Loring arrived. His arrival as I imagined it did not
happen. He’d said his flight left Boston
one and a half hours late. I had arrived, or almost arrived, at Rue Gay Lussac,
after 11AM. I remember specifically, probably minutes before falling down the
up escalator, worrying because I’d kept Pierre waiting over a half hour. Then
again, shouldn’t he have known better than I how long it should take from the
airport to the apartment? But, I digress.
Because of the above factors, I didn’t start looking from the balcony
for Loring until 11 am. I was sitting just inside, at the window, and writing
this blog, I believe.
I stood up to go to the bathroom, took a peek out from the
balcony, and there he was, and had been waiting, for five or ten minutes
already. I guess the pilot made up for lost time.
So what I’d envisioned for days, waiting at the balcony and
seeing him emerge from the metro, never happened. Oh, well.
The first day, after a brief rest for Loring at the
apartment, we set out on my potential planned itinerary for day one, the easy
one, as I told him. And we actually
wound up doing everything I had tentatively planned. First, a walk through the
Luxembourg Gardens, to Rue Fluerus, to pay tribute to Gertrude and Alice and
entourage. We’d heard music at the
bandstand from the apartments, just as I had a week or two before, and wound up listening to the group for a
while before crossing the park. It was a Hungarian band, three brothers, a
cousin, and one unrelated guy. I recognized one tune, something I had danced to
in folk dances groups years before. Their website described them as reviving
and playing traditional music that had been collected by Bela Bartok. But what
they played sounded like a mix of traditional, jazz, and almost a klezmer
sound. They were terrific. They had three tiny stringed instruments that we
didn’t hear them play, but that I read were at the crux of their music.
We moved along, and across the gardens, to chez
Gertrude. Then back around the edge of
the gardens to the Pantheon. It is a beautiful building with an impressive
dome. The dome is currently under renovation, and is entirely covered with
scaffolding, an impressive sight in itself. In all my many times in Paris, I
had never before been there. It is right in my neighborhood, and I
had walked by it, or at least seen the dome, pretty much every day this trip. The Pantheon
is famous for the many people whose tombs are in the crypt there, including
Victor Hugo, Marie and Pierre Curie, Voltaire, and many many others. We spent some time in the main area of the
Pantheon, and then headed down to the many corridors of the tombs. I recognized
many names, some were people I knew of, many other names that I recognized from
street names or metro stops.
We headed on, down the Boul Mich and across the Seine,
passing by Notre Dame, and headed over to Paris Plage. I still find it quite
whimsical, and love the fact that Parisians enjoy it so much. Unfortunately, we got to the stage where they
do tai chi in the mornings and have dancing at night, too late. I don’t
understand why the music and dancing end at 8pm, when everything in Paris seems
to go late, and it doesn’t get dark until after 10 pm.
Next day, we walked quite a bit and eventually headed over to
the Arts and Metiers museum, which I thought that Loring would really
appreciate, and where I’d tried to meet Matthew, but where we’d somehow missed each
other. Loring did like it, to an extent,
and I was happy to pay another visit, not having seen everything on the first
time around. They have everything from models of old weaving machines to early
flying machines to early tv sets to computers. But, as Loring pointed out, the
tech displays, touch screens, etc. don’t seem very well designed, and don’t work
well. Some of them don’t work at all. Ironic, to say the least, for a museum of
technology. But I still like the old timey feel of the place, the beautiful
wood and glass cases, highlighting the technology of the19th century when the
museum was built, and of times before that.
And all the beautiful models, works of art themselves.
I tried to be good and not schedule
or suggest too many museums for Loring’s three days. Not the Louvre, nor the
Orsay, nor many others, but did suggest the Pompidou and the Carnavalet
(history of Paris) as well as the ones above.
I’d scouted around for restaurants
that were authentic but not expensive. Neither of us likes stuffy gourmet
restaurants, we both prefer little hole in the wall places. There’s a plethora of sushi, Mexican, you name it ethnic restaurants as well as the
pretty decent food in the neighborhood cafes, where I’d had several
meals. I found one place listed as
inexpensive that was not far from the apartment, and then walked right past it
one day without having been looking for it.
So that seemed like the place, atmospheric, old, not expensive, nearby. On
Loring’s first day, we happened to walk by, and I pointed it out, saying we should
go there our last evening. And we did. The name of the place is Polidor. It’s
been there since 1845. I’d say little has changed in that time period. Most
remarkable is the only toilet, a Turkish style. ceramic hole in the floor kind.
When I pointed out the restaurant to
Loring, I noticed a photo of Woody Allen in the window. A a young American man
standing outside the restaurant said to us, “Have you seen Midnight in Paris?” And added, “this is where they filmed the
scene where Owen Wilson meets Hemingway. He also told us that Hemingway had
been a regular at the place, as well as other luminaries. I debated asking him
if he’d paid homage chez Gertrude and Alice, and now am sorry I didn’t
mention it. Perhaps he already knew.
