April 14, 2008

Paris: Episode Five

In this episode the Paris Chroniclers will take you through Père Lachaise cemetery, and Tim’s risking of life and limb to take that one perfect picture.

Joanna: Père Lachaise—what atmosphere! A haunting place. So many of the monuments and crypts were works of art unto themselves.

A panorama of moss-covered stone everywhere you looked. The sun would shine on the ironwork on a tomb and create strange shadows on the graves next to it. Little paths and nooks to explore, a gothic feeling emanating from the rows of tombs, mysterious epitaphs and inscriptions on the graves, ornate ironwork, weaving and criss-crossing, and best of all—more amazing stained glass!

Stained glass and iron and stone in such a variety of designs.

We visited graves of some of our favorite musicians and writers, like the novelist Marcel Proust, singer Edith Piaf, composers Frederic Chopin and Georges Bizet (Carmen), playwright Oscar Wilde, and Medieval-love-letter-writers Abelard and Heloise.

Ironically, some of those graves were among the more plain and ordinary ones! Of course we saw Jim Morrison’s grave. We came across a British Doors fan with long hair and Jim’s face plastered on his T-shirt. He and his “da” were walking with a map impatiently trying to find The Grave.

We followed him and soon saw a crowd of Doors fans gawking at the small gravestone. Not all that much to see. We ended our visit by stopping at Chopin’s grave to have a little picnic.

Tim: Now for the more juicy part. Guess what?!? I got my ears boxed by a fuzzy freak! We found a long street market on Rue Menilmontant near the Menilmontant Metro station and started exploring it. Talk about an international street fair! We saw everyone and everything! And close up! It was so crowded that it was impossible to walk without constantly bumping into people. We passed fishmongers, fruitmongers, spicemongers (and every other kind of monger), clothing of all styles, incense, you name it.

Things were going along just fine until I saw a café called “Le Metro” with a cool sign. Little did I know that this would cause me some considerable trouble. As I stopped to take a photo of the café, this large, swarthy man took an interest in me. Before I knew it, he was yelling in my face, shaking me by the collar and venting a copious amount of spleen and displeasure at me. In my confused state, I said “I don’t speak English!” when I meant to say “I don’t speak French!”. Silly me. Soon another guy came between us and the fuzzy, freaky guy started to calm down. He sent me on my way with a friendly neighborhood shove and I gathered up Joanna and got out of there. Whew! I was so thankful it wasn’t worse. He was big enough to pulverize me if he wanted to!

Anyway, we got out of there and ducked into the Belleville Metro station. Yikes! Egad! Sacre bleu!

Posted by Tim and Jo at 11:52 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

August 21, 2006

Paris Chronicles Four

Ahh...this time last year we were savoring our last few drops of Paris...

So, here goes another installment. Enjoy!

This time the Paris Chroniclers will take you to some artsy-fartsy stuff - the Musée d’Orsay, the Opera Garnier, and the Louvre. For you artsy-fartsy types out there, enjoy. For you Philistines who would just love to break the glass in front of the Mona Lisa painting and draw a handlebar mustache on her, the next few episodes will be more juicy (about street life and our adventures (and misadventures!) therein). Stay tuned! It will be worth it – Tim gets attacked!!!!!


All the art in the Musée d’Orsay was overwhelming. This is the place to see the Impressionists. We saw Degas’ ballet dancers, Pissarro’s scenes of the French countryside, Cézanne’s apples and oranges, Van Gogh’s self portraits, Gauguin’s Tahitians, Toulouse-Lautrec’s Moulin Rouge dancers (ooh-la-la!), Signac and Seurat’s pointillist masterpieces, Rodin’s statues, Corbet’s monster-sized paintings, Renoir’s luscious portraits, four of Monet’s paintings of Rouen Cathedral (our favorites!), and so much more. Some of Gustave Courbet’s paintings were so large that it made us wonder how they got the things inside the museum. A few of his paintings had to be at least 15 feet high by 30 feet wide!

Joanna used the clock to frame three places in Paris that we loved--the Sacre-Couer (up the street from our hotel), the Ferris Wheel in the Tuilerie Gardens (see Chronicles 3), and the Louvre.

