Another installment from my April 2011 travelogue.
In which I impart some travel tips, some bells are rung, and we go people-watching amongst the locals.
06: Lessons Learned and a Quiet Day
Thursday did NOT start at 4AM.
It started at 2AM, when a group of inebriated youths (okay, I was calling them something else at the time) came into the playground behind our flat and started calling out for Michel. They wove their way around the carousel and the swings, calling out for him for about 20 minutes before things quieted down. What struck me as odd was that no one opened up their window and shouted them down. Imagine the same scene in New York, and you’ll get what I mean. There’s a heavy tradition of laissez-faire that still resides here; I imagine that if it had gone on much longer, there’d have been hell to pay, but after 20 minutes either Michel showed up or his friends lost interest, I don’t know which, but at no time did anyone in the surrounding buildings open up a window and shout the Gallic equivalent of “Hey, you kids, get off my lawn!” After things quieted, so did we.
At this point, since there are some folks reading this who haven’t done a lot of travel, I’m going to put down a handful of observations I’ve made during this and our previous overseas trips.
Apartment vs. Hotel
Sure, if you’re only staying a couple of days, or even if you’re staying a week but moving around a lot; if you need the amenities they can provide; by all means stay at a hotel, but if you don’t, seriously consider renting a flat for the week(s) that you’re in-country. Here’s what I mean…
Today, as I sat waking up, slurping my coffee (French-press-strong, in a bowl, with lots of whole milk), the windows were open and the city was quiet. There was no street noise save for the odd scooter. At 8AM, the church bells began to toll, and one thing I like about churches in France is that, when they toll 8 o’clock, they really toll 8-ish-o’clock. Church bells start at around 5 before the hour and go till about 8 after. In our neighborhood, if you want to set your watch, go by the bells of St. Médard. St. Severin is always late, but I like that about it. We have pigeons that roost in the hawthorn trees, but not the standard, citified mutt pigeons we’re all so familiar with…ooooh no. These are something completely different. These pigeons are wood pigeons; they are the size of red-tailed hawks, are good eating (judging by the number of recipes that popped up when I googled them), and they set up a coo like they are on steroids. The ones here like to roost in the alcove in the morning, where they’re surrounded on three sides by stone-faced buildings, and the echo chamber makes them sound HUGE. Sort of like singing in the shower, for pigeons. Anyway, at about 8:30AM, the dog on the 1e etáge below us began to bark, and I knew that the postal carrier had arrived. After that, the neighborhood and the city had just begun to go out and start their day. Kids were heading to school. Gutters ran with water as shopkeepers rinsed off their sidewalks. Monsieur “Poubelle” was heading around the park, emptying all the trash bags (poubelle is a waste-bin). Neighbors on their way out dumped their bottles in the recycling bin downstairs. The heavy garbage truck was dieseling its way down the narrow streets, squeaking past all the parked cars with a skill that impressed.
Granted, you might get one or two of these things in a hotel (especially a smaller hotel), but you probably wouldn’t get them all, and it’s harder to get the feel for a neighborhood when you’re surrounded by other visitors. I know that the guy who runs the epicerie downstairs doesn’t turn his bananas often enough, but that he’s much less dour than his taciturn son. I know there’s a lady across the way who likes to cook (we can see her kitchen from ours). For me, travel is learning about the country and the people in it, and not just seeing the sights (though “ticking off boxes” is hard to resist, I admit). Living in a neighborhood, living in someone’s home, brings you closer to what a native experiences. It’s also cheaper, which I like.
Notes About Paris
- In Paris, there are lights to tell pedestrians when to cross and when to stay on the curb (green men/red men), but here’s the trick: there’s a light across the street and there’s a light halfway across the street. Watch the one halfway across the street!
- It is not true that all Parisians are beautiful. What is true is that all Parisians make an effort. You will never see a Parisian man in cargo shorts and t-shirt and a baseball cap. You won’t see a Parisian woman in crop-pants and sneakers. You won’t see anyone over the age of 13 in t-shirt, running pants, and tennis shoes. Parisians have style, even if they don’t have looks, and style goes a long, long way.
- We found that most of the stereotypes of French/Parisians were bogus. Not all of them smoke. They don’t all smell bad. They’re not all rude and snooty.
- Many smoke, that’s true, but inside restaurants and cafés it’s no longer allowed, so you’ll only see it in parks, on the sidewalk tables, and on the street.
- Even on the hottest day (and it got up to 80F today), Parisians don’t smell any worse than Americans. In fact, thanks to French perfumes, many Parisians smell wonderful, which raises the average smell-scent-acceptability coefficient, and so I’d have to say that, in general, Parisians smell better than Americans.
- And while you can definitely find a snooty Parisian, mostly I find them to be diffident rather than snooty. They don’t care if you like them or not, while Americans tend to want to please everyone they meet. Parisians on the street don’t smile at you—after all, they don’t even know you—and most often they just keep to themselves and expect you to do the same.