So I guess I can say I used the
same toilet that Hemingway did. I think that might even be more exciting than
seeing the bathroom at his house in Cuba, which I could only peer in at. It was
beautiful, though,
The food at Polidor was perfect,
just what I’d hoped, real old home style food. I’d planned on having the lamb,
the special every Sat. and Sunday, but they were out of it. We’d come too late,
said the waitress, who was also perfectly suited to the environment. So I had a
turkey leg cooked with cabbage in a kind of stew, which was delicious. They
somehow kept the skin crisp, I wish I knew how. It was too much to eat, so I
asked her to package up the rest for me to take home. But she didn’t understand
me, and tossed it. I was desolate. Next trip, I guess.
They had made a few concessions to
modernity, although not with the toilet. There was a sign that said, No credit
cards taken, since 1845. The modernity was not that they took credit cards, but
that they had a modern funny sign, although they made it out to look old.
One day, as we walked along the Seine,
Loring noticed a police boat rushing down the river. We leaned over the wall,
between the booksellers’ stalls, to see. Within minutes another boat, this one
filled with firefighters, pulled up. We watched for a bit, not seeing anyone in
danger. Then we noticed, first a young woman in a bikini, then, a few minutes
later, a young man also in a swimsuit, at the edge of the water. The couple, and the
officers, huddled there for five or ten minutes as we watched, trying to figure
out what had occurred. Neither seemed terribly distressed, but they didn’t seem
too happy either. As we were ready to continue on, officers brought over
aluminum wraps for the two, the kind they give runners after a marathon. It
seemed odd that after ten or so minutes
they were finally concerned about the couple being chilled.
Our guess, finally,
was that they had dove into the Seine, probably not allowed or a good idea, and
then couldn’t climb out. They also
happened to be right at the stop for the tourist boat, which of course came
along right then, although the tourists seemed only slightly interested. We never did find out. I forgot to look at the
paper the next day, just as I had forgotten to look for info on the
demonstration I’d watched from my little balcony.
Later in the day were hot and tired
after a lot of walking. We didn’t dive into the Seine, though. We weren’t far from the Canal St. Martin, so
headed there, thinking we’d find a shady spot to sit, But the shady side of the
canal was already crammed with folks, and the sunny side was too hot, so we
decided to move on.
I thought of the Buttes Chaumont, a park I’d been to once before when I was with my mosaic group. So we headed
there, our first and perhaps only time in the metro together. I hadn’t been
using it much, unlike on other trips, and after mishap #2, when my hand got
caught in the door, I wasn’t much fond of either metro cars or escalators. But the Buttes are in one of the further out
arrondissements, and at least I was tired of walking. We emerged on one of the longest escalators in the city. The Buttes were under extensive renovation, and were
pretty crowded on this hot sunny day. We did find a shady spot, and both took
naps. While lying half asleep, I heard an odd tinkling sound I couldn’t place.
After a while looking, I realized it was vendors walking through the park,
sellilng bottled drinks, and tapping their openers against the bottles. They
did it in a restrained way, not when they were too near people, and not too
loudly. The sound was in fact kind of pleasant. After seeing several, I
realized that the men were not selling bottled water, as vendors do near all
the big monuments and museums. They were selling bottles of wine and beer. One more cultural difference.
We did go to another museum, the Orangerie
in the Tuileries that is home to Monet’s expansive water lily panels, which the
space was designed to hold. They are
definitely worth viewing every few years. Too bad my Museum pass was no longer
valid, it was one of the places where the pass let you jump the line. Last time
I was there I was on my own, and saw a very distinct image of Monet himself in
one of the panels. I was curious to see if I’d have the same reaction now,
several years later. I sure did, as
distinct as before. I could envision others too, but they required more imagination
and were not as precise and didn’t look especially like Monet. I had previously
convinced myself that this was Monet’s intentional doing, his little joke on
viewers. But now I wasn’t quite as sure.
We went into the second room of
paintings, and then returned through the first. I asked Loring to take my picture
with Monet. Just as he did, another visitor gestured precisely outlining the
place where I saw Monet’s face. Loring is certain that the man saw the same
image I see in the painting. And just as
I had convinced myself that I was the only one in on Monet’s little joke. I have looked but never found any reference
to Monet’s self portrait in the water lilies.
On the day we saw the rescued stranded swimmers we walked through the Ile
St. Louis, a beautiful little island in the Seine. I knew from various
guidebooks that the supposed best ice cream in Paris, Berthillion, was there,
but had never sampled it. Now it seems that every corner on the Ile, and other
places too, serve Berthillon ice cream. I wonder if the original place still
has the long lines that the guidebooks always described. So, even though it was
still morning, it seemed that the time to sample Berthillon had come. We shared
a two flavor cone, chocolate and mocha. It was good, but I have to say that the
ice cream I had at Paris Plage was even better. Sorry Berthillon.
And that concludes the last stage
of my Paris soujourn, three days with Loring to end the month. And we did watch
the Tower sparkle, all three nights.
Next, on to London…
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