Paris

Wednesday, November 14

Larry does not like cities but he makes an exception for Paris. I'm a city girl at heart, so I feel reasonably at home here -- with the exception of the language barrier, of course. I am learning some new vocabulary which I can understand when it is written down, but I am totally unable to understand anything that is spoken -- even when I hear it and see it at the same time. My ear is not tuned to the cadence of French, and the French do not speak distinctly. They slur their words together as if an entire sentence were one word. 

Someone that I was talking with recently (in English) said that just about anyone under the age of, say, 40 has learned English in school as it is becoming the lingua franca of the European Union. (Isn't that ironic since England is leaving the EU.) Americans and Brits (and Canadians, and Australians, etc, etc) will in future decades have less trouble when they come here to France. However, since French is not widely spoken (or taught) in English speaking countries, the French who don't generally travel much anyway, have a very hard time when they go to the US or England.

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We arrived in Larry's favorite city on Wednesday via the fast train from Bordeaux. What a pleasure to not have to drive all that way which would have taken most of the day. Considering the cost of fuel and the outrageous tolls on the highways, I think that we at least came out even. My only complaint about the trip is that the windows were so scratched that I could not really see the countryside as we passed by.

Paris is such a lovely city. It was just designed to be beautiful. Unlike more modern cities, the buildings are generally not much over six stories high, no doubt because when they were built there were no elevators and a person can only climb just so many stairs. I can't imagine the workout to get to the top floor of our building.

Our apartment in Montmartre is familiar to us because it is the same one that we stayed in last year. We decided that since we were planning this trip on such short notice we would stick to the familiar. This apartment is really a studio divided by usage for the bedroom area and the eating area. It is comfortable enough for the two of us for a short stay, but it would become suffocating if we lived here (although most of the apartments in this building are occupied by people who live here).

When the owner was giving us the information about the apartment, she mentioned that the last renter here had complained that the people on the next floor up appeared to be moving furniture in the middle of the night. I thought that to be quite odd. She asked us to let her know if we notice the same. I must have been too tired to hear anything the first night, but on the second night here, I heard exactly what she was talking about -- the sound of furniture being moved and it was 3:30 in the morning! If I were of a different persuasion, I would swear that there were ghosts upstairs; you know, the kind that move furniture in the middle of the night and all.

I decided that the situation is that the people upstairs have a Murphy bed. To extend it, they have to move all of the chairs/tables, etc. If they put some felt pads on the legs of the furniture, no one would hear anything, but the scraping of the furniture at 2:00 or 3:00 am is rather annoying. 

On top of that, Larry has contracted a very bad chest cold which causes him to wheeze and cough a lot, especially at night when he is trying to sleep (while I am trying to sleep also). With all of the night time noises, I'm not getting adequate sleep and I've caught the same cold though not nearly as bad. Which is to say, we have less energy than normal, which is never a lot.

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Thursday, November 15

On our first full day here in Paris, we decided to go to a small museum that we had visited before, the Musee de Montmartre. 

Photo credit: Wikipedia 

It is housed in the oldest building in Montmartre, built sometime in the 1600s when the area was farmland, long before it was called the Mount of Martyrs. Most of the buildings now standing in Montmartre were built at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century, emphasis on the latter.

At various times during the late 19th century, this house was home and/or studio to Toulouse-Lautrec, Renoir, Susan Valadon, Maurice Utrillo, and many lesser known artists.

Renoir painted this famous scene of the Ball at the Galette Mill just a few short blocks from the musee.

Photo credit: Wikipedia

Toulouse-Lautrec and Steinlen painted posters for the night clubs that sprung up in the area. Like this one advertising the Black Cat Club.

And, this one advertising the Lapin Agile (or agile rabbit), another night club in the immediate area.

From the garden of the museum, we could look over the wall and see the only remaining vineyard within the city of Paris. I'm not very good at estimating areas and distances, so I looked it up. This total vineyard is roughly 1/3 of an acre (just exactly the size of my parents' property when I was a kid). There is not much wine to be produced from this tiny plot.

The grapes have been harvested (a month ago or so) and the wine has been made, ready to rest.

