Tuesday, July 24, 2007

That Last Week in Paris...

I had that one last week after the end of classes and before coming to Prague. So I took advantage of the opportunity to play tourist and to take a few more pictures to remind myself of my sojourn in Paris.

Sunday in Montmartre

I spent one day wandering up and down staircases in Montmartre:

I also liked this view of Sacré Cœur from the little park around in back of the Basilica:

And I had dinner one last time in Montmartre:

Tuesday on the Seine

I finally took one of the Bateaux Mouches trips. I can't really say that I was all that impressed, and I probably wouldn't do it again. But it does provide a different view of Paris:



There are a couple of reduced scale versions of the Statue of Liberty in Paris: one is in the Luxembourg Gardens, and another is on an island in the Seine:

After my little boat trip, I just wandered around a bit, and came across this memorial:

The caption reads, "In homage to Komitas, composer and musicologist, and to the 1,500,000 victims of the Armenian genocide of 1915, perpetrated by the Ottoman Empire".

Marais and the Bastille

Another day, I wandered around the Marais and visited the Place de la Bastille:

I encountered this statue of Louis XIII in a plaza near the Marais:

I also visited the Memorial of the Shoah, which I had been unable to find the first time I had looked. It's not very big, and it's easy to get disoriented in the windy little streets of the Marais. The memorial is very moving:

The inscription on the outside reads, "Before the Unknown Jewish Martyr, incline your head in piety and respect for all the martyrs; incline your thoughts to accompany them along their path of sorrow. They will lead you to the highest pinnacle of justice and truth."

The exterior also contains the Wall of Names: the names and dates of birth of the 76,000 Jews, including 11,000 children, deported from France as part of the Nazi plan to annihilate the Jews of Europe with the collaboration of the Vichy government.

Inside, there's the crypt:

A Star of David fashioned out of black marble, marks the tomb of the six million Jews, dead without a grave. It contains the ashes of martyrs taken from the death camps and from the ruins of the Warsaw Ghetto. The ashes were buried on February 24,1957 in earth from Israel, in keeping with tradition, by Chief Rabbi Jacob Kaplan. An eternal light burns at the center of the marble star. There's quotation from the Bible in Hebrew on the far wall: "Look and see if there is any sorrow like my sorrow. Young and old, our sons and daughters were cut down by the sword".

The permanent exhibition details the history of the "Final Solution" in France, and includes biographies of a handful of Jews resident in France at the time the Occupation began. It was not a cheery experience, but it was an important site to see.

Carousels of Paris

And there are carousels all over the place in Paris. There's this one in the Tuileries:

This one is on one side of the Pont d'Iéna, near the Trocadéro Gardens:

And this one is on the other side of the Pont d'Iéna, near the Eiffel Tower:

And this one I found in the Marais:

I don't really get the carousel thing, but I enjoy looking at them!

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Saturday, June 23, 2007

The End of Classes

No more pencils!
No more books!
No more teacher's
Dirty looks!

Yesterday marked the end of my French classes (at least for the time being!). I'm feeling a little bit wistful now.

Now I have one last week in Paris, free of classes, before I head for Prague and my next round of classes. Whatever shall I do?...

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Thursday, June 21, 2007

I went to Disneyland!

As advertised, I went to Disneyland last Wednesday (the 13th).

Euro-Disney is very like its California counterpart: everything is spic 'n' span, lines at the rides move along briskly, there are ample opportunities to meet Disney characters, and there are more than enough places to buy over-priced food and drinks and merchandise.

It was not, in fact, very French at all. The French visitors were vastly outnumbered by the American and British visitors. It seems that everyone on the staff speaks English; in fact, I was surprised to see that a lot of the signs were in English only, which I had thought was prohibited. While Fantasyland was somewhat transposed to France, there's blatantly nothing French about Frontierland or Main Street, USA. Discoveryland and Adventureland are pretty much stateless. The main French touch: the availability of wine and beer.

Neither was it particularly crowded; granted, it was midweek and rather early in the tourist season, but still... The lack of crowds, though, meant that I was able to get in two rides on each of the three roller coasters: Big Thunder Mountain, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Peril (aside: I didn't realize that Disney owned, or at least was licensing, the Indiana Jones franchise), and Space Mountain: Mission 2. Space Mountain was my favorite: a lot of it takes place in the dark and I found that the resulting disorientation increased the excitement. Star Tours (and I didn't realize that Disney owned or was licensing the Star Wars franchise, either) was also fun. Buzz Lightyear Laser Blast was really geared towards little kids and was rather hokey, but it was still entertaining. On the more sedate side, I always like carousels, and the riverboat ride was pleasant. Alas, Phantom Manor was closed during my visit.