About traveling
- Years ago, I used to try to “fit in” by wearing clothing that wouldn’t peg me as an American (see above). Basically, I didn’t want to stand out as a tourist, much less an American tourist. During the Years of Embarrassment (aka the Bush Years) I even went so far as to sew a Canadian flag on my backpack. However, I quickly learned that this is a ridiculous goal. I am a tourist. I am an American. I will never be taken as a native because I’m always looking up at the buildings with a “Golly Gee” expression on my face. And I almost always have a camera with me. In short, I ain’t being taken as anything but a tourist by anyone except maybe another tourist. So, now I wear clothing that doesn’t peg me immediately as a stupid American because it’s safer that way (see below). I also want any pants I wear to go with any shirt I wear. This is just makes logistical sense.
- Washcloths/Facecloths are never provided for you by a hotel. In Europe, a facecloth is a personal toiletry item. Bring one. And make sure it isn’t white or the wait-staff will take it away with the other white towels, like the maids did with our Harrods-bought Calvin Klein facecloth in London.
- Be aware of your personal security. Money belts are de rigeur and no one is embarrassed when you go digging in your pants for a €20 note. Also, while we never had any problems in London, this week in Paris we’ve been hit with 4 different scam attempts:
- My Husband is in Bosnia Scam: A woman of foreign aspect comes up and asks if you speak English. She shows you a piece of paper on which is written a sob-story about her husband being trapped in Bosnia and she’s trying to raise money to get him to France. We got hit twice by this scam (the note was exactly the same), and I’ve been hit with similar, localized scams in Seattle (my boyfriend is in Portland and I just need bus fare…)
- I Can Paint Your Portrait in 5 Minutes: get suckered into this and 5 minutes later you have to pay for something you wouldn’t ascribe to your 5 year-old niece. If you want your caricature drawn, go to Disneyland.
- I’m Deaf Will You Sign my Petition: I watched these operatives work—always young, always attractive, mostly female—they target obvious tourists (whose signature wouldn’t mean anything), come up to you with a clipboard, and pen and motion for you to sign. This works either as a plea for a “donation” to their cause, or as a setup for a bump-and-run, where someone else comes up behind you and picks your pocket. Swift, easy, and usually with a nearby Metro station to disappear into.
- The Found Ring: A guy walking towards you stops, bends over, and picks up a golden ring of substantial size. “Is this yours?” he asks. If you bite and say “no” he’ll ask if you want to buy it. Trust me, it’s brass, though when we got hit with this scam (on the Pont Alexandre III) I was really tempted to give the guy €5 just so I could have the ring and the story to go with it.
- There are others, too—the friendship bracelet, the Oh-I-Dropped-Something bump-and-run, etc. In short, don’t keep anything in your pocket you can’t afford to lose.
So, as I said, this was going to be a quiet day: we had only a small trip planned. We’d seen the twin spires of an unknown church several times as we navigated through the city by bus and on foot, but we never knew what it was. Two elegant Gothic spires rising up out of the middle of the St Germaine-de-Pres neighborhood, but spires that did not belong to the Church of St Germain-de-Pres. Researching “Paris twin spires” we quickly came up with the Basilica of Sainte Clotilde (ain’t the internet great?) So, off we went to find her.
The Basilica of Sainte Clotilde is a brand-new church, meaning she’s only 150 years old, but she’d fool you if you squinted. What gives her away, though, is the crisp, realistic quality of the statuary that adorns the many niches outside. They’re beautiful, to be sure, but they’re obviously of a newer stamp than the rough, time-worn saints that hang on the walls at Notre Dame. We got there at about 11:30AM, and had just made our transit of the church when the noon-hour arrived. As we stood at the top of the nave, the bell above us started to toll, calling the faithful to the noontime mass. Then the bell in the second tower started to toll, adding an urgency to the call. The floor actually trembled and the air was filled with the sound. I couldn’t help but laugh at the joy of this little bit of serendipity.
We left Ste Clotilde and walked across the Seine to the Place de la Concorde, a traffic circus in the long line between the Louvre and the Arc de Triomphe. This is the point that divides the Champs-Elysees from the Jardins de Tuileries. We took the quick walk past the backside of the Ministry of Defense (many uniforms) and the frontside of the National Assembly (more uniforms) and crossed the nondescript bridge to the small but chaotic traffic circle that surrounds an obelisk that came from Luxor and is one of the few Things Egyptian in Paris that Napoleon didn’t steal. We came here to this point because we wanted to walk the Jardins des Tuileries, but I gotta tell you, there wasn’t much Jardin in these Tuileries.
It was a hot day. Unseasonably hot: 27°C, to be exact, which is about 80°F, which for a Seattle boy in April comes under the heading of “Damned Hot”. The Tuileries is a grand space, acres wide and more acres long, but it’s mostly paved with the hard-packed-ground-limestone-and-gravel mix that is ubiquitous in Parisian parks, and on this day, with that sun, and that heat, and no wind, it was like stepping onto a hot anvil. It’s unlike any other park we came across in Paris in that it is a grand space. It doesn’t invite small groups to gather and converse, not at least at the end near the Obelisk. Midway down our trek, though, the character changed. There, to either side, are planted symmetrical rows of chestnut trees, and as soon as we walked beneath their green branches, a breeze blew in. People around us sighed audibly. Here, under the chestnuts, folks gathered on benches and at the cafés that flanked the park. But still, down the center of the park is the open area, that grand Haussmann-esque sight-line. Step out from the protection of the chestnuts and into the sunlight and in one direction you can see the Louvre and its small Arc de Triomphe, while in the other you can see all the way past the Obelisk, up the Champs-Elysees, up to the massive, super-sized Arc de Triomphe at the Etoile, and beyond it to the Star Trek/Wizard of Oz skyline of La Defense.
We walked the rest of the way down to the Louvre and regarded the place, as a place, not as a museum. Taken as a building, the Palace de Louvre can only be described as larger-than-life. Its proportions of height and width, of doorway to window, are all familiar and human, until you realize that the doorway you’ve been looking at is 30’ tall, and that window is 20’ tall. It is as if—and indeed it was a fact that—giants inhabited this place.
As to the pyramid, I’m sort of with Bezu Fache, from The Da Vinci Code. “A scar on the face of Paris.” It’s an interesting piece, on its own, but it doesn’t fit in its space, it doesn’t mesh with its surroundings, and it doesn’t evoke much (unless you want to get back to the whole France plundering Egypt thing, which I don’t think was the point). I’m sure scores of post-graduates have written scores of theses on the topic, but if its meaning is so obscure that only an academe could parse it, I count it a failure.
We weren’t heading inside The Big Boy today. That was for tomorrow. Rule #1 for the Louvre is go early or go late, and never go there at 3 PM, and since that was what time it was, we decided to head home.
As you might remember, yesterday we learned learn the following lesson: never take a bus through central Paris between 3PM and 7PM. So, today, we took le Metropolitain home, zipping from the 1st arrondissement through the 4th, to our flat in the 5th in about 15 minutes instead of the 1.5 hours it might have taken by bus. A quick lunch at home, an hour to ice our feet, and we were ready for more. But not much more. The pace had been taking its toll, and our stamina was waning. Besides, I had a “very important business meeting” to attend that evening.
So we took le Metro up toward the Marais, a twisted knot of narrow streets that is probably most like the pre-Haussmann Paris than any other area. We were headed to Place des Vosges, but this section of town holds secrets and surprises, so when you go there, keep your eyes open and your GPS locked on the home beacon or you may never get back out.
The Place des Vosges was originally designed as a royal residence with His on one side and Hers on the other—sort of like the 1950s-era twin beds but with mansions. In true French royalty fashion, it was never used as a residence (at least not by them), and now it’s a collection of art galleries and brasseries surrounding a very lovely little park. We walked around the outside, under the shade of the twin maisons, ostensibly looking for a cooking supply shop that was supposed to be “around here somewhere” and that was called something that “started with an M and ended with an A”—I’d forgotten the specifics at the flat and was navigating by instinct here—but what we were really doing was people-watching. This is a great park for it, too. One thing about the Parisians: they use their public spaces. The park was full, and full of all sorts. There were families, couples, gaggles of girls, packs of boys, grandpapas with grandkids, and even a few tourists. We got about halfway around when, right near the viola da gamba busker (where else in the world (okay, outside of Venice, maybe) would you get a busker playing a viola da gamba?), I noticed a little doorway. I peeked in, said psst to my wife, and we went through.
What we found was one of those little surprises that really make a day or even a week. We had found the back door to the Hôtel de Sully, the country home of the Duke of Sully, built in the 1620s. There is a quiet little courtyard that connects it to the Place des Vosges, and it’s simply an oasis. We walked in—the baroque strains from the viola da gamba echoing in behind us—and saw a tall wall to one side covered in ivy. The ivy wasn’t in full leaf yet, and sparrows flitted up to nests tucked in among woody, decades-old vines as thick as your upper arm. The lilacs were in bloom, and the garden was green, and as we went in, we realized that this was one of those places that tourists never go. The hôtel is now used for the offices of the National Trust for Historical Monuments, and that’s just not much of a draw. There were two or three pieces of art installed in the lawns of the courtyard; some abstract, some whimsical. We sat down in front of the hôtel, next to an old lady who was just sitting there, staring into the calm garden, the epitome of the Parisian ethos: slow down, enjoy the view. We did. While we were there, she didn’t move but to blink her eyes and breathe. She was there when we arrived, was still there when we left a half hour later, and for all I know may be there still.
We re-entered Place des Vosges, watched a grandfather cantilever his granddaughter inward around the fountain’s edge to touch each and every water jet that issued from the twelve lion mouths encircling it, and headed home.
That evening I made boeuf Bourguignon, sipped wine, and Skyped in to a lunch gathering with friends back in Seattle. They had pizza while I had wine and cheese. Via an intercontinental video feed, I watched the sun rise high above their heads while it went down over my left shoulder. Sometimes I love technology.
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