The next day, we did a tour of the famous Opera Garnier which was finished in 1875.

We got the student discount (cool!) and basked in the over-the-top opulence of the place. We should have put on some sunglasses before we went in because everything about it was overwhelming to the eye—gold, marble, mirrors, flamboyant paintings—the building is more of a show than the ballets and operas performed inside!

Our favorite thing was the ceiling in the main auditorium painted by Marc Chagall. What a profusion of bright colors! Even though he painted the ceiling in 1964, 90 years and a staggering number of stylistic changes after the building was constructed, the brushstrokes of Chagall created a harmonious and complementary affinity with the red velvet seats and rococo décor of the auditorium. Joanna was in rapture staring up at this panoply of joy and color. Of the ballets and operas depicted, she was able to pick out The Firebird, Swan Lake, Fidelio, Tristan und Isolde, Pélleas et Mélisande, Carmen, Daphne and Chloe, Boris Godunov, and The Magic Flute.

We Metroed and found ourselves in front of this really big building.

There was a sign that said “Louvre”, so we surmised that we must be at the Louvre. Since we were there and had some time to kill, we decided to take a gander at what was inside. It was 6:15 pm so we had about three and a half hours to explore. We made first for the Sully wing and found the Venus de Milo and her big sister, the Winged Victory of Samothrace. Here was the height of Greek Hellenistic sculpture. There was a display cabinet near Venus with possible reconstructions by various experts – what the statue might have looked like before she was de-armed. The Winged Victory of Samothrace had part of her hand sitting by itself in a little display window several yards from the statue. It looked so lonely! She stands in the middle of a wide stairwell, at the top of a staircase, dominating all who stand below her. The surface is very rough, as if the statue has lived through a lot, but from a distance, she is radiant. By contrast, Venus is more smooth and seems to have met with less adversity in her 2300 years of existence – she only lost her arms, where the Winged Victory lost her arms and her head! Poor old girl!


The museum was crowded but not so much that it was a drag. When we got to the Mona Lisa, the crowds, of course were much more densely packed, a horde of camera-toting gawkers anxiously waiting to have an audience with that enigmatically smiling lady. It took me a few minutes to wedge my way to the front. Joanna stood off to the side and watched all the madness. The Mona Lisa was, well, the Mona Lisa! She looked bemused by the phalanx of tourists gazing at her. Looks as though she found her long lost family. Buon giorno, mi figlio! Buon giorno, mi marito!

We walked through several other areas marveling at all the beauty. Our feet were sore, our legs were tired, but it didn’t matter. We were doing the Louvre!

Posted by Tim and Jo at 10:01 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

July 26, 2006

Paris Chronicles, Episode Trois

On our third day in Paris we visited the Cathedral of Notre-Dame. As soon as we walked inside, we were overcome with Gothic majesty. The variety and profusion of stained glass, the chancel screen from the 14th century curving around the apse depicting scenes from the life of Christ in amazingly detailed stone and wood, the alternating black and white floor, the candles, chandeliers and candelabras, the rose windows, the paintings, the statues, the height of the vault taking the eye ever higher, etc… So much to be overwhelmed by! There was an organist playing murky mysterious music which perfectly set the mood.

We walked outside and got in line for the tour of the towers. While we were waiting, we gazed at the three portals, the two towers, the dozens of gargoyles, the 29 Judean kings, the west rose window, the massive wooden doors with amazingly intricate iron scrollwork, the filigreed stone ornaments and the parvis full of people with awed expressions on their faces.

After a long wait – only 20 people are let in at a time – we were getting a little antsy, even though the weather (except for un petit peu rain), scenery, and street musicians were excellent. The way up was broken up by a stop at a gift shop. In the shop were the stairs leading to Esmerelda’s chamber, so clearly described by Hugo that it could easily be identified. It made us want to read the book again. All along the way were beautiful quotes from The Hunchback of Notre-Dame that whetted our appetites.

