Houn's Journal

HOLA!

2012-02-11T17:45:00.001-08:00

Well, about 7,000 miles and 17 hours later, we’re across the Equator and fumbling with non-existent Spanish in Santiago, Chile, the start of our three week ground-and-cruise trip around South America. We left L.A. Friday about noon, on a totally full flight to Atlanta on Delta, there to make (hopefully) a connecting Delta flight to Chile. For whatever reason (cheap seats, no doubt), we were in the last of four groups to board. Delta works on the social-class boarding system, and we paupers feel the pain. Things were so crowded they were asking both for volunteers to take a later flight, and for all those in the third and fourth boarding herds to step up now and volunteer your carry-ons for at-gate checking, because the bins will be full! Given the ridiculous sized bags that they were allowing people to take on board, I wasn’t surprised. Loni and I did manage to weasel our way up to the head of the desperate fourth pack (hey, don’t glare at me, lady, you do what you gotta do!), and got almost the last of the bin space for her bag. Mine was stowable under the seat. We got a newer plane, with in-back-of-seat video screens but, alas, no freebies on Delta. You want to actually see something? Fork over $6 each for each movie or tv show. Nuts to that. Brought plenty of newspapers, magazines, & books. We were happy to be off at last, despite this crummy photo (I’m wearing a headset).

Delta did serve a dinner, which was fairly decent, but not up to Air France standards. Flight was unusually smooth, with nary a ripple. Got to Atlanta’s Hartsfield International (self-proclaimed the “World’s Busiest”) on time, but ended up in a queue of planes waiting for gates to open up and spent another half hour on the ground. Hartsfield, if not the busiest, is certainly one of the most spread out airports, and we disembarked at the gate that was the farthest possible from the one we needed to get to for our Chile flight. Much walking and a tram ride later, we were at gate E2 with the ravenous cruiser wolf-pack:

We were in group three of four for boarding this time, and it took some determined sidling to maneuver to the front. Same nonsense about no bin space, and they were collecting lots of bags for checking. Still, it was high entertainment after we were seated to watch the bin-stuffing follies. Some of those bags just wouldn’t fit, but it didn’t deter the slow-of-wit from trying. Sorry, more bags consigned to the hold. One gal kept trying to slam the bin door shut over and over again, with the bag visibly bulging out and nowhere to go. Kudos to the Delta attendants. They kept their cool and got everything under control. Have to say, these were my first flights on Delta in over 30 years, and I was impressed with the personnel.

This plane, however, was an old warhorse. No in-seat videos here. Nope, ancient CRT screens dangling from the overhead every twenty feet or so. You’d need binoculars from some seats, the resolution was crappy, and the colors were all off. Also, since it was not an “on demand” system, you had to watch what they were showing and when they chose to show it (“Water for Elephants” at 3:00am anyone?). Watched Clooney’s “Ides of March,” which I think was a decent film except the dialogue was so soft so often that I didn’t have a clue what was going on. Second film was “Moneyball,” the Billy Beane (Oakland A’s) story starring Brad Pitt. Being about sports instead of politics, that one was much easier to follow, and was pretty good. At least Delta didn’t charge for these on international flights. Food was again adequate, and beer and wine were gratis. Well, all right. I may be off wine, but can still down a Heineken thank you.

Delta must be part of some alliance with Qantas, because the seat pitch was just as meager. The women in front of us, as soon as we lifted off, immediately put their seats into full recline, and kept pushing back for anything more they could get. As a result, no knee room, and my nose was four inches from the top of the seatback. I made a point of giving the seat a bump every time I moved around, just to get even a bit. There’s no way to sugarcoat a ten+ hour flight in cramped conditions. It sucks. Restless leg syndrome strikes. This flight had quite a few bumps, so Loni put on her wrist bands and loaded up on dramamine.

We survived, sleepless, dawn broke, and as we approached Santiago the landscape looked just like southern California: arid hills, fertile valleys. Since we were an early landing flight, we had the immigration and customs facilities to ourselves, and breezed through. After, of course, the obligatory stop to pay the $144 (each) “reciprocity fee” that Chile charges to travelers from the five countries that impose some fee on Chileans entering their countries. The U.S., Canada, Mexico, Albania (of all places) and China. Americans, of course, paid the most. The good news is that you have to pay it only once per passport. Whenever you come back to Chile on that passport, it’s free. Whoopee. Can’t see I’ll ever get to take advantage of that.

We pantomimed our way to hailing the hotel shuttle, and are ensconced in the very nice Hilton Garden Inn near the airport. Have yet to see anything resembling a garden, but the rooms are nice, people friendly, and this internet connection is just fine. We keep thinking we’re in Phoenix or Albuquerque.

More adventure tomorrow. We have no confirmed way of getting to Valparaiso, the ship’s port, which is 80 miles away. The front desk said they could arrange a car and driver for $288. Ah, no thankee. We will figure something out. Heck, the ship doesn’t leave until 7pm. [Cue ominous music.]

MOM GOES TO PARIS, SORT OF

2012-01-24T18:31:00.000-08:00

Our SoCal LazyDaze owner’s club has monthly outings (called Caravans) from September through June (Nov-Dec are combined) each year. Attendance rarely drops below 60+ rigs, and sometimes tops 100. Within the SoCal Caravan are 8 or 9 informal subgroups composed of folks who like to get together during these meetings for potlucks, campfires, etc. Each subgroup takes a turn in “hosting” a monthly Caravan, consisting of registering each rig as it arrives, handing out schedules and info, doing the morning announcements via CB, and taking care of all the gear that goes with the group. When Loni and I attended our first Caravan after picking up Albatross nearly 5 years ago (!), the host subgroup was the “Past-Tents.” That turned out to be a fortunate bit of serendipity, as we have enjoyed newfound close friendships ever since.

The outing for this month (January) was held at Lake Perris State Park in the Perris Valley, about 50 miles east and 20 miles south of downtown LA. Loni’s and my recent trip to Paris sparked the idea to make this Caravan a “Lake Paris” theme. All the Past-Tents pitched in and brought theme materials, including a ten-foot Eiffel Tower, French posters, French flags, cheezy French café accordion music, and, of course, berets. That’s Loni in her red beret under the canopy, manning the welcome tent.

I once again got dragooned into doing the morning announcements over the CB, so Loni and I ginned up a “Pierre and Fifi” routine with a few bad jokes* and an atrocious French accent that fooled no one. Still, it was better than a dry recitation of daily events.

* As in: Q: “What do you get when you throw a grenade into a French kitchen”

A: “Linoleum Blownapart. (Groans)

OK, there are precious few jokes about the French on the internet, other than about their military ineptitude, which I didn’t want to use. So the pickings were slim.

Loni, who missed it last year, got to go on the tour of the local county morgue and viewed an autopsy. She was only mildly impressed, having seen much the same on a number of occasions at work over the years. I went last year and thought it was pretty cool. While Loni was doing that, Mom and I went with a group to the March ARB (formerly AFB) Air Museum which is just north of Lake Perris. As many of you know, I’m a sucker for air museums, and we’ve been to quite a few in our travels around the country. Mom is an old Navy Wave from WWII, and was stationed at Jacksonville NAS in Florida where she worked with the flyboys, so she also has had a long interest in military planes. At nearly 89, she was the oldest person there and the only one with WWII service. The museum is low key, but has some very interesting stuff, including an SR71 Blackbird high-altitude reconnaissance plane, one of the few remaining that has both engines intact. It’s a mach-3+ machine and still holds the speed record for air-breathing aircraft. They entered service in 1964 and continued in Air Force service until 1998. Because they flew so high and fast, none were ever shot down although 12 were lost to crashes. Mom is way down the body on the left.

These things were flying gas tanks, with the fuel stored within the fuselage. Because it was made of a titanium alloy, it had a high coefficient of expansion. When on the ground, it leaked fuel like a sieve; when flying, everything tightened up. The fuel was some special composition that had an extremely high flash (ignition) point. They had to use a sodium-based explosive to ignite the main fuel. Our docent told us of an incident where a non-fuel fire broke out near one of these things. A maintenance man took a jerry-can of the SR71 fuel and used it to douse the flames! This thing was created before the days of computer-aided design, using slide rules. And it still holds the speed record. Amazing. Kudos, Lockheed “Skunk Works.”

They also had a nice set of MIG fighters, from early to late models, a bunch of huge bombers, Phantoms and dozens of familiar as well as obscure craft.

They even had a kindred soul to our own rig:

They do restoration work here, and we had a nice chat with one of the guys working to restore this old B-17 Flying Fortress. They’ve stripped all the paint off, patched up the holes, fabricated parts that were missing, and now they’re about to paint it. Mom was a real trouper, walking pretty good distances to get to all the planes that were displayed outdoors.

She also got right in there in the bomb bay underneath this B-29 Superfortress, like the Enola Gay that dropped the bomb on Hiroshima, but she eventually pooped out and had to take a break.

Back at the Caravan, we did the usual round of activities. Mom and I broke out our set of bocce balls and, in a nod to the French, played a game of boules. The ground, however, was very hard and bumpy, so success was due more to luck than skill. Some of the best parts of any Caravan are the Past-Tents’ potlucks, and this outing was no different. We even had a magnifique boeuf Bourguignon, and Loni made a yummy French green lentils dish. The lady with the beret and sunglasses is Agnes, mother of fellow camper Nancy, and she’s even older than Mom – 91! They had a fun time trying to hear one another.

A little campfire to end the day. Despite the coats in these later-in-the-day pictures, we had sunny daily weather in the 70’s until Saturday, when we had rain in the morning. All in all, a good Caravan with 95 rigs in attendance.

That’s the three of us, right in the middle. Good job, Past-Tents!

[Photo by Art]

AU REVOIR, PARIS

2011-10-31T16:10:00.000-07:00

I’m posting this with an Oct. 31 date, even though we didn’t leave until Nov. 2, because I want to keep the entire Paris trip in one month “unit” on Blogger for easier access. Our last two days brought our first real rains of the trip. We’re pretty lucky that they held off that long. Even in the wet, Paris is a beautiful place, as in this shot from the balcony of the old Opera House.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. We figured this would mostly be a day of indoor sightseeing, so we headed to the shopping district to check out the huge department stores. Yikes. Rodeo Drive or Fifth Avenue are pikers compared to these salons of swank. We were particularly stunned by the Galeries Lafayette on Blvd. Haussmann. A huge ground space, surrounded by opera-like galleries filled with boutiques. And check out that glass dome!

This place was w-a-a-ay too rich for our blood. Loni had her brief Sex-In-The-City moment, but I kept a firm grip on her purse.

From the faux opera setting to the real thing, we sloshed through the streets to take in the original opera building, the Palais Garnier.

The Opera National de Paris now divides its performance schedule between the Garnier and the modern (read, ugly) Opera de Paris Bastille, which opened in 1989. The exterior of the Bastille Opera is so dull and uninspiring that I didn’t even take a picture of it. We didn’t see its interior, but it couldn’t possibly hold a candle to the incredible opulence excesses of the Garnier. It was ordered built by Napoleon III, and the design competition was won by the unknown, 35-year-old Charles Garnier. Including halts for war, empire collapse, etc., it was constructed between 1860 and 1875. It seats 1900.

The Garnier was the inspiration for Gaston Leroux’s 1911 novel, “The Phantom of the Opera,” partly because of the legend that it was built over an underground lake. According to the guidebooks, the place boasts perfect acoustics. However, due to its odd shape, some seats have limited or no visibility! Hmm. That might fly for listening to a concert, but not seeing the opera? Actually, for an operaphobe like myself, that might not be a bad thing, except I’d still have to listen to the stuff. Anyway, it’s a glorious venue. The auditorium boasts a painted ceiling done by Marc Chagall in 1964, much to the dismay of classic architecture purists. Supposedly, the paintings depict scenes from operas by 14 composers. All Greek to me. Below, top right, is an entrance to the stalls; at bottom, Loni is perched on a portion of the grand staircase.

During intermissions, one can promenade along the Grand Foyer, a dazzler that rivals the main hallway at Versailles.

Well, you get the picture. The place is a jaw dropper at every turn.

The rain wasn’t getting any better, so we decided to head back home, get some dinner, and do our packing. We were going to have to get up at 4:30 am to get showered, breakfasted, and haul our bags down six flights of stairs to meet our 6:00 private shuttle to the airport. Charles de Gaulle is at best a 35-40 minute ride in no traffic, and we couldn’t count on that, so we were allowing plenty of time, especially given that all flights were completely booked due to the Air France strike over the last five days. While Loni manned the stove, I went out for wine and, uh, well, desserts. Yeah, plural. C’mon, it was our last night in Paris.

Yes, we DID finish all three, and the bottle. We set two alarm clocks that night.

Our trip back was uneventful. The shuttle service showed up only ten minutes late, but I had budgeted for 30, so all was good. Despite the drizzle, the traffic hadn’t yet backed up, so we got there in plenty of time and were one of the first to check in. No lines at all, no taking shoes off at security. It was like travel several decades ago. We took off through the clouds and bid farewell to our last glimpse of France through the mist. We mostly cruised above the cloud cover all the way to North America, again watching multiple movies and getting fed two pretty fine meals. It was pretty bittersweet as we descended into LAX and the California sun. Good to be home, but missing already “our” pied-a-terre.

How to sum up? I guess by simply saying it was everything we had hoped for. It’s pretty rare when reality meets your aspirations. Taking a whole month to do mostly one city was the right thing for us. We were always relaxed, and never felt tied to a schedule other than “what shall we do today?” Even our excursions out of the city didn’t have more than a day or two forethought. We really endorse the idea of renting a flat with kitchen facilities. It ended up averaging a little over $50 a day for the apartment, and eating in for breakfasts and about half the dinners really made it affordable. And the French? We were out and about every day, and can honestly say we didn’t have a single bad or rude encounter the entire trip. The anti-America myth is just that. If it exists at the government level, it doesn’t seem to arise in day-to-day ordinary interactions. Just try first to speak a little French, no matter how badly. They will be patient and, eventually, gracefully come back with much better English than your French.

We had a ball! Vive la France!

REMAINS OF OUR DAYS

2011-10-30T15:42:00.000-07:00

Down to our last couple of days. We had no more museums to check off, and had seen all the monuments that we could handle, so we decided just to wander around and take in the scenery. There’s probably no better city anywhere for that. We went up the hill to the touristy side of Montmartre and stopped by the Place du Tertre (“mound” or “hillock”), where parts of Amelie and Midnight in Paris were filmed, and seemingly home to every street artist in Paris.

Dozens upon dozens of artists milled about trying to induce you to stand still for a portrait, sort of like the caricaturists at Disneyland. None of them advertised a price; that, presumably, would be the surprise once the portrait was done. We kept moving, and went down Rue Lepec and past the Le Moulin de la Galette (“biscuit”). This was built in 1622 and once was the venue for a cabaret frequented by Van Gogh, Utrillo, Toulouse-Lautrec, and Renoir. Prior to that it was a flour mill owned by one Debray. Legend has it that he was strung up on its sails and spun to death after trying to defend Montmartre against invading Cossacks in 1814; his widow had to collect his scattered remains in a flour sack in order to bury him. Hmmm. I dunno. That’s their story and they’re sticking to it. Anyway, it’s a beautiful spot.

Wandering further down the Butte, we came upon this view of Sacre Coeur which I thought was pretty neat. It’s odd, but for all the narrow streets and scrunched up traffic, the Parisians don’t do a lot of horn honking. It’s like everyone is resigned to a creeping pace and just don’t get that frustrated.

As we were on the eve of November, the trees and plants were starting to turn and the color display was pretty nice throughout the city.

We thought the Jardin des Plantes would be a good bet, so we hopped the Metro over to the University area. This originally was Louis XIII’s “Garden of Medicinal Herbs,” established by two physicians in 1626. Today, it is the city’s botanical garden, with 2,000 species of plants from all over the world. It didn’t disappoint.

This was a lovely park to walk through. I was reminded of San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park, as there were paths all over, a natural history museum, a small zoo, and an arboretum. There was a bit of Disneyland here as well, in the form of the animatronics shoe tree.

There were hundreds of shoes dangling from this thing (more extensive than shown above). At first, we thought it was the local equivalent of tossing sneakers over power lines. But when we stood under it, the darn things were talking. The picture at the right shows the hinged toes of this particular pair; they flapped up and down as they “spoke.” There were others that had similar openings and movement. We don’t have a clue as to what they were saying. Likewise, we don’t know whether it was for kids or adults. It would have been right at home in the old Tiki Room at Disneyland.

All that walking builds up an appetite. Boulangerie to the rescue. Sadly, eating like this, we’ll never look like the gal to the left. Ah, who cares?

Fortified, we started angling towards the Latin Quarter and passed by the Pantheon. OK, another monument, but you can hardly avoid them. Originally commissioned in 1750 by Louis XV as a church, it remained unfinished due to lack of funds until 1789. Two years later, it was turned into a secular mausoleum for the “grands hommes de l’epogue de la liberte francaise” (great men of the age of French liberty). Since then, it has entombed Voltaire, Rousseau, Hugo, Zola, Jean Moulin, Braille, and Marie Curie, who is the first woman occupant (reburied there in 1995). We just looked at it from the outside.

If we had a goal this day, it was to find a couscous restaurant for dinner. When we were students back in the day, that was the only meal we could afford when we visited Paris. Back then, Moroccan food was really cheap and filling. The guidebooks had a number of them listed, but the first two we located (after much walking) were both closed, as in out of business. So much for 2011 guides. We sat down on a bench to rest the dogs and to ferret out more options. Looking across the street, I saw the absolute perfect lineup of shops, all in a row. The locals of this neighborhood really have it good. I’d love to pick this whole block up and drop it in Los Angeles.

From the extreme left, a grocery, a fishmonger, a beef butcher, a poultrymonger, a pork butcher, a cheese shop, a wine shop, a bakery, and a café. Yum. We continued to wander and stumbled upon perhaps the world’s fanciest fire station. You’d expect a Rolls Royce pumper to come out of that place.

As it was getting on towards evening, we went back towards the Universite de Paris, figuring that cheap couscous would be found where students hung out. Finally, on Rue Monge, we found what looked to fill the bill. Reasonably priced and many varieties of couscous. It turned out to be a Mom and Son joint, the former running the front and the latter manned the kitchen. We were the only ones there for quite a while, and only one other table was occupied that evening. It was only okay. I think our memories are colored by the fact that we were so happy to get anything to eat as students that we thought it was gourmet at the time. Frankly, we do couscous at home that is better than what we got, but then Loni is a dynamite cook. Still, we enjoyed it as our last night on the town. We were planning to eat at the apartment the following night before we were to leave.

It was odd. Throughout the dinner service (all done by Mom, a 75-ish woman), Mom said virtually not a word and we felt about as welcome as ants to a picnic. Then, just when she brought dessert, she asked where we were from. We told her Los Angeles, and it was like a switch went on. She started talking about how much she loved movies. At least, I think that’s what she was saying. She was speaking rapidly and with an accent I couldn’t fathom. It turned into a comedy routine with her saying something, looking at us for a response, us laughing and nodding as if we understood, and her then peeling off a gale of laughter before starting in again. It went on for at least ten minutes. I was afraid she was going to say something serious and we would follow up with grins and nods, but apparently we pulled it off. She was a real character. But I never felt more completely incompetent in speaking French.

Sigh, a whole month and I still can’t parler worth a darn.

NAPPY AND THE BIG ASPARAGUS

2011-10-29T16:00:00.000-07:00

For all its love of military pomp, France has a pretty sad record when it comes to warfare. That doesn’t keep the French from aggrandizing the monumental egos of its past, particularly Napoleon and Charles de Gaulle. Both are immortalized, after a fashion, at Les Invalides.

In 1670, Louis XIV decided to found L’Hotel des Invalides to house the disabled soldiers from his various wars. Its first residents settled in 1674 in the complex which included barracks, a convent, a hospital, and a workshop. By the end of the XVIIth century, it housed 4,000. The chapels were started in 1676. The architect had a problem. The king wanted to worship “with” his soldiers, but protocol prohibited him from entering through the same doorway and from praying in the same physical space. As only the French could do, the architect (Jules Hardouin-Mansart, if you’re interested) designed dual chapels, back to back. The gold dome you see in the picture above is the roof of the king’s elaborate chapel, with the soldiers’ chapel between it and the front entrance of the complex.

The soldiers’ chapel is quite nice, in an austere, military fashion. The king’s chapel is on the other side of the far end. It is not entirely closed off; there are openings above so that the king could hear the services in the troops’ side. Neither, of course, could see the other.

As you can imagine, the king’s side was a little more gaudy. But, he was with them in spirit, right?!

Les Invalides houses the Musee de L’Armee, covering France’s entire military history. We didn’t get to 75% of it, there was just too much. I guess the less success you have, the more you trumpet. Anyway, we did get to the terrific displays of armor and 13th-17th century weapons. After you admire the nifty upper windows framed in stone armor, you go in the main entrance, pay your fees, and enter into a large courtyard. The center doorway in white is the entrance into the troops’ chapel, and the king’s dome looms behind. This courtyard

houses a battery of 60 French classical bronze cannons that are the jewels of the artillery collection. These date from 1666, and were used in sieges against fortified towns during the wars of Louis XIV.

