Italy and France 2007

It is late afternoon on the fourth of our five days in Paris.  As always, the time has flown by in this beautiful, enervating city.  It’s been 22 years since I was here, but my memories of that trip have stayed so vivid that it seems to be much more recent. 

We have been frequenting the usual tourist haunts: Tour Eiffel, Montmartre, Montparnasse, the towers of Notre Dame, and the Latin Quarter among others.  I had the opportunity to dust off my high school French when my 5 day Metro pass stopped working after the second use.  The ticket agent spoke no English so I was forced to describe my problem en Francais!  It worked.  I got a new ticket and didn’t fracture the grammar too much in the process.

Some of the highlights of the trip have been a couple of strolls through the Latin Quarter, at one time the intellectual center of Paris.  The Sorbonne is located nearby and the area is filled with bookstores and cafes.  The cobbled streets are narrow and reserved for pedestrians only.  At night, they are jam packed as hoards of tourists (and I suppose some locals too) frequent the inexpensive Greek and Middle Eastern restaurants that line the streets.  It’s the best spot for people watching I have ever encountered.  The photo below gives you some idea of the street scene, although it gets decidedly more lively when the sun goes down.

The Montparnasse Cemetery also made it on to the itinerary yesterday.  It is filled with massive concrete monuments to some of those who have passed on.  We walked around for a while and came across the graves of Charles Baudelaire, Camille Saint-Saens, Simone de Beauvoir and Jean Paul Sartres.  Sartre was a hero of mine in adolescence as his philosophy of existentialism resonated with me in those days and, to be honest, still does.

Tomorrow we are off to Monet’s country home at Giverny even though it means catching an 8:15 am train.  You may not be aware that Monet was not only a brilliant painter, but a master gardener as well.  It was at Giverny that he took inspiration for much of his work and the pond where he painted his water lilies is there.  The home fell into disrepair after Monet’s death, but has since been restored to it’s former bucolic state.

In some ways, Paris looks just like I’ve imagined – or to be more accurate, like the Paris I’ve always seen in books and movies. Charming old buildings with wrought-iron balconies, trees lining every street, sidewalk cafes…it’s pretty awesome. We flew in from Bologna on Friday morning and got to our apartment at around 2:00. We spent most of our first half-day relaxing, exploring, and getting into the groove, but we were able to explore the ground floor of Notre Dame, take a walk by the Seine, and climb to the top of the Arc de Triomphe in the early evening. We’ve already had a couple of language barrier adventures, the first occurring after our unfortunate discovery that the washing machine in our flat does not work. We were at a café for lunch and my dad was trying to ask the waiter, in English, where we could find the nearest laundromat. The waiter, of course, didn’t have a clue what my dad was talking about, so I brought out my best French and said that “We are in need of a place to do our laundry.” Somehow he thought we were trying to purchase a washing machine, and it took a second waiter to help us straighten things out! The second occurred during dinner. My sister had ordered a cider, but she took one sip and said that it “tasted weird.” My mom looked at the bottle, sampled it, and proclaimed, “It’s hard cider!” Leave it to the French to serve alcohol to my thirteen-year-old sister without even asking how old she was.

            Our second day involved some much needed sleeping in, followed by a trip to Musee d’Orsay with Joy, Melody, and Mackenzie Miller. We saw many of the classic impressionist pieces, including some very famous Renoirs and Van Gogh’s “Portrait of the Artist,” but I think I was the most blown away when I walked into the Monet room and saw his painting of the water lilies and two more of the bridge at Giverny. After hearing and reading so much, it was amazing to finally see that. I could stare at the impressionist paintings for hours; so many details! Later that day we tried to visit the Eiffel Tower but postponed our trip to the top because of the ridiculously long line. Instead, we opted to stretch out on the lawn of a nearby park, enjoying the breeze in the shadow of one of the world’s greatest landmarks. That evening, we had Turkish food on the Left Bank and went for a nighttime walk along the Seine.

            Today’s been busy, too, but I’ll let one of my parents describe it in detail once we’ve finished it. Au revoir for now!