Then again it was up and up and up dimly-lit spiral stairwells. Soon we saw a glimpse of daylight. The chimeras and gargoyles greeted us as we stepped along the narrow passageways outside and the view was breathtaking. We enjoyed using the gargoyles as vantage points when taking pictures.

We lined up the mouth of a gargoyle next to the Eiffel Tower so it looked like it was eating the Tower.

Up, up again we went to the very top of the south tower. As we circled around, we found this little square terrace with a table and chairs on a building next to Notre-Dame. What a view it must offer! Tim wouldn’t mind having a cup of coffee there every morning!

We then went down, down and down, round, round and round the spiral stairwell until we reached street level. We walked around the outside again hearing a man playing an ocarina and a choral group singing polyphonic Renaissance music. We did Notre-Dame, and it did us – did us in!

We went over to Sainte-Chapelle thinking “how can the stained glass windows we saw in Notre-Dame be topped by Sainte-Chapelle?” Well, they were—Sainte-Chapelle has more windows than walls! And not only that, the chapel was constructed in only 33 months (finished in the year 1248!), as opposed to Notre-Dame which took over 200 years! We walked up the steps and entered the chapel and were flooded with rays of filtered light.

We found that the mood and atmosphere of the inside changed with the shifting sunlight. We could tell if a cloud passed in front of the sun because the ambiance would change. It was as if the chapel was perfectly and intuitively interpreting and channeling the light of the sun – there was a symbiotic connection. The rose window looked almost proto-Art Nouveau in style with its wavy lines and swirling patterns. It looked like it was in motion, rotating.

The windows around the chapel (the “walls” of the chapel!) depicted scenes from the Bible from Genesis to Revelation. Joanna spent her time trying to figure out what Biblical stories and persons were depicted in some of the windows. She deciphered many of them but it was difficult because they were so complex. She wondered how uneducated peasants in Medieval times 750 years ago could understand the cryptic language of the windows. Tim was too busy being mesmerized by light and color to think of what the windows meant. For once, he got lost in the aesthetic experience of something without trying to understand and analyze it!

Periodically the sound of the people talking within would cause a tour guide to go “ssshhhhhhhh!!!” and suddenly the noise would die down into quiet whispering for a few minutes until the talking started to get louder again. We stepped out onto the main portal and admired the carved stone around the doorway. Even the floor of the chapel was beautiful with an alternating fleur de lis design.

There also were amazing statues of famous saints inside which perfectly complemented the windows. They had stern expressions on their faces as if they were guarding the stained glass windows. The place was truly enchanting, mystical and ethereal – causing a lasting sense of wonder and awe. What men were these that created this masterpiece?

Posted by Tim and Jo at 10:02 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

July 01, 2006

Paris Chronicles 2

TIM: The major thing we did our second day in Paris was visit the Rodin Museum. But first I must tell you all about a strange hobby I adopted in Paris – sugar packet collecting! In Paris, all the cafes have their sugar in long, thin packets. I met this phenomenon in London, four years ago, and have always lamented the fact that I didn’t save any for souvenirs. I remedied this on our Paris trip, to remind me of the cafes we went to. Here’s another sugar related story: On the morning of our second day in Paris, we had breakfast in the little, angular, non-symmetrical courtyard of our hotel. There was a British family that came for breakfast. They had a little girl and she wanted “Frosted Flakes”. The hotel had only regular cornflakes, so the ever-ready-to-please mom improvised by scraping sugar off of sugar cubes (since the hotel also didn’t have sugar packets) onto the girl’s cornflakes. What a mum thing to do! I’m sure if the girl had her way, she would have placed a cube of sugar on each cornflake!

T&J: Now for the Rodin Museum. The Rodin Museum was filled with the cutest little sugar packets you ever saw! Rodin himself designed them and…..
Just kidding. The Rodin Museum was filled with the most awe-inspiring sculptures created since Michelangelo. This museum was fabulous not only, of course, for the sculpture but for the interior of the museum itself. It is housed in the Hôtel de Biron built in the early 1700s, a classic example of rococo architecture and design. Each room had magnificent woodwork, beautiful paintings on the ceiling, gigantic mirrors and geometrically patterned hardwood floors (that creaked when you walked on them). We spent about an hour and half there and then ventured outside to the café. We found that the pigeons of Paris eat very well but have poor table manners. They show up for lunch without an invitation, chew with their mouth open, don’t use napkins, spill drinks, never sit still, and even eat off of other peoples’ plates! How gauche!