Next stop were the halls devoted to the ancient armor and arms of the 13th-17th centuries. I don’t know about function, but the French clearly were masters of style. They even made children’s armor for the royal offspring. The relief work is from the breastplate of a suit of armor. As for eaglebeak . . . ???

The hand weapons show the exquisite design art that only the French could pull off. I loved it, but I suspect they weren’t winning any quick draw competitions with those pistols.

The serious stuff was much more somber, but just as impressive. This place actually is an armory, and holds hundreds and hundreds of suits of armor in endless displays. I particularly liked the snake carving wrapping around the cannon. Couldn’t convince Loni to try the shot-out-of-a-cannon routine with that monster mortar.

Time to move on to the Eglise du Dome, the royal chapel. At the time it was built (1677-1706), the interior decorations glorified Louis XIV, the monarchy in general, and the French armies. Under the French Revolution, it became a military pantheon at the instigation of Napoleon, with the installation in 1800-02 of tombs of various military leaders. Nappy, no doubt, was thinking ahead to his own immortality. Sure enough, in 1840 King Louis-Philippe I ordered Nappy’s remains to be returned from his final exile on the island of St. Helena, and for a tomb to be erected under the Dome.

The work was completed in 1861. The king’s chapel is the gold on the left, the dome is above the circle where the people are looking down

onto Nappy’s modest final resting place. Jumbo the elephant could be interred in that thing.

Around the sarcophagus are twelve “victory” statues symbolizing his military campaigns. Where’s the one celebrating the Russian campaign, hmmm? Waterloo? How about some homage to the hundreds of thousands who died in his vainglorious catastrophes? Paris is the capital of revisionist history.

Speaking of vanity, Les Invalides also is home to the Historial Charles de Gaulle. It’s tempting to dismiss de Gaulle as just a vain windbag, but that wouldn’t be just. Despite his imperious manners, he was a genuine war hero and forward thinker, but suffered at the hands of the idiots who were in charge of the French military. Back in WWI, de Gaulle fought bravely, was wounded multiple times, captured by the Germans and held in POW camps, attempted escapes five times, and generally acquitted himself with genuine honor. After the war, he rose to the rank of Colonel, and served on the National Defense Council, but there he stalled, running afoul of the hidebound military elite. The clowns in charge of the Light Brigade couldn’t hold a candle to this bunch of incompetents. De Gaulle was an outspoken advocate of building up France’s mobile mechanized warfare – tanks, etc. – so much so that he was nicknamed, after the U.S.’s General Motors, “Colonel Motors.” He was an early clarion against Hitler’s rise and Germany’s rearmament and France’s inadequate readiness. All for naught. He was ridiculed by his superiors, and repeatedly denied promotion. When WWII broke out, he was made a temporary brigadier general and given command of a tank brigade, with which he won one of the few French victories over German forces. He became part of the government just before the Maginot line was overrun (as he had warned) and the Germans marched on Paris. He fled to England and assumed (in all the senses of the word) the role of leader of the Free French forces which, considering France’s total capitulation, weren’t much. Churchill found him insufferable and Roosevelt didn’t trust him (thought he wanted to become emperor after the war). He was named President after hostilities ceased, resigned within a year (1946), but came back a decade later and served as President for a dozen years. The Historial is an homage to his life and career, mostly done through photos and newsreels. His face is everywhere.

When we were in Paris for Bastille Day weekend in 1966, we went to see the grand parade along the Champs Elysees. They had the usual marching formations, bands, flyovers, etc., but the highlight was Le Grand Charles, riding in an open convertible, acknowledging his adoring public. Somewhere I have a blurry photo of him zipping by. Three years later, following riots, strikes, and student protests, he resigned. He died a year later, in 1970. A complex guy, to say the least.

Oh, yeah. The Big Asparagus. That moniker was hung on him as a youth in school, with his lanky resemblance to that tall stalk. His detractors used it to the end of his life.

THE GOOD, THE BAD, AND THE UGLY

2011-10-28T18:22:00.000-07:00

Beauty, of course, is in the eye of the beholder. That applies in spades to art. But it’s my blog, so what I say goes! Paris is filled with museums and some of the most famous works of art in the world. It’s not all in the Louvre. The Holy Grail of our art quest on this trip was the Musee d’Orsay, home of the Impressionists and Post-Impressionists: Manet, Degas, Monet, Van Gogh, Gauguin, Seurat, etc. etc. So, it was high on our to-do list when we first arrived. But when we were at Notre Dame, we struck up a conversation with another couple while waiting for the tour. They told us that the D’Orsay’s collection of Impressionists, etc., was closed as they were just finishing a two-year remodel of the galleries and the art was being moved. It was scheduled to reopen on October 20th. That was OK by us, as we had the whole month to play with. Little did we know . . .

Putting off the D’Orsay, we made for the Pompidou Center, the “Ugly” of our title. The Centre National d’Art et de Culture Georges Pompidou is the narcissistic monument to the late president’s ego. Reviled when it opened in 1977, it supposedly is now beloved by Parisians. It’s the “inside-out” building, where the structural components are exposed. Sorry. It’s interesting. But it’s still U-G-L-Y, and jarringly out of place in this city.

I kept thinking of Terry Gilliam’s “Brazil” movie when eyeing this monstrosity. Those Plexiglas tubes house the escalators that you take up to the various levels. I assume the air scoops are functional, but I dunno. Of course, old Georges’ puss is plastered two stories high across the front. Yeah, that is indeed the front that Loni is standing before. It was really cold this day, so we were glad to get inside (after standing in that line back in the distance).

We went up the tube escalators, stood in lines in the tube walkways, and gazed down on the poor houses across the way that now have to look at the Pompidou for all eternity. I’d pull the blinds.

The big show at the Centre currently is an exhibition of Edvard Munch (1863-1944), he of “The Scream” fame (which wasn’t part of the show). Munch is a good pick for the weirdness of the Pompidou setting. He was one strange character himself. He clearly had a lot of artistic talent, as shown in the “Night Wanderer” (1923-24):

But the themes he chose to paint about, and his depiction of his subjects as tortured souls, was bizarre. He was obsessed with death and conflict. The six below are representative. From the top left, then clockwise: “The Sick Child,” “Murder on the Road,” “Burning House,” “The Fight,” “The Uninvited Guests” (note the gun), and “Jealousy.”

I don’t think I’d like to spend much time in his company. His photo reminded me of Benito Mussolini, and he had a rather severe vision of himself in a few self-portraits.

We saw some other exhibits at the Centre, but weren’t allowed to photograph them. In one case, that was a blessing. As only the French can do (think of their veneration for Jerry Lewis), they were celebrating the winner of the Marcel Duchamp Prize (whatever that is), a no-talent photographer named Cyprien Gaillard. We didn’t get it. He took extremely ordinary (think a Kodak Brownie manned by a junior high school student) photos of mundane scenes and objects. They were all taken with the camera turned slightly, so that the image appeared in a diamond shape instead of a square. This is from the internet:

Big deal. I guess that diamond look was the “art,” cause it certainly wasn’t the compositions. Really, this was junk, and part of the “bad” of this post.

The other exhibit actually was pretty neat, and I wish we could have taken some pics. Google Yayoi Kusama images and see some of her works and installations. There were some mind-blowing rooms filled with lights, mirrors, or repeating patterns. Sort of a high-class fun house. [Note: I just noticed that you have to hold down the CTRL key when clicking on the link; that’s something new with Blogger.]

When the 20th rolled around, we were ready to beetle off to the D’Orsay. Not. We forgot to factor in the French predilection for strikes. Seems the gallery workers decided that, with the addition of new exhibit space, they needed at least 20 more employees to, ahem, properly serve the public and protect the art. So, they struck the morning of the reopening, which didn’t take place. No D’Orsay for us or anyone else. This went on day after day without any end in sight. I’m sure there were thousands of really pissed off tourists who didn’t have the luxury of staying longer. Hey, we only had a week left ourselves!

A companion museum to the D’Orsay is the L’Orangerie, which has a nice collection of stuff we liked, such as:

Picasso was well represented in the regular collection, and it was interesting to see his transition from realism to abstract.

Frankly, I really like Picasso’s early stuff, and can’t stand his later nonsense.

The special exhibition was of Spanish artists of the post-impressionist era from about 1890 to 1920, subtitled “From Zuloaga to Picasso.” Frankly, I know virtually nothing about Spanish artists, so I was curious. Turns out it was some of the best art we saw the whole trip (my subjective opinion, of course). I haven’t the experience or knowledge to provide any analysis, all I can offer is what I liked. This exhibition was off-limits for photography, so I wasn’t able to get shots of the stuff I fancied. I really enjoyed Joaquin Bastida ‘s work, so internet to the rescue:

Ramon Casas was another favorite. Many of these Spanish artists came to Paris to soak in the French artists of the period, and their works sometimes are quite similar to more familiar painters, at least in their subjects if not in their styles, like this one, called “Madeleine.” The look in her eyes is amazing.

Perhaps another genre of my personal art criticism is the “hoax.” This is the “you gotta be kidding me” category. Topping the list at L’Orangerie was Monet’s “Water Lilies.” Two, huge, oval rooms are devoted to this farce. Here’s the official blurb:

Monet’s veritable artistic testament, these “large decorations” are the culmination of an entire life. Designed from 1914 until his death (1926), they are inspired by the “water garden” at the artist’s property in Giverny. The eight panels represented in these two rooms evoke the hours passing from morning in the East to sunset in the West. Monet represents neither the horizon, nor the top or the bottom. The elements – water, air, sky, earth – become intertwined in a composition without perspective, where the water lily flowers provide the rhythm. The painter thus gives “the illusion of an endless whole, of a horizonless and shoreless wave.”

Okayyy. Now here’s my take: Monet’s artistic downfall, these paint-by-the-numbers murals are the nadir of an entire life. The eight panels evoke somnambulism from dawn until dusk. There’s no beginning or end; in fact, like Oakland, there’s no there, there. The elements – monotonous colors, suffocating boredom, numbing repetition, utter lifelessness – become a composition without meaning or interest, where the lily flowers go on ad nauseam. the painter thus gives the reality of an endless murkiness.

Really. That this is considered some masterwork is the ultimate in hype. It looks like my Aunt Evelyn’s wallpaper. Here are parts of two of the eight (!) panels that cover two rooms.

After eight days of striking, the D’Orsay workers finally got sufficient assurances that their demands would be addressed, and returned to their jobs. Finally, with only a few days to go in our trip, we got to see its works. It’s housed in a former train station. The French love to recycle buildings, and I’m all for it.

With a couple of rare exceptions, there is virtually no place in the museum that you are allowed to take pictures, so you are spared more shots of stuff that I like. I must say that the remodeled galleries are as good as all the hyperbole that accompanied the reopening. No more white walls, they’re all painted in darker hues. The lighting is incredible. Somehow, only the painting on display receives light, not the surrounding area. As a result, those masterpieces seem absolutely to glow and radiate their own light. It’s really stunning to see. We both had the “wow” reaction when we walked into the first impressionist room. Museum curators the world over should take a junket and come see what the D’Orsay has done, it’s that good.

About all we could photograph was where we had lunch. The D’Orsay occupies a huge building that used to be a train station, thus it is gigantic in its interior space, and has a number of oversized features. One of these was the station clock, which dominates the space where the lunch café was located.

If you look closely in the lower center of the right photo, you can see Sacre Coeur in the distance atop Montmartre. I have to say, the food was pretty good in the café, not at all like most museum fare.

To return to the Pompidou, there was another area in which I could photograph, but I didn’t much want to. There’s art, and then there’s junk that someone declaims is art. The mystery to me is why anyone believes it. It’s just bad.

So, with a tip of the hat to Sergio Leone, there you have it: the good, the bad, and the ugly.

THE TOUR FROM HELL

2011-10-27T17:10:00.000-07:00

Our final excursion out of Paris was to be to one of the most dramatic sites – and sights -- in Europe: Mont St-Michel, situated almost due west of Paris on the Atlantic coast. It sits atop a huge chunk of granite out in a tidal basin, and is visible from a long way off. This is taken through the bus window.

We visited here with our Stanford group back in 1966, ate snails for the first time, got potted on cheap wine, and partied on the sands, daring the tides to come in and drown us. We virtually had the Mont to ourselves back then, and it was not only a thrilling sight, but the village was quaint and not terribly touristy. Well, times change.

There’s no direct train service from Paris (or anywhere, for that matter). We would have had to travel 2 hours by train to Rennes, then hope that a bus would be available to take us another 70 kilometers to the Mont. We didn’t want to chance bad, or no, connections, so opted to take a tour bus, even though the full drive by bus would be about 9 hours round trip, not counting the time at the Mont (13 hours in all). The internet sources for such tours all required that you be able to print out a voucher to present to the tour operator. We didn’t have that capability, so I looked for a tour that had an actual office address in Paris.

As an aside, if I were going to again go to Europe for some time, I’d try to take some really compact portable printer with me. Most attractions sell tickets online, but you have to be able to print them out. We could have saved many cumulative hours that we stood in lines to buy tickets for the museums, Eiffel Tower, and the like. They all had lines (virtually empty) for visitors who already had tickets.

Anyway, we found a local tour place -- France Tourisme (which probably was the actual operator for many of the online sources). It boasted lunch with a view on the Mont, guided tour in English and other languages, and priority access. Sounded good. It wasn’t. [Roll ominous music.] We had to opt for a Sunday tour, as Saturday was booked, Monday they were closed, and Tuesday was the day before our departure. Still, that was OK by us. What we didn’t know then was that this was to be a four-day weekend, since Tuesday was a holiday.

Our day didn’t start out well. We had to be at the tour office at 7:00 a.m. (sharp! they said) and the bus would depart promptly at 7:15. Sunrise, by the way, would not be until 8:10. We got up at 5:30 to shower and grab a quick bite, then hustled down to the Metro, hoping it ran frequently at that hour. We had to wait about 10 minutes, not bad. The plan was to take our line 12 down to the Concorde station (8 stops away), then transfer to the #1 line for three stops to the Rivoli station, near the tour office. The best laid plans . . . Our train stopped four stations into our trip, and everyone had to exit and go topside. They were repairing the tracks! The friendly Metro people would provide a bus to take us to the next open station. Auugghhh! We’d been through that once before. It takes forever to get it organized and going. We’d never make it. As we climbed out onto the street, we ran smack into a brawl going on right at the exit involving half a dozen people, all screaming, shoving, pulling hair. The police were just arriving, so we quickly scooted away from the melee. We didn’t want to get caught up in a general dragnet. So, there we are, deserted streets, no bus in sight, way too far to walk, and Loni is not feeling well and needs a loo. I went out and stood in the middle of the street, looking for a cab, waived at anything moving (cabs here turn their roof lights on when they have a passenger, not when they’re free – go figure). After five minutes (seemed a LOT longer), a car stopped at my arm-waggling, and a roof light came on – yes! We piled in, I shoved the tour brochure with the address under his nose, and we were off. Made it right at 7:00, only to find a lot of people milling about. At check-in, she said they’d be a little late departing. Loni asked for a bathroom. Sorry, don’t have one. There’s a café open about two blocks away. Too far. Next door there was a café, not open, but a guy was sweeping the floor. Beg beg beg. Slap down some coin. He shrugs and nods her in. Saved. At 7:30 they called to load the bus, and about two dozen of us boarded. Then the fun began. A Spanish family (elderly father, adult son and his wife) started getting into it with the tour guide. Seems they had booked a different tour, not this one, according to the tour company. The Spaniards denied it, said this is what they booked. A big row ensues, with lots of hand gestures on the part of the old guy that even I could interpret. The tour people wanted them to get off the bus, and they refused. The son gets off to negotiate, but the old man stays put, verbally abusing the guide at the top of his lungs. This goes on for nearly half an hour before the son gets back on, the guide sits down, the driver climbs in, and we leave. Nothing more is said, but we’re way behind schedule.

On the way out, we got a view of the Eiffel Tower all lit up in the pre-dawn darkness.

After all the excitement, most of the bus settled in for a few winks as we made our way into the countryside. We did get treated to a bit of Fall color, but the good stuff was probably a couple of weeks away.

We made one pit stop about halfway there, and we tanked up on raisin snails (danish, not gastropods) and orange juice. We thought we’d be getting some commentary from the guide as we rolled along, but not one peep in nearly four hours. We didn’t have a clue what we were passing through. He didn’t come to life until we had the Mont in our sights off in the distance, and his remarks were limited, vague, and even wrong. Ah, well. It’s the visuals, not the story.

See that line of little white things on the horizon to the left. Well, that turned out to be the line of cars trying to get to the parking area. Priority access? Hah. Not for anything on wheels. I think this must have been what Woodstock looked like. Note the bird-streaked windshield. That’s how we started the trip. I’ve never seen a filthier windshield on a bus.

We finally crawled into the bus parking area. At least it was closer to the Mont than the general parking for the cars and RV’s. I think half of France must have decided to come here today.

Back in the day, the causeway itself used to go completely under water when the tide came in, making the Mont an island. Visitors had to time their visits for low tide times, and get their vehicles out before the tide came in. In the shot above, all the cars to the left, and the buses on the right, still would have to leave before high tide. Only the center corridor remains above water. Fortunately, high tides this day were at 8am and 8pm, so the water was largely receded by the time we got there, and no one had to worry all afternoon.

Now, the Mont is really a crowded place. There’s only one street that winds its way up to the abbey, and it’s really narrow. Imagine all the people in all the cars and buses that you saw in the picture above. Now, imagine all of them trying to get to the abbey up this “road.”

Yup, that’s it. The only way up. Can you spell Z O O ? By the time we got there, we were way late for our lunch reservations and, as you can imagine, the restaurant did not hold them with all these folks clamoring for tables. It was 12:30, and the guide split us up, some into one restaurant, and the rest of us in another. That table with a view? HAH! We waited while the guide pleaded for any seating at all. We got crammed into a foursome right by the stairwell with a view of nothing but other tables. The guide wished us well, said to take the left staircase when we went up to the abbey, and disappeared. That was the extent of the guided tour. He guided us to the restaurant. We then experienced the worst meal of the trip, if not the decade. The appetizer was three slabs of cold, heavy cheese. I could only choke one of them down. The main course was an omelet. Well, that’s what they called it. A thin sheet of fried egg (browned completely), folded over some foamy stuff. Tasteless. Dry. Bordering on the inedible. All this took quite some time to get to the table, as the place was absolutely jammed with tour groups (most of whose plates looked more appetizing than ours). This was so bad, and we were running out of time to see the abbey (we had to be back at the bus at 3:15), that we left without even seeing the dessert. Whatever it was, I don’t think we missed much. The only saving grace was that we shared our table with a young couple from Singapore who were in France for a year for his business assignment. They were delightful and we could converse in English for the most part.

Having escaped the Terrasses Poulard (never darken their doorstep) restaurant, we started up the hill, moving in lockstep with the masses. It was useless to try to push through. Once we got to the abbey, we looked for the “left staircase” the guide had mentioned. There wasn’t any, but we walked up the left side of the single steps, much to the consternation of the legions who were waiting in line on the right. That line snaked way, way out of this picture.

Turns out, the guide was right. If you hold a ticket indicating you are part of a “guided” tour, you get to enter via the “tour” line, which is on the left. Of course, there’s not a single sign that explains this, so a lot of dirty looks are exchanged as we “crashed” up the stairs to the head of the line, unsure we were doing the right thing until we got to the top and only then saw a small sign inviting tours to enter. Once in, the abbey is as impressive today as it was then. More so, perhaps, as we saw areas that we definitely did not view when we were here before.

The history of the Mont dates back to 708, when Aubert, Bishop of Avranches, built a sanctuary in honor of the Archangel, Michel. The mount soon became a major focus of pilgrimage (tourists, even then). In the 900’s, Benedictines settled in the abbey while the village grew up below its walls. It was an impregnable stronghold during the Hundred Years War, its fortifications resisting all English assaults. AS a result, the Mont became a symbol of national identity.

The place is full of interesting architecture, having been built over the centuries by piling one structure on top of earlier ones. The abbey (interior, center above; exterior, above right and left) stands on crypts that create a platform designed to take the weight of the church. The bottommost crypt has massive pillars to support the upper levels. It’s called the Crypt des Gros Pillers. The women in the left photo below are standing in front of one of the more unusual features, a giant wheel.

The wheel was used as a huge pulley to haul up materials and provisions to feed the incarcerated after the abbey was turned into a prison during the Revolution, and continuing until the 1860’s. There is a giant stone trough that angles down the slope from the base of the wheel to the town below which acted as the slide.

There is a columned, interior courtyard called the Cloister, which provided communication between the various buildings, and acted as a place of prayer and meditation. It sits atop a building known as the Merveille, built at the beginning of the 13th century, and gives access to the refectory, kitchen, dormitory, and various stairways. Below, top right, is the refectory, where the monks took their meals in silence while one of them gave readings from a pulpit on the south wall. The floor is in the nave of the church.