Slideshow

I've put the rest of my pictures into a slideshow (this will open in a new window).

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Evening at the Cabaret

The other evening, I went to Le Lapin Agile, "Paris's oldest bar-cabaret and a Montmartre landmark".

The story behind the name: In 1875 the painter-caricaturist André Gill painted a sign of a rabbit jumping out of a saucepan: "Le Lapin à Gill" changed quite naturally into Lapin Agile (the nimble rabbit).

The doors open at about 9:15 PM, and most of those there at that hour were tourists: a few little groups of students, a Japanese couple and another small group of Japanese tourists, and me. There were also a two or three French couples. A group of Japanese businessmen showed up a little later, and after about 10, French couples started trickling in.

The show itself is very simple: shortly after we were seated, a man came in and started playing the piano. About 15 minutes later, a few people came in, sat down at a table in the middle of the room, and just started singing. These then were the performers. It all looked and sounded very unstructured: they took turns with their solos and encouraging the group singalongs. The Japanese businessmen in particular took some good natured ribbing about their reluctance to join in the group singing. "How hard is it to sing 'la la lala la'"? got them singing, too. While some of the French refrains were a little too complicated for me (or the other tourists) to pick up on, the French guests sang along happily, and several of the songs had refrains no more complicated than the afore-mentioned "la la lala la" or "oui, oui, oui; non, non, non." When the pianist took his breaks, someone else would take out a guitar or an accordion.

They don't try to serve food, and while a drink is included in the cover charge, they make no subsequent effort to push further drinks. It made for a very pleasant and relaxed evening.

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Wednesday, June 20, 2007

Louvre, Revisited

I went back to the Louvre last week, specifically to the see the Praxiteles exposition.

Praxiteles was a Greek sculptor from the 4th century BC. Virtually none of his work is known to have survived intact. Most of the bronze work was melted down, and the little that survives is corroded and fragmentary, while the work in marble has at the very least been chipped if not broken. As a result, most of what is known about Praxiteles's sculptures comes from written accounts.

So, how do you put together an exposition for an artist who has no surviving, complete work?

  1. You display the fragmentary work, and
  2. You display the copies and pastiches of his work

So, there are multiple variations on, for example, the Aphrodite of Cnidus: Praxiteles is credited with being the first to sculpt female nudes. There are also variations on Apollo Sauroktonos (Apollo the Lizard Slayer: how's that for an appellation to strike terror in the hearts of your enemies?) and the Leaning Satyr. In addition, the exhibit included several statues of a woman who may or may not have been Phryne, who may or may not have been Praxiteles's lover.

I was a little disappointed by the exposition: the multiple variations on just a few prototypical pieces were redundant.

I also wandered around the rest of the Louvre, since I hadn't seen everything my first visit (and still haven't with this second visit). As usual, I mostly focused on sculpture. The last time there, I had missed Canova's Cupid and Psyche:

I think I found my lion friend in the same room:

He's particularly engaging in closeup, although the picture doesn't do him justice:

I spent a couple of hours wandering around the Decorative Arts, which I very much enjoyed. I don't know how I missed it before. And I visited the Islamic Art collection, which is the newest and not yet complete addition to the Louvre's permanent collections. There were some lovely pieces, but it doesn't really come together well yet.

Tourist season has not begun in full force yet, but even on a weekday afternoon, the crowds are starting to mount up:

The public buildings in Paris, such as churches and palaces, never cease to amaze me. I have enormous difficulty wrapping my brain around constructing places on such a grand scale. The only thing comparable we have in the States are shopping malls. And will people still be going to, say, the Mall of America in a few hundred years? (Oh, Lordy: I hope not!)

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Paris, Je T'aime

I went to see this the other day, with no particularly high expectations. I was pleasantly surprised. Of the 18 mini-films, 3 were laugh-out-loud funny, and 4 made me cry. Some of the other 12 were merely "heh", but none was actively bad. So not a bad mix.

I particularly like Carol in the last segment, 14e Arrondisement:

Her accent, and her French, are perfectly execrable. While I flatter myself that I'm not that bad, my professor in Oral French has observed, somewhat reluctantly, that I continue to speak with a strong American accent. Which can be charming, she hastened to assure me.

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Tuesday, June 12, 2007

I'm going to Disneyland!

Okay, it's totally silly and pointless and why did I even come to France in the first place if I'm just going to go to Disneyland?

But I am. Tomorrow. For no real reason except that my classes are winding down to a conclusion and I want to. So just lay off, okay? (What? Am I just a little defensive here?)

Details (and probably pictures) will follow after my return.

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Sunday, June 03, 2007

Versailles, Revisited

There's only one excuse for visiting Versailles on a summer weekend: to see the fountains in action. It's too expensive to run the fountains all the time, so they're only on for a few hours a day on weekends from April through September. (Versailles also charges admission to the gardens on these days; otherwise, entry is free.) There's also a soundtrack of Baroque music, played by Le Concert Spirituel.

While I had enjoyed the gardens on the occasion of my earlier visit, being able to see the fountains in action made it ever so much better.

A smattering of the fountains, starting with the Apollo fountain:

The fountain in the Bosquet of the Pyramid:

The Dragon basin:

The fountain in the Bosquet de la Girandole:

There were more people in the gardens this time (surprise, surprise), and the row boat rentals were open:
Pity they don't have paddle boats, though, like the ones at Stow Lake.

Since I was there, though, I took advantage of the opportunity to visit the Dauphin's apartments (which I hadn't had time for before) and the apartments of Mesdames (which are open only on weekends), as well to spend a little more time in the gardens at the Petit Trianon:

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Crown of Thorns

Notre Dame de Paris has three major relics:

  • the Crown of Thorns
  • a piece of the Holy Cross, and
  • one of the nails of the Passion.
Indeed, it was to house these that Louis IX built Sainte-Chapelle, which I visited in January. But after the Revolution, the relics ended up in the keeping of the Cathedral, where they are displayed to the faithful on the first Friday of every month (as well as the Fridays of Lent and Good Friday).

This past Friday was the first Friday of June, and I cut class to attend the 3 PM service of Veneration of the Crown of Thorns. After a brief Liturgy of the Word, the Crown is presented for Veneration. The fragment of the Cross and the Nail are also displayed, but not presented. The Crown, mostly stripped of its thorns (there are several churches that claim individual thorns as relics), is kept in a reliquary in the form of a glass tube ornamented with gold and tied to a velvet pillow. I filed up with the rest of the congregation to kiss the reliquary.

Now, widespread counterfeiting of relics in the Middle Ages makes authenticity of any purported relic dubious. (Just how many heads did John the Baptist have, after all? And if you assembled all the alleged pieces of the True Cross, you could build a small village.) And even if authenticity is conceded (the Crown of Thorns has a pretty solid provenance), the veneration of relics still makes me a little uncomfortable, smacking as it does of superstition. It's not as though the relic itself has any power.

So then why did kissing the reliquary make me cry?

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Thursday, May 31, 2007

Réjouis-toi, Marie

Notre-Dame is showing another "opera of images", like the Lumen de Lumine, Lumière née de la Lumiére show I saw in January. This one is based upon the Akathist hymn, a Byzantine hymn to Our Lady.

This one was not quite as successful, in my opinion. It is projected from behind onto a sheer screen. But this time of year at 9 PM, it's still light, so the windows and sanctuary were visible through the screen, and the double images gave me a headache. In addition, the English translation (where it existed) stood in serious need of proofreading. It seems that Mary bore in her womb a "bake," thus serving as a sanctuary for "Gog," who is a friend of "makind".

The images were lovely, though (if only I could have seen them better!), and the music was splendid. And there was only one occasion on which a barbarian decided to take a flash picture.

After the show, I wandered along the Seine a little and watched the bateaux mouches go by.

I'm going to have to take one of those boat trips sometime soon. Before I leave Paris.

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Wednesday, May 30, 2007

Musée Rodin

Last week's sightseeing trip was a visit to the Musée Rodin, one of my favorites. They had just opened a new exhibit, Le Rêve Japonais (The Japanese Dream), which includes both Japanese selections from Rodin's private collection as well as Japanese inspired works of Rodin.

I was not all that blown away by the exhibit, although that says more about my tastes than the exhibit. The reason I really visit the Rodin is to wander in the garden and visit my favorite sculptures. The Thinker, for example:

Or The Burghers of Calais, which is just heartbreaking:

The Three Shades I find fascinating: it's three of the same figure, just turned differently:

And of course, I could pour over The Gates of Hell indefinitely:

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Tuesday, May 08, 2007

Musée d'Orsay

I'm not much of one for art museums. In particular, I don't much care for painting. It's just too flat for my tastes. I prefer more tactile art forms, such as sculpture and metal work. However, I've been hearing a lot about La Forêt de Fontainebleau (The Forest of Fontainebleau) exhibit, and I decided to head over to the Musée d'Orsay and check it out.

