Daily Archive

We have two weeks in which to relish Paris, and have been relishing away. Munchkin would like to go to college in French–not just in a French-speaking country, and certainly not just for a semester–so she has been exploring universities, first in Geneva, now here, and next week, in Lyon. Joy and I have no such burden and can’t really be of any assistance other than, you know, bringing her to Europe, so we just do our thing while she pokes around universities (campus tours are not done here) and chats with students.

We are staying close to Montmartre, and on my own one one of our first days, I toiled up the stairs to Sacre-Coeur. One could write a thesis on the interweaving of military and religious imagery in the Christian West, and I’m sure many have, although I won’t. But these two guys are what caught my attention when I got to the church. I didn’t go in, not feeling up to standing in line, but I pop into other churches now and then and have been struck by the idea that Parisians don’t know how to do a small church, just as they don’t seem to know how to cook a bad meal. For example, this is a neighborhood church, Eglise Notre-Dame de Clingancourt.

Joy has been on a quest for a small tacky item of Eiffel Tower memorabilia to bring home. I admired this woman’s efforts in that direction: a rainbow of tiny Eiffels, which she had set up to photograph with a backdrop of Sacre-Coeur.

Then I just meandered back home, enjoying the luxury of downhill. I just love the architecture of your basic apartment building here.

Munchkin and I had a plan of getting to the Louvre early (since online tickets were already sold out for the dates we wanted. Friends, buy those online tickets weeks or months in advance). We failed. We arrived shortly after 9 and were told the wait would be three hours, but decided to stick it out because, eh, we could read in line. As it turned out, the wait was under two hours, and as I posted a few days ago, was totally worth it.

I don’t usually take photos of artworks, since if I want to see them again later, they are likely to be in a book or online, or in the case of the most famous, on postcards, all of which are better representations than I’m going to get with my camera. But the Venus de Milo is always shown from the front, and she is so stunning from the back that I snapped this in case I want to draw it later.

A really nice thing about this cafe in the Louvre is that you can take your food to tables alongside the statues that line the roof. However, we opted to eat indoors for our usual reason: the lovely outdoors is made much less lovely by the omnipresent cigarette smoke. People smoke a lot more in all the places we’ve been this summer than in San Francisco. It seems like a ticking time bomb for these countries’ marvelous single-payer healthcare systems as well as for the individual smokers. My more selfish concern is that it smells awful. Of course, with all the doors and windows open, it’s not possible to get away even though smoking indoors is forbidden. We had the most exquisite dinner the other evening at a restaurant near where we’re staying, in the 18th arrondissement, and the smoke coming in from the people dining just outside got so strong that as soon as the child finished, she excused herself and went home. I stuck it out because I was absolutely determined to have dessert, but the creme brulee would have tasted a lot better if not accompanied by tobacco.

Another return visit for me and Joy earlier this week: the Rodin museum.

Munchkin spent the whole time in the atelier, making art alongside French kindergarteners, and then left to go to the Curie Museum. Then the three of us joined up for a tour of the Saint-Geneviève library, one of the libraries of the Sorbonne. The man offered to lead the tour in English, but we declined. Joy and I could follow a lot of it with our decades-dusty French, and Munchkin translated the key points for us afterwards. No photos of users allowed, only of the architecture, which is gorgeous.

Then, yesterday, Munchkin went on a long bike ride all over the city, and Joy and I got on a bus and went to Giverny, the home of Claude Monet, where, as his painting career became more successful, he put his money into creating some of the most beautiful gardens I have ever seen.

Buses are not my favorite way to travel. I felt clammy and was sure I was turning a little green, so I snapped this selfie. I do look green, although that might be the lights. Fortunately, buses also make me sleepy, so I slept most of the way both ways.

The gardeners of Giverny (Monet and his staff in his time, and now eight gardeners employed year-round) have such an amazing sense not only of color, but of texture. Also–more thunbergia envy–apparently there is such a thing as pink thunbergia, and a couple of them are growing next to the house, with a profusion of flowers in hues ranging from almost-white to magenta. I didn’t take their photo, just this sweetie’s, which from the foliage might be some kind of zinnia.

When we got back from Giverny, we met up with the munchkin and did something we can’t do in the United States: went to a jazz club, all three of us. And it turns out that she loves to dance, just as I do. We danced together, but I couldn’t keep going all evening, the way she could. The munchkin just carried on. There’s such a great feeling there–people of all ages, people dancing in couples or alone or in groups, same-sex couples both romantic and non-, expert dancers and those like me who just get up and move. The crowd was a lot younger than I expected, which makes me hopeful for the future of jazz.

Now it is Bastille Day. I had originally proposed going to Chartres today, because Friday is the day you can walk the labyrinth there. But Joy flatly refused, having learned that there are actually fun things to do during the day on Bastille Day. We have no interest in the military flyover or parade, and you couldn’t get me to the Champs de Mars on its most crowded day of the year, but supposedly there are fun doings at the fire station down the block, as at most of them around the city.

At 4:30 Munchkin and I are going to the Catacombs, a fascinating relic of a brief period of Paris history. The weather has cooled off a bit, but going underground for a couple of hours of the afternoon is still an attractive prospect. I remind myself, grimly, that this might be the coolest summer of the rest of my life . . .

Other details that have made me smile in Paris: the sound of a pigeon landing just outside the half-open shutters in our room and cooing there as I watched it through the slats. Murals like the one on this stairway in a Metro station. The kind neighbor who passed us the key since our host was out of town when we arrived, and how animatedly she chatted with Munchkin. The gentleman who lives elsewhere in the building who said, not “Bonjour,” but “Je vous souhaite un bon jour,” as he nodded in an equally courtly way and went out. The way bakery workers spin a paper bag between their two hands to close the top with two little twists. The attention given to beauty in so many buildings, street signs, even the Metro corridors.

I find myself thinking, “If I were young and still deciding where I would live, like Munchkin, I would be pretty interested in spending a few years in Paris.” Then, considering why I don’t do that now, and why I didn’t do it when I was her age, I realize: because I don’t have the language. And I am so glad for her that she has opened the doors of the Spanish-, French-, and probably Italian- and German-speaking worlds for herself.