However, around the corner on our way back to the apartment, we came across this banner announcing that the new beaujolais is ready. Beaujolais Noveau is always released on the third Thursday of November. We were in Amboise last year on that date and were very lucky to watch the vintners' parade through town, toasting their new wine.

If I had been just a few seconds quicker, I would have gotten a great shot of the waiter on a ladder attaching the sign. All of the wine shops throughout Paris have posters or signs in the windows advertising the new wine. It is a big deal here in France.

One of the great things about traveling is that occasionally we happen on a celebration of some sort that is little known or not practiced at all. The celebration of the new wine is one of those occasions.

On our way back to the apartment, we stopped to take some photos of this church spire through the fog.

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Friday, November 16 

One of our favorite museums in Paris is the Musee Marmottan Monet and we have been here several times. This permanent collection is the largest collection of Monet paintings in the world and was donated by his son in the 1930s. M. Marmottan donated his residence to house the collection. At the time, the mansion was probably in the outskirts of Paris, but now it is in a fashionable residential area.

As usual, the museum has a special exhibit as well. This time it was an exhibit of paintings that are all held in private collections; meaning that they are not seen very often. 

There were many there that I had never seen before. For instance, this one on their advertising poster that was painted by one of my favorite painters, Gustave Caillebotte. Readers of my blog will have probably never heard of him, except for my raving about his paintings at the Musee d'Orsay which we will be visiting on this trip.

Here is a Monet that I had never seen before, done in Bordighera, just over the line from France in Italy. When we drove on the highway through Bordighera, I was just thrilled to see this countryside that I had seen in so many of Monet's paintings. I recognized it instantly. My only regret was that we could not stop to take photos of the landscape. However, I have the pictures in my mind.

And here are a couple of Caillebottes that I've never seen before. The first one looks more like it was painted by Sisley and the second one looks more like it was a very early Monet. I would have been fooled, but for the placards on the wall.

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Saturday, November 17

By Saturday, our colds are settling in and we were not up for any long outing. Instead, we went to a small museum that was closed last year when we were interested in going.

We got there by a rather circuitous route because we got off at a Metro stop that was not the closest. But, no matter, we found our way through the maze of streets to walk through the Place de Vosges, a lovely quieter small section of town on our way to the museum.

Place de Vosges has the distinction of having all of the fronts of the houses with the same design. This was a revolutionary idea when they were built in the 1600s. Over time, the name of the square changed back and forth, at times being called Place Royal. However, no kings or queens of France ever lived there. I would take it that the name was just marketing hype.

A couple of blocks away was the Musee Cognacq-Jay which had a splendid (but not particularly interesting to me) exhibit of finely made furniture as their special exhibit.

There were lots and lots of very similar small tables with intricate inlay of different woods and mother of pearl and many with gold leaf. Meh!

Similarly not especially interesting to me were the objects.

I was more interested in these two paintings by Giovanni Antonio Canal, better known to the world as Canaletto.

Of course, what really got my attention were the statues.

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Sunday, November 18

On Sunday, we were both really feeling the effects of our colds and we needed to get some additional rest. It seems a shame to be in Paris and spend the afternoon in bed, but that's exactly what we did. I probably could have stayed awake, but it would have been difficult.

Instead, we rested and went out in the early evening to a special exhibit in the Jardin des Plantes. We have never been there when the flowers are in bloom, but I bet that they are spectacular. The French really know how to make their public spaces special.

What drew us to the jardin was the special exhibit called Especes en Voie D'Illumination. This is an exhibit from the China Light Festival. The theme was animals that are extinct and animals that are threatened with extinction. This seems appropriate since the Jardin des Plantes houses the Paris Zoo, though there are no live animals around right now.

Here are a few photos of the exhibit.

The "animals" are made of wire structures over which a very fine fabric is wrapped. And, of course, there are lights inside. They were pretty amazing and I'm glad that we endured the very chilly weather to see the exhibit. The exhibit was mobbed with people. The gates opened at 6:00 and we waited in line for an hour and half to spend an hour inside the park. I can't imagine how many people were there, but when we left at about 8:45, there was still a small line waiting to get in. I would guess that there were a few thousand.

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