England Plus Paris: Part 1

My phone rang. It was the front desk clerk, telling me that I had a telephone call. Was the clerk, then, making a meta-telephone call?

It was my parents, telling me that I now had health insurance. Ever since my former employer had gone under, I'd been in health-insurance limbo. Blue Cross couldn't decide whether to cover me. Blue Cross had asked why I'd taken antibiotics in 2000. It was a strange question; I hadn't taken any antibiotics in 2000.

I'm not sure how things got straightened out. Maybe my health insurance broker yelled at them.

Another Meal

I was surprised at the blandness of the baguettes at breakfast. I wondered why the French became so enthusiastic about bread in the first place.

The coffee was good. The coffee was very good. I had a lot of good coffee in Paris. Before leaving on this trip, I had jokingly worried about getting good coffee because I didn't know the French for "french roast." But the coffee was consistently good. Like a bagel in New York, it was a safe thing to order.

Island-Hopping

This plaza looks like nothing special, but it consistently cheered me up.

I walked along the right side of the Seine. Or, rather, along a sidewalk that was across a busy road from the right side of the Seine. There was a lot of traffic, and it cold and blustery. Then I went around a slight bend in the road, and from around the corner of a building there was a swirl of fallen blossoms. It was a little plaza with some flowering trees. Now that I look at its photo, it seems like nothing special. Yet it cheered me up each time I encountered it.

I walked on the Ile St-Louis, which seemed less interesting than St Louis, MO. I crossed a bridge to Ile de la Cite.

Before coming to Paris, I had read Iain Banks' State of the Art, in which one character likens Paris' Mémorial des Martyrs de la Déportation to female genitalia. The Memorial sits on the tip of an island, where the Seine splits, thus the comparison. With a racy description like that in mind, how could I not visit this reminder of human misery and cruelty?

When I was there, I looked out at the Seine. I noticed that the Seine flowed very slowly. It hardly seemed to have a current at all. This place didn't feel like a split in the river; it felt like a bit of shore on a pond.

Gates controlled access to the Memorial. One set of gates was locked for "safety", though they didn't lock one away from anything one couldn't reach otherwise. It wasn't clear that the gate was locked until you got close to it. Some people on the other side of the locked gate approached it: they didn't know it was locked, and were going to waste time walking over. I rattled the gate and made a big sad face, thus conveying the idea that the gate was locked. They nodded, stopped walking over, waved, and turned away. All this without words. Marcel Marceau would have been so proud.

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There is a fence around Notre Dame. It keeps people away from the flying buttresses. If the fence weren't there, no doubt people would leave graffiti and urine on the buttresses. Still, I would have enjoyed a closer look. Charles Sheeler had taken some nice photos of the buttresses. My view was blocked by fences and ill-placed trees; I could not re-create his photos.

It looked like there was a way to see the buttresses up close from a walkway on one of the lower building sections. But there weren't any tourists on that walkway, which made me think that it wasn't open to the public.

I entered Notre Dame. It soared like the central area of one of those high-rise hotels that has a soaring central area. There didn't seem to be any way up to that walkway. I exited.

There was a way to get up to the towers (which were called tours, no doubt to attract tourists), but those were on the opposite side of the cathedral from the interesting walkway. I gave up on trying to get close to the flying buttresses.

Drawn In

I walked South from Notre Dame, crossing to the South side of the Seine and moving past tourists shopping for tourist crap.

I failed to find the restaurant Grenier de Notre Dame, probably because I was looking for a street called "Boucherie" about 5 minutes South of Notre Dame. Thus, I walked past a street called "Bucherie" about 1 minute South of Notre Dame. That will teach me to follow vague directions.

I found myself in a retail neighborhood, about a third of whose shops were various pieces of Album Comics. I went into an Album which seemed full of collections and graphic novels, and picked up a book by Tardi which I hadn't seen yet. It was in French, but maybe I could fake my way through. I also bought a Captain Nemo graphic novel. It was in French, too, but I I already knew his story.

I didn't pick up Hutch Owen Travail Dure, nor a book by Steve Weissman. If I had started picking up French-language versions of American comics, I would need a bigger apartment.

On the Restorative Powers of Carbonated Bubble Gum

The Mexican restaurant next to Album comics had English on the menu and a vegetarian burrito plate. The idea of a Mexican restaurant in Paris appealed to my curiosity and sense of humor.

Off to the side of my burrito, there was a dollop of guacamole with exactly three tortilla chips artfully embedded in it. This made me think that the restaurant's chef probably had a sense of humor, too.

They had Inca Kola. That salvaged the meal. I never would have thought I could get Inca Kola in France. I'm not the biggest fan of Inca Kola, but it tasted the same in Paris as it did back home.

A lady walked into the restaurant. The proprietress said, "Bonjour," and the lady replied, "Hola." The lady wanted to buy some peppers in a "terrain" (a jar, maybe?). This place did not have peppers. I could have told her that. Better she should have been looking for Inca Kola.

Or espresso. This Mexican restaurant served espresso. Of course. I liked the espresso.

I eavesdropped on two students who came in. They were speaking English: one sounded like he was from the UK, the other sounded like he was French but had given up on getting his friend to speak French.

The French student announced his intention to study Arabic. The UK student said that he thought that Arabic script was as beautiful as Japanese script. He said that when he'd studied Japanese, he could spend hours looking at the script of a poem.

Madam, I'm MNAM

There were many things at the MNAM (the modern art museum in the Centre Georges Pompidou) to delight and amuse me.

I spent a lot of time at the Raymond Pettibon exhibit. It was the biggest collection of his work I'd ever seen. I wondered why they'd have so much of his stuff here rather than in, say, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Was he big in France? Was he the Jerry Lewis of punk rock album designers? I watched Pettibon's "Sir Drone" for a while. It wasn't a great movie, but it was wonderful to listen to Mike Watt's California drawl.

I've laughed at people who come to San Francisco and eat at McDonald's. Perhaps it was pathetic to come to Paris and watch a video of people speaking like Californians. But I was discovering that I could be pretty pathetic in a place where I didn't understand the language.

Nothing to See Here; Move On

I walked past many signs in French on the way into the Photography Museum; I thought that they were telling me that something was going on this week, though I couldn't tell exactly what.

But really they were telling me that nothing was going on this week, that the museum was closed so that they could set up another exhibit that would be displayed next week.

Plat du Random

I walked through the touristy area around MNAM, finding myself in Fisherman's Wharf. Tourists milled past touristy shops. A man at a table could write YOUR NAME IN CHINESE. (Not "Pour nom en Chinois" or whatever the French would be.) I crossed a bridge, and past a tea shop called Salon De The La Quasimodo. As an English speaker, I found "The La" to be redundant until I figured out what it meant. I thought about "Paris in the the spring." as I walked past the milling crowds of gawkers in front of Notre Dame and across the bridge to the Left Bank.

This time I found the Grenier de Notre Dame on the Bucheries street, where I ordered something I didn't understand. It turned out to be a seitan patty accompanied by potatoes: a meal for recovering carnivores. I had chosen poorly.

Walking in Marais

I walked back, including a walk through the Marais neighborhood. The Marais reminded me of Chestnut Street in San Francisco. Self-important people frittered in expensive shops, unable to do anything more useful.

I noticed something about Parisian pedestrians: they cut me off. If a pedestrian approached me from the side (perhaps after crossing the street), s/he would speed up to get in front of me--and then slow down. No Parisian walked as fast as I did--except to wriggle in front of me. This happened several times a day. While in Paris, I saw people wait in line politely, contrary to reports. But I wondered if there was still some vestige of the can't-wait-in-line spirit at work in the merging of pedestrian streams.

Pedestrians on Chestnut Street have a tendency to stop in the middle of the sidewalk, thus showing that they're too important to move off to the side. Most of the the Parisians who cut me off were in the Marais, thus further reinforcing the Chestnut Street comparison.

When I thought I smelled something recently-dead, that just meant I was going past a cheese shop.

Burning Topic

I lay awake in bed. It was 3am. I could not blame garbage trucks. I had woken up at 3am for no good reason. I suppose it was jet lag.

It occurred to me that I hadn't seen people wearing berets. I'd seen absurdly-striped shirts, but no berets. I hadn't seen much dog poop on the streets.

(Later, I'd mention the beret thing to Paul Du Bois. He said that berets were more of a Basque/Southern-France thing than a Paris thing.)

I hadn't seen any Burger Kings. (Nor would I.) I had seen no "Le Royal with Cheese" wrappers. (Nor would I.)

My stereotypes of France were stripping away. It was nice that my brain was tossing out false generalizations. I wished it could have done so while I slept, though.

Not Every Stroll Can Result In A Discovery

I haven't seen too many photos of the Place de la Concorde. Maybe that's because it's overrun with tourists and tour buses.

After breakfast, I went out. I walked along the Right Bank. I looked up at gray skies, watched traffic rush by. I wondered, "Is that the Pont Neuf?" and it was. I walked past the Place de la Concorde. The Jardin des Tuileries looked like one of those gardens best enjoyed at high speed. Since I was on foot, I avoided it and stuck to the river. I walked under trees, quickly, made wary by the ubiquitous bird-poop. I laughed at the long line of people waiting to get into the Musée d'Orsay. I was looking out for the Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, and looked right at it (and even took a photo of it) but didn't realize I was looking at a museum because it looked like an abandoned civic government building.

Instead, I walked up the Trocadero. I'd already walked through some touristy areas of Paris, but this was amazing. Some kind of construction barriers were up so that the passage between the two wings of the Palais de Chaillot had been narrowed by wooden barricades. Tourists emerged from this narrow space like sheep from a chute and stood mesmerized by the sight of the Eiffel Tower. Then they stopped to look at the people who wanted to sell them postcards or miniatures of the Tower or ice cream or worse.

I moved among rollerbladers, clumps of screaming young tourists, clumps of disoriented old tourists, merchants. I moved against the current of the chute, wriggling past buskers and the crowds which blocked the chute to gawk. I emerged into a plaza full of tour buses and my goal: the entrance to the Maritime Museum. It wasn't very crowded. I guess most of the tourists wanted to make sure that the Eiffel Tower looked like its photos.

That Was Quick, Part 1

It's a ceremonial barge.

Kids like the fresnel lens.

I didn't learn anything at the Maritime Museum (everything was in French and there wasn't much there), but I had a nice half-hour there. You might be surprised to think that I could go to a maritime museum and spend less than an hour there. But it's true.

How does a big dodecahedron help you model boats?

That Was Quick, Part 2

[Photo: Peeking in the door of the Japan Pavillion]

The Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris takes up part of the Japan Pavillion. The museum part is very spare. It looks like this other part of the building, closed off, was more interesting, to the point of being garish. It looks like it might have held some kind of art exhibits at some point--you can see a hint of some murals up at the top of the pictured stairs. It seemed like more of an art-mural than a pavillion-mural, if that makes any sense.

The Paris City Modern Art Museum contained temporary installations, none of which interested me. I spent more time waiting for the slow bag-check lady to check and uncheck my bag than I did walking past the installations. This place was a complete waste of time, and I was sorry I stopped by.

What's that? You want a better description than "...temporary installations, none of which interested me."? All right, here's an excerpt from the List of Works pamphlet:

Okay, so there's this area on the floor which has been covered by volcanic rocks. There's also a clear space which allows you to walk past the rocks on clear floor. Now pretend you haven't read that description above. If you were me, you'd think you were supposed to walk on the clear space while looking at the rocks and nodding thoughtfully.

This exhibit was at the start--before you reached the point where the museum people handed you the List of Works pamphlet, which was the only thing which made it clear that you were invited to walk on the rocks.

It was a corridor, lit yellow. Philistine that I am, I didn't see how it called my eyesight into question. Another excerpt:

So we have some exhibits which aren't interesting, either because of their intrinsic featurelessness (e.g., Yellow Corridor) or because of the museum's poor presentation (e.g., Lavafloor). The latter group caused me to think I wouldn't like any exhibit presented in this museum, not until such time as someone kicks the butts of the people who plan the layout.

That Was Quick, Part 3

This was a model of a car designed to roll around the sewers. It was wide, so that its wheels would be at the raised sides of the sewers, out of the muck. It could lower a wooden ball down into the trough of muck. By dragging the ball, it could scour the trough, and help stuff along.

I think I could have learned something in the sewer museum, if I'd stuck around. But it was crowded. I'd wait my turn to get close enough to look at something; when I got close enough, I'd discover it was nothing interesting. This made me less willing to wait my turn to see the next thing. So I only looked at things which had no lines, and there were mighty few of those.

The museum is in functioning sewer tunnels, which made the crowds more of a problem. I wasn't willing to brush up against a wall just to squeeze past a clump of gawkers; that seemed like a good way to jump-start a bacteria farm on my sleeve.

There were various vehicles that had been designed to travel through the sewers, with various attachments to hurry the slurry. There were giant wooden balls which were allowed to run along long pipes to scour them. There was an old epee and other implements of injury, showing that people have been ditching murder weapons in the sewers for 100s of years.

I wished I'd come to this museum earlier, before it got so crowded. As it was, I wriggled out in a hurry.

What's the French for "Impossible Paris"?

There was some kind of sand depot next to the Seine. There were huge piles of sand; huge hoppers to hold more sand. I excitedly looked around for covered conveyor belts to photograph. There were none.

I pushed my way through the crowds of tourists thronging around the Eiffel Tower, but I did not pause there. I was ready for lunch. I made my way down unlabelled streets until I found, Erawan Thai, a restaurant which had been recommended on the net for having a veggie dish. When I found it, I checked the menu posted outside: it had no veggie dish. I wasn't hungry enough to try and beg for veggie food in English.

Then I was going past a movie theater showing "Le Voyage de Chihiro", the latest Studio Ghibli release. The afternoon showings were "VF"; the nighttime showings were "VO". My Lonely Planet had told me that "VF" meant "Version Francaise" (dubbed), while "VO" meant "Version Originale" (subtitled). It was early afternoon; if I saw the movie now, it would make no sense: it would be in French. I shrugged and kept walking.

Knowledge

I saw how sailboats get under the bridges of the Seine: their masts swivel down.

Orsay What?

The Orsay had some architectural ornament, sort of like the St Louis City Museum, only more French.

I'd planned on skipping the Musée d'Orsay. I'd seen Piaw's photos of it. I'd seen Arlene's photos of it. There photos had been nearly identical. The difference: Piaw had one more photo, a photo of Paul Du Bois standing by a statue by Paul Dubois. I'm sure that if Arlene had been travelling with Paul Du Bois, she would have taken that photo, too.

So I was pretty sure that I'd seen what there was to see of the Musée d'Orsay.

But what else was I going to do with myself? It was still early afternoon, and I had no plans. (I hadn't expected to see three museums in a morning.) People who'd been the museum enjoyed it. Had Paul said it had been his favorite thing in Paris? Maybe.

Departures: England Plus Paris: Part 1

Does This Mean I Can Jaywalk Again?