England Plus Paris: Part 2

[Photo: Port de Plaisance de Paris Arsenal]

You could do a lot worse than to walk past the Port de Plaisance de Paris Arsenal.

I planned, ate, and set out. The prettiest thing I saw that morning wasn't part of the plan. It was a stretch of canal harboring many boats.

It seemed like a popular place for groups of people taking their morning exercise together. Ahead of me, a group of brisk walkers made their way. One lady among them stepped in dog poop. When she noticed, she seemed hardly dismayed.

'Rinth, Rather Retreat

I had read that there was a hedge labyrinth in the Jardin des Plantes. A "labyrinth" is like a maze, but with no dead ends, no choices. You can contemplate life as you traverse a labyrinth, losing yourself in its twists and turns.

But you'd have to be pretty dumb to lose yourself in this labyrinth. I can sketch its layout for you in print: @.

It was a spiral of low hedges. For some people, this had been too difficult. They had pushed through the hedges, ripping gaps in it. I've seen a lot of unimpressive things in my day, but that labyrinth took the cake. I shrugged and left.

Window Shopping

In a little park off the Rue des Ecoles I took a photo of this pretty storage tank. I didn't take a photo of the icky, filthy pigeons who clustered around me, trying to shake their lice onto my shoes.

I'd looked through the Paris yellow pages with a jaundiced eye, hoping against hope for shops that might sell interesting music. The places with promising names were all in the Latin Quarter. And so I walked along the Rue des Ecoles, keeping an eye out.

The last thing I expected to see was a new-looking copy of the boardgame called Junta. My copy of Junta was pretty ragged around the edges; I'd wanted a replacement set, but the publisher had gone out of business years ago. I looked more closely at this game in the window. It was new--but it was in French. That did me no good.

The music stores were all closed: it was Sunday. I don't know why I thought any of them might be open. You might think that one of them might open on Sunday, thus capturing lots of Sunday shoppers, but you would think wrong.

I liked the Latin Quarter a lot. It had bookstores and music stores and game stores. It had more real people than it had tourists. But it was pretty dull on a Sunday morning.

Ave Atque Vale

[Photo: Roman wall with a bit of preserved surfacing]

For this I came to France?

I was in France because I wanted to see Roman ruins. My friends and relatives had a frequently asked question about this: If I wanted to see Roman ruins, why not go to Italy?

I'd heard that Italy was hard on travellers. Ticket-sellers made up prices; scamsters abounded; many people in the tourist industry had a hobby of short-changing. Tourists said this. Tour leaders said this. They said, Italy will wear you out. (Since then, I've talked to people who went to Italy without being overwhelmed by scamsters. Anyhow.)

I planned to go to Nimes, a city with some well-preserved sites. I hoped to stand among old stones and let a sense of history wash over me. I'd studied Latin in high school, which entailed learning some Roman history. I'd enjoyed it; going in to college, I planned to double-major in Classics and Computer Science. (A lecture from a self-important Classics professor at Berkeley cured me of that ambition.)

But as a sneak preview, I went to the Musée National du Moyen Age in Paris, part of which is housed in the remains of a Roman bath.

If a sense of history washed over me, I didn't notice it. I looked at brick-and-mortar construction. I was not moved.

So I looked at some medieval art. There was something that looked like it might be a waffle iron, but wasn't. It was a mould for making holy wafers. There were also some ivory carvings of the life of Christ. So Christ died for my sins, and some elephants did, too. I shrugged. I left.

My Best Meal in Paris

At Les Quatre et Une Saveurs, I ordered vegetable soup and something that I didn't understand. Since it was a vegetarian restaurant, I was okay ordering something that I didn't understand.

The reason that I hadn't understood it is that the menu was trying to explain to me, in French, the concept of a bento box lunch while assuming that I didn't know the word "bento".

(The waitress understood English pretty well; I probably could have asked her about the things on the menu and received an intelligible reply.)

It was my best meal in Paris. It was soup and steamed vegetables and shredded vegetables with dressing. In California, I might not have noticed it. In Paris, I was just so glad to eat something with flavor.

So I Went to the Louvre

I was thinking of skipping out of France earlier than planned. I was also thinking of skipping out of Paris earlier than planned: Everything had taken less time than I expected.

I'd originally planned on skipping the Louvre. People had told stories of getting lost and of long lines for the but-it's-so-small Mona Lisa.

But I still had a day and a half left on my museum pass, and I was hoping that if I stuck around a while I'd like France better, and resume my original plan. That didn't happen, but I did spend an enjoyable day-and-a-half at the Louvre.

(When people say of the Louvre, "You can't see it all in one day," they don't just mean that it's big. Certain parts of it are closed on certain days of the week. So you really can't see it all in one day, unless you're sneaky or something.)

Don't listen to the people who tell you that the Louvre is no fun. It is fun. You will get lost. Some parts are way too crowded. But you will find interesting things, and the crowds are easy to avoid and/or mock.

(For my ever-insightful commentary about some of the exhibits, follow the photo-links.)