A Sticker on the Sky and a Wild Goose Chase

Paris: Part One

I'm typically not one to idealize Paris. The French and specifically Parisian heritage I still have, if any, has raised me to be overly familiar with the ways of the Parisian French. The snobbery was no surprise, the aloofness and independent nature totally familiar. The food, the wine, the pastries: I just finished a program where it was all injected to our jugular as gospel truth.

But damn Paris is gorgeous. And it does need two posts.

Paris began with us realizing that our train pass was not as simple and cheap as I thought and had made it sound. We had to take a bit of a detour to keep it cheap which still put us in Paris for 2pm. Paris was our first experience with AirBnB, a vacation rental by owner situation. We found a tiny apartment in the Latin Quarter, top floor from which you can see the Pantheon and, after dark, the beam from the Eiffel Tower. It overlooked the clusters of those iconic Parisian rooftops, each like a mantlepiece lined with terracotta pots, vases and found things. 

 

We got ourselves unpacked and went down to the neighbourhood Carrefour to pick up some food. I can verifiably say that we ate a baguette everyday for four days. Our diet did stray from that but we made sure to incorporate something quintessentially Parisienne into our food cost. And everyone we saw was walking with one. Baguette, some good double cream brie and some jambon, we were set. We picked up three or four bottles of beautiful French red wine. For a couple of Euros each, how could you not? After this, we explored one of the most popular areas for food markets and cafes, the Rue de Mouffetard. Bourdain suggested a cafe along Rue de Mouffetard called La Papillion. We thought, maybe we'll hit it. Ya know, on our way home, real flexible like. Not open. In fact, closed until August 17th. All good, coincidental bad luck. Through this we discovered our morning ritual, a cafe dilonge (long shot espresso) at Le Verse Tojours and freshly baked croissants and Boulangerie a la Monde. 

We realized quickly people can tell when you're a tourist, even if you're trying hard not to look like one. And when they can tell you're a tourist, they ask where you're from. When you tell them Canada, they automatically assume you speak French. It's amazing how much you can pull together, just vocabulary wise. But 'Je ne parlez pas Francais' goes a long way when someone starts asking you for directions. 

First day, we went to book our train reservations for Barcelona, and from there waltzed along the Seine while the morning opened up. Curving around the Seine, you first see Ile St Joseph, the first of the two islands situated in the middle of the seine. Paris grew out of a small settlement of a tribe named the Parisii on these islands. Above the eastern most point of Ile de la Cite rises the gothic spires and gargoyles of the cathedral of Notre Dame. I instantly move into my most operatic rendition of the Bells of Notre Dame from Disney's Hunchback of Notre Dame, which is unfortunate because then for the rest of the day I had about six bars of it stuck in my head. 

We snap pictures of the exterior as we eye the forever snaking line to get into Notre Dame. We decide to come back earlier the next day and we'll got and find a place that Anthony Bourdain said has great croissants and OJ. This is the moment in our programming where we realized GoogleMaps is not in Europe what it is in North America. Another half hour of walking and staring at streets, feeling confused. We hit the Pantheon, by our place, which is where Marie Curie, Voltaire and Rousseau are all buried. It's for all the brainy ones. You can climb the steps all the way to the top to see a replica of Foucault's 67m pendulum that he used to prove the rotation of the earth. It had to be installed into the bell of the Pantheon because no where else at the time was big enough to fit it. 

We headed home and had our first French meal. Cheese and bread with some chilled Rose. We eased our aching feet and then took a walk to the Luxembourg Palace, which is now the seat of the French Senate. The French very much take pride in their gardens. Disney movies weren't lying. So many different flowers and succulents, palm trees, and topiaries. At most of the castles and palaces we saw, all the trees are are blunted into squares. 

On our way home, we walked back through Rue de Mouffetard and found an Egyptian cafe with hookah. Sitting in cafe as the sun set, and the terraces opened for the late night drinks along the tiny cobblestoned streets was the perfect way to end our first day. We kicked our shoes off and collapsed into bed. We fell asleep to the distant sound of an accordion playing in the background. 

Our second day we were determined to get a handle on addresses and to find them definitively on the maps. No more GoogleMaps nonsense. First stop, the Invalides.  Louis XIV built the Hotel de la Invalides for unwell soldiers. It was meant to be a place for the sick and the dying, where they would otherwise have no where to go and no one to care for them. It has fifteen different courtyard including one called the 'cour d'honneur', or 'Court of Honor' for military parades. This set it up to be somewhat of a big deal. Parisian rioters stormed the Invalides and took the cannons so that they could storm the Bastille during the French Rev. Alfred Dreyfus was degraded here during the Dreyfus affair. Napoleon is buried there! The building itself was inspired by St. Peter's Basilica in Rome and conversely, the Capitol building in Washington, DC was based off of Les Invalides. That 'wedding cake' construction just has this je ne se quois. 