The interior is a real maze of passageways, circular stairways, and rooms of all sizes and shapes on many levels. The arched hall below left is the Knights’ Hall, built to hold up the cloister, it was the work and study room of the monks. There is a specific route to follow (a handout is given at the start), and woe betide he that deviates, because it is easy to get lost, and you either go forward or retrace your steps, as there are not alternative routes to egress. As a result, all of the visitors follow the same path. This isn’t a problem until (a) you look at your watch and realize it’s 3:00 and you’re still in the bowels of the abbey, high atop the Mont, and (b) you’re behind a huge tour of Chinese tourists who are all trying to funnel into the one-person-at-a-slow-time circular stairway that is the only way out (below, top right). We, ah, rather impolitely shoehorned ourselves into the middle of their group and squoze ahead.

Once we got out, we weren’t out of the woods. We had to navigate from the exit at the rear back around to the front so that we could find the sole stairway down into the village. Wandering around outside was just as interesting as inside.

We found our way back to the West Terrace, where you have a panoramic view over the bay, from the west in Brittany, to the cliffs of Normandy to the east. The picture below only takes in the Normandy coast on the right, with the isle of Tombelaine sitting out there. There are lots of signs posted in the parking lots warning visitors to NOT go out on the sands as there is quicksand and, when the tides are turning, that the speed of the incoming tide can outpace a running horse. People have drowned and been swallowed up. I guess nothing changes. We ignored the same warnings back in the day, and those little dots you see down there are folks doing the same today.

Being the anal types we are, we hustled as much as we could, given the unyielding masses, back down to the bus. We needn’t have bothered. Lots of folks were late, including the worst offenders, the nice young couple with whom we had lunch. No problem, as we were in no hurry to leave this gorgeous spot.

We didn’t tip the guide.

THE MIDDLE

2011-10-26T17:10:00.000-07:00

No, not that sappy sitcom about life in Indiana, this is our visit to the Musee des Moyen Ages, aka the Musee de Cluny, the National Museum of the Middle Ages, one of the oddball but totally fascinating gems of Paris. It was founded in 1843 in this very building, the Hotel (mansion) de Cluny, built in the late 1400’s and surviving almost intact to this day. It was the first Parisian example of a private mansion between a courtyard and a garden.

The other half of the museum is composed of the adjacent “northern thermal baths” of Lutetia, a Gallo-Roman structure built in the late 1st century. It had cold, tepid, and hot rooms devoted to baths and physical exercise. The only elevated portion remaining is the frigidarium, or cold room. It’s ceiling reaches nearly 50 feet.

They had some nice examples of stained glass surviving from the early and mid 1200’s. In this group, we have one showing the Charity of St. Martin, a Chevalier killing a King (“Off with his head!”), a depiction of the troubles of Job (looks like a lot of tortured barnyard animals to me), and one showing Christ toting the cross.

Remember those statues that lined the front of Notre Dame? The ones that had been hauled down and busted by the mobs, then replaced in the 18th century? Well, the originals ended up being buried for safekeeping, and later unearthed and installed here. They were not restored.

Much of the stonework in this part of the museum is not original to the site, but was brought from other locales to be installed and displayed here. They’ve gone to some effort to preserve the atmosphere of stone passageways and carved walls.

But it’s not all statuary and ancient chambers. There is some exquisite stuff lurking within, like the gold work in these 7th century votive crowns from Visigothic Spain, and the delicate 1330 Minucchio da Siena Golden rose, from Avignon.

My favorite piece of all, however, was this astonishing folding carved altar piece, the Triptych from Saint-Sulpice-du-Tarn. I’m just blown away by the fact that each panel was carved out of a single slab of ivory, yet has great depth and graceful detail. It’s about two feet high, and depicts scenes from the birth and death of Christ. At the bottom, the Virgin, who had been cradling the Child (which has since disappeared), is between two angels, with the Magi in adoration to her left. To her right is the Presentation to the Temple. The Crucifixion is framed by the Carrying of the Cross to the left and the Removal of the Body to the right. Dates from the late 1200’s.

There was way too much here to see in just a few hours. We should have allowed a full day. There were rooms devoted to arms, shields, and armor, but I found more interesting this medieval manual on the art of hand-to-hand combat. I should think one good kick with those pointy shoes would do the trick.

Loni really liked the elaborate ceiling supports in the Chapel of the Hotel de Cluny. How’d you like to dust all that?

But her favorite item was the set of tapestries called The Lady and the Unicorn. These occupied their own rotunda room, kept very dark to avoid light damage (and to frustrate would-be photographers). They are deemed one of the most stunning examples of “millefleurs” style tapestries, referring to the background composed of thousands of flowers. There are six pieces which illustrate the five senses, along with the sixth “sense” of love and understanding. Well, that’s their story and they’re sticking with it. When we got there, a class of grade schoolers was doing their best to ignore the nice lady trying to explain it to them. I had to use my Gorilla Pod to steady the camera for this long exposure.

That’s supposed to be “sight” in the middle (she’s holding a mirror and the unicorn is gazing at its reflection), “taste” on the right (foodstuffs in the basket), and “hearing” on the left (hard to see, but she’s playing a harp). You’ll have to imagine the other two. The sixth panel hangs by itself on the back wall. It contains the words, “A mon seul desir,” an obscure motto (wikipedia speaking now), variously interpretable as "my one/sole desire", "according to my desire alone"; "by my will alone", "love desires only beauty of soul", "to calm passion".

This tapestry has elicited a number of interpretations. One interpretation sees the lady putting the necklace into the chest as a renunciation of the passions aroused by the other senses, and as an assertion of her free will. Another sees the tapestry as representing a sixth sense of understanding. Various other interpretations see the tapestry as representing love or virginity. It is also debated whether the lady in "À Mon Seul Désir" is picking up or setting aside the necklace.

Saturated with history and art, we headed for home via the Metro, boarding at this beautiful station. Having just left the giant remains of the 2,000 year old Roman baths, I couldn’t help wondering if all this would get buried over the eons, and what some future discoverer would think of this huge space and its cryptic art.

PILGRIMAGE TO CHARTRES

2011-10-24T18:14:00.000-07:00

The cathedral at Chartres sufficiently impressed us as students that it was one of the places we most wanted to revisit. Chartres lies about 90 km southwest of Paris, so it was up early and off on the Metro to the train station once again.

Chartres is too close for a TGV train, so we got the local instead, and the trip took about an hour and 20 minutes, with stops along the way. The cars on the local were a little worn around the edges, but quite comfortable . . . except for not having any operating bathrooms! We got to Chartres just before 11:00, and as we left the station we saw one poor guy relieving himself against a wall between some trash bins. Uh oh, are we going to have a problem today? As it turns out, nope. Chartres depends heavily on tourism, and there was a public facility on our way to the cathedral. Unfortunately, the women’s side was unusably filthy, so Loni had to wait until we found one of the many shops sprinkled around the town that offered their facilities for 50 cents a go. The tourist bureau had a map that showed where they all were, unlike in Paris.

It’s easy to navigate around in Chartres. The cathedral easily dominates the skyline, and you can almost always catch a glimpse of one of the spires. The countryside surrounding Chartres is quite flat, and you can see the towers from 30 miles away. When we rounded the final corner and got our first glimpse of the whole front façade, we were dismayed. It’s undergoing renovation!

It was more than just a facelift. They had completely removed the beautiful rose window from this front face. When we got inside, we were presented instead with a huge silkscreen on which they had imaged the window. Clever, but a pale substitute indeed.

What they’re up to on the interior is a good cleaning and a painting of the inside surfaces. Yup, paint! I didn’t think they did that to stone, but apparently in olden days they had quite a variety of hues adorning various surfaces in churches. They’re sticking with white here, and the one area they had completed was ten times brighter than the rest. The place should be transformed when they’re done. We had made sure we arrived on a day and at a time when we could take advantage of a tour given in English by the “legendary” Malcolm Miller, an Englishman who decamped from England to Chartres for his thesis back in the ‘50’s. He liked it so much, he has been here giving tours for 56 years! In fact, I asked him afterwards if he had ever been engaged by Stanford to give tours for its students here back in the ‘60’s, and he said yes, he had. So, we very well might have soaked up some of his exposition 45 years ago. He’s internationally recognized as an authority on the cathedral, and received two of the highest French civilian honors: knighthoods in the National Order of Merit and the Order of Arts and Letters. He still puts on a good show. The windows and statuary come to life when you know what they are portraying.

The ones above are part of the North Porch entry. The figures in the big picture are those to Loni’s left in the smaller one. From left to right, these are the priest-king, Melchizedek; Abraham (holding his son Isaac, in preparation for sacrifice. Isaac’s feet are bound, I guess to indicate he wasn’t fully on board with the program.); Moses (pointing to the brazen serpent with which he healed those bitten by poisonous snakes); Aaron or Samuel (knifing the sacrificial lamb); and King David (who prophesied Christ’s passion, so carries a spear and a crown of thorns). What was going on here was religious education for the masses carried out in glass and stone. A “pictorial catechism,” if you will, of prevailing religious thought of the time. It’s pretty neat, once someone decodes it for you, and old Malcolm knows more about it than anyone in the world. He’s on auto pilot by now, but still makes it interesting. We all got earphones and listened via bluetooth as he murmured into his microphone. We could hear perfectly, and he wasn’t disturbing the other visitors or tours.

The present cathedral is at least the fifth to stand on this site. A decree from the reign of Charlemagne’s father, Pepin the Short (751-768), mentioned gifts to the ‘Church of St. Mary’ at Chartres. The devotion to Mary was strengthened in 876, when Charlemagne’s grandson, Charles the Bald, gave to Chartres the “Sancta Camisia,” the garment believed to have been worn by Mary when she gave birth to Christ. Talk about snake oil. Anyway, as Mary grew in theological importance, Chartres grew in importance as a pilgrimage shrine as the faithful flocked to view the nightie. Today, they have it preserved in Lucite behind bars.

The previous cathedral (#4) kept getting damaged by fires (they had wooden roofs), was rebuilt in bits and pieces over centuries, but probably originally dated from 876, with new towers built in the 1100’s. All was for naught, as a devastating fire in 1194 destroyed most of the town and the cathedral. The Chartres we know today, consecrated in 1260, was built in only thirty years (!), with then-unprecedented height, numbers of sculptures, and use of glass. 44 windows were given by royal or aristocratic donors, and they are memorialized by their heraldry set out in the panes. Another 42 windows were given by various merchant fraternities (bakers, farriers, butchers, masons, etc.), and they are represented in scenes portraying their trades.

Because of the current renovation, a lot of the glass was covered up, but what was still visible was impressive. In addition to acting as bragging boards for the guilds and individuals who ponied up the money to build the cathedral, the windows tell Bible stories. This one below tells the story of Adam & Eve. This shot was taken from about 50 feet away, looking up, so it’s a little distorted. The upper quadrant of the center rose has God showing A&E the forbidden fruit; in the circle above that (unfortunately in a shadow), Adam, on the right, clutches his throat after eating the apple. Hundreds and hundreds of Bible tales are enacted in the windows, but this heathen really needs a guide to tell what’s going on. The other scenes in this panel tell the story of the Good Samaritan.

A feature of many medieval French cathedrals was a labyrinth set into the floor of the nave. Most of these have not survived, but the one at Chartres is the largest and best preserved in existence. Some references say that the purpose of the labyrinth is not clear. Our boy Malcolm says that pilgrims would walk it, or go around it on their knees, as a spiritual exercise, perhaps a symbolic pilgrimage to Jerusalem. This one dates from about 1200, so it was part of the previous church that burned down. It has never been restored, and looks today, worn and chipped somewhat, just like it did 800 years ago. It’s made of flagstones from quarries in Bercheres enclosed by bands of black marble, and is 261 meters long. In my picture, most of it sits below the chairs.

Despite the restoration work, the Rose window and lancets over the North transept are visible and luminescent. In the diamonds are the twelve kings of Judah, as Christ’s ancestors; four doves and eight angels surround Mary and Child in the center. Beneath the rose, the center lancet shows St. Anne with the Mary child; flanking her in the other lancets are four Old Testament figures who are trampling underfoot smaller figures, antichrists.

Left to right, they are: Priest-king Melchizedek carrying a chalice representing the virtue of faith; David, with his ten-stringed harp (below him, defeated King Saul is depicted committing hari kari with a broadsword, a logistical conundrum given its size); to the right of Anne is David’s son, Solomon, and under his feet is some idolator worshiping a golden calf; and finally, high priest Aaron wears the Jewish ephod (priestly apron?) and carries the flowering rod given to him by Moses. All very cool stuff when someone points it out.

His hour and a half up (at 10 euros each, minimum party of 12), Malcolm bid us adieu, pointed out the nook where the gift shop resided which, conveniently enough, was laden with various tomes on Chartres by yours truly. We did spring for one, which is how I sound like such a smartypants above. It was getting on towards 2:00, so we wandered into town in search of a place to eat,

and found a cozy spot with a great prix fixe menu for mixed grill and frites plates. A nice pichet of red wine (500ml), and we were set. Again with my extended arm self-portrait.

We wanted to take a walk after lunch through the old medieval town, but we had to hustle back to the station to make our train back to Paris. Chartres was an excellent day trip, and we had a relaxing ride back. I think we had learned the night before that Stanford had just squeaked by USC in triple overtime, hence my sporting the colors 6k miles away.

PUTTIN’ ON THE RITZ

2011-10-22T16:55:00.000-07:00

You come to Paris for many reasons, and one of them surely is to eat. Eating really is different here. They take it seriously, both in terms of service and quality. We only had one bad meal the whole time; more on that in another post. But this post is about two sublime evenings, courtesy of one who asked not to be named. I’ll honor that, but wish I could give credit where it is so richly deserved.

I’ve already blogged about our lunchtime Slumming at the George V. Now we move to the evening and a couple of dinners that also were extra special. The first was at a place called Terminus Nord, to which we were turned on by our friends Osea and Emily, who had recently returned from their own excursion to Paris. They went to this restaurant with their apartment host, and their raves fell on our eager ears. We hit the Metro for the short ride to the Gare de Nord, for which the restaurant is named. Being a major “Grande Lignes” station, it has some loooong connections between it and the Metro system. Sorta looks like a scene out of a scifi movie.

Across the street from the entrance to the station, we found the restaurant, all lit up.

As you can see on the awning, it’s a relative baby, only in business since 1925, and apparently is stuck (in a good sense) in a time warp, with the original 20’s ambiance: a copper bar, waiters in white aprons, brass and mirrors everywhere.

Hearty, traditional fare is the byword here, and seafood is a specialty. Loni had just finished reading Julia Child’s memoire of her early days in France, and Julia’s introduction to French cooking. The first real meal she had was filet of sole meuniere: dredged in flour, then sauteed in brown butter, parsley, and lemon. I think Loni (and Julia) like it for the same reason I like lobster – the opportunity to gorge yourself with butter. Anyway, Loni started with an onion soup, and I had pate, both excellent. When they brought the mains, they first brought the sole displayed on a large platter, and asked Loni if they could proceed with preparing it. We hadn’t a clue what that meant, but said oui oui. “Preparing it” turned out to be an elaborate deboning process, transferring to a plate, garnish, etc. Then they brought both plates to the table. I had chosen a cod with a sauce that I can’t now remember what it contained. I just know we both really enjoyed them, washed down by a yummy Chablis. Chablis in France is not like the watery dreck we often get in the States; here it has good body and flavors. For desserts, Loni got a café legionoise (sp?), a heart attack potion of coffee, coffee ice cream, and chantilly cream. I got a more sensible (yeah, right) warm flourless chocolate cake on raspberry sauce with hazelnut ice cream.

We both had a ridiculously great time, including killing the whole bottle.

In between these outings, Loni makes good use of the kitchen in our apartment to make meals with a little less butterfat content so that we don’t croak. She tries to make “one pot” meals so that we don’t have a lot of cleanup, much like we do when we travel in the RV. The French have some absolutely wonderful canned products, like lentils that were smaller and tastier than what we get at home, and stews with real hunks of lamb or beef, not the reformed processed mystery meat in Dinty Moore’s, etc. We get a can of each, and combine them, and add in some fresh carrots, garlic, onions, bell peppers, etc., and cook them up. It makes a delicious dish, with a side salad and some baguette slices. And, of course, some wine. We couldn’t possibly have eaten out every night. Our stomachs would have rebelled.

They certainly weren’t rebelling when we went out for our next fancy dinner, again courtesy of “X.” There are hundreds of fancy restaurants to choose from. The super-top triple-Michelin-starred ones require more advance reservation time than we had; some of them required many weeks or even months. We also wanted to make sure that the menu wasn’t overloaded with shellfish items, as Loni is allergic. We perused the guidebooks and internet, and limited our search to places that had good, recent reviews and menus posted online. We decided on Les Elysees du Vernet, a Michelin-starred restaurant located in the Le Vernet Hotel, just off the Champs Elysees,

as we liked the tasting menu they had posted. We made reservations for 8:00, figuring that was a suitable French dining hour, but we got there a bit early so we wandered up the way to get a night shot of the Arc de Triomphe.

After we killed a quarter hour, we went over to the Hotel. When we got there, we were warmly greeted by multiple staff and led to a nice table

where we could observe the room . . . which was empty! We were the first to arrive. Augh! Oh, well, it was a gorgeous room,

with a century-old Gustav Eiffel skylight ceiling which was beautiful even at night.

Our waitress was a fairly young gal, whom I thought was a little cool to us at first. Turns out she was just nervous. She was new to the restaurant, having just moved from London where she had worked for 4 years, and she was just learning French. She was from Sicily, of all places, with family in New Jersey! As we spoke more, and asked her about Sicily, she warmed up and became a real chatterbox. We settled in with a glass of Champagne, then ordered a bottle of Meursault.

Here’s the tasting menu that attracted us:

Artichoke Veloute, Fois Gras Custard Royale, Duck Confit nem
Frog Legs Tempura, Tandoori (the dark half-rings encircling the legs, very hot); Watercress juice
Crunchy Sea Bass Filet, Baby Spinach
Braised Veal Cheeks, Crunchy Vegetables, Ginger Saute

Goat Cheese Cromesquis (not pictured)
A pre-dessert “palate cleanser” custard cream with a hazelnut mousse
Araguani Chocolate Douceur (with edible gold)
(Extra) some mini macaroons and meringue puffs

Oye. This was a great meal. It lasted about 3 hours. Absolutely everything was scrumptious. We ostensibly were celebrating Loni’s birthday a little late, and the birthday girl was beaming. If you look at the reflection in the mirror to the left, you’ll see the face of a woman facing this way. She was a dead ringer for an aging Faye Dunnaway, complete with fright wig hair. If the three of them hadn’t obviously been French, I would have bet money it was her.

Quite a night. Thank you, “X”, for two wonderful evenings!

THE PINBALL PRINCIPLE

2011-10-21T10:46:00.000-07:00

Walking around Paris is like a pinball bouncing off bumpers. You can hit the flipper to launch you for an approximate destination, but what you encounter along the way is random and unpredictable. That’s what makes it such a great strolling town. Just start anywhere and wander. It’s not all museums, parks, monuments, and architecture. There’s delight and goofiness in the ordinary pace of life here. We spent a lot of days with only a vague idea of an itinerary.

Public art pops up all over the place. We bumped into this outdoor exhibit on the Quai Branly, a walkway on the Left Bank along the Seine. It went on for quite a distance, with mostly avant garde (or just bizarre?) photography.

On the whole, Paris is a pretty clean city, despite some counter-intuitive accepted practices. There are lots of trash containers on the streets, consisting of a metal ring stand with a plastic bag hanging free. The key thing is that they are emptied frequently by guys driving little golfcart trucks. If there isn’t a receptacle handy, you are encouraged to throw your trash in the gutter! Yup, just toss it. The streets are cleaned seemingly every day or so, and they figure the trash will get swept up. All over town you find city employees walking around with brooms and bags, and they even have crews that hose off the sidewalks. This guy’s hose is connected to a mini water truck that is just out of the picture.

The famed bookstalls still line the promenades along the Seine, although I can’t for the life of me see how most of them make a living. These aren’t, for the most part, real antiquarian dealers. Their stock mostly seemed to be obscure tomes on anything and everything, all used and in mixed condition ranging from merely dog-eared to truly tattered. Fun to look at, though.

One of the hazards of walking around Paris is the need, already well documented in my case in our trip to Chantilly, to find a bathroom once in a while. Let’s face it: we guys of “a certain age” need one more often than we used to. Virtually no shop or eating place will let you use theirs (if they even have one) unless you are a customer. I don’t want to buy a meal just to take a leak. Paris does have a number of public “pissoires” around town; the trick is to find one when you need it. We could walk for ages and never spot one when it was wanted. Other times they popped up all over. What is truly needed is a map book that identifies the location of these salvations. None that I have seen provides this info. I went online trying to find it, but even sites that claimed to be toilette guides turned out to be useless. Maybe there’s some money to be made here. Anyway, pay attention to this procedural so that you don’t end up embarrassing yourselves like, um . . . we did. The throne huts look like this:

Each contains only one toilet, so lines frequently form. That’s the rotating door in front of Loni. To the left is a panel, explaining the functioning, all in French, of course. It has a series of four LED lights, which aren’t very visible here, although I think you can see one glowing just below the single white circle halfway down. They tell you the status of the cycle. I did not know this. When the green light is on, the unit is washed, unoccupied, and ready for use. Everything is clean, because the unit completely washes down and disinfects after every use! Did I know this? Of course not. I was second in line. The door opened, the previous occupant departed, and a yellow light was glowing. The guy in front of me didn’t move, so I was going to go around him, but thought first to motion to him that he was first and should go ahead. He looked aghast, and said “non, non!” and pointed to the yellow light. At that moment, the door revolved closed, and a red light came on. The unit was cleaning itself. When it was done, the green light came on, the guy stepped up, pressed the enter button, and voila! So that’s how it works. When he exited, I waited like a pro for the cleaning cycle to complete. Well, actually I was shifting from foot to foot while I was waiting, as it takes several minutes. You can see why lines form. Once in, you have to push the door close button (while an irritating recording in unintelligible French is telling you what to do) and you’re in business. There’s a porcelain bowl (no seat) and a counter with a small washbasin. I relieved myself (I went first as my need was more urgent than Loni’s) and searched in vain for a flush button. Nope. Nowhere to be found. But it’s all yellow. How can I leave it like that? Went over to the basin. No taps. OK, just some automatic mechanism. Stuck my hands under the overhang. Nothing. Irritating French recording is blaring away, probably trying to tell me what to do, but it ain’t getting through. Stuck my hands under again and kept them there. After about 15 seconds a small squirt of soap comes out. Lather. Keep holding hands there. 15 more seconds and some water comes out. Rinse. Keep holding hands in same place. Air jet starts. Dry hands. Now what? Toilet is still full. Then it dawns on me. The darn thing is automatic, and will flush during the cleaning cycle after I exit. Duh. Push the door open button, and exit. Doors close behind me, and the cycle begins. I gave Loni the lowdown, or so I thought. She entered on the green, and I saw her push the door close button. Then, ten seconds later, the door opens and out she steps, not exactly a happy chappy. People in line are perplexed at this rapid turnaround. Seems that after she closed the door, the darn recording started blaring and she thought she heard it say something about the porte (door), so she pushed the open button. If a buzzer would sound for a wrong answer, imagine it now. Fun and games at the pissoire. Having lost her place in line, we departed, wiser, if not comforted.

Musicians are all over Paris. They play in Metro stations (but only in the long tunnels, never on the platforms for some reason), they play and sing ON the Metro’s, they’re jazz bands on street corners, harpists on sidewalks, and singers in the alleys. Lots of them carry portable battery-operated speakers that play drum or instrumental accompaniments. It’s pretty startling to be on the train and all of a sudden it breaks out with amplified music. Accordions, violins, trumpets, opera, ethnic, you name it. It was a rare Metro trip when we didn’t hear someone doing their thing. I never saw much money being handed over, however, so it’s a tough way to make a euro. I loved the guy with the baritone horn, as I played one in junior high. The guy in the porkpie hat was really unusual. He stood in this alleyway, hardly moving, staring at the wall, and sang in the purest castrato soprano voice you’d ever want to hear. It was eerie, but he got a lot of coin thrown his way after his performance.

There’s a street just below Sacre Coeur, on the touristy side of the hill, that was absolutely jammed with humanity one Sunday afternoon. We joined the crowd, and the street was lined with tourist-trap gift shops, but the biggest impediment to the flow of the crowd was a series of six or more temporary (very) tables set up in the middle of the street with the old shell game in full swing. Both the ball under the cup and three-card monte were being played. I went to take a picture of one, and an alleged bystander started waving at me with a nasty face and saying non! Bite me, was my response. She obviously was the shill in the crowd, working with the operator, and didn’t want me recording his game.

Down near Notre Dame, on the Pont de l’Archeveche that connects one end of the Ile de la Cite with the Left Bank, we came upon this collection of thousands of locks attached to the bridge’s ironwork. They are placed there by lovers who are following the ritual of pledging their eternal connection by locking it to the bridge and throwing away the key, or, I guess, forgetting the combo. Whatever.

One day we came upon the remains of a sports car exhibition that was just breaking up. Two of my all-time wish-list favorites were still there: A Triumph TR3 and an Austin-Healey 3000. My first 360 degree spin was in a TR3 while acting as navigator for an idiot driver during a rally when I was in high school. When you’re that close to the ground, a maneuver like that seems so much more up close and personal. As for the Healey, that’s the one that got away. When Loni and I had just gotten married, I was at my first duty station in the Navy at North Island in San Diego in 1968. Our first car, a ‘67 Chevrolet Bel Air, went submarine on us in a flood of the parking lot of our first apartment. We went hunting for a replacement and passed by the local British cars dealer. There it was. A new 1967 British-racing-green 3000 Mark III. Love. Dealer said it was the last one in Southern California, as Austin had stopped exporting them to the States. We looked, we sat, we drooled. Impractical. Yup. We went home to think about it. Next day we went back to buy. Sorry, gone. Augh! I still think about that car to this day. But now I’m reduced to gazing at clapped-out 2CV’s.

A number of the parks have areas set aside for playing boules, also known as petanque, or bocce in Italian. We have a set of boules that we carry in the rig, but haven’t played that much with them. It’s a real passion over here and the skill level is amazing. We watched an old geezer who could not even stand up straight launch perfect shots that left the boule right smack against the small target ball, the cochonnet. That’s the object of the game, to get your boule the closest. The good players could unerringly loft their boule to land on and smack away an opponent’s boule. British lawn bowling is similar, but without the lofting throws. To throw, you have to stand within the ring at this guy’s feet. The games are played on dirt-gravel, not grass.

Paris is loaded with motorcycles and scooters, which are very practical as the streets are narrow, parking is extremely difficult to find, and they are allowed to park on sidewalks! Lots of streets have special parking areas reserved for two-wheelers, including our own Rue Lamarck. These are just down the block from our apartment.

If you look way down in the picture above, there’s a red awning on the left at the foot of the street. That’s the little Cocci Market where we did most of our food shopping. The veggies were outside, and the rest of the stuff within. Loni began to be a favorite of the trio of guys that ran it. They were fascinated by her fractured French.

If you must have four wheels in the city, the overwhelming choice is for a small car, as parking is virtually bumper to bumper. These guys are actually well spaced; usually, at least one bumper is touching.

One of my downfalls is a sweet tooth, not for candies, but for baked goods. Cakes, pies, patisseries, oh yes. Almost every block of the city has one or more bake shops where dazzling desserts are on display. Look away, look away!

If eating is not the national pastime in France, surely it must be protesting and striking. Not a day passed when we didn’t encounter some sort of demonstration. This was one of the more unusual. We could not figure out what it was all about, but the signage indicated that it was related to the Communist party. Don’t know whom the masks portray on all the heads.

In one of my earlier posts, I commented on the barge boats that were tied up all up and down the Seine. From what I now see, they aren’t working boats at all, but purely live-aboards. Some of them are really big. I’d love to see what they look like below decks. Most are quite nicely maintained, and whimsical to boot. The far right one is called “La Brigantine.” Given the high (think San Francisco or New York City) cost of apartments in Paris (we look in the realtor windows), and their small size, I wonder what it costs to dock one of these right here in the middle of Paris?

Although most of Paris is free of graffiti, it does exist. We saw a lot of it from the trains as they made their way out of Paris. This was probably the worst we saw in wandering on foot. Does it have a Gallic flair? Looks like NYC to me.

Well, all this walking about generates an appetite. Fortunately, you can grab a jambon sandwich on just about any block and eat it on a handy bench. Hmmm, now where was that patisserie again? Bon appetite!

C’EST POSSIBLE A RETOURNER CHEZ NOUS ENCORE

2011-10-20T02:33:00.000-07:00

Loni and I were last in France in (ouch) 1966, as students for six months at Stanford’s overseas campus in the city of Tours, down in the Loire Valley about 90 miles southwest of Paris. One of the “must-do’s” for this trip was to go there and engage in some heavy nostalgia. Thomas Wolfe’s cautions notwithstanding, it was a real time-warp experience.

We got up at 0-dark thirty to get to the Gare Montparnasse Bienvenue to catch our bullet train (TGV) to Tours. Friend Rick, who actually learned French during his one year abroad as a student, correctly pointed out that my previous translation of “Tres Grande Vitesse” was wrong, that it stands for Train a Grande Vitesse. Desole. We hadn’t purchased tickets in advance, so we had more than a few anxious moments in line waiting to get them. All they had left for the trip down were unreserved flip-down seats in the space between the coaches. Fooey. My first TGV trip and I’m in purgatory. The “real” seating area was pretty posh. Loni’s on another flip-down opposite me.

About an hour into the trip, a bunch of people got off at an intermediate stop, so we got to move back to the good seats for the last 15 minutes or so. I think our strongest impression of the TGV is not a sense of speed (although things were certainly flying by) but rather of smoothness. Seamless rails, and a sense of floating along. But, when we went into the several tunnels along the route, the air pressure buildup was immediate and you had to keep “popping” your ears to relieve them. Just like descending in a plane. Loni was having a bit of trouble keeping hers clear, which is usually my problem. We arrived at Tours, and upon exiting we turned around and immediately recognized the façade of the station, unchanged in all these years.

The tourist bureau was in a building just a block or so away, so we stopped there and got a foldout map and a tourism brochure which had suggested walks and sights. Wow, nothing like that back in the day. I think an organized approach to tourism as an industry got started well after we left but is now in full swing in every town that has anything to show off. Tours is actually historically significant, and is considered the birthplace of the French language. Back when we were here, it was said that Stanford located the campus in Tours because the inhabitants spoke the “purest” French. Whatever that might have been was certainly lost on me.

We started out with the major local cathedral, St. Gatien’s. The present structure succeeds three former churches, and sits on the remains of an old Gallo-Roman settlement called Caesarodunum (“Caesar’s Hill) which was founded in the first century AD. In the 5th century, a basilica was built on the site of the tomb of St. Martin. Two of its towers still exist. The present cathedral was started in 1170 or so, and crawled through 300+ years of construction. I never could get a shot of the façade, as a truck was always parked in front of it, absolutely ruining the view. But the interior was pretty nice.

It has some very nice stained glass, but we found most interesting a wall painting that had been covered up for many centuries by another wall. When they were removing the latter for some renovation, they discovered the painting beneath. Neither of us remembers being in here back in 1966. Our loss, which we were glad to make up.

Another few blocks and we were at St. Etienne. I’m amused that France today is so secular, but has churches and cathedrals everywhere you look.

The neatest thing here was the way the light through the stained glass windows made pastel hues on the columns.

We started wandering over towards where we remembered the “campus” to be. Stanford abandoned it sometime in the 70’s or early 80’s, in favor of a dispersed living arrangement in Paris. But then, in loco parentis was in full bloom, and the university kept everyone under its wing in one place. It was essentially a dormitory for 90 students that had been converted from a hotel. Must have been a very cheap hotel, as the rooms we got were rather spartan. Bunk beds, a sink, and a bidet was about the size of it. You can guess what the men used the bidet for. The building was four floors high, with men in one wing, women the other, but ne’er the twain shall meet was seldom the order of the day. Communal shower was down the hall, but a few choice rooms had them en suite. Those fortunates had to share them with the less lucky. Offices, mail room (where we also got our graded work returned), some classrooms, and staff, led by the redoubtable Mme de Renusson, were on the first floor. The dining room and larger lecture rooms were in the basement. I remember it being near the start of the main drag, facing the river, with a big bridge just to the right, and a library bearing a U.S. president’s name down the street. Well, for once my memory held up, which it seldom does these days. We found it, and with remarkably little change. Today it’s a dormitory/office building for the new (to us) University Francois Rabelais.

The main thing missing that sticks out in our memories are the broad outside stairs (they led to some public terrace, also gone) that used to sit just to the left of where we are standing in the picture above. That’s where we had our group photo taken. I’ll have to scan that when we get home and add it to this entry. The river Loire still chugs along across the street, the flag-lined bridge is the Pont Wilson, and I now remember the library was named after old Woodrow as well. At least back then. Now it’s just called the Bibliotheque Municipale. Hmpf.

Here’s a shot of the entire building from across the street, with my back to the river; our end (to the left) was only a small part of the overall complex. The area where we are standing is all new, as far as the walks, plantings, etc. It was mostly scrub grass and dirt back then.

Both of our rooms were on the low-rent side, around back; no river view. Actually, no view of anything except other buildings. We racked our memories trying to remember which rooms we each occupied, and we think the near one is mine, and Loni’s was a floor higher way down the end.

Stanford still operated on a curfew system back then, and its foreign campuses were no exception. Lockdown was strictly enforced by a hirsute character we called “The Crusher,” his name befitting what we expected would be our fate if he caught us. When guys (and occasionally the gals) got back late, they would try to stand on things and get into the lower rooms, assisted by the hopefully friendly occupants. Frankly, neither Loni or I had enough money to be spending it on nights out, so we never risked the Crusher’s grasp. This was an absolute kick to return here after 4 1/2 decades and breathe a few wisps of our youth.

We decided to walk around and see what we could locate that was familiar. Not much! Everything has been so spruced up that, other than the churches and major buildings, we didn’t recognize a whole lot. There’s an entire “medieval section” of Tours that has houses dating from the 1300’s! Made of wood! Neither of us has any memory of this area at all, probably because it was then a rundown slum. But back in the 70’s, according to the city guide, instead of tearing it all down the city rehabbed it all, and now it’s a thriving, beautiful area loaded with shops and restaurants, tiny streets, and lively squares. Sure wish all that had been here in 1966. The town was pretty dead then.

The area ranged from the sublime to the ridiculous. Old town even had my favorite car, the Citroen 2CV!

I’d love to have one of those babies to tow behind our RV. Other than a small fleet of them in service as guided tour vehicles in Paris, I’ve only seen three or four of them in private use here.

Loni remembers attending services at a smaller church just around the corner from our building. I only remember its darn bells. It’s called St. Julien, but it seems to have fallen on hard times. It’s smaller than St. Gatien, but about the same age. It doesn’t look like it holds regular services anymore, although we could peer inside through the bars. In the back there are areas where evidence of an older structure can be seen.

St. Julien faces the main drag, the Rue Nationale, which runs from our Pont Wilson down to the Hotel de Ville, which is not a hotel, but the city hall. This was about the only street we frequented, but it has completely changed. We didn’t recognize a thing. Even Credit Lyonnais, the big bank we had our precious few francs in, has disappeared. The street looks like this today, with high-end shops predominating.

All this walking around made us hungry, so we headed back to the old section of town where I had seen, what else, but a patisserie tea room. It was starting to sprinkle, so it was a good time to get inside and relax a while. Jeez, I gotta ditch that old-man sweater vest.

Fortified, we pushed on, found and made use of the locale public pissoire (more on those in another installment), and went over to view the Charlemagne Tower, built over the tomb of Luitgarde, Charlemagne’s wife, who died in 800 AD! Hey, we’re talking ancient history here.

Getting late, so time to start meandering back towards the station, down the Rue Nationale to the very pretty Hotel de Ville, facing the town’s central square with its fountains.

Well, Wolfey, sometimes you can go home again, if home’s address is Memory Lane.

EIFFEL IS AS EIFFEL DOES

2011-10-19T10:12:00.000-07:00

OK, the shot the everyone takes. Can’t leave Paris without it.

At least we had a beautiful day for it. Actually, we’ve been pretty lucky. Although we’ve had mostly cool, crisp days, we haven’t really had a bummer since we’ve been here. Lots of overcast, a couple of rain showers, but on the whole we can’t complain about the weather. (Watch: as soon as I say that, we’ll probably get 2 days of rain.) This day was the day we didn’t go up the Tour because it was getting late in the afternoon and the lines were awful. Most of these people are in one of the four lines.

I’m not really sure what these people were queued up for. Vampires, kilts, pirates, parasols, top hats. ??? It’s not Halloween yet.

Anyway, we vowed to come back early on the next clear day to beat the lines. Yeah, right. We ended up just as late as this day and again stood in long lines. I will say that, contrary to back in the 60’s, the French (and the tourists) are quite line polite. No elbowing ahead or anything. That didn’t make things move any quicker, however. Loni remains easily located with her red sequined hat. Check out the picture, though; virtually nobody except some tourists wears a hat, neither men nor women. We’re waiting in the wimp line: the “elevator only” tower. One of the others is a “walk up only” tower. We did that in ‘66; not in ‘11.

The little yellow box in the picture below is our elevator car. It comes down at an angle almost all the way from the second platform. If you want to go to the very top, you change there to another elevator for a more vertical climb to the peak.

The tower, of course, is named after its designer, Gustave Eiffel, and was built as a temporary structure for the 1889 World Fair. It was roundly criticized as an eyesore at the time, and almost was torn down in 1909, but was saved because it was an ideal platform for the newfangled radio transmitters. It is 324 meters high, so over 1,000 feet.

After inching our way through the snaking line, we got our tickets and had our bags searched, and waited for our car to come back down, which we could see through the glass panes above us. It’s a double-decker affair, and the bottom part has a mannequin that sits outside the car like the old-time operators used to. You can just see his body in the picture below, to right, bisected by the white bar across the viewing window. It got a lot more crowded in there right after I snapped our picture. In fact, the alarms went off and the operator (inside, these days) had to ask a few folks to get off so we would be within the weight limit. Gurk. I don’t like to cut things that fine!

We made it without any fuss, to the second level viewing platform, which is as far as we went. Things are just too small from the very top, like looking down from the Empire State Building. From this level, however, Paris is sweet. This is looking north towards Sacre Coeur (the spires just to right of center), which is the Montmartre section of town where our apartment is.

It looks like this through the telephoto. We live just over the hill behind the cathedral.

Remember our excursion to La Defense, the high-rise business section? Here it is in the background, off to the west. In the foreground leading back from the Seine are the Jardins du Trocadero, backed by the curved arms of the Palais de Chaillot (which now houses an architecture museum, a maritime museum, the Museum of Man (currently closed), and an aquarium. This was built for the 1937 World’s Fair.

On the opposite side, facing essentially southeast, lies the Parc du Champ de Mars, which ends in the distance with the Ecole Militaire buildings. Also, looming in the background, is the single skyscraper that got put up in the 70’s that resulted in the legislation banning any more such eyesores. Get thee to La Defense! Of course, the residential units in that building that look in this direction are very much in demand for the stunning views of all Paris.

Looking off a bit to the northeast, you can see the type of old buildings panorama that the ban sought to preserve. Much better than skyscrapers.

Finally, the views of the Seine were superb. This looks northwest.

There are two restaurants located on the Tour Eiffel. One is the Jules Verne, Alain Ducasse’s fabulously expensive eatery and fortunately requiring about 3 months lead time for a reservation. The other is 58 Tour Eiffel, a tourist-oriented operation, the menu of which allegedly has Ducasse’s imprimatur, and that supposedly is run by the JV folks. Well, that’s like saying that Thomas Keller designs menus for American Airlines. We were hungry, and figured it would be neat to eat on the Tour and enjoy the view. We got a not-bad table, considering virtually the entire place was being held for large tour groups. But you had to go place your order over at a central spot, which had multi-lingual displays of the menu, and even plasticized examples of each dish. I thought they were miniatures of the real deal. Ah, well . . . , think again. We ordered some wine, which was ordinary but not bad, but the downer was the food being served in those little airline plastic plates with a lid on top to keep it warm (after, apparently, it had been nuked in the “kitchen”). This was not a French dining experience. So, unless you’re really dying for that view, skip the 58 and go grab a baguette sandwich somewhere and look AT the Tour instead.

Finished with lunch (that was salmon, by the way), we were finished with the Tour. I grabbed a quick artsy-fartsy shot,

and queued up for the trip back down. We could have walked, but hey, I PAID for a round-trip. Oh, look! The line’s gotten shorter.

Once out of the lift, we strolled across the Seine on the Pont d’Iena and up the stairs to the terrace in front of the Palais de Chaillot, where I realized I had finally become photo-happy, dragooning others to snap ours, and taking pictures of others taking pictures of the Tour. Well, she was a real bride, I think.

Ah, love in Paris.

REIGN OF TERROR!

2011-10-18T12:02:00.000-07:00

No, not my in extremis in trying to find a public bathroom; this was the real deal. Caution: history lesson approaching. Next to St. Chapelle lies the underpinnings of the original royal palace of France. In the 6th Century, Clovis, the first French king, established his royal residence on the Ile-de-la-Cite (which holds Notre Dame as well as St. Chapelle). Five centuries later, Hugues Capet, the first Capetian king, established his government in the Palais de la Cite, which thus became the seat of royal power.