After we ate we meandered through the gardens and sculptures outside the museum.

We were inundated by roses – thousands of them, and their cumulative scent was an olfactory delight. We saw The Burgers of Calais, The Thinker, Balzac, The Gates of Hell, and the Three Fates. All were situated and presented beautifully in the garden amongst the roses, bushes and trees.

When we were done visiting the works of Mr. Rodin, we took the Metro from the Varenne stop to Invalides, then the RER to Pont d’Alma. The RER was so cool – a double decker monster of a train! What was not cool was the fact that the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris in the Palais de Tokyo was closed for renovation. Bummer. We wanted to see the stained-glass influenced paintings of Georges Rouault here. All we saw was a group of punk skateboarders using the Palais de Tokyo as an obstacle course. We then decided to substitute Rouault with Monet and visit the Musée de l’Orangerie in the Tuileries Gardens to see the Nymphéas – the water lily paintings. We hurried underground, caught two Metro trains and walked briskly to the museum. It was 4:15 and the museum closed at 5 pm. It was all for naught though – that museum was also closed for renovations! We realized that we had been struck by that bane of all tourists –

THE CURSE OF THE CLOSED MUSEUMS!!!

Worse than the Black Plague, more hideous than boils, this ghastly specter waits to strike unwary art fans. Somewhat disappointed, we walked around the Tuileries Gardens a bit and found Café Véry which made it all better. What a pleasant time we had here. Joanna ordered a tarte aux poire carmelises (a caramelized pear tarte) avec un boule de glace chocolat noir (with one scoop of dark chocolate ice cream).

It was a mouthful both of words and taste! She was beaming. She was in Chocolate Heaven. Tim ordered a double café crème and sucked that caffeinated nectar down. So we sat here for an hour and rested our weary Metro chasing, closed museum cursing bones.
We walked some more through the Jardin des Tuileries and saw:
1) Beautiful statuary
2) Beautiful trees, hedges, beds of flowers aligned in swirling arabesque–like patterns
3) Kids sailing sailboats and ducks swimming in the great round pool with a fountain in the center
4) A painter painting in an abstract way the gardens and the Musée d’Orsay across the Seine
5) A fun fair!
We walked a while through the fair and saw all kinds of rides and games – dark rides, a spook house, bumper cars, a carousel, a trampoline, and a Ferris wheel. This Ferris wheel was big! We couldn’t pass up a chance to admire the view from the top so we bought a ticket and hopped on.



Up we went, down we went, up we went, down we went! The view of course was spectacular – the Eiffel Tower in all its grandeur, the great expanse of the Louvre right under us, the sparkling river Seine, Sacré-Coeur in the distance! It was a great ride. By then we had forgotten about the closed museums. There was always something else in Paris to attract ones attention – always a diversion. Nothing here was boring!

Posted by Tim and Jo at 11:14 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

June 20, 2006

Paris Chronicles 1

Well, we haven't had as much time for blogging lately, more on the reasons why later. But in a fit of nostalgia for our big Paris trip last summer, we've decided to share our adventures and misadventures in the city of lights. Believe it or not, this is the meticulously abridged version of our first day!

Paris Chronicles – Episode One

Bon jour,
It’s time to come strolling down the avenues of Paris with Tim and Joanna. If you’ve ever wanted to waltz down the Champs-Elysées parading your perfectly poofed poodle, if you’ve ever wanted to show off your diamonds and pearls at the Place Vendôme, if you’ve ever wanted to nibble on caviar at Maxim’s - read someone else’s travelogue, you fop! But! If you want to hear about grimacing Gothic gargoyles, cavernous claustrophobic catacombs, and boisterous bustling boulevards, you’ve come to the right place. Don’t worry, we were good. We didn’t paint a moustache on Mona, we didn’t ask Venus to give us a high five, and we didn’t bungee jump off the Eiffel Tower.