Because this is an exhibit that focuses on the setting rather than the artist, there was a wide variety of art, spanning both different styles and different media (oil, watercolors, pen and ink, even photography and film). As a result, I enjoyed it more than I had expected to.

After the exhibit, I wandered around the rest of the museum, where I found sculpture and some Art Nouveau pieces that are part of their permanent collection. These were even more to my taste, though I didn't find anything that I actively coveted. Well, maybe Fremiet's St. Michael, but what would I do with a life size St. Michael? No, much better to let the d'Orsay keep it for me.

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Monday, March 12, 2007

The Garden

When I registered for classes at ICP, my advisor pointed out to me how nice it was to have a "garden" in which to have lunch and relax between classes:

Garden? A graveled courtyard with some forlorn patches of grass and a few trees, some picnic tables and benches, and planter box of geraniums?

I keep thinking of Goethe's "Mathematicians are a kind of Frenchman; if you talk to them, they translate what is said into their own language, and then it is immediately something quite different". Something quite different indeed.

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Sunday, March 11, 2007

Sunday in the Park

After an earlier post in which I commented on the lack of open green space in the immediate vicinity, I received the suggestion that I check out the Parc Buttes-Chaumont (thanks, Kimberly!).

It's not on a direct métro route from here, and I mostly avoid trips that entail two or more transfers, as this one does. But then I looked at the map of the bus system, and saw that the number 60 bus goes from three blocks away right to the Parc. So I packed myself a little picnic lunch and went to check it out.

It is indeed a lovely park. And it was such a lovely day that it was full of families (and their dogs) and newly married couples getting their pictures taken. I wandered around and about for an hour before sitting down to enjoy my lunch (which I refused to share with an importunate dog); followed by another hour or so of wandering.

The number 60 bus actually goes all the way to Père Lachaise cemetary, so I continued my trip out that way.

Rather than post individual pictures for the day's dual excursion here, I'm putting up a little slideshow (a new window will open).

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Friday, March 09, 2007

Français des affaires

Well, I'm two weeks into my classes. I'd forgotten how much work being a student is! I'm just glad that I don't have to be concerned about grades.

The business French (Français des Affaires) course is particularly serious. The professor, Mme Sainlos, is very geared toward making sure that we can pass the DFA1 exam offered in at the end of the term. The DFA (Diplôme de Français des Affaires) is offered by the Chambre de Commerce et d'Industrie de Paris to certify French fluency. The written exam has two main components: writing letters and writing résumés (which in the case of business French means summaries), and so our Tuesday meetings are mostly given over to résumés, while on Thursdays we work on letters. The oral exam similarly has two main components: providing an oral summary in French of an article written in our native language and mounting an argument for (or against) an idea presented in an article written in French. And so part of our course work will also include such presentations. Next Thursday (yes, already), it'll be my turn to argue. I have an article entitled "Le tourism s'invente de nouveaux guides" ("Tourism invents new guides"). I'm charged with outlining the advantages and limits of this new approach and advancing my own opinion.

We also have work in small groups: in groups of two or three, we're researching different French companies and will be presenting our findings to the class. I'm working with one other student on Air France; our rough outline includes the history of Air France, their alliance with other airlines, objectives, activities, and balance sheet.

And while all of this is going on, we're learning French business vocabulary, which is particularly tricky, since some fairly simple words have very specific meanings when they're used in a business context. And of course those very specific meanings are not addressed in our little pocket dictionaries.

Unlike the general French course, most of the 12 of us are non-Americans with French spouses. Only three of us are Americans.

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Monday, February 26, 2007

First day of classes

This morning was the first meeting for the general French class. There are 15 students, 14 women and a lone guy. 10 are American students, 3 are women of different nationalities married to French men, there's one student from China, and then there's me.

The professor kept stressing that, since we meet for only six hours a week, we can't do anything too in depth. I dunno: six hours seems like plenty to me!

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Tuesday, February 20, 2007

Placement Exam

This morning, I took my placement exam and registered for the Institut de Langue et de Culture Françaises program at the Institut Catholique de Paris. I scored better on the oral part than the written (much to my surprise), and came out solidly intermediate.