In the 14th century, Philippe IV the Fair, grandson of the King who became St. Louis, made the Palace a symbol of the monarchy, and it became the seat of the Parlement de Paris, which was not a legislative body, but rather the highest judicial court in the kingdom. At the end of the 14th, Charles V left the royal residence following the assassination of his father’s advisors. He appointed a steward, or “concierge,” endowed with legal powers to run the Palace and its by-then prison. It became known as The Conciergerie, our touring venue for the day.

Built from 1302 onwards, the basement-like “Hall of Men-at-Arms” is a huge space, and the only part of the original buildings still extant. It is considered one of the finest examples of Gothic secular architecture. There are four naves like the one I’m standing in.

The floor is still at its 14th century level. The related buildings were raised higher via embankments. This hall was reserved for the Royal Guard and the king’s staff, about 2,000 people in all. Sometimes, it is good to be king. Above this space was the Great Ceremonial Hall, now disappeared, which was reached by spiral stone staircases like this beauty.

After a fire in 1776, Louis XVI modernized the Conciergerie prison. I’m not so sure that his wife, Marie Antoinette, fully appreciated the upgrades when she got put in stir there some years later. The Conciergerie became the central holding tank for the victims of the Reign of Terror. In 1790, the mayor of Paris sealed the doors of the Palace, which effectively terminated the Parlement de Paris courts. The Revolutionary Tribunal, initiated in March of 1793, took over the Conciergerie. In July, Robespierre joined the “Committee For Public Safety” (ah, poli-speak) with a program based on alleged virtue and outright terror. The “Law of Suspects” ordered the arrest of anyone presumed to be an enemy of the Revolution. Old Roby would eventually regret this.

We got a rundown on most of this history at a convenient video presentation, with hit-or-miss translations running below. Unfortunately, the area between the seats and the screen was a major thoroughfare, so we got constant blockages from folks walking by and, in some cases, oblivious to the seated audience, standing right in front of the screen.

As well as men, women got the guillotine treatment during the Terror. But, the sensibilities of the day were still observed. Women were housed separately, and even had their own courtyard in which to stroll, which Loni tried out.

The had some reconstructions of the cells. Seems you could, if you had the bucks, buy yourself some luxury (relatively speaking) while you awaited the axe. The “standard” room was for the “payeux,” the poorest prisoners, and had a bit of straw on the wood floors for seating and sleeping; the “deluxe” version for the “pistoliers” (those who could pay a few pistoles) came with a bed and chair. Sorry about the reflections; they had plexiglas across the front.

Of course, if you were the queen, you got the best, including two guards at all times. The reconstruction of her cell is on part of the actual site of her dungeon.

From all I have read, Marie got a bum rap, being accused of every sexual deviancy the fertile Girondin minds could think of: sleeping with a variety of men, sleeping with her son, engaging in who-knows-what with an infamous lesbian baroness of the time. She was pretty much railroaded, as were the other victims of the Terror. Louis got chopped on January 21, 1793, at the tender age of 38. Sometimes, it’s not good to be king. On August 1, Marie was clapped into the Conciergerie. She was tried on October 14, having been given one day’s notice to prepare a “defense.” She was found guilty of treason two days later, promptly was shorn of her hair, paraded in an open cart to the Place de la Concord, and executed. Old Robespierre must have been feeling pretty smug. He shouldn’t have.

Over 1793 and 1794, 2,780 people appeared before Fouquier-Tinville, the tribunal’s public prosecutor. The trials of famous people gave way to collective trials. In 1794, witnesses and defenders were eliminated, and tens of people were guillotined each day. Like dogs turning on their own, Robespierre himself was accused and done away with. After his fall, the Tribunal ran out of fervor and was dissolved in May of 1795, having killed thousands and accomplishing precious little in the way of permanent political reform.

But, wait, you say. What about the Bastille? Wasn’t that the prison involved in the Revolution. Well, yeah, that’s where it broke out. The mob stormed the Bastille, set free a grand total of 7 prisoners, and that was about it. The prison was soon ordered destroyed by the Committee, and no trace of it remains. The site is now occupied by a monument and the ugly-modern Opera Bastille. Worse, the monument doesn’t even relate to the events of July 14, 1789, but rather to a later revolution (how many has France had, anyway?).

Ah, well. As they say over here, “Plus ca change, plus c’est la meme chose.” The more things change, the more they stay the same. Paris is still seething with revolutionaries, as we found out this same day when we walked by (several times) what seemed to be a day-long harangue in one of the public squares. Don’t know what the grievance was.

No storming going on today; this event was well monitored by a fleet of vans containing very serious-looking gendarmes. Too bad old Louis didn’t have gendarmes: his Swiss guards got slaughtered by the mob storming the palace. Fini.

SLUMMING AT THE GEORGE V

2011-10-17T09:58:00.000-07:00

This entry is way out of order, as we did this Tuesday, Oct. 25, but I wanted to get it posted for the boyos and girlos who made it possible. The George V is a posh hotel, now owned by the Four Seasons group. Yup, the Lamborghini belonged there, along with a new Rolls and other exotica parked by the front.

It contains the George V Restaurant, which has been a Michelin 2 star restaurant for quite some time. It deserves the accolade. Armed with our 300 euro (!!) gift certificate, we put on our best duds and prepared to join the ranks of the swells. But first, we had to join the great unwashed in the packed-as-sardines metros to get down to the Champs Elysees area. I admit to being a little uneasy at the prospect of rubbing elbows with the truly rich who truly believe they belong in places like the V. What would the staff make of us? As usual, I needn’t have fretted. If they gave out Michelin stars for making one feel welcome and important to them, the V staff would get the top ranking. Our D-in-L, Meghan, traveled all over the world doing hospitality training of the staffs of swank hotels. I wonder if she used the George V staff as a template? I think, in part, the cost is so high because they have at least a 1 to 1 ratio on visible staff to guests. You can’t move ten feet without someone greeting you and wishing you bonjour, and having every appearance of meaning it. Kudos to whomever is running the place.

The entry to the dining area is pretty nice. It’s to the left down there where the two guys are standing.

There are a couple of salon rooms where folks eat breakfast or just come for tea, with couches and tables, that you walk through to get to the main dining room. Oh, my. This is the view from our table back to the entrance to the room. There’s more to the room behind us.

I was trying to take these shots surreptitiously, as I didn’t think it was the thing to do. Again, I shouldn’t have been concerned. Several other cameras came out later, and the waiter was happy to take another table’s picture. Relax, Jon, relax; it’s just a restaurant. Anyway, I didn’t photograph every course, sorry to say. They started us with a bite of salmon with a citrus marinade, and a little pastry puff with an olive and mushroom tapenade inside. The breads were accompanied by two tureens of butter, one flavored with something we couldn’t identify, but tasted good, and a “plain” country butter from Bretagne. We got another pre-meal “amuse bouche,” three items on a small plank. A cup of mushroom-based broth with foie gras and some flavored foam on top; a small square of gel flavored with a Dijon mustard taste, with a dab of caviar on top; and a bite of marinated eel on a daikon radish base, with some sort of thin chocolate glaze. All of these were completely different types of tastes, and were delicious. During all this, we’re sipping a dry Vouvray (white) which was going very well with the food. Time for the appetizer course. I had a pasta with mussels in a cream sauce; Loni had wild mushrooms with bitter raisins, greens, seaweed, and thinly sliced charcuterie, and some fig. Although I enjoyed my pasta, Loni clearly had the winner.

That’s one of the butter mounds on the right, the flavored one, with its bell-jar cover behind. Loni’s dish also came with a side cracker with an eggplant mousse on it. I have to say, we were grinning like Cheshire cats. All of these dishes are served by two waiters, who simultaneously put them in front of us. We savored our way through these, finished off the white wine, and the red promptly arrived, a Cote de Rhone that was equally nice. We both opted for the duck, cooked “rose” but not red. They put covered plates in front of us both, then whipped off the tops with a flourish and a “bon appetite.” The duck was like a thick strip of breast, with crispy fat-skin, that they topped with a cooking sauce. The meat was accompanied by a spinach-wrapped baked shallot and a filo-dough ball filled with foie gras. Oye, oye, oye. The portions were larger than they seem in this picture; they were so rich tasting that you wouldn’t want anything more.

Next up was the cheese course, where we each got a selection of three from the incredible cartload that the waiter wheeled out. We each opted for Roquefort, of course, but had different ones that we shared for the rest.

My first two were, for me, so-so, as my taster isn’t 100% and misses out on the subtler varieties. Loni said they were yummy for her, as was her Camembert. We both rolled eyes and made cooing noises at the Roquefort. Oh, man, was that good. After this we got a palate cleanser which, before we messed it with our spoons, looked for all the world like a big eye staring at you. It was a ball of sheep-milk sorbet, with a kumquat slice in the middle, sitting in a thick kiwi sauce, with a dash, of all things, of olive tapenade that went surprisingly well with it. Bizarre, but tasty.

Palate suitably “cleansed,” it was dessert time. We both opted for the strawberry gratin, encircling a frozen raspberry sorbet on the inside, with a scoop of white chocolate ice cream with dark chocolate bits inside. A lot going on in the mouth.

Ok, we’d nearly had it. We’d been eating and drinking for over two hours. Time for some double espresso for Loni and, let’s see, a quick mental calculation on how much of the certificate we had eaten up, and, hey, there’s some left. Asked the waiter for the sommelier, asked him for a suggestion for a port, and, well, they just happened to have a 1971 something-or-other. I just kept nodding like I understood what he was saying (I could figure out that it was forty years old) and he brought this absolutely lip-smacking, closed-eyes sighing, delicious port. It tasted like essence of raisins in the sun, if that means anything. The color was a lot more chocolate-tawny (although it was not a tawny port) than it appears in this picture. It was amazing. Loni didn’t want any. Really. Honest.

We walked out to the entrance area and two people magically appeared, holding our overcoats and helped us on with them, while a third stood there and wished us a good day. We already had it. Nearly three hours of bliss. Was it worth the buckos? You betcha. Everyone should live the lifestyle of the rich and famous at least once! Thank you Alia, Meghan, Mike, and John. Thank you, thank you, thank you.

MY KINGDOM FOR A TOILETTE

2011-10-16T11:25:00.000-07:00

Although we’re staying the whole month in Paris, we planned to make a number of excursions out of the city. One of those was to go to Chantilly, 50km north of Paris, to eat Chantilly cream (me), see a horse show (Loni), and visit its beautiful chateau. This would be our first train ride out of town. We metro’d on over to the Gare du Nord, the closest one to us and the one from which trains depart, well, north. This train was an intercity train, not one of the speedy TGV’s (Tres Grande Vitesse), but it was pretty posh nonetheless.

I think this probably was one of their newer set of coaches, because the one we got on a later trip was much inferior. Overall, the French train system is excellent. They run on time, they’re not grotesquely expensive, and the equipment is pretty modern. We paid 20 euros each for the round trip. When we got to Chantilly, the first thing we did was to ask at the visitor center where the public bathrooms are. Oooh. So sorree. There are some at the chateau. Uh oh. (There weren’t any at the train station, either.) The chateau was about a mile away, an easy stroll . . . when you aren’t in extremis. We did a slightly faster stroll through the village and out the main path to the chateau. We spotted the building in the top picture below, which I thought was the chateau. It turned out to be the back of what is in the bottom picture. This giant edifice was the stables!

We found this out when Loni went in the front door (by those columns in the lower pic) to ask about “les toilettes” while I did St. Vitus’ dance out front. She came out with not an encouraging look and told me that this wasn’t the chateau, that yes, they did have a toilette, but it could not be accessed for the next hour while the current horse show was underway. We’d have to go down that road you see above, go to the left past that dark car, cross a bridge, buy a ticket, walk further to the chateau, and locate the toilettes in the basement. Aaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhh. No way. Absolutely no way. I almost was at the point of reverting to childhood and clutching my privates. I mean, I had to GO! I’m an old man. We got problems. I couldn’t make it that far. Well, you see those van-like vehicles parked in front of the building, about dead center in the pic above the green lawn? One was parked parallel against a kind of catch fence, and another was parked behind it, providing a bit of cover. Fortunately, the drivers were not milling about. I walked over with, I’m sure, a strange gait and stepped between the van and the fence and, well, let go. That, my friends, is how you spell R-E-L-I-E-F. Out in the open in front of one of France’s treasured attractions. Sorry about the lawn. We beat a hasty exit, whistling casually. What? Who, me? Non, monsieur.

Restored to free ambulation, we walked over to the chateau, which is in quite a beautiful setting.

The original Grand Chateau was completely destroyed during the frenzies of the Revolution. It was rebuilt by the duke of Aumale, son of King Louis-Philippe, from 1875 to 1885. I don’t think much of the exterior of the chateau; to me, it seems clumsy, cluttered, excessively ornate, and without grace.

It does, however, have a ton of paintings and sculptures collected by the duke, and arranged according to his whims.

He bequeathed the chateau and contents to the Institut de France on the condition the exhibits were not re-organized, so it’s a curator’s nightmare. Other than the organization, it’s pretty nice inside. Here’s the entrance hall with the stairs down to the giftshop, a gilded ceiling, and a fireplace. Hmmm. Decorating tips for our place.

I was particularly impressed with the library. It was gorgeous.

Besides the paintings, there were a variety of different media to suit every interest, from illuminated manuscripts, to insanely detailed marquetry, to ancient mosaics made from thousands of tiny tiles. The Duke was a Renaissance man.

The jewel in the collection is a painting attributed to Raphael. There is some scholarly dispute about its authenticity. I don’t know stuff from shinola, but it didn’t look like a Raphael to me. It was way too plain in its execution and lacked subtlety. That’s my take, and I’m sticking to it.

It was getting near time for the horse show to start, so we quit the chateau, checked out a small portion of the extensive grounds,

and hoofed it back to the stables. Down this line of stalls, and then to the right, lie the bathrooms previously forbidden to me. Bah! Loni, who has some strange thing for horses since childhood, was in seventh heaven. Me? I was just glad I didn’t have to go again.

These grand stables were built between 1719 and 1740 to house 240 horses and over 400 hounds, as this was a hunting estate. Today, 30 spoiled equines live in luxurious stalls built by Louis-Henri de Bourbon, who wanted them to be nice because he was convinced he would be reincarnated as a horse, and wanted appropriate grandeur when he came back. Hey, I don’t make these things up. This all leads up to a one-hour horse show performed in the indoor riding ring.

This wasn’t a big production. Most of the time it was just these two riders on a variety of horses, demonstrating training methods, gaits, control, and then doing a few tricks. They were wirelessly miked, and were doing extensive explanations for the benefit of a gaggle of schoolkids seated just to the right out of this picture. The French was largely lost on us, but there was an English language crib sheet we could follow to get the gist.

This was interesting, but not compelling “performance” entertainment. I wouldn’t make the trip out especially for the horse show, but the chateau and grounds are well worth it. After the show, we toured the ancient carriage collection and the private horse parade grounds complete with grandstands.

OK, by now it’s 4:00, no lunch, and another hour and a half until the train back. Where’s that Chantilly cream? This was supposed to be “a deliciously sweetened thick crème” invented here. Well, all right. Just the spot for the ultimate butterfat search. We ambled back along the main drag (this is a small town of 10,000 or so; just one drag), found a recommended place called “Le Boudoir,” and stopped in for tartes and homemade hot chocolate with Chantilly cream. I’m sorry that we devoured most of the mounds of cream that rose well above the glasses before remembering to take a picture. It was as good as advertised. We groaned back to the station, managed to understand the last minute change of tracks, and caught our ride home. A day of contrasts, indeed. From the excruciating to the divine. All’s well that ends well.

LA DEFENSE

2011-10-15T09:29:00.000-07:00

When construction began back in the 1950’s, the Paris skyscraper district called La Defense was considered one of the world’s most ambitious civil engineering projects. Hmmm. Maybe in the 50’s, and maybe by the French. It is, without a doubt, one of the most bizarre collections of building and public “art” assembled in one place. It lies west of the city proper, at the end of Metro line # 1. Today it has more than 100 major buildings, and houses the headquarters of 3/4 of France’s top 20 corporations. The only skyscraper within the city proper is the blight-tower, the Tour Montparnasse. After it was built in 1973, the city outlawed all further skyscrapers.

Anyway, La Defense’s iconic structure is the Grande Arche, 35 stories tall, and envisioned as (caution: Frog-speak alert!) “a window to the world, a symbol of hope for the future; that all men can meet freely.” OKayyyy. Whatever, it’s impressive. And designed by a Dane.

And pretty cool from certain angles. Hey, there’s that red-coat chick again.

Too bad it was a gray day for photographing all this gray architecture. Amongst the buildings are 60-some artworks, ranging from the sublime to the ridiculous, with many “what the . . . ?”’s in between.

We did like the giant Calder spyder, and these nifty textured/colored towers, called Vive le Vent (Long Live the Wind?).

The carousel was particularly neat. The French don’t just do horses.

This must have been a Jules Verne theme, with the Nautilus, the balloon from “Around the World. . .,” and the space ship (“From Earth to the Moon”).

Some of the objects looked a lot different when viewed from afar and then close up. Interesting to see how the grand “painting” effect is created from all those individual tiles.

When we got there, it was about ten in the morning, and the place was absolutely deserted. We were wandering around almost alone. At noon, however, all hell broke loose as the 150,000 office workers all pour out for their two hour (!) lunch break. So, we joined them. At night, this becomes a ghost town, not unlike downtown L.A.

One of the most overblown descriptions of the architecture was applied to this black one, “indicating an impressive architecture of a sober black gloss, inspired by the monolith of the film, 2001, A Space Odyssey.” C’mon. It’s a black box, just like dozens around the world, including a matching pair in downtown L.A. About the dullest architecture going.

One thing the French do do very well is to incorporate open spaces into their work environment, like the huge plaza that runs down the center of this entire project, with lots of seating areas, fountains, and reflecting pools, like this one at the very end, facing back into downtown. Very tiny, almost hidden by Loni’s head, is the Arc de Triomphe.

The Great Arch of La Defense faces down this central corridor, and the whole thing lines up with the Avenue de la Grande Armee, which arrows into the Arc de Triomphe and then on to the Champs Elysees. Beautiful symmetry.

Snarky though I might be with some of my comments about the art and architecture, this definitely was well worth a day’s visit.

St. CHAPELLE BY DAY AND NIGHT

2011-10-14T10:17:00.000-07:00

St. Chapelle was consecrated in 1248 after just five years of construction! Unbelievable. It was built by Louis IX to house his personal collection of holy relics, including that “original” crown of thorns that he paid a mint for – more than three times what the chapel cost. He certainly got his money’s worth on the latter. He was aiming for a light and delicate look, and he got a bejeweled masterpiece.

I don’t know whether it’s the time of year or what, but the light was difficult within the chapel. It only illuminated the end and one side (and that partially shaded by the adjacent Law Courts building), with virtually nothing on the other side. And, the full sun coming in blitzed the colors, making photography difficult. There, my excuses have been sown. It is known for its gorgeous blue shades of stained glass, supported by slender columns that give the appearance of near total glass walls. Stunning.

First of all, there’s the queue to get in. For anyone concerned, as we foolishly were before leaving home, about meeting Paris expectations as to dress, just take a look at the tourists in this line. One need not worry about dressing up for everyday in Paris. Jeans are everywhere. Sure, there are plenty of stylish folk, but they are vastly outnumbered by the regular Joes (and Jacques).

Once in the chapel, you actually are in the lower chamber, where the servants and common folk worshipped. The starry (actually, they’re fleur-de-lys) blue sky ceiling is not shabby, but nothing like the light show above.

Finished here, we climbed some very narrow circular stone steps and emerged into the upper chapel. You can see why I was dismayed about getting any good photos. Way too much light contrast depending upon the angle of the sun and the shadows from the adjacent buildings.

It was impossible to get a decent overall shot, so I just concentrated on getting a few windows at a time. But the above photo will give you, I hope, a feeling for the total glass feeling of the place. Here are some of the individual portions of the windows.

There are 1,113 scenes depicted in the 15 stained glass windows, and they tell the story of mankind from Genesis through to the resurrection. They actually read in order, left to right and bottom to top, around the chapel. There is a lot of mayhem depicted in stained glass. I could only get a good angle on the lowest ones, but here are some of the individual story panes. There are swordsmen on horses slashing away, guys getting their heads lopped off, Christ bound and flayed, Christ getting his crown of thorns, as well as gentler scenes. It is just mind blowing to think these were created in such a short span of time, and have endured for nearly 800 years.

Statues of the apostles line the nave, but only five of them are originals from the mid-1200’s. This one is typical.

The ceiling of the upper chapel repeats the fleur-de-lys sky of the lower one, but has the benefit of the soaring columns and glowing windows to set it off.

