When In London...

…talk some more about Paris.

Yes, this is the real Paris update you’ve all been waiting for. I’m afraid that since it’s been a week and a half (and since I have visited two more cities, two more countries, and one more continent since then!), my recollections won’t be as prolonged or vivid as they might otherwise have been, but you’ll have to bear with me through a rather impressionistic update. You can also look through my scenery-heavy pictures here.

Friday, October 30

We caught an early-morning flight out of London Luton airport, which is perhaps the most awkward airport in London to get to (although I can’t speak from authority, since I’ve only flown out of three of the five thus far). We had to get a taxi at 5:30AM in order to get to the airport in time to make it through security and be ready to board our plane on time. We arrived in Paris (at Charles de Galle, and after some more experiences with Ryanair, I have to tell you how rare it is for a discount airline to fly into a major airport) and took the RER train from the airport to Gare du Nord, where we took the metro straight to our hotel (Hotel Picard, inordinately proud of its two star rating). It was cheap and really just a place to sleep at night, but I’m totally fine with that, and it was only two blocks from Place de la Republique, which is pretty centrally located on the Metro, making it easy to get from place to place. I frankly love the Paris Metro; it’s easy to use, efficient, and clean. It doesn’t have the same kind of branding applied to it as the London Underground, but it doesn’t need it; the metro stops are still signed (for the most part) with the art deco-inspired signs developed when the metro was first implemented.

The first thing we did when we got there was go to Pere Lachaise, a very large and fairly well-known cemetery that was within walking distance of Place de la Republique (it would have been a very fast metro ride, but we wanted to find some food and some espresso along the way). I was a little tired and a little hungry and, at times, a little annoyed (it was very easy to get lost in Pere Lachaise, and none of us had maps), but the cemetery was beautiful. If any of you have seen the film Paris, Je T’aime, it’s the same cemetery that has Oscar Wilde’s grave in it. (For those of you who haven’t seen it, I’d recommend it, keeping in mind that it’s a bunch of short films and the caliber does vary.) I saw the grave of Wilde, as well as Eugene Delacroix (painter of “Liberty Leading the People”), Moliere, Chopin, and others that I can’t at this moment remember. Me, Sam, and Jess split off from the boys (Nav and Oren) pretty early on and spent three hours wandering through the place, trying to find all of the graves on our lists, but also taking the time to really enjoy the place. I took so many pictures, and they can’t even begin to capture it. The weather was just the right shade of gloom, the leaves on the trees were yellowing and beginning to fall — in short, perfect cemetery atmosphere.

After Pere Lachaise, we went to Montmartre and climbed the hill to see the church of Sacre Coeur. We went in, but didn’t climb to the top; it was a chilly, overcast day, so the view was obstructed by fog. We did, however, ride on a merry-go-round and giggle like small children, as well as eat our first Parisian crepes. (They were yummy!)

Saturday, October 31

Since Reno and Drew had class on Friday and couldn’t fly out with us, they came in Saturday. We had an unintentionally leisurely morning waiting for them to arrive, but once they got settled in and we got breakfast (for me, this consisted of croissants and a shared bottle of milk from the small corner store across the street from the hotel — thankfully Oren is also a nonfat milk drinker), we made our way to Ile de la Cite, arguably the center of Paris. This island in the middle of the Seine is home to Notre Dame, Saint Chapelle, the Conciergerie prison, and the Palais du Justice (and probably more, but those are the big things that I know about that are there). After having spent my entire summer reading and re-reading A Tale of Two Cities for work, actually seeing the sites of events during the French Revolution was impressive — for instance, Charles Darnay is imprisoned in the Conciergerie while he awaits his execution, and it is in this prison that Sydney Carton changes his life for Darnay’s.

I don’t even know what to say about Notre Dame, except that you can’t possibly do it justice. I want to learn French now (even more than I did before) so that I can read Victor Hugo without translation and see if he manages it. We climbed all the way to the top of one of the towers of the church, and the view out over Paris was spectacular. We also got to go up inside one of the bell towers and see one of the bells — one that they still actually ring. I was surprised how accurate Disney’s Hunchback of Notre Dame was to the architecture of the place; I even found individual gargoyles that looked a lot like the ones that come to life in the movie.

Inside, there was choral music playing, and the clouds cast alternating light and shadow through the hundreds of panels of stained glass. Paris taught me, among other things, that I am in love with stained glass. St. Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican might be the largest church in the world, but to me, it pales in comparison with Notre Dame. My friends (who have not yet been to Italy) laughed when I exclaimed at how much more intimate it felt — of course it’s still huge, but it’s nowhere near on the same scale as St. Peter’s. And perhaps that’s why I like it. It feels like a better compromise between God’s scale and man’s. I can actually imagine services being held at Notre Dame, and the next time I’m in Paris I would love to attend one.

