we were going to see the Eiffel Tower. She did not know that I had a plan to maximize the spectacle. And I didn’t know that Eiffel had a plan of its own. Evening was approaching, but the sun was still in the sky as we emerged from the metro station onto the Place du Trocadero, beside the Palais de Chaillot which crowns the hill of Chaillot, across the Seine from the Tour Eiffel. I did not want the sun in the sky. A month earlier when I had first conceived the trip while browsing a book of aerial photographs of Paris, a co-worker who was a confessed Francophile had shared her favorite view of the Eiffel Tower: At sunset, enter the great esplanade between the outstretched arms of the Palais de Chaillot to see Eiffel standing in the twilight. I don’t contrive experiences like this as a rule. It’s generally best to just let things happen. But having chosen to do it now, I was determined to do it right. I led Stephanie past the Palais de Chaillot and up one of the great avenues off the place du Trocadero, requiring that she not look back. We safely escaped to a cafe-bar-brasserie-restaurant where we could bide our time until sunset. We ordered vanilla ice cream (which again, automatically yields French vanilla, which was fine with us). The waiter, a gentleman with a dash of silver and grey in his hair, was friendly and even gave us a little extra ice cream (or some such act of generosity, I can’t quite remember). Again we noted the common, if not universal, Parisian custom of repaying courtesy with courtesy.

When you are wandering an unfamiliar city, restrooms are a recurring focus of attention. We seized the opportunity of no-fee access, for men and women, at this restaurant. At the top of the stairway that led down to the restrooms, there was a mirrored wall. The change of plane (the stairs) colluded with the redirection of light (the mirror) to create a moment of disorientation as one took the first step downward. It was a flaw of design. Decor should enhance utility, not degrade it.

Now the sun was setting. With lessons learned and ice cream eaten, we walked back to the place du Trocadero. For added effect, and to fully satisfy the strategy of contrivance, I asked Stephanie to close her eyes as I positioned us at the entrance to the esplanade. "Okay, open your eyes!" There was Eiffel in the distance. But now the tower offered a contrivance of its own. Eiffel suddenly erupted in fireworks scintillating up and down its full height—a holdover from the millenium celebration a year earlier.

We lingered for a little while on the balcony, taking in the tower and watching the rest of the crowd. From either end of the balcony, stairways descend to two long walkways which slope downward the length of a couple of city blocks to the Avenue du President Kennedy, the Seine, and the bridge called Pont d’Lena. We followed the more southern stairway and walkway. As the dark of night loomed, Stephanie noted that our outer walkway offered prowlers too many hiding places behind trees, so we moved to the brighter inner walkway alongside the central reflecting pool.

Carlights streamed along the avenue ahead, and just before it, mute horses frozen in mid-gallop rose and fell as they circled tightly under a brightly lit canopy. Yes! It was one of Paris' oddly commonplace merry-go-rounds. In this great revolutionary city, merry-go-rounds are not ghettoized in fair grounds and amusements parks. No, they apparently are free to roam the city and set up on any broad, more-or-less flat surface. Who wouldn’t ride a merry-go-round in Paris! We paid our fare and each climbed onto our horses and rode. Circling, slowly circling. Once you’re up there, you say to yourself "What am I doing here?" But ride we did. And then—Was it when Stephanie was jumping on or when she was jumping off? We don't knows just when it happened--we only know it did. Seams ripped, and air-conditioning was added to the many fine features of Stephanie’s new French pants—the green pants she had bought our first day out on the town. A strategy session ensued. Should we go back to the hotel? Would we make it back here before closing time at the Eiffel Tower? We decided there was no time. Suddenly the lights dimmed and the carnival music stopped. Ours had been the last ride of the night. We pressed onward across the avenue and over the bridge to the Eiffel Tower, arriving at 7:30pm. I reassured her, as we climbed the stairway up the tower, that her pants looked completely normal from behind and nothing was showing that shouldn't. And this was mostly true. Halfway up by stairs, we then switched to the elevator for the final journey to the top. The view of the city was pleasant. But for me the real thrill had been seeing the tower from the ground when we had first crossed the bridge. Photographs had given me no sense of the enormous breadth of the base, the great arches of Eiffel's four iron legs.

Friday, 9 March

Stephanie awoke sick with a cold. We found a pharmacy—watch for the sign of the green cross— to get medicine for her cough. The pharmacist kindly spoke English after I opened with a few words in French. If I had begun as I ended, by mimicking coughing noises, I don't think he would have been so kind. After Stephanie took her medicine and rested for a while, we explored the modernistic shopping mall at Forum des Halles We could never quite tell where we were or what level we were on or would end up on if we took the elevators.

Saturday, 10 March

Today we returned for a look at the interior of Notre-Dame cathedral. No highflying acts this time around. We entered the great arched doorway at the front of the cathedral and paused just inside the nave for a first glimpse at the vast, cavernous temple. As in any well-known place of worship, the crowds of tourists bustled around individuals who really were there to worship. "Maybe we should come back another time", is what you feel like saying to your travel companion, only to realize that no time would be the right time to disturb the quiet worshippers. And with that realization, there is nothing to do but walk in. As we approached the transept at the center of the church and commented to each other on the spectacle of the great stained-glass rose window high on the north-facing wall, the cathedral's PA system blared, "Shhhhhhh! Silence s’il vous plait!" Silence please! It was a recording that repeated every ten minutes or so. It may or may not have been effective in keeping down the volume of ambient conversation. But there is no doubt that it mechanically instilled in all tourists a sustained, low-grade sense of Catholic guilt—a dose of authentic cultural immersion.

Sunday, 11 March

We left Paris De Gaulle airport at 1pm. We were on our way back now, crossing the Atlantic south of Rekyavik, Iceland at an altitude of 35,000 feet. Our final morning in Paris was smooth and on schedule in spite of the ordinary departure-day jitters. Maybe I was a bit too efficient: Stephanie felt rushed at times. And while on our way to the airport, it didn’t feel very smooth. We tried to enter the Chatelet metro station at an entrance clearly marked, beneath stickers and graffitti, "Closed Sundays". We were inclined to try because a man managed to enter just ahead of us, squeezing through the closed barrier even as the machine rejected his ticket. But we couldn't repeat his magic act, so instead we entered down the block. Fortunately, Stephanie’s ability to spot metro signs at any distance still held. The large pale yellow "M"s were as good as invisible to me. We quickly made our way through well-signed tunnels, pausing only to free me from the automatic gate to the RER train platform, which had closed on my luggage. When we reached the platform, the train was standing there with doors open. Perfect timing. We jumped on the train without hesitation. But I actually hate doing that—emerging from winding tunnels onto an unfamiliar platform and sailing directly into the first available set of open doors. I generally like to read the signs first and make sure I am where I think I am. To put myself at ease, I asked another passenger who confirmed this was the train to l’Aeroport Charles De Gaulle. We still endured some uneasy moments on noticing that the line would split ahead, one prong to the airport, the other not. Oddly, in this otherwise well-signed system, it seemed that not a single mark on the train-, inside or out, indicated which prong this train would follow. We know there was no indication on the outside because at one stop we jumped off and looked and, on the advice of yet another commuter, jumped back on again. It was the right line after all so all the anxiety was for nothing. Now we were dining on airline chicken and stuffed green peppers high above the ocean. We had made it in and out of Paris.

 

© John Clay