From there we were going to go find another Bourdain destination, armed with better directions and addresses. Our destination is Le Royale, for friggin croissants and OJ. This time, we found it fairly quickly and very quickly found that it was closed. Until September 3. We start that kind of laughing -that funny laughing. Not funny 'ha-ha' but funny 'something's loose up there' laughing.  

From here, we were only a few blocks off of Tour Eiffel. Laughing off the Le Royale but feeling a little hungry, we wandered over to the Champs de Mars to take some pictures. The sky was cloudless and it somehow functioned to emphasize how…small the Eiffel Tower is. It's not small. It's an 81-story building. But it stands so LARGE in memory, in cultural consciousness, that when you see it, the first thing that leaps to mind is, "I thought it'd be bigger." It kind of looked like a sticker on the sky, one that you bought at a Post Card shop. 

What about Bourdain's other suggestion near the Eiffel Tower? We have truly bad luck with this stuff. Feeling like the Eiffel Tower kind of looked like a sticker against the sky at the moment, with high sun and no cloud, we went for one last jaunt. Well worth it. 

La Cocotte, is a restaurant concept from Christian Constant where he centres his menu around a Staub cocotte, which is a stoneware baking dish. Almost everything came in it. Some nice red wine, some amazing country style pate, some red fish with tapanade and the original Cesar Ritz salad, all within view of the Eiffel Tower, that day got to be our splurge. 

From there, we crossed the Seine and up to the Arc de Triomphe. We pushed past the ritzy shopping district on Avenue George V and up Avenue Champs Elysee. The Arc is much bigger in person than it looks. We wander through the tunnel that leads up to the Arc. Temporary fences partition off the arch. There are veterans, flags and a full military band. Everyone in the place was just silent. We later find out that August 10th is the anniversary of the storming of the Tuileries and the start of the French Revolution. The ceremony lasted probably about half an hour. There is a tomb of an Unknown Soldier underneath the arch. There is always a flame lit above the inscription that reads, ICI REPOSE UN SOLDAT FRANÇAIS MORT POUR LA PATRIE 1914–1918 ("Here lies a French soldier who died for the fatherland 1914–1918"). 

From the Arc you could see the sun just dipping behind the spire of the Eiffel Tower. Reading to sit down and relax with some wine, we wandered over. The Eiffel Tower is one of the buildings that is so large in lore and in expectation that when you see it during the day, when there is all the hustle and bustle, it's almost underwhelming. But then night falls. The columns light up with spot lights. Suddenly, it reaches up into the black night, it's beam seemingly reaching far beyond Paris. It is all you have been told and all you imagined when you pictured it in your mind. The first five minutes of the hour arrive. Bulbs that line every beam on the tower go off randomly. It really does sparkle. And it takes your breath away. When the lights first started, there was a collective gasp from the entire park. There is something about watching it sparkle that pictures don't do justice to. It simply seems lit up. But seeing it sparkle makes it what you walked across Paris to see. 

All credits for these photos go to my husband,
Moozh Dempsey

The 'sparkle' was gone as it came and we stayed until a merciful chill started to set it, just watching the beam circle around. Strolling back down the Champ de Mars, you walk past the twenty-something girls travelling Europe together and snapping pictures of each other in front of the tower. You pass the small French families eating dinner as their young kids dance and scream in the dusk. You pass the couples sitting and making a moment of it. You cross to the back green, past the uni students and the partiers drinking bottles of wine to themselves. Past the Mur de la Paix, or Mural of Peace, where 'peace' is written in 32 different languages to symbolize life in the third millennium.

Paris is just getting started.

Bonjour! Un croissant, s'il vous plait. Quatre-vingts centimes. Merci au vous. Bientôt!

Get a friggin croissant. Eat it. Repeat. Enjoy.

Things I learned in Paris:
Don't miss the moment. (Are you seeing a pattern?)
Even histories that are so far beyond you can sometimes still feel relevant.
Bread and cheese is a friggin meal man!

Quote from Paris:
Me: Our waitress is so nice.
Moozh: Why?
Me: She got all excited when I got here, "Bonjour! Ca Va Bien!"
Moozh: What does that mean?
Me: I don't know but I said, "Bien" and she acted like that made sense.