You may be wondering how well we did with the French language over there. Well, Joanna has a decent handle on vocabulary and sentence structure and Tim has a decent accent so between the two of us, we spoke perfect broken French. Like seasoned travelers, we focused on the most important question, the vital key to international communication, that Rosetta Stone of a phrase: “Ou est le w.c.?” – “Where is the water closet?” (bathroom) That’s really all you need to know. Once you’ve attained that level of linguistic prowess, the richness of the French language is opened to you.


The plane ride was uneventful and so was the train ride from Charles de Gaulle airport to Paris. We found our hotel on Boulevard Rochechouart in Montmartre and took a little nap to try to lessen jet lag (we flew overnight and got little sleep).





We were soon on our way exploring the streets of Montmartre. We started walking up the many many steps that lead to the Basilique du Sacré-Coeur. Every level we went up gave us a grander view of the expanse of Paris. The eye could not take it all in, nor could the camera. We watched some kids rolling down the hill in the grassy sections – what fun! We ventured inside Sacré-Coeur. All manner of statuary, intricately laid mosaic tile, stained glass, stone work, iron work met our gaze. The inside is cavernous. The outside of the church is made from a certain type of limestone that emits small amounts of calcite (calcium) when it rains. This whitens the stone and makes it essentially a self-cleaning church! Here's a picture of the church, as well as the carousel featured in Amelie





We wandered the streets up and down, criss-crossing. We came across a mime who took a liking to Joanna. She was so cute with him. His face was painted white and Joanna’s was painted pink!





Joanna got some ice cream at a little stand—she asked for coco, thinking it would be chocolate, in fact, it was coconut. Oh well—she still said it was good. We walked some more gawking at the magnificent iron-work on the outside of almost all the buildings. There is a wonderful continuity, a symmetry, an affinity between the buildings. Everything fits together so well and simply pleases the eye. You just want to stand there and stare at everything.


We were getting hungry, so our objective was to hunt down an epicerie or a tratteur to buy some picnic food for a picnic by the Eiffel Tower. After half and hour, we had a baguette, Prosciutto, tabouli salad, and Camembert cheese. Tim also got a Leffe Brown beer.





We found a cozy plot of grass under a tree near the south leg of the Eiffel Tower. What a wonder it is! More on that later when we go to the top! Our picnic was yummy – bread and cheese in Paris is raised to fine art and we were eating that art. There were many people on the Champs de Mars hanging out with Paris’s favorite toy – the Tower. That’s all it is – a big toy. But for people who take playing as seriously as the Parisians do, that toy is important! It sparkles at night!





We walked to the Seine to board the Bateaux-Parisien boat for a tour of the river. The boat was huge, packed with over 200 people. We sat right on the edge of one of the sides practically with our feet dangling over. We passed under 24 of Paris’s bridges. The funniest thing about it was all the people we saw hanging out on the banks and quais. We would wave at them and they would wave at us. Everyone we saw was having such a good time. There were people dancing, people having picnics, people making out, people drinking wine, etc… It felt like the city was one big happy family celebrating something. There was nothing in particular to celebrate except the fact that we were all in Paris having a great time!





When we got back to the hotel, we wanted to get some ice to chill our beer. We asked the man at the counter and he went in the back and actually started scraping ice out of the freezer compartment of their small fridge! What dedication to pleasing the customer! So we chilled our beer, sat on our teeny balcony, planned the next day, finished our leftover picnic food, and wrote a few postcards. Our first day in Paris was filled with excitement and wonder. We were in love with the city already!

Posted by Tim and Jo at 10:10 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

March 27, 2006

Paris Chronicles!

Inspired partly by the amusing and beautifully written (although sometimes off-color) travelogues of William "Sundown" Sanders, we've decided to put up some of our Paris chronicles and pictures from our trip last summer. Hope you enjoy it! Stay tuned for our opening installment.

Posted by Tim and Jo at 07:45 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack