SKIP TO THE LOUVRE, MY DARLING

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

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

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

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!