Afterwards, we crossed the bridge to Ile de Saint Louis (a smaller island in the Seine) where we had lunch and ice cream accompanied by a beautiful view before making our way over to the Louvre. It was late afternoon, but I had remembered reading somewhere that the Louvre was open until 8pm. We got there at 4:30ish only to learn that it closed at 5:30, so we decided to come back the next day, and instead made our way over to the Eiffel Tower. Our timing was perfect; we arrived just as the sun was setting, about ten minutes before the tower lit up.

You don’t really realize how tall the Eiffel Tower is, even when you’re standing under it. At least, I didn’t. It wasn’t until I got up to the first observation deck, which is maybe a third of the way up the tower, that I realized this thing is big. This realization was followed in quick succession by the realization that I still had another two thirds to go up. In the elevator that takes you from the middle observation deck to the top, my ears popped. Oren and I were both squeaking like little girls about how we weren’t sure we’d be able to manage the height, neither of us being terribly fond of tall things. Jess had been before, and Reno is a self-proclaimed heights junkie, so there was a little laughter at our expense.

By the time we got to the top, we were high enough up that the entire view was shrouded in fog. It made the ground seem even further away — like it wasn’t really there, or like I was just looking at a picture. Frankly, it was probably easier that way than if it had been clear out. I would have been much more scared by the prospect of seeing exactly how far up I was. The fog made everything seem surreal, and diffused the light from the tower in strange ways. My knees were a little shaky, but I’m going to take the liberty of attributing that to the amount of walking I’d done that day.

Sunday, November 1:

Me, Oren, Jess, and Reno spent four hours of this day wandering the halls of the Louvre and being generally awed by the art. Nav and Drew were supposed to join us, but they were apparently out until 4AM the night before (we later learned they got caught up in an impromptu jam session on the banks of the Seine?) and we wanted to be there when the museum opened so the four of us left without them. Sam had been to Paris multiple times before and there were other museums she wanted to see, so she left us.

Originally we hadn’t wanted to go to the Louvre on this Sunday because it was the first Sunday of the month and admission was free; we were sure the crowds would be ridiculous. But since we had come too late the night before, we shrugged and just planned to show up early. Frankly, I didn’t have any problems with the crowds; there were a lot of people, it’s true, and in some places there were too many camera flashes going off for my liking (even though you’re not supposed to use flash in the museum), but we still saw everything we had really wanted to, and some things that were beautiful that I didn’t know were missing from my life until I saw them.

The first and foremost among this latter category is the partially intact sculpture known as the Winged Victory of Samothrace. This woman, arms and head missing, nonetheless stands victorious at the top of a staircase at the end of a long passageway, the museum seemingly designed around her. Winged Victory was more impressive than anything else I saw in the Louvre, all the famous and typical pictures included. The only things that came close for me were Delacroix’s “Liberty Leading the People” and David’s “Coronation of Napoleon” (which takes up an entire wall — it’s about as big as Napoleon’s ego).

After the Louvre, we decided to make our way toward the Garnier Opera House, made famous by Gaston Leroux’s novel (and later Andrew Lloyd Webber’s musical) The Phantom of the Opera. We were planning on taking a guided tour, but it turned out we should have asked ahead — a matinee performance was scheduled, so the theatre was closed to tourists. We strolled back in the general direction of the Louvre and found a cafe where we had croques madame, very French sandwiches involving cheese, ham, and fried eggs. We met back up with Sam and walked in the rain (it was a very gloomy weekend) to the Musee d’Orsay, which houses impressionist art, but we didn’t end up going in since the lines were so long. Jess and Sam split to visit the Rodin sculpture garden, and along with Oren and Reno, I made my way back to Place de la Republique, where the three of us found a comfortable cafe and drank hot chocolate for a couple of hours. They read, I wrote, beginning my NaNoWriMo novel by hand in a small journal I purchased at the Louvre, with an image of Winged Victory on the cover.

Monday, November 2

We went back to the Garnier Opera House, and it was a good thing we did, because not only did we get in to see the opera house, we also got to take the guided tour, because we happened to be there in time for the one that was in English. The theatre is gorgeous, and walking through there felt like being part of Phantom of the Opera. (Sidenote: after getting back from Paris, Reno and I booked tickets to see Love Never Dies, the musical sequel to Phantom, during its opening run in London this spring. Will it be terrible? Probably. Will that still be awesome? Definitely.) Since Jess and Sam were gone, and Nav and Drew were basically doing their own thing, the day was really relaxed and we just took our time.

After the Opera House, we got coffee and cheesecake before heading back in the general direction of the Louvre and Notre Dame. We strolled and just checked out the area. Reno and I went into Saint Chapelle (reinforcing my love of stained glass), after which we found this strange American-style diner (Happy Days Diner, I believe) just across the river from Notre Dame, where we got cheap meals, which we ate in the plaza in front of Notre Dame before returning to our hotel, picking up our bags, and catching the bus back to the airport.