I'm signed up for 18 hours of classes: 6 hours of general French, 6 of business French, and 3 hours each for written and oral French. The business French class is officially slightly advanced for me. The advisor who was helping me plan my program actually found the professor to discuss whether or not I should be allowed to enroll. After looking over my written test and discussing my background with the advisor, the professor gave her okay after making me drop the history course I had wanted and extracting a promise that I would work very hard.

Most of my classes are in the late afternoon, Tuesday through Friday, from 2 to 5, although the general French classes are Monday & Tuesday, from 10 to 1. Classes start Monday, so I'll have to enjoy these last few days of complete liberty while I can!

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Wednesday, February 07, 2007

The view from the Butte de Montmartre

I have to admit that I was a little spoiled in Oakland: anytime I got restless, I could out and walk around Lake Merritt. I have yet to find a comparable walk here: there just doesn't seem to be much greenery within a reasonable walking distance. (And in truth, if I had lived almost anywhere else in the Bay Area, I'd likely have had the same problem there.)

The best I've come up with so far as an alternate destination for those times when I need to get out and stretch my legs is to climb up to Montmartre. It has occurred to me that Paris is much better looking from ground level than it is from on high:

Since I'm heading up there anyway, I've started getting into the habit of timing my trip for early evening and attending Vespers and/or evening Mass at Sacré Cœur. The result is that I've effectively abandoned my original parish of Notre Dame de Clignancourt.

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Day trip to Versailles

I caught the train down to Versailles yesterday.

It's very easy to get to Versailles from the train station: it's only a five minute walk and you just follow the flood of tourists.

Even on a weekday in the dead of winter, there were still quite a number of people in the chateau: I identifed groups of Japanese, Italian, Spanish, and Irish tourists, and that was all before I even had my ticket! It took close to four hours to cover just two of the available circuits: 1) the King's and Queen's state apartments and 2) the chapel and opera house. As a result, I passed on the Dauphin's apartments in favor of wandering in the gardens and visiting the Trianons.

Once in the gardens, the crowds thinned out considerably. In part, it was likely that there was so much more space. The chilly and drizzly weather undoubtedly accounted for the rest of the diminuation of crowds: there was hardly anyone at either the Grand or the Petit Trianon.

The ornamentation of virtually every flat surface becomes cloying after a while: I wonder that the inhabitants could endure all that everlasting gold leaf! I don't wonder at all at Marie Antoinette's preference for the Petit Trianon.

BTW, no pictures. Sorry 'bout that, but I inadvertently set my camera to video (not sure how I managed that, mind), and the first "picture" I took ate up all the space on the memory card. It wasn't until I got back home that I figured out what had happened. And no, I couldn't find any usable screenshots from my video.

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Tuesday, February 06, 2007

Venturing into Montparnasse

I had occasion yesterday to visit the Institut Catholique de Paris (where I plan to be starting my business French course later this month). I haven't been in that neighborhood before, so I did a little exploring.

I found Saint Sulpice, which has been suffering from unwanted notoriety as a result of The Da Vinci Code. More recently though, I had read an article, by Rick Steves in the travel section of sfgate.com, about the organ and organist. As a result, I've had it in mind to venture out that way for Sunday Mass some week, but just haven't gotten to it yet. In the meantime, I have to say that it's not a particularly attractive church, though I can't put my finger on just what I dislike about it.

The Jardin du Luxembourg and the Palais du Luxembourg are also in that general area:

The Jardin is, according to my guidebook, a popular weekend hangout for families, but on a winter weekday, it's pretty bleak. The Palais is now the seat for the French Senate, so it's not generally open to visitors. I'm not sure if the Senate is sitting just now, although I saw lights on and there are police patrolling:

I also found a perfectly scrumptious bookstore: Librairie La Procure. The books are all in French, of course, but I still had a marvelous time wandering about and dreaming of the day when my French is good enough to justify a buying spree!

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Sunday, January 28, 2007

Portrait

The downside to visiting Montmartre, as I did this afternoon, is that around the Place du Tertre especially, it's hard to avoid the hordes of artists, all clamoring to sketch your portrait (for a fee, of course). As with panhandlers, the usual trick is to avoid eye contact and to refuse to get drawn into conversation.

That said, I'm not sure how it happened, but I ended up having my portrait sketched; he started even though I had kept walking. So, yes I finally did stop. It is, at any rate, a flattering likeness:

(That's my fuzzy Cossack hat, in case you're wondering.)

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Wednesday, January 24, 2007

It's Snowing

It's not way obvious from the picture,
Snow in Paris
but those white specks are snowflakes. They're melting as they hit the ground, though, so there'll not be any snowmen (what's the French for "snowman", I wonder) in the streets.

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Saturday, January 20, 2007

The corner bakery

The bakery on the corner is the one with the longest lines on Sunday mornings: I don't know that it proves that it's the best in the neighborhood, but it seems a reasonable proxy.

I've been popping in a few times a week to get my lunchtime sandwiches and my Sunday morning pain du chocolat (chocolate croissant) and the occasional loaf of bread. The staff there are very nice and the bread is tasty. French sandwiches are more about the bread than the filling, and I find that suits me well. They also have other savory baked goods, such as quiches, pizza, lasagne, etc., as well as a generous selection of pastries and candies. Fortunately, I don't have much of a sweet tooth, so I've resisted the temptation.

Until today, when I got a millefeuille (AKA napoleon) to go with my lunch. It was beautifully flaky and custardy. There is, however, no chocolate involved, so expect I'll be able to resume resisting the temptation. Although there's no shortage of chocolate-rich pastries from which to choose.

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Biblioholic in withdrawal

When I arrived in France, I carried with me only a few books: my Bible, a couple of reference books on living on France, and a few novels. My intent had been to have a few boxes of books, constituting what I consider my "core" library, shipped to me here. However, as things fell out, I ended up trying to do this just hours before my flight, and I ran into so many problems at the Post Office that I just gave up and had them shipped to my brother instead. (With many thanks to Uncle Arnold for helping with the process and to Little Brother for housing my temporarily orphaned books!)

So, here I am, with hardly any of my own books. The apartment has a bookcase, tiny by my standards, of course, with a modest selection of books, including some in English. I've thought about asking my brother to start sending some of my books, but then reconsidered. I'll only be in this apartment for a few months, and then I'll have to find a new home. Really, wouldn't it be better to wait until I'm properly settled before sending for my books? (It's way traumatic on books to have to settle into new homes: they're worse than cats that way. Not that books are happy about being mushed into boxes either. But it's the lesser of two evils.)

No, the answer, it seems, is to build a new and modest library, comprised mainly of books that I can love & leave.

There are several bookstores in Paris that carry English language books, and I've visited two of them so far: Librarie Galignani and W.H. Smith, both on the Rue de Rivoli. Disciplining myself strictly, I came away with only two books.

Books are so expensive in France, though: even ordinary paperbacks start at a little over 10€ (about $13-14 at current exchange rates). I did a little online comparison shopping at amazon.com, amazon.co.uk, and amazon.fr, and found that, even with shipping costs added in, amazon.com ended up being least expensive. That may be in part a function of the books I chose, and I'll continue the comparative shopping routine to be sure. But in the meantime I've expanded my local library by another eight books.

There's also the French missal that I bought, since I don't know the Mass responses in French, and my French isn't quite up to the task of following the readings just by listening.

So here I am, barely three weeks into my stay, and I've already bought ten (or eleven, if you want to be picky) new books. (I've also finished five, including some I brought or found already here, and have three in progress.) And I consider myself justifiably proud of my self-restraint!

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Thursday, January 18, 2007

Wednesday is sightseeing day, it seems

I went out again yesterday to see the sights. I walked in a wide arc that took in the Arc de Triomphe:
Arc de Triomphe
and ended up at the Eiffel Tower:
Eiffel Tower

It took two hours to get to the Eiffel Tower, and when I got there, I found that the third floor was closed for the day, due to high winds. (And yes, it was indeed seriously windy yesterday.) So, I didn't bother to go up ('sides, after all that walking, I was tired!).

Besides the Arc de Triomphe and the Eiffel Tower, I ran across the Lithuanian Embassy and the shop for The Fleuriste du Chocolat (the chocolate florist). There were some amazing bouquets in the window, which combined (real) flowers with flowers created with petals of wrapped candies. These must be seriously popular hostess gifts.

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Tuesday, January 16, 2007

More movie outings

In the past week, I've seen Apocalypto and Hollywoodland. These were both listed as "VO" (i.e., subtitled rather than dubbed). Unfortunately, I forgot that, in the case of Apocalypto, the original was Mayan; fortunately, my French was up to the task of following along!

I was actually more impressed with Apocalypto than I expected to be. It was gory, but the gore didn't have the pornographic glee of Gibson's Passion of the Christ. It also dragged some, but I got caught up in the story and the fate of the characters.

I wasn't all that taken by Hollywoodland. Affleck made a valiant effort, and maybe the script was at least partly to blame, but he came across as wooden, and didn't convey Reeves's charm. Neither was I convinced by Brody. Diane Lane, on the other hand, was very good, and I liked Spano and DeMunn (who played Strickling and Weissman, respectively).

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Sightseeing

Well, there's no point in living in Paris if you're not going to go see the sights. So, last week, I went out to visit the Louvre. On my way there, I made a detour to see Sainte-Chapelle, which I had never seen before.

The palais de la Cité, where the chapel is located, is now the home for the Paris law courts, so you have to go through security, complete with x-raying bags, to get in to the chapel. They're doing some renovation, so the exterior is swathed with scaffolding, and the lower chapel is cluttered with tools and drop clothes and the like. (As an aside, I really think they should discount admission when work is going on.) Even without the clutter, the lower chapel, while nice enough, was nothing all that impressive.

The upper chapel, on the other hand, was utterly exquisite. The upper walls are nearly entirely paneled in stained glass in vibrant reds and blues. On a sunny day, it must be dazzling. As it is, I was enthralled.

Rose Window, upper chapel at Sainte-Chapelle

My next stop was the Louvre. (The last time I had been was before I.M. Pei's pyramids had been completed.) The immensity of the Louvre still takes my breath away. Try as I might, I simply can not imagine people actually living there: everything is on simply too grand a scale.

I wandered about for a couple of hours, and probably covered less than a quarter of the total museum. But then, I'm not much of a fan of painting, and I was mostly interested in the sculptures and antiquities. Especially my favorite: the Winged Victory:

Winged Victory

There is, by the by, a Starbucks in the Louvre. This is just so wrong. Come to think of it, I can't recall having seen any other Starbucks in Paris (not yet anyway).

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Housekeeping

The popularity of studio apartments in Paris makes for very space-efficient appliances.

For example, the stove in my kitchen has a dishwasher built in. There's the range on top, a fairly shallow oven (no roasting turkeys in this oven; I'm not even sure if I could manage a roast chicken, which may account for the popularity of roasted chickens in the butcher shops), and at the bottom, a drawer that opens out as a dishwasher rack. While demonstrating the amenities of the apartment to me, my landlord explained that I can not use the oven and dishwasher at the same time. It's hard to imagine that this is a problem that would arise often. And in fact, I've not yet had occasion to use the dishwasher. Nor have I used the oven all that often, either.

I also have a washing machine at my disposal, which is certainly handy. It's very cunningly designed. It's less than 20 inches wide, not even as wide as a one of the cabinets, so it fits quite handily into a corner of the kitchen. It loads from the top, and the drum rotates vertically, rather than horizontally. It doesn't hold a lot, so I'm needing to do laundry a few times a week. And there's no dryer: instead, I have a folding rack that I drape damp laundry over. Apparently, the existence of a washing machine but not a dryer is a fairly common arrangement. On sunny days (we've had a few recently), I look up sometimes to see people drying laundry on their windowsills.

I also have a towel drying rack in the bathroom. This seems rather an indulgence, but it is nice to have a dry and toasty warm bathmat and towels in the morning.

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Monday, January 08, 2007

That fatal phrase

It's worth pointing out that, to date, I have not once heard that fatal phrase, "My, what good French you speak, for an American".

I don't know if I've changed, or the French have. The most likely explanation, actually, is that I'm living in a residential neighborhood with a substantial immigrant population, so my French is not particularly noteworthy one way or another.

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Sunday, January 07, 2007

"Lumen de Lumine, Lumière née de la Lumière"

I went to this show at Notre Dame cathedral this evening.
Lumen de Lumine

Described as

Opéra d’images pour découvrir ou redécouvrir les "Mystères de la Nativité", sous-titré en anglais, projeté sur écran géant transparent, suspendu dans le Chœur de la Cathédrale, destiné aux petits et grands. Une heure d’un récit imagé, mêlant textes bibliques, narration, musique & projection de chefs-d’œuvre de l’Art chrétien.
(An opera of images to discover or rediscover the "Mysteries of the Nativity", subtitled in English, projected onto a giant transparent screen suspended in the choir of the Cathedral, designed for children and adults alike. A one hour illustrated story, mixing biblical texts, narration, music, and projection of masterpieces of Christian art.)

It was a very prettily done show, and wove its different pieces together quite nicely. The English subtitling, however, was distinctly amateurish.

