One of the greatest extravagances of our trip was
booking the private compartment on the train. It was so worth it. It is such a relief to travel to another country
by train: airports are so very horrible and flights oppressive. With a private
compartment, we didn’t have to worry about much of anything. We spread our luggage
out and let the soothing motion of the train relax us. Our compartment
had four chairs and four bunks. When night fell, the train attendant came to
secure our beds with her magic make-a-bed tool. I woke up at dawn as a rainy and
green French countryside chugged by us. I jiggled my way through at least ten
cars to the snack bar to obtain coffee and croissants, packed up our luggage, and waited for arrival.
(One of the best ways to snag decent prices on train
and plane tickets is to book two months in advance. I spent a lot of time comparing prices on
different websites. Also, it’s very important to let your credit card company know
that you’re spending money overseas, or you might run into trouble trying to
buy from non-US websites. Additionally, when you are out of the country, some businesses only take cash and others
won’t let you use anything that looks like a check card. Others expect you to
type in your PIN. Always have two cards and cash, and you’ll be safe.)
From the main
station, we took the metro to the Abbesses stop (As the host of our AirBnB
apartment said, “Take the elevator. The stairs are endless.”) Someone had
etched Obama’s image on the wall of the elevator car. We walked out into the
heart of Montmartre, one of the most adorable neighborhoods I’ve
experienced. It is sometimes now known as the Amelie neighborhood (after the
movie). Although we didn’t eat at the café at which Amelie worked, Les Deux Moulins, we had no trouble feeding and caffeinating ourselves.
We chose some
delicious savory and sweet pastries from a bakery and briefly picnicked in a
small park where we watched fifth-grade girls capture boys in a very frenetic
game. A screen siren was stenciled on the wall behind us. It was sunny. Montmartre has
book stores and vintage shops where towers of men’s hats and racks of high-waisted
floral minidresses live.
The Sacre Couer is a beautiful church set atop
Montmatre. From the grounds, there is a very satisfying view of the city.
Inside the church, there were very busy shushers. Their job is to patrol the
church, look for prohibited photographers and say “shhhhhhhh” as they point fingers at people who talk. More interesting to me was the performance
art outside the church. Street performer
Iya Traore is as exciting as any Cirque de Soleil performer. He
freestyles with a soccer ball, strips a little, and then climbs a lamppost
while doing absurd balancing tricks.
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The biggest disappointment
for me was Place Pigalle, home to the Moulin Rouge. I’m not exactly sure how I
put it together, but I had an image of a quaint little street with cobblestones
that ended in the majestic burlesque hall. Instead, it is a very busy average
city street with many lanes of traffic, cruder strip clubs, and lots of
identical sex shops. (That scene can be fun to explore in its own right, but that's not what I wanted to spend my precious hours in Paris doing.) In the middle of one of these busy street blocks, there is the red windmill, standing behind rows of
traffic and a gaggle of tourists. It did not inspire me to pay over $250 for
the two of us to see a show. Skipped it.
We spent a lovely
day walking through drizzle and tombs at Cimetière du PèreLachaise It is the largest
cemetery in Paris. There are possibly 300,000 bodies inside and underneath monuments
with columns, eerie statues, broken stained glass windows, and a crematorium. Although I was happy to view it, Jim Morrison’s gravestone is not that
remarkable. The poor monument in front
of it is covered in crude graffiti from fans. Oscar Wilde’s resting place is marked
by a flying nude angel and is disappointingly encased in glass. People had been
kissing his tomb for decades, and it had been covered in lipstick. So this was the fix. Lipstick sounds
way cooler than the banal Morrison graffiti. Like Morrison's, Edith Piaf’s grave is unassuming. There are many other historical celebrities buried in Pere Lachaise (See the website. There's a map.), but we could only afford to be there for a few hours. Nearing
the gate through which we left was a group of monuments for specific ethnic
groups involved in WWII. Although it is a bit thrilling to be at the graves of famous dead people, the graves of people unknown to me were just as captivating. I could spend days in that cemetery, exploring, photographing, contemplating.
Continuing the
tour of Paris’s dead, the longest line I consented to wait in during our whole
trip was for Les Catacombes de Paris ,
where 6 million skeletons are said to be stacked. The catacombs
were created at the end of the 18th century. Bones from old cemeteries were re-housed in a
quarry, and they are spectacular to behold. We spent at least an hour and a
half looking at bones and bones and bones in various configurations. The bones
were not arranged as intricately as the ones in the catacombs I saw in Rome,
but the scale of this display is hard to really conceptualize. It is one of,
but not the largest, catacombs in the world.
I saw the Eiffel
Tower at night, just as the observation decks were about to close, and there
was still a line. I was content to view it from the attached park, where sketchy
men were running around, interrupting conversations to sell light-up flimsy plastic
towers. The twinkle lights make the actual tower very festive. I’d like to visit Paris
in the winter sometime. Maybe, wrapped within a parka, the tourist experience
would be more palatable.
Notre Dame also
had a discouraging line. I think I spent more time looking at the adjacent bridge
which was decorated in locks. This is a thing now, tourist spaces using walls or railings as canvasses for growing installations. People write their names on
locks and connect them to symbolize the security of their relationships. We
didn’t buy a lock, but we found some cool ones. My favorite was a red “Johnny
& Kevin” with a winged heart.
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North of Notre
Dame is the Marais neighborhood. This is a great place to wander around,
looking at both reasonable and more upscale shops and lots of great places to
eat. Fancy men’s underwear ads consume the plate glass of a few store fronts.
Vintage 80s, including lots of menswear, for sale all over. We had some truly
delicious falafel and came back the next night to eat at a fancy vegan French
restaurant. I never thought I’d be able to eat French onion soup in a Parisian restaurant because of the beef broth, but we
were in luck. LePotager du Marais was able to
provide us with such a thing. It’s not a cheap place, and it’s cramped and popular,
but very worth it for vegetarians and vegans.
Other highlights
of the yummy variety: giant bowls of coffee at Coquelicot and Italian food at Le Coryllis.
We ended our stay
in Paris by wandering Montmartre on a dark and rainy night, buying souvenirs
such as a Moulin Rouge music box that plays “Thriller,” and listening to a Jazz
duo in a bar.
PS. I am angry at the html in this post. I'll do better next time.
Above: The street on which we stayed: Rue Yvonne le Tac
About those snotty French people...We couldn't find them.
PS. I am angry at the html in this post. I'll do better next time.