OK, that was St. Chapelle by day. We went back at 6:30 for our 7:00 concert, and had to go through an airport-like security check, complete with xray machine. I didn’t snap any photos. The gendarmes looked plenty serious. Funny we had to do this for the concert, but thousands go through the chapel during the day without so much as a glance. The program was by the Orchestre, Les Violons de France, a string quartet together with a soprano soloist. They did Mozart’s “A Little Night Music,” Schubert-Gounod’s “Ave Maria,” and “La Chanson de Solveig” from Peer Gynt. OK, I’m not hot on soprano soloists, and this one was no exception no matter how beautiful her singing probably was (Loni thought she was great). But the strings were ethereal. Maybe it was the setting. It felt entirely different from when we were there in the daytime. In the waning light outside, you could actually see the entire place glow, better than in the daytime. By the time the concert started, every seat was filled, except for two. More on that later.

The acoustics were perfect. No echoing whatsoever, and the strings could play soft or loud with excellent clarity. At least to my plebian ears. A fantastic venue. I couldn’t, of course, use a flash, and even holding the camera up to get a shot was intrusive, so I waited until breaks, then took what I could get.

As we were waiting for the concert to start, and the chapel was filling up, I couldn’t believe my luck. Loni sat on the aisle so that she could see better. In front of her was a short grandmother. In front of her were her two small grandchildren. She had piled their stuff on the seat next to grandma, in front of me, so I had a perfect view. A woman with BIG HAIR sat in the seat to the right of the empty one in front of me. To her right was another empty seat, the only two I could see. Exactly ONE MINUTE before the start of the concert, some chump comes down the aisle looking for closer seats. As he comes back up the aisle, the BIG HAIR lady motions to the seat to her right. He says no, he needs two. Well, grandma springs into action, moves the coats, and BIG hair moves over smack in front of me. All the while, the guy is protesting for them not to make a fuss for him. Then he goes back up the aisle, and never comes back. Lights dim. Concert starts. While the lady on my right was ecstatic with her now-clear view, I wanted to go find the chump and kill him on the spot, cause this is what I now faced:

The photos I took above were by holding the camera over in front of Loni and shooting blind. The moral of this tale is never, never, never start smirking about your good luck. It won’t last.

Big hair notwithstanding, this was a magical evening. The stunningly beautiful setting and the exquisite music (soprano excepted, for me anyway) made for a memory that will last.

RED LIGHT DISTRICTS

2011-10-13T11:54:00.000-07:00

Strolling along the Seine is almost a de rigueur thing to do for tourists. And why not, it’s a beautiful place to be. I’m still puzzled, however, about the boats we see tied up in various areas up and down the river.

They appear to be combination cargo boats and live-aboard vessels, but fixed up quite nicely for the most part. We’ve seen dozens of them, none going anywhere. The center one above was particularly nice. I can’t figure out the huge “fin” type thing on its side by the shore boat.

Most of what’s moving are pure cargo vessels that haul along at a pretty good clip. But even they have to stop for red lights! The one below was cruising down, aiming for the middle archway, when a stoplight appeared on the bridge. You can just make out the twin red lights if you look closely over the center span. He put it in reverse, came to a halt, then maneuvered over to the right side of the river where he just waited. We watched for a while, but didn’t see any opposing traffic coming, so we left him sitting there.

Paris, of course, has its more famous red light district, the Place Pigalle, home of the famous Moulin (windmill) Rouge cabaret and its retinue of cancan dancers. It was founded in 1889 and still is covered by its trademark red windmill, although this one is a 1925 replica of the original.

We were not tempted. For one thing, it costs about 90 euros (~$130?) per person, without any drinks or food. Add those in and it can go to nearly 200 euros each. Vegas stuff at Vegas prices. No thanks. (I couldn’t afford it back in 1966, even at the prices then). For about four or five blocks, you get one sex-related enterprise after another, tawdry whether in Paris or some low-rent place in the States. It’s all harmless enough in the daytime, but all the guidebooks warn against walking around this neighborhood at night.

So, Paris has an “underbelly” as well as sublime edifices. Speaking of which, we had seen posters about a concert to be given at St. Chapelle, so we headed that way to check it out. It’s back on the Ile de la Cite along with Notre Dame, so we got off at the Cite metro stop, with its art nouveau ironwork, one of only two remaining.

Like my “man purse?” I carry it everywhere, holding two guide books, my French/English dictionary (from high school days, no less!), wallet, and map book. Sometimes my camera, although most often that’s stuck in my coat pocket. I didn’t want to carry my wallet in my pants pocket as there are cautionary signs everywhere to beware of pickpockets.

St. Chapelle has no tower(s), but rather a distinctive needle spire.

It’s hard to get a picture of the entire structure, as it’s hemmed in by abutting buildings. Those gilded gates date from the 18th century, and guard the courtyard to the Law Courts.

We found that the concert was to be that same night, so we bought tickets. But, St. Chapelle deserves it’s own blog entry, so I’ll end this one here.

UN GRAND TOUR D’UN PETIT ESPACE

2011-10-12T09:02:00.000-07:00

If you’re not too picky, the apartment we rented for a month is just about perfect. We’ve already described the residential, non-tourist neighborhood, despite Sacre Coeur being just a few blocks up the hill. Most of the tourist traffic comes up the other side of the hill, through the historic part of Montmartre. That’s just fine with us. Here’s a tour of our digs. It’s just a small living room with a table to dine at, a kitchen alcove, a bedroom, and bath. You’ve already see the living room, but here’s a repeat:

I think, if they wanted, that it’s a working fireplace (after pulling the Victrola out of it), because there was a notice posted in the ground floor vestibule about flue/chimney cleaning services, and some of the residents had signed up for it. For now, it has a metal cover fitted in the opening. The kitchen is directly behind me as I take this shot.

The bedroom is a similarly oriented room (same window aspect), connected by a window paned door. On the right foreground is part of the counter that separates the kitchen from the living room.

The bedroom is cramped with a queen sized bed, but is very comfortable, with bookshelves, a stereo, and plenty of storage space for clothes behind the mirrored closet doors. Yup, it has a closed-off fireplace too. The door on the left in the bottom right picture leads to the bathroom.

The bathroom is about the same size as the one in our r.v. A little bowl sink, a tiled shower with a sort-of rainfall shower head, just big enough to stand in. Unfortunately, it lacks a curtain or any other means of keeping the water from splashing all over. No matter how you stand, the water bounces off and partly out. We just mop it up, but I wonder why there isn’t a simple curtain? You’ll also notice one other thing missing from the room. A toilet. Well, we have one, but it’s by itself in a little – and I mean little – room of its own between the living room and bedroom. I suppose they have them in the States, but personally I’ve never seen a corner toilet before.

Let me tell you, with the door closed there is virtually no room for my legs. They are crammed right up against the wall and door. And, you have to go around to the other room to wash your hands! Like I said, quirky, but livable. The kitchen is entirely adequate for our use. Four burner stove, a small counter, and a corner sink that is awkward to use, to say the least. I have to wash the dishes in a tub set on the counter because it’s too hard to reach into the sink. Only Loni could be so happy about cooking in Paris.

The balconies are so small (and, a hundred years old) that we don’t spend any time on them. If we did, our views up and down the street look like this, and the view directly out the windows across to the apartments on the other side of the street.

We have ok internet service, about as good as the one I’m going to upgrade from at home, but it is serviceable as long as you don’t try to stream anything. It’s good enough for a Skype call now and then, although we aren’t always successful.

That’s it! 40, rue Lamarck, Paris 18e, six floors and 114 steps every darn time.

ODES TO GOD AND MAMMON (not necessarily in that order)

2011-10-11T03:34:00.000-07:00

One of our guidebooks (we have three, plus a mapbook) – the Lonely Planet’s Paris City Guide – had an interesting walk called “Right Bank Time Passages.” These are covered shopping streets, the first of which was constructed in 1800, with about 150 of them in existence by mid-19th century. Only a dozen or so survive today, the rest falling victim to the rise of the department store in the latter 19th. Off to Metro stop, Louvre-Rivoli. The passages are all on the Right Bank. First stop were the twin galleries that flank a center courtyard at the Palais Royal. One of them is the lower left photo below. These are not actually passages, as they are not covered, but rather are arcades. But, they debuted in 1786, so they were precursors. Strip malls? These two weren’t particularly interesting except for the high price tags and the abysmal taste of the clothing in Stella McCartney’s shop. The arcades do have a load of history, however, as it was from the Montpensier side that the Revolution broke out just three years after they opened. On the other side, Charlotte Corday, the assassin of Jean-Paul Marat, worked in a shop located there. The other two shots are of the entrance and the gallery of the Passage de Choiseul, with mostly very tony shops. Loni had a good time today!

Exiting this one we had to cut through an outdoor market, which was all fish on the left, which really smelled. I’d think twice before buying there, but the locals were. We also went through a square where a very self-satisfied t.v. commentator was awaiting his film crew to set up as he stood in front of one of the many demonstrations that we have seen these past two weeks. All very mild. Don’t know what this one was about, but it didn’t have many supporters. By the way, about half the population of Paris seems to wear neck scarves at the first hint of cool weather, all tied like this guy’s.

Continuing on our trek, we found another of the high-end passages, the Passage Panoramas. Oye, the money circulating through there on the main corridor; there are four less tony side passages. This passage was the first one built, in 1800, and the first to be lit by gas lamps in 1817.

Passage Joffrey was the next stop, the last passage to be built, in 1847, and the first to have central heating. I liked the funkier shops here. My favorite was the M&G Segas boutique, which is where Toulouse-Lautrec bought his walking sticks. It’s still in business! Selling walking sticks. Don’t ask me what that is hanging over my head.

Passage Jouffroy had stores for kids, but I was surprised to see an outing of first graders taking in the sights mid-day. Coolest of all, Jouffroy had a hotel at the end of the corridor. Neat.

We went through several others, but they were rather nondescript. Next stop, the islands and the churches. First, we crossed over the Seine and watched the working barges thread the needle through the bridge supports. Not much margin for error.

The Seine is a working river every weekday, with scores of these craft going up and down. No clue as to what they are carrying or where they are going. On the weekend the river is packed with tourist cruises. On the other bank, we got our bearings,

and headed down to the Ile Saint Louis. There are two islands in the river, abutting each other. The smaller is the Ile Saint Louis, and it is perhaps the most expensive residential real estate in Paris. It gets a lot less traffic than other areas, so is like a calm oasis. It is home to some tony 17th century buildings that line the Seine,

one of which sports dragon-styled rain downspouts, the Hotel Lauzon.

Ile St. Louis also is home to what the books call the “legendary” Berthillon’s, ice-cream maker extraordinaire. Faithful readers know I am always in search of the perfect butterfat, but the temps today just didn’t qualify for an ice cream day. We will go back when it warms up. It also has the French Baroque Eglise St-Louis en L’Ile, which was quite light and pretty, including its graceful pipe organ.

At the top of the Ile is the Pont (bridge) St-Louis, leading to the Pont de L’Archeveche, from which one takes the iconic photo of Notre Dame’s flying buttresses. At least I think “one” does, since I remember taking a shot of the same scene 45 years ago, on a sunnier day. Even is the gloom, it’s a magnificent sight.

We were hustling our way around as we wanted to make the start of the daily English language tour. Well, sort of English language. We had a dear old lady who sported the classic caricature of French-accented English. It was a hoot, but she knew her stuff when it came to the cathedral. We just had to listen extra hard. The taller statues in the upper picture are larger than life sized, but are not original. The originals were destroyed during the revolution, allegedly as the rioters were after anything that resembled monarchy. Not sure which king they thought sprouted wings like the two angels, but it was a mob mentality. The replacements copy the originals and date from the 1850’s. The guy with his head in his hands is an early Bishop of Paris, Saint Denis, who, after being decapitated in A.D.250, allegedly picked his head up and walked to a fountain to rinse it off, then staggered six miles while preaching a sermon. Well, that’s the story, and the Catholics are sticking to it. The smaller figures ARE original, thus date from sometime in the late 1200’s. Amazing that they have survived that well, as these are all low on the front, flanking the left entrance, and quite reachable from the ground.

Notre Dame is surprisingly narrow-feeling inside, with its nave 430 feet long, enough for a football field with end zones and a running track. It can seat 6,000! It was a lot dimmer than my slow shutter photo would indicate.

But the stained glass windows are beautiful nonetheless. This is the rose window from the north transept, which has remained virtually unchanged since the 13th century.

Here are the windows from the rounded end over the alter area.

Our guide lady got us into the roped-off area where the choir sits in these great seats. We hope to hit a choir or organ performance here before we leave.

From this vantage we also could get a good view of the alter area with its lovely Pieta.

Finally, our guide ran out of gaz, and the tour ended. She made a polite pitch for donations to keep the good work going, but I think we were the only ones that passed her paper money. Speaking of money, before we left we sprang some extra euros to visit the tresor (treasury), which, according to the guidebooks, in addition to displaying church silver and gold plate goods, holds Christ’s crown of thorns. Or so thought Louis IX in the 1200’s, the poster boy for P.T. Barnum’s adage. That Louis built the gorgeous St. Chapelle, close by Notre Dame, for about 400,000 francs. He paid 1.3 million francs for the bag of thorns and a piece of wood allegedly from the true cross. Anyway, we didn’t read the guides carefully enough. The thorny wonder is on display only one hour on one Friday each month. Not our day. We had to content ourselves with the gold/silver plate, most of which is not that old, but certainly dazzles. It’s even got its own wall of fame, with cameo portraits of all the past popes. Ooh, be still my heart.

Our eyes glazed, we exited, walking out towards the rose window over the portals, whose view unfortunately is marred by some structural stuff at the bottom.

Oh, yeah, the front looks pretty nifty too.

SKIP TO THE LOUVRE, MY DARLING

2011-10-10T12:32:00.000-07:00

Well, there comes a time when you just have to do the real tourist stuff. And there’s nothing more Paris touristy, except maybe the Eiffel Tower, than the Louvre. I mean, you just can’t ignore it. All our trips start out at our local Metro stop, Lamarck-Caulaincourt, about three blocks from the apartment.

The Metro is extensive and convenient and is the only way to get around Paris. Once you understand the simple rules of navigation, it’s almost impossible to get lost. If it was, I’d surely do it. All the lines run across Paris from one end to the other, each with different starting and ending terminals. Those end points represent the direction you want to be traveling on that line to get to whatever intermediate stop you desire. The lines intersect all over the place, so you can get anywhere by changing trains at intersection points. As long as you don’t actually exit any station and come above ground, you can keep changing and ride everywhere on one ticket. We carry our map book, with it’s Metro map, wherever we go. We buy our tickets in packs of ten, called carnets (car-nay), for 12.5 euros. This ends up being a pretty good savings over the single ticket price of 1.7 euros. The only problem is that not all stations have a live ticket seller who will take your paper money for them; many have only automated machines that take only coins or European credit cards, the kind with chips in them, not our striped kind. Some of the stations that have attendants will take U.S.-type cards, if they have the proper reader equipment and if the attendant is in a decent mood. Some are great, others couldn’t care less. There are other means, such as passes, but we worked out the economics and the carnets suit us best. Anyway, we’re off to the Louvre on our local line, # 12, towards its southern terminus, Mairie d’Issy. Change at Concorde to line # 1 towards its east terminus, Vincennes, and get off at Palais Royale/Musee de Louvre. Except for several hundred stairs at the stations, piece of cake. We’re there!

Along with thousands of other souls, all of whom are queued up to buy tickets. See that mob running from the center to the right? That’s the line. It bends way around in the back. Ah, but we have read our guidebooks, all four of them, and we knew to buy our tickets from a store underground where we got off the metro. Unfortunately, the guidebooks didn’t tell us how to get to the magic entrances for those “with tickets” to avoid the lines. We looked, I cursed, we looked some more, and covered a lot of territory. Never did locate those entrances, but when we gave up and headed for the pyramid entrance (which ALL guides said to avoid), lo and behold there was a special corridor set off by theater ropes, virtually unmarked save for a tiny sign, that said, “Avec billets.” Well, all righty. We swaggered past the unwashed thousands and waltzed right in. The underside of the pyramid is the huge central hall, from which you take off for the various wings of the museum.

Somehow, we managed to locate additional, upside down pyramids. I think Pei, the architect, had a thing for Egypt. Isn’t it handy that Loni has virtually the only red coat in all of Paris for easy spotting?

Once in, we snagged an English language map guide. Don’t leave start without it. The Louvre is HUGE and not all that intuitive for navigation. We got confused a number of times, even with the map. The French either have great signage, or really crappy, and the Louvre largely falls in the latter camp. Anyway, there are certain icons that you naturally gravitate to, and this was our first.

Man, we tourists look like supplicants seeking favor from the king. Nice to know they haven’t moved old Winged Victory in the 45 years since we last saw it. And something else hasn’t changed. The absolute mob scene around the Mona Lisa. I don’t know about you, but I think this is perhaps the most overrated piece of artwork in the world. It’s certainly a great work, but why does it get this kind of attention? Dozens, if not hundreds of other pieces are just as well executed, but this one gets all the glory. Mystifies me, but what do I know? This is only a small portion of the crowd. I had to wade my way in to this point through hundreds. Yeah, I know; why did I think I needed a shot of this thing? Irony is my middle name.

Rather than go from one iconic masterpiece to another, it was more fun just to stroll through and stop whenever something caught the eye for whatever reason. I must have a strange eye. These were three that I liked a lot. I loved the figures in the Robert; they had life, vitality, and the central character was the incarnation of insouciance. I don’t remember the artist, but the “Death of Elizabeth” was almost spooky. Man, she really does look like death warmed over. And who doesn’t like Delacroix’ “Liberty Leading The People?” You feel like breaking out into “La Marseillaise.” Although I have just a thumbnail of it here, it’s really a huge painting, roughly ten feet by twelve.

Even larger is the one that has Loni transfixed here, and easily her favorite. It’s the coronation of Napoleon, by Jacques David, finished in 1807, and it’s gigantic, about ten by six meters! Do the math. David depicts Nappy in the act of placing the crown on his own head. An egotistical schmuck, responsible for the death of millions.

All of this classical stuff is great, but there are tons of unsung items that we found compelling. Picture the museum as a giant “U” shape. At the very end of one of the very long arms, there’s an exhibit that’s hard to get to, as you have to go down some stairs and down another corridor, to an isolated, but large, display of the “Arts of Africa, Asia, Oceania, and the Americas.” Almost no one goes there because it’s so out of the way. We virtually had the place to ourselves, which was too bad because we thought it had by far some of the most interesting works. The sheer antiquity was mind boggling. The Mayan Bowl dates from the 7th to tenth centuries – how does something that delicate survive over a thousand years? God only knows how old the Easter Island statues are. By contrast, Canova’s Psyche and Cupid, which occupies a place of honor and resulting crowds in the main galleries above, was commissioned in only 1787.

For me, the best piece in the museum (whoa, WAY out on a limb here), was this carved head. It’s from Nigeria (!), and dates to between 200 and 400 B.C. I’m utterly fascinated by the bold style of the artist. Think of how flat and lifeless the Egyptian art was of the same period. The swoop of the brow just boggles me. Like I said, we just wandered until something grabbed one of us. This spoke to me.

But, wait, as they say, there’s more! It’s nice, once in a while, to see how the other half lives. An eye-popping wing of the museum houses the apartments of Napoleon III. Old Boney might have had to live out his years on St. Helena, but his progeny did all right for themselves. It’s all a matter of taste, but you gotta admit the place dazzles.

A flash would have been useless in a room this big, so these are not as sharp as I would like, having been taken with available light and my palsied hands. But you get the picture. Even the ceiling was a masterpiece.

I think this is supposed to represent Nap3 lording it over all, but not sure. They didn’t have any guides for these rooms. Some of the furnishings were incredible. I love the fact that the bedchambers were equipped with chairs surrounding the royal cot. Performances for the guests? I was surprised that the throne was as ordinary as it looks here. Just a plush chair. That marble table boggled the eyeballs. How did they do these things?

Our last stop was one of the two massive indoor sculpture plazas. Even with a wide angle lens, I can’t get the whole thing in the shot. Overhead is a glass roof for natural lighting.

Lots of naked guys in heroic fights and various states of distress, but I particularly liked the one of the man giving the child a drink while the dog licks her foot. It’s tone was so different from all the other statuary.

We’d finally had enough, and staggered out and caught our first glimpse of the Seine.

We certainly didn’t see everythingl at the Louvre, but we sampled an awful lot. The eyeballs were numb, as I suspect yours are by now as well. Well, feast them on the dinner Loni made that night, with dessert courtesy of our local patisserie. Ah, oui.

FETE DES VENDAGES

2011-10-08T08:46:00.000-07:00

By Friday, the Montmartre wine festival was well underway. I think this thing translates loosely as: “Festival of the grape harvest. Montmartre salutes the islands. The route of taste.” Well, that’s the best I can do.

The festival takes place over four days and nights, in venues all around Montmartre, but the principal action was all within a couple of blocks of our apartment. I didn’t know of this when we booked, so it was just dumb luck that we stumbled into this on our first weekend. Up by Sacre Coeur, they set up hundreds of tents that housed vendors selling foodstuffs and wine. We went up on Friday night, along with a few tens of thousands of our closest friends.

Gosh, Parisians turning out for wine and food. Whoda thunk? Bands were playing, and individual and duo musicians were doing their thing. The vendors were selling all manner of stuff, including foie gras sandwiches (!), cheeses, sausages of all sorts. You could stuff and drink yourself silly.

Foolishly, we had already eaten, so we didn’t partake this night. Instead we found a good spot and settled in to listen to the free concert being performed from a stage down the steps and hill from the cathedral. Of all things, it was a gospel troupe singing traditional and pop stuff. Very good. We were overlooking it with all of Paris behind.

The next day there was to be a parade that would wind from the local mayor’s office, down Rue Caulaincourt, which is the next street over from us, and then around the small streets until the finish at the cathedral. We were walking around before the start and found this group looking for a way to get their wagon down the hill. The guy with the red sleeve is gesturing for them to turn around and go down a side street. I have no idea what guild they purported to represent. Court jesters?

These were the steps right behind me as I was taking the picture that they didn’t want to go down. They needed to get w-a-y down there to that green square in the distant bottom. All of Montmartre is filled with hills like this.

We later saw a lot of different groups sporting similar costumes. Apparently, the parade celebrates guilds and brotherhoods of various food and drinks specialties, and all manner of weird bunches were wandering about. We went on back up to the main tents area and joined in the gluttony. Loni’s grinning over a duck sausage sandwich. That chocolate machine essentially makes hot chocolate by simply melting the real thing. These folks then added a large dollop of Chantilly cream to the mix. Oooooh.

When it was getting near time for the parade to begin, we wandered down the hill and set up along the Rue Caulaincourt. Guess the Parisians are advocates of the “just in time” method, because the street was just about deserted with only a half hour before party time. This is our main shopping street. There are FOUR boulangeries within three blocks, several grocers, two butchers (across the street from each other), cheese shops, a general dry goods/hardware store, and a gaggle of cafes, bistros, and restaurants. We don’t think we could have ordered up a better neighborhood.

Once the balloon men moved into place, we knew we were close to the start. Fortunately, they moved on so that they didn’t block our view.

The parade consisted of band groups and lots and lots of those guild types that were all in costume. Much was traditional dress (I especially liked the little kids in the revolution costumes),

but, since this year was a salute to “the islands” (Caribbean), there was a lot of exotic and, well, downright bizarre dress as well. The jumping bananas have big blade springs attached to their calves. They really launched!

The celebration of the food groups was a little wacky. I don’t quarrel with honoring the lofty garlic with a satin pillow, but the bunch pulling the frying fish cart was a little strange. Most of these groups sported banners like you see here. Best I can tell, the green banner was a brotherhood of Chablis producers. Another wine group was actually pouring samples in little plastic cups for the crowd as they marched along.

All in all, it was a very vibrant and mellow parade, and everyone, participants and onlookers, had a fun time. As the restaurants were jammed from the festival goers, we had dinner in the apartment then headed back up to Sacre Coeur, which is beautiful at night, as was our first glimpse from the hill (with a long digital telephoto) of the Eiffel Tower lit up.

We went back to again sit on the steps below the cathedral with the, by-now, totally lubricated crowd awaiting the fireworks show, which was excellent.

This was a fun festival and, as you can see, a good time was had by all. We had an easy stroll back down to our apartment afterwards, but people kept draining off the hill well into the night. Bon soir, indeed! (The arrow for our apartment should be pointing to the right and up—it’s the first darker building beyond the sign.)

MONTMARTRE MEANDERING

2011-10-06T09:25:00.000-07:00

Once unpacked, we made our first excursion to one of the local boulangeries for a real baguette. A few raindrops started to come down, so I had to protect the goods.

We also stopped off at a grocer and stocked up on supplies for the kitchen. All that smooth-talking French that floats around in my head comes to a screeching halt when I open my mouth. Oh, well, they are plenty used to the American pantomimes and we managed to fill our basket and pay the bill. We weren’t up for trying to eat out. After the long flight we just wanted to settle in and crash. No hurry. We’ve got four weeks to fill up. Did I say we were nearly at the top of the hill? Now I know why there are few fat Frenchies.

Loni worked some miracles in the kitchen with our limited goods, and we toasted our first night in Paris, champagne courtesy of our apartment host, Marianna. Thanks!

Our flat is in the XVIIIieme district, called Montmartre, or “Le Butte” (the hill). It’s considered a village within the city, as it sits above and overlooks the rest of Paris sprawled below. The best view is from the steps in front of the Sacre Coeur cathedral. This is about three short (but up) blocks from our flat.

We’re looking south in this shot, and a side view of Notre Dame is visible to the right of center. This was to be the site of the annual wine festival that they have in Montmartre the second weekend in October. Well, all right, that’s this weekend!

No broad boulevards here on the Butte, it’s full of winding streets, cobblestones, old streetlamps, tiny hidden squares, and tons of stairs. Just below the cathedral is a pretty touristy area, that has a lot of charm nonetheless. Loni’s in the red hat; Sacre Coeur’s dome looms behind.

Louis VI founded the Benedictine abbey of Montmartre in 1133. There’s a small church of St. Pierre that sits in Sacre Coeur’s shadow, consecrated in 1147, which is all that remains of the abbey. Like most of the medieval abbeys, Montmartre became involved in wine production and soon much of the hill was covered in vines. Real estate development gradually wiped those out, and today there is only one vineyard left. It provides the excuse for the upcoming celebration, the Fete des Vendages. They do produce wine from it, but apparently it’s more for show than for drinking. They auction off the bottles to raise funds for charity.

In the 19th century, Montmartre was a magnet for artists, writers, poets, and musicians, and this fostered a community of cabarets, dance halls, and brothels that gave the quarter its decadent reputation. One of the most famous spots opened in 1860 as the Cabaret des Assassins. In 1880, artist Andre Gill painted a sign outside featuring a nimble rabbit (lapin in Fr.) in a bow tie avoiding the cooking pot. Playing on his name, the cabaret became known as Au Lapin Agile. It’s still here, and still operating, and sits directly opposite the vineyard.

We decided to go visit some dead folks, and headed down the Rue Lepic

towards the Cimetiere de Montmartre, built on the site of abandoned gypsum (plaster of Paris) quarries. Like the rest of this area, it’s not level, but was fun to walk around in to view the famous, and not-so-famous, departeds. If you can’t read it, that’s Dumas that Loni’s looking at.

I found this eerily beautiful scene hidden away behind another tomb.

The French either have a good sense of humor, or are willing to honor their “artistes,” no matter the profession, as the Can-Can lady’s tomb reflected. And, who knew there really was someone named Sax who invented the darn thing? My middle digit is extended towards an old tormentor. You’d do the same if YOU had to read “Le Rouge et le Noir” in the original French. Torture!

Not all the whimsy was confined to the graveyard. Montmartre has some unusual modern touches as well. Han Solo could sympathize, I’m sure.

That was enough for one day. It was very nice to kick back that evening in “our” flat’s living room. The gramophone is a repro, but plays as badly as an original. There’s a collection of vinyl to play, but it’s very screechy, and no volume control. We treat it as an ornament. A bientot.

NOUS SOMMES ARRIVES

2011-10-05T12:48:00.000-07:00

Or something like that. My ancient French has gone the way of the rest of my little grey cells. We got a lift to LAX from Chuck and Alice (thankee, guys) so we didn’t have to worry about a cab or shuttle picking us up in time. We pulled up to Terminal 2 and saw a line out the door and down the pavement. Urk. On closer examination, it was for some other airline we’d never heard of, queuing for the adjacent counter. Air France was nearly empty. Guess it pays to get there 2 1/2 hours early. We made the weight limits easily. Actually, we really tried to cut down on the stuff we packed, knowing we had washing facilities at hand in the apartment. Boarding passes issued, we dropped the bags at the xray line and went on to the security check line. It, too, wasn’t too bad, although the one we selected (natch) ended up being the line where they brought special needs passengers, who, of course got priority ahead of us. Forgot to take off my belt, as usual, but we passed through and re-dressed on the other side. At least there were plenty of benches to sit on. (Are you listening, Southwest?) We settled in at the gate for the 1 1/2 hours before boarding was to commence. Yeah, it’s still on-time!

This AF flight had four classes: First, business, super-economy, and cattle. No need to guess which one we were in. The top three got priority boarding, and the front 2/3 of the plane. The remaining 50% of us got the back 1/3. You do the math. It would be heaven for amputees, but we limbed types were wedged in with no place to go. The seat pitch was 31”. That’s not the smallest aloft (Ukraine Air and Air Malta are 30”), but it’s right there with the worst of the major carriers. By comparison, the poshes in Premium Economy got 38”. So, no leg crossing for the next 11 hours. Embolisms, anyone? At least there was enough space available in the overhead bins that we could get our carry-ons out of the way. Right on schedule, we pushed back at 3:30pm and we were on our way.

The seat griping aside, I really can’t cobble up any complaints about the rest of the flight and service. The FA’s were polite and attentive, the food actually was quite edible, both dinner and breakfast, and more than enough to fill you up. It certainly didn’t hurt that you got complimentary wine AND after-dinner cognac or Pear William. Go, France! Dinner was a chicken dish with rice and veggies, with an edamame/corn salad with a slice of ham, pudding cup, and chocolate cake (the only dud: too dense and dry). Breakfast was nice as well, with yoghurt, muffin, sliced meats, and fruit cocktail.

AF also had a pretty good entertainment setup. Dozens (!) of movies to choose from, in both English and French (with subtitles). I watched a pretty funny one in French, then just had to re-watch “Fargo,” one of my favorites. Those ate up four hours or so, and magazines, a crossword, and a book gobbled the rest. Neither of us slept a wink. I never can on a plane, but surprisingly Loni didn’t either. We will have been up for 34 hours by the time we crash tonight.

There was nothing but cloud cover when the sun finally came up as we were beginning to pass over the British Isles. We could track our flight path progress on one of the channels that was on the entertainment system. England was clouded over, as was the Channel, but when we got close to landing, the clouds thinned out and we got our first view of the countryside. Not bad at all.

Another neat feature of AF’s video system is a nose camera so you can watch the landing. It cuts out, though, when you get close to touchdown. Hmmm. Interesting to watch, nonetheless. That’s our runway, I hope, straight ahead.

The landing was nice and smooth, but our gate was occupied by another plane, so we had to wait on the tarmac for about twenty minutes. That doesn't sound like a lot, but when you’ve been cooped up like a Perdue Farms chicken for 11 hours, you just want to get on with it. We finally made it to the gate, unloaded our stuff, and walked (oh, blissful walking!) into the terminal. It was easy to follow the crowds and signs to the immigration checkpoint. All the guy did was to glance at the passport, stamp it, and hand it back. That was it. On the the baggage area where we lucked out as our bags were among the first to come down the ramp. This was too easy. That changed.

We had pre-booked (and paid) with ParisShuttle to get into the city, at 20 euros each it was a decent deal. You have to find a FranceTelecom phone to call them once you get your luggage. I tracked one down and it’s a pretty nice system. Certain types of numbers do not require any change. You just dial the number given by the shuttle company and you are connected without charge. Nice. I tried my French on the lady, gave her my name, and she switched to English. Hmpf. So much for my efforts. She said to wait by door # 8, which I saw was just down from us. We wheeled our bags out on the free carts provided by the airport (are you listening, LAX?) and took up our position in front of door 8. And waited. And waited. And, well, you get the picture. We amused ourselves by watching the lady in the Range Rover that was illegally parked curbside. She was half blocking the rather narrow lane, forcing a lot of vehicles to work hard to squeeze by. Didn’t faze her. She just sat there, waiting for someone. No gendarme came along to tell her to move. Finally, a cab driver got out and went up and started berating her, and she half-heartedly pulled up a little ways, but finally moved out when another cabbie started towards her. Anyway, we were going nowhere fast, so I went in, found another phone, and asked where the shuttle was. She asked me which terminal we were in. I didn’t know, but I could see # 3 across the way. The line went dead. I went out and looked at the building and saw we were in # 2. Back in, re-phoned, told her the terminal, and she said the driver was looking for us at # 4. What? I think it was bay ess, as the French would say, but she was sticking to it. 15 minutes later (and over an hour late in total), the guy pulls up and we’re off. To terminal 4. Then terminal 3. Then back to, you guessed it, terminal 2, picking up new passengers at every stop. Sheesh.

Anyway, we had a nice chat on the way in with couples from New York and L.A. (!) who were respectively starting and ending their trips. I borrowed the driver’s cell phone and called our apartment manager, Keith, to let him know we were running late. We had some luck as we were the first to be dropped off. I tried to recognize streets from my internet walkabouts on Google street view, but was hopelessly confused. Fortunately, the driver had a GPS and delivered us to our doorstep. It looked just like it did on the internet! We got our bags out, waited for the driver to hang up his phone, tipped him (although, after the hour delay, I was tempted not to), and waited by the front door for Keith, the local manager, to show up and let us in.

We were already just a bit after the appointed time, but 15 minutes later, still no Keith. I walked across the street and looked up at what I thought were our top-floor windows, and a head appeared, looked down, and pulled back in. Hmmm. I hollered up, “Keith! Keith!” Out came the head. It was him. I shouted up that we needed to be let in. He looked puzzled, but came down. Turns out that he thought I was calling from my own phone, and when he heard the shuttle drive up, he had called that number. He had been giving the entry code directions to the driver, thinking he was talking to me. I guess the driver didn’t have a clue who he was, so he didn’t say anything about it. As Strother Martin said, “What we have here is a failure of communication.”

Keith took care of schlepping Loni’s bag up the six flights, so that saved me a trip. Going up with my bag was all I wanted to handle. The old ticker was pounding, and the legs were throbbing at the top of the 114 stairs. Keith showed us the ropes, gave us a bottle of champagne, and was off. We have arrived!

STONEFACED

2011-09-18T11:56:00.000-07:00

We left Osea and Emily and motored east for the last leg of our trip in that direction. Strange things began to happen. First the engine died and we were stopped dead in the road. Then a roadside sign began to spin around rapidly. The sun disappeared. A bright light illuminated the rig from above, and strange musical notes began to repeat, over and over, and a gigantic rumbling filled the air. Yikes, we were having a proximate face-to-face of the tertiary persuasion.

Well, that explained most of it. The rumbling source was revealed a little further on.

You encounter the most bizarre things on the road. And Devil’s Tower has to rank right up there. Formed by erosion of the softer materials, leaving the harder rock, it reminded us most of Devil’s Postpile near Mammoth, CA. The vertical columns are really neat, and change colors depending upon the sun and angle. Spielberg made a good choice of venues. I’d like to fatten this entry up with a few more factoids about the place, but I’m writing this about 3 weeks after the fact, and 6,000 miles away from my pamphlets and maps. Sorry, the pics will have to do the talking. Although this mountain is sacred to the local tribes, one still is able to climb it with permits. A group was just starting up as we arrived, and clearly they weren’t going to make it to the top today. As the wind was rising and the temps dropping, I didn’t envy them this night on the rock.

We got here fairly late in the afternoon, so we opted to spend the night nearby rather than try to push on to the Black Hills. We ended up in the tiny town of Sundance, where SR14 and I-90 meet. Nothing much there, but it was quiet and a good park to stay in. We took off the next morning for our final destination of the trip, Mount Rushmore and its surrounds. The town of Custer seemed to be the best central location for getting around on the scoot to the various attractions, so we headed there. It’s a one-street town, easy to walk around. They celebrate the local bison herds that dot the area by placing fiberglass buffs all around the town, painted by various local artists. They look pretty neat.

We got settled into the campground, which was located about a mile out of town, down a back road, offloaded the scoot and took off for Rushmore. We took the scenic route (well, they all are, but this was pretty good) along the Iron Mountain road. Scoot heaven. Twists, turns, and pretzel portions where the road doubled back under itself. Nice! This is the preferred route because it goes through three tunnels hewn out of the rock, and through each of them you get a framed view of Rushmore in the distance. Well, at least with the naked eye. I couldn’t get a shot that showed it clearly, so use your imagination.

You can sorta make out Washington’s mug on the left. It’s smaller than you think in this pic. His head is just below the ridge line. This road is absolutely verboten to RV’s, trucks, etc. The tunnels are neither wide nor tall enough. From the marks at the entry edges, it would appear that some clown (s ) didn’t get the word. We got to the park and found that this was the one national monument in the country where the geezer pass didn’t get us in free. The monument technically didn’t cost anything, but parking did. It’s a private concession that paid for the parking lots to be built and maintained. Oh, well. We’ll be outsourcing Congress before we know it. Anyway, the monument is pretty impressive, and has a good museum/interpretive center. Here’s the five great heads:

Okay, okay, just four.

As we were leaving, the exit road sort of wound around the monument’s left side and we got an unexpected profile.

As we rode back to Custer, we passed the entrance road to the Crazy Horse monument and debated going in. We could see it from the road, and it wasn’t all that impressive. It’s about 90% incomplete, and since the guy whose idea it was, and who did most of the original work, is long dead, it seems his family is just milking the tourist trade for something that will never be finished. Maybe that’s a bit unfair, but we didn’t bother going in. Back at the RV, we had just collapsed on the couches when our neighbor returned with his tow vehicle.

Well, this IS the wild west.

All that hard scooting wore us out, so it was time to sit back with a game on the tube, emails on the laptop, Loni’s wonderful chicken risotto and . . . a PIE from the local bakery. Life IS good.

The next day we lit out for the Wind Cave National Park. This is one of the oldest in the park system, and was discovered in 1881 by a cowpoke who happened to hear wind wooshing out of a hole in the ground, barely big enough for a man to crawl into. It seems that the wind is a function of the air in the cave seeking to equalize pressure with the air above ground. American Indian stories dating back centuries spoke of a "hole that breathes cool air." The exploration of Wind Cave began. In 1903 Wind Cave became the first cave anywhere in the world to be designated a national park. Cave explorers are still finding new rooms and passages, and currently it is ranked the fifth longest cave in the world. We only got to go into about a half mile of it, but it was pretty good stuff. No, Loni, I think it’s this way.

It’s a “dry” cave, with minimal water seepage, and is best known as holding 95% of the known “box” formations, which are formed when the softer inner materials erode away, leaving the harder “walls” behind.

We’ve been in a number of caves around the country, but haven’t ever seen formations like these. They’re not as spectacular as stalagmites/tites, but pretty interesting nonetheless.

As it was the major football (World style) weekend of the year (Manchester United v. Chelsea), we decided to just vegetate our last day here in the rig. We have a lovely spot to ourselves, and all the comforts of home. Just what RVing should be!

Like all of our trips, this has been a great one. I got to see parts of the country I’ve never been to, and Loni got to re-live some favorite childhood memories of her family vacations. Now for the long slog back home. Through endless promos for Little America, the world’s biggest truck stop in the middle of nowhere, past the weird otherworldliness of the Bonneville Salt Flats, across the endless tracks of central Nevada, punctuated by truth-in-advertising, and then to a brief get-together with LazyDaze friends near Tom’s Place in the Eastern Sierras.

After a couple of days with the gang, we did our farewells and headed south along 395, going down the long, steep Sherwin Grade descending into Bishop and the Owens Valley. This is a sight we could never tire of.

Only to be confounded by a sight we never expected to see. After a month on the road in the high country, with only one rainfall during a single night, we never expected to get a wet greeting back to California! But it was beautiful, and a fine end to our trip.

OSEA and EMILY, HOSTS EXTRAORDINAIRES

2011-09-14T09:35:00.000-07:00

Our destination on this leg was the small town on the far side of the Sawtooths, Sheridan, Wyoming. There’s not much there to attract the average tourist, but we were after a couple of special items: Osea and Emily.

I first met Osea when we were freshman at Stanford, occupying the same dorm floor in Trancos House, drinking (and then cutting with water for resale) RonRico 151 (as in proof) rum. Oh, the hangovers! Later, when we were both juniors, we were roommates at Stanford’s France campus at Tours for six months. The campus consisted of a former hotel that had been modified somewhat as a dorm and classrooms setup. Being French, each room of course had a bidet, a foreign concept to we less-than-savoir-faire American students. What the rooms did not have were ensuite bathrooms. Osea rectified that oversight: the bidet became a urinal. Fast forward 40-odd years, during which we had no contact, me being in California the whole time, and Osea lost in the wilds of darkest Wyoming, teaching English to college students. Osea was coming to Los Angeles for a few days, and we got together for dinner at the house. We looked at slides of our days in France and generally reminisced. But Emily had not come along on that trip, so we were yet to meet her. I think we spent nearly half of our total time there around this table, either eating with gusto or gabbing endlessly. I swear we talked nonstop for two days, and still had words left over.

Osea and Em live in a small house that they’ve added to and remodeled over the many years there. It is a gem. I was particularly impressed with Osea’s carpenter skills evidenced in the huge back porch he designed and built himself. Yikes. I can’t even assemble a decent bookcase.