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Friday, January 05, 2007

Out to the movies

I went to the movies this evening for the first time in Paris (and my first time in several weeks!), and saw The Holiday. It was entirely predictable, but mostly charming, although I really wanted to slap Cameron Diaz' Amanda around a few times.

American movies are very popular in Paris, and most movies can count on a Parisian release. Unfortunately, the release dates are different. While usually this means that they're later, so I now have another chance to catch Hollywoodland, sometimes it means that they're earlier. In particular, it looks as though I've missed Children of Men: it opened in France in November, and right now, it doesn't appear to be playing anywhere closer than Marseilles.

The movie listings for American, or other foreign language films, include a notation "VO" (version originale) or "VF" (version Française) to indicate whether it's subtitled (VO) or dubbed (VF). Sometimes the same theater will offer both versions.

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Just looked out my window...

To see two policemen riding by on their bicycles. They weren't pedalling all that quickly, so I gather they were just making their usual patrol.

Given traffic and parking (and it's amazing to see the way that the French will wedge their cars into any little teeny, tiny space, even straddling corners), I suppose bike patrols make a lot of sense. It was, nonetheless, a surprising sight.

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Wednesday, January 03, 2007

Second visit to Table d'Eugene

I may just try eating my way through the menu.

My first visit, I had the salade aux boudin noir (salad served with four croûtes of black sausage), brick auvergnate (a sort of gratin with potatoes, cheese, and ham), and lemon sorbet.

This second visit, I had the salade de cabécou au miel (salad with chèvre drizzled with honey), poisson au sauce beurre nantes (fish with a *very* buttery sauce studded with baby shrimp), and tarte belle Hèlene (a tarte with a filling of chocolate mousse studded with poached pear).

I have to say that the desserts are the weak spot: the lemon sorbet featured too much rind, making it bitter, and the tarte was okay, but boring.

My initial impression of Table d'Eugene as a neighborhood spot has been confirmed, though.

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Tuesday, January 02, 2007

Into the center of town

Today was the first day I ventured out of my immediate neighborhood: I headed specifically for the Bazaar de l'Hôtel de Ville to find adapters for my computer & speakers. Which I found, along with a (French) power strip and a few other little odds and ends. Then, since I was in the area anyway, I wandered over to Notre Dame de Paris.

Even midday on a Tuesday, it took about 10 minutes for the line for entrance to the cathedral to make its way inside. Is this just still the holiday season, or is it like this all the time? And what a nuisance for those for whom this is their "home parish." But it's as lovely as I remembered.

And now that I have my adapters, I can get set up again with my own Internet access. Yippee!

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Monday, January 01, 2007

Bonne Année

A quiet day today, a bit at loose ends. I made it to the 11 AM Mass at Notre Dame de Clignancourt and went for another walk out towards Montmartre. This time, though, instead of going up on the hill, I just followed Blvd de Rouchechouard out to the Place Pigalle, where it turns into the Blvd de Clichy. Which in turn is where Paris' strip clubs congregate. This was another area full of tourists: I counted over a dozen tourist buses parked along the street.

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Sunday, December 31, 2006

"Home Parish"

While Sacré Cœur is a lovely church, it wouldn't be way handy to attend it on a regular basis. Fortunately, there's another parish just a few blocks away, Notre Dame de Clignancourt. I attended the Sunday evening Mass there this evening.

It looks as though there are no regularly scheduled ministers. Instead, there was a middle-aged lady who went among the congregation about 15 minutes before the liturgy began to recruit lectors (one for the first reading, one for the second reading, and a third for the prayers of the faithful) and people to take up the collection. I was one of the people recruited for the collection: I tried to demur, but she was having none of it. All I had to do was take my little basket up the center aisle and take the collection on the right and bring it to the back of the church. So I dutifully took up my share of the collection. And resolved *not* to show up early to Mass, at least not until I'm a little better settled in!

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Saturday, December 30, 2006

A regular restaurant?

I went out this evening in search of someplace to have dinner and possibly turn into a regular hangout, and I think I found it.

The Table d'Eugene is just a little ways away, and it looked as though near about everyone there is a regular. It's the sort of place where the patrons think nothing of getting up to get a bit more bread or being asked to help translate the menu for a hapless pair of tourists (not me; another table). The food and wine are tasty and reasonably priced. The proprietor is very genial, with a bit of a Richard Dawson complex.
Table d'Eugene

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Friday, December 29, 2006

First full day in Paris