There are steps that meet and lead off both the right back and right side. Very nifty. Their lot is a couple of hundred feet deep, with plenty of room for Albatross to hide at the very back. We were even provided with an electrical hookup! Ah, but the real hosting took place in the kitchen. In a word, we ate like pigs. Happy pigs. Osea does most of the manning of the stove, except for Em’s homemade breads. And what a cool stove it is. I love it.

Osea made “garage chicken” the first night, so named because, well, he cooks it in the garage so that it doesn’t smoke up the house. Heck, he could cook it on his engine manifold for all I care. It was good! The next night was his famous 7-layered casserole, this time whipped up inside. The chef gets to eat while he works.

Way too much food. W-A-Y too much food!

On the right is breakfast the next morning. Em’s homemade bread topped by poached eggs, backed by sausage patties. Oh, yeah, there’s a fruit salad hiding out of the picture. I don’t think Loni and I ate for the next two days after leaving Sheridan. Except to have the homemade pumpkin bread that Em gave us before we left. Yum.

Sheridan may be a small town in the middle of nowhere, but it is the beneficiary of some sort of trust fund grants that allow it to do things not available to the rest of the cash-strapped cities in this country. Like nifty new public buildings and college facilities, and public art. We thought these were very cool. Note the water dripping off the cowboy’s hat. Nice touch.

While walking around the main street in town, we stopped in at a shoe store as Loni was still looking for a comfortable pair to wear around Paris next month. Unfortunately, she found a brand she really liked. Fortunately, they were out of her size. But now she had the bug, and we would spend time later investigating outlets of the same brand (SAS) looking for her size. She found them at last at a store in West L.A., at Paris prices. Ouch!

We were sorry to have to move on, but for once we did have a real timetable to keep to in order to see what we wanted and still get back with sufficient time to prepare for our next jaunt. So, to Osea and Em, a bientot (and sorry for the yellowish skin tones that I can’t figure out how to get rid of).

THE EXTRAORDINARY BUFFALO BILL

2011-09-12T09:32:00.000-07:00

We headed out of Yellowstone via Fishing Bridge, skirting the north end of the lake, while keeping an eye on the smoke from the fire on the east side. We climbed up to Sylvan Pass, on the way viewing the superb little lake at the top of the climb. I’m glad we did it from West to East, as the grade from the top down to the East entrance of the park is long and steep. It’s nice to be going downhill for a change. Our destination was Cody, founded by and home to William Cody, aka Buffalo Bill. We opted for a nice RV park that was within walking distance of the Cody Museum, and it turned out to be a good choice. Under the pick-your-spot program, we opted for a nice site with no one to the left or right, and under some trees for shade. Turns out this wasn’t such a bright idea.

It seems that the nice trees are home to the bad birds. The next morning . . . but I digress.

We walked up the street to the Cody Historical Center, a sprawling museum that is split into 4 or 5 submuseums on Cody’s life, local Indian tribes, guns, pioneers, etc. Each of them would be fine museums on their own. Together, they’re almost too much unless you have plenty of time. Fortunately, we did, and also fortunately the museum entrance is good for two days, which we made use of.

Buffalo Bill has always been a sort of cartoon character for me, which is simply ignorance talking. Once we started getting into his life part of the museum, my opinion of him changed completely. This was a remarkable guy, ahead of his time in many ways. We know him best for his Wild West Show that he organized, promoted, and starred in for decades.

I hadn’t known that he not only put this on here in the States, but he took it to Europe where he toured it, off and on, for almost a decade. It was a great hit over there, and he was feted by heads of state in England and Europe. The production was massive, with over 500 performers and support staff. The Kaiser once sent his senior generals to study Cody’s organization to see how he managed to feed, house, and move such a large company, so as to apply it to the military. Queen Victoria was so enamored of the show, and Cody, that she made a gift to him of a giant bar, that is still in use today in the Erma restaurant and hotel in Cody.

The pioneer and Indian areas are extensive and interesting, if a little bizarre at times, like the diorama with the tipi, and the taxidermy collection. And what’s with the beaded baseball cap?

Quibbles at oddities aside, we had a great time here. The gun museum, however, was just too much. A true aficionado of weapons could spend a week here, but for the layperson it’s just too much. It goes on forever, thousands of guns on display. Our eyeballs glazed over and we exited after about a quarter of the way in.

Cody was not only a great showman, but he was ahead of the curve politically as well. He was an early advocate of women’s rights, long before the suffragettes got going. In his treatment of the Indians, he was leagues ahead of his contemporaries. Those that were in his show said that they were always treated with respect and enjoyed every equality with the Caucasian cast members. He campaigned for various Indian causes in Congress and was welcomed as a brother by the various tribes. This was in stark contrast to the government’s generally abysmal treatment of native Americans.

Cody started a hotel in his town, called the Irma after one of his daughters. The hotel’s not much these days, but is still operating. More famous now is the adjacent Irma restaurant, also dating back to Cody’s days, wherein is housed the bar given to him by Queen Victoria. They make pretty good lunches, too!

I have to say, that clam chowder was one of the best I’ve ever had, with big pieces of clam throughout. In Wyoming???

From Cody, we continued East

to eventually wind our way up through the Sawtooth mountains, a very pretty drive full of switchback roads and (another) high pass. This would have been another good scooting road, but was fairly slow going in the rig. The sage was blooming everywhere, just as it had been in many other areas.

Oh, yeah. About that shade tree in Cody. Well, the bird family that occupied it had their nest(s?) directly above the rear of the rig. The next morning I came out to find it just covered in copious amounts of guano. I couldn’t believe all that could have rained down in just one night. I had to get a bucket and sponge and climb up on the roof to wash the junk off, all the while wondering if I was going to be the next target. Nope. But we moved forward so as to avoid a repeat the next night.

YS, PART 5: WHERE’S BILL CODY WHEN YOU NEED HIM?

2011-09-09T17:20:00.000-07:00

“Members of the genus Bison are large, even-toed ungulates within the subfamily Bovinae.

“The bison's temperament is often unpredictable. They usually appear peaceful, unconcerned, even lazy, yet they may attack anything, often without warning or apparent reason. They can move at speeds of up to 35 mph (56 km/h) and cover long distances at a lumbering gallop.^[11]

“Their most obvious weapons are the horns borne by both males and females, but their massive heads can be used as battering rams, effectively using the momentum produced by 2,000 pounds (900 kg) moving at 30 mph (50 km/h). The hind legs can also be used to kill or maim with devastating effect. At the time bison ran wild, they were rated second only to the Alaska brown bear as a potential killer, more dangerous than the grizzly bear. In the words of early naturalists, they were a dangerous, savage animal that feared no other animal and in prime condition could best any foe.”

Well, I’m glad we didn’t read THAT before we went scooting with the buffs. We were frightened enough as it was.

For our last day in YS, we opted for a long day in the saddle, planning to travel the entire upper loop from our base in Bridge Bay. I think the total was to be about 114 miles, but Loni really wanted to see Mammoth Hot Springs again to relive her childhood memories of the place. I remembered, a day late, that we did have some photo-taking capability with our iPod, although with a super-wide-angle lens and relatively few pixels. Better than nothing.

We scooted through the Fishing Bridge camp area and headed north again along the river. But not for long. We soon came upon a line of stopped cars: a bison jam!

A bunch of them are in the woods on the left; a big one is standing in the oncoming roadway just in front of the white car. Another big one is on the shoulder on our side of the road, out of this picture, but blocking the lead car in our lane. This stalemate went on for many minutes, with no one making a move. Finally, our lane began to move forward, so we followed. This went well until we crept up even with the big guy on the left, and the damn cars ahead STOPPED so they could take pictures. Well, let me tell ya, the bikers ahead of us and we were hollering our heads off to GET MOVING! You simply can’t imagine how vulnerable you feel sitting right there with buffs on both sides just feet away. We were looking UP at their heads. Yikes ain’t the word! This is the guy who was on our shoulder, but had moved off a bit allowing the line to move forward. We weren’t too happy sitting where we were.

Eventually the clowns in the cars ahead got the picture, and we were able to move off. We didn’t get a shot of the big bull that was in the oncoming lane while we were sitting next to it. Loni was getting ready to jump off if he moved a muscle, and I was too busy trying to get us going. This was more up close and personal than we wanted.

Having escaped violent death, we scooted north and passed through a beautiful grassy plain with the river far below and hundreds of buffalo grazing as if they were on an 1850 prairie. This was a magnificent sight, and I longed for my camera. The little iPod lens just doesn’t do it justice. The little black specks are the bison; there’s lots more out of the picture to the right and left, and behind us on the other side of the road. This really was like a step back in time.

We came upon another herd just a bit farther on, this time all of them on the other side of the water, so we walked down from the roadway to get a closer shot. This picture could have been taken thousands of years ago, with little unchanged.

Our first destination on the northern loop was Tower Falls. What I found interesting about these was that they seemed to simply spring out of the face of the mountain. There’s a road that traverses just above them, which we later crossed, and we didn’t see any river feeding the falls. Does it travel underground? Dunno.

Leaving Tower, the road to Mammoth Junction involved a lot of climbing before it descended into the Junction, which is the lowest spot in the park. This is where the Army set up headquarters back in the early days of the park. The old buildings are still standing, and the place has the air of the military about it. We took a shot of the place from a high point, but it doesn’t show a lot.

All this white stuff in the foreground was the area that Loni had remembered as being beautifully colored. This was, then, a springs area, with gorgeous flows cascading down the hills. but 55 years brings a lot of change, especially after the 1960 earthquake that disrupted a lot of the geothermal processes. A ranger we spoke to said that these particular springs stopped flowing only about 5-6 years ago, and the colorful deposits had since been bleached white in most areas. Not pretty at all. We did noodle around some on the side roads, and found a couple of interesting features, this being the best. But, unless you are entering the park from this NW entrance, I would advise skipping the long trip up to this corner.

The remainder of the trip back, down to Norris, across to Canyon, then back down to Bridge Bay, was unremarkable . . . except for the buffs.

We encountered another bison jam, this time a huge one. With nothing coming in the oncoming lane, I crossed the double yellow and cruised past at least a half mile of stopped cars before coming to the stoppage point. Buffs were all over the place, blocking both lanes, crossing back and forth to the grazing areas on both sides. There was a pullout on the left, so we stopped there next to a pair of Harleys that had been overheating while idling in the line. We all turned off our engines to wait. Loni snapped this shot of a bull getting up from a dust bath just to our right.

While we were waiting, a crowd started to form up around us, with people getting out of their cars and coming up to get pictures. That wasn’t a problem until three of the buffs came up an embankment and, finding cars across the road in front of them, decided we would be easier to move out of the way, and started coming towards us. SAY WHAT!?!

Feet, don’t fail me now! With the scoot dead-stick, I tried the back-pedal foot shuffle, with Loni still aboard, and promptly ran smack into the jerk who had set up his tripod right behind us. Yahhh. They’re still coming our way. It was Monty Python time. Run away, run away! I tried starting the scoot, realizing instantly that the safety interlock prevents starting it unless the left brake is full on. But that means stopping. And they’re still coming. Shuffle shuffle shuffle. The tripod clown beats a retreat and we keep backing up along with a sea of drivers trying to get back to their cars. But then the buffs stop, and just stand there. Faceoff!

Finally, “our” buffs turn around and go across the road.

The oncoming line of cars crept past for a while, then stopped again about 100 yards up, about where the top of that RV is in the picture above. Our line moved forward to that spot, and stopped as well. Another big bull was playing statue in front of the lead car in our line, and the oncomings were reluctant to move forward as well. This went on for another five minutes. I looked at the Harleys, but they didn’t seem inclined to budge, so I told Loni, “Let’s go for it.” We crept forward in the oncoming lane until we got to the lead car in our lane, with the buff right in front of it across the lane, with its head facing the center line. Do we? Don’t we? They’re used to people by now, right? They don’t charge like fighting bulls, do they? Fortunately we hadn’t read the passage cited at the beginning of this post, and ignorance was a sort of bliss. We gunned it past him in the oncoming lane, then swerved right around him and, victory pumps in the air, we sped away. I don’t know how long the cars sat there, but no one came up behind us the whole way home.

Too much adrenaline for cooking, we opted for the lodge at Fishing Bridge, eschewed the buffalo burgers, and had a very nice dinner of pork chops. And, of course, berry cobbler a la mode. Sorry, no pics.

I have to say that the 17 miles or so between Fishing Bridge and Canyon are some of the most scenic we have ever been on. Seeing the buffs spread out all over the place, in that beautiful setting, was like stepping back in time. We had the feeling that the wild west was alive and well in this small corner of the country.

YS, PART 4: SHAMELESS COPYRIGHT INFRINGEMENT

2011-09-08T10:56:00.000-07:00

So now it’s Thursday, time to break camp at Grant and move a bit north to Bridge Bay Campground. We would have preferred to go to Canyon Campground, but it closed for the season a couple of days ago. BB will be the next best bet as a base for exploring the upper loop. Plus, it has full sun sites, so we won’t have to worry about recharging the batteries. We got ourselves set up, after changing sites due to inadequate space in the first one, and took off on the scoot for the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone. Without a camera.

Not to worry. There are plenty of photos available online to document what we saw, most of them a lot better than I can take. So, what you see in this post are cadged from the internet. Thanks, photographers!

On the way up just out of BB, there was a lot of haze coming across the lake from a fire that was burning on the east shore. We were hoping that it wouldn’t affect our eastern exit in a couple of days. Once past the lake, the haze disappeared and the skies were a perfect blue. The drive up this way follows the Yellowstone River north towards Canyon Village. Wow. For sheer beauty, this is hard to beat. And, it had bison! More on that later. Suffice to say for now that encountering 2,000 lb bison, up close and personal, without the benefit of a steel car around you, is, uh, exhilarating. Yeah, that’s the word I’ll use for all that rapid heartbeat and sweaty pits!

At the Canyon, there are north and south drives, and we did them both, each with great views. This truly is a “grand” canyon, with sheer walls v-ing down to the river far below. We had read about a ranger walk along “Uncle Tom’s Trail” to a view of the falls, so we headed to the meeting spot at the trailhead. The name has nothing to do with H.B. Stowe, but rather for a pioneer tour guide at the turn of the last century.

Them tourists were made of stern stuff!

Ranger Dan was Tim Conway with a mustache and goatee, doing his best to ease off his Boston accent. Like the other rangers we dealt with, he was passionate about the park and almost evangelical in his zeal to protect and display it.

While we might not have had to use ropes and ladders, the hike down nevertheless was a doozy. Part of it is via steel mesh stairs and bridges. They were strong enough, but you could see right through them to the great void below.

My acrophobia kicked in big time, and I was squeezing those railings until they bent. Oye.

But the viewpoint, once we got there, was well worth the terror. The falls lived up to their billing. Tons of water was coming over, even in mid-September. That’s a testament to the huge winter this year. There was a notch in the rocks that formed the lip of the falls, and the water flowing through the “V” was a bright green in contrast to the white water everywhere else. Very cool effect. Oh, for my camera. Curse you, Duracell charger!

YS, PART 3: WITCHES’ BREW AND BAD KARMA

2011-09-07T10:19:00.000-07:00

The variety of the geothermal attractions in YS is mind-blowing. Geysers, steam vents, mudpots, calm holes, bubbling holes. But some of the most spectacular are the boiling lakes and streams. The roads in YS form a large figure 8, with “arms” going out to the various entrances.

We had pretty much covered the Upper Geyser Basin around Old Faithful (SW end of the lower loop), so we decided to do the west-central part of the lower loop and head to the Norris Basin from our camp at Grant Village. Along the way we stopped at the utterly wild Midway Geyser Basin, home to the Grand Prismatic Spring and Excelsior Geyser. It lies just below the “16” mileage number above O.F. on the map.

You reach the features by crossing the river on a bridge. Next to the bridge is a boiling water cascade that comes down from the Excelsior above.

The colors in these features were unbelievable. I haven’t doctored these photos a bit except to increase the contrast a bit in order to make them more like what our eyes actually saw. This is what feeds the cascade:

The Excelsior, which seems to be misnamed, as it didn’t act like a geyser at all. No eruptions, just a lot of boiling and mist.

But the best was the Grand Prismatic Spring. Oh, the hues!

We were reluctant to leave, but got back on the scoot and headed north towards Madison Junction. Not much there other than a small interpretive display and a bookstore run by the Yellowstone Association. They sell many excellent books and guides, and we bought their “Official Guide” which was well worth the absurdly low $9.95 price. We then followed the Gibbon River NE towards Noris. All of these riverside drives in the park are splendid. Great scooter venues! We did the side road to the Artists’ Paintpots. Skip it. Everything we saw was dried up and white, one of the very few duds we came upon. At Norris, we enjoyed the overlook viewing the Norris Geyser Basin, but didn’t feel compelled to go down and wander the boardwalks. Jaded? Perhaps, but more likely lazy.

We did visit the small but interesting Museum of the Park Ranger at Norris, which gave a history of the Park Service and the evolution of ranger duties. YS was the first National Park, created in 1872 by president U.S. Grant. In the early days, it was protected from exploitation for about 30 years by the Army, based at Mammoth Hot Springs in the NW corner. Is is from the Army’s campaign hats that the iconic Smoky Bear Ranger Hat was derived. It has remained largely unchanged for over 100 years.

We retraced our steps along the route back to Grant, and made a stop at the pretty Gibbon Falls. They are 84 feet high, and fall over what is part of the rim of the 640,000 year-old Yellowstone Caldera. Yellowstone is actually one giant caldera, 30 x 40 miles across. All the mountains you see encircling the park are actually the caldera rim. That must have been one huge eruption!

Just after the Madison Junction, we pulled off onto the Firehole Canyon Drive. Don’t miss this! I rate it as the prettiest mile of canyon river I’ve ever seen. Sheer cliff walls, serpentine river, multiple rapids and falls, all compressed into this short loop drive. Outstanding.

Unfortunately, this is where our luck ran out. The camera battery died. And, of course, my spare was left at Mike’s house in San Francisco. However, I did have my newly-purchased-at-Walmart dual voltage Duracell charger. Right? Well, back at the rig, long story short, the either the charger or the battery was bad, as I couldn’t get a charge on either the rig’s 12-volt system, nor the 120v outlet in the lady’s bathroom. AUGH! The battery is one of those square, flat, Canon-specific jobs that can only be purchased at a large store, like W-M, Best Buy, etc. Over the next few days I searched every camp store we encountered, but nada. Great. We have yet to view the buffaloes and the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone, and now it’ll be without a camera. I’m ready to follow that kid into one of those “cool” pools.

YS, PART2: BLOWHARDS AND PRETTY HOLES

2011-09-06T17:41:00.000-07:00

After watching Old Faithful go off, we decided to take a turn around the Upper Geyser Basin that surrounds the Inn area. This is an extensive plain filled with geysers, hot pools, frothing holes, and lots of startling color in an otherwise white landscape. There are miles of boardwalks that take you on a tour of the various features. Signs everywhere warn that you should never venture off the walks, as the crusty ground, which looks solid enough, could be thin and you would sink through into boiling liquids. Even pools that look serene and coolly blue are at the simmer level. We heard a ranger talk about a young 12-year-old boy (back in the 1920’s) who “didn’t believe the water was all that hot” (allegedly his very words) and proceeded to jump into one of the pools. Lobster, anyone? I thought it might be an apocryphal story, but later saw some repros of old newspaper stories about it. Yikes. As you can see, the colors of these holes are wildly varied:

I bet the kid jumped in the nice, cool, blue one. While we were out on the boards, we heard an announcement that the Beehive Geyser was about to go off, and boy did it. Twice as high as O.F., its eruption lasted over 5 minutes, with the Inn as a backdrop.

We got lucky with this one, as its time between blowoffs is 11 to 14 hours. Time your visit wrong, and you’d never see it. Continuing on the boardwalk, we came to this gorgeous pool that looked like a berserk Morning Glory.

There were some pretty neat fumaroles, as well. These were dotted all over the landscape, steaming constantly.

A ranger walked by, letting everyone know that another long-period geyser was giving signs of erupting, called Grand Geyser, which goes off every 10-12 hours. Wow, we really hit the synchronicity jackpot today. We beetled off that way and took up station next to an elderly woman holding a clipboard and stopwatch. She turned out to be a volunteer recorder of the eruptions, and proved a font of knowledge about all things geysers. She could read the waxing and waning signs and tell us whether or not an eruption would take place. Good thing she was there, or we would have given up and left. It was over an hour of false alarms before she said, “Yup, it’ll go this time,” and was right. It started slow, then increased steadily before becoming a massive fountain. This one is not very high, but it puts out huge volumes of water in its column.

When it died down, we turned to go, but the woman said to wait a sec, as it often had a second act. Sure enough, a few minutes later and it gave out with a second burst. This, she called a “double,” and duly recorded it in her log. Then she said she was late for her dinner and strode away. That sounded good to us, so we rode the scooter back to our mobile cabin site and, well, toasted our lucky day.

Ah, but there’s good luck and bad. It needs balance, and the next day it was my turn. [ CLIFFHANGER ]