I think I propositioned a cabbie. I meant to ask if he would take me to my hotel. (I asked because the taxis closer to Gare Montparnasse had been reserved and I didn't know what was going on with the strike). I think I asked him if he would take me in my hotel. Or something. Um, no. After we got that confusion as cleared up as it was going to be, he had to look up rue de l'Échelle on his map. I had the street number of the hotel, wrong, as it turned out. There was nothing at 11. It was 7. I probably crossed a numeral 7, all suave and continental, and then mistook my 7 for a continental numeral 1. Though how I doubled it I don't know. Anyway the hotel was only the block before, easily found.
RDC had left me a note and the key. I happily threw myself into the room, onto the bed, to nap before his return in about a half hour; and then into his arms when he got back. For supper we found a little restaurant in the rue Moliere and he had a good red wine and we had decent chocolate mousse.
I love Paris. Anyone can love the central, walky, best-preserved area of a city, and paint me a tourista but I love Paris. I love the architecture. It's mostly of a piece in this main, oldest, central part of Paris, but a good piece, 17th century, four and five stories, shops at ground level, living and office space above, shutters and window boxes, lovely. "I am here as a tourist." I am so shameless that I quote "A Room with a View" about tourism.
Friday we went to the Louvre, which was supposed to open at 9. Because of the strike it didn't open until 10:10, and then the ticket-printing machine we chose ne marche pas. We brought our half-printed tickets, whose timestamp though nothing else was legible, to the information booth. There helpful people helped us, in two steps, one of which lasted long enough that before the second step I asked, in flawless idiom and accent, ahem, "Combien temps?" Of course I have no idea what that actually means but I was understood, and a clerk told us "deux minutes." Two minutes later, indeed, we were on our way.
There was a special exhibit of da Vinci's notebooks and cartoons. I loved seeing his rough draft work. He was like, and I don't mean to be profane, Mrs. Barrable from Coot Club, whose own letters she would unconsciously interrupt with sketching. I confuse, because I suck, some of his notebooks with others of Michelangelo's that we saw upstairs. One of the men interrupted his doodling with the odd line of Petrarch. Since I couldn't even ask how much time it would take for our tickets to be fixed, my French was not at a level to translate much of the commentary about the work. But it was still remarkable to look at.
After that we did the Cliffs Notes to the Louvre: the Venus de Milo, the Victory of Samothrace, the Mona Lisa, and its two Vermeers, The Lace-maker and The Astrologist. The Wreck of the Hesperus I didn't track down, but my attachment to it comes solely from A History of the World in 10.5 Chapters, which I haven't read since 1991. And some stuff in between, Italian Renaissance paintings and a chamber devoted to Michelangelo's notebooks and an Egyptian tomb and some remnants of the crown jewels. At least England had three centuries of Empire after its Revolution to rebuild its collection of sparkly rocks for my viewing pleasure. France, not so much.
We found lunch in a cafe in the Place à Malraux. Nearby in le Jardin du Palais Royal, RDC indicated the square with a sweep of his hand, the black-and-white striped columns of different heights, and said, "This is where they grow their columns." He pointed to some circles set into the ground. "These have already been harvested."
He retreated to the room to nap and I would have joined him if I had harbored any hope of success. Instead I went ShopPING, because I was in Paris. A store near the café sold Tintin stuff, which is ridiculously marked up in the States, so I bought myself un petit Milou. (I found out when I got home and replaced Babe with Snowy on my monitor at work and brought Babe home, that Blake is afraid of Babe. And in return for acknowledging that the French pronunciation of Tintin is better, can we please all admit that Snowy is a better name than Milou?)
Last time, walking from la Place de la Concorde and to Musée Picasso, we detoured just a moment into a kitchen store. It was very close and my first place to try this time for my main task, a butter dish for my sister. (That's what she asked for.) The closest thing I found this time turned out to be a terrine dish, and a clerk recommended a shop just across the way.
The china shop I found myself in was one of the few businesses I encountered in which no one spoke English, and even with my stupid French we all got on fine. I spoke with three different clerks, besides greeting them: yes I had seen the back; please could you pack that for travel; thank you for writing out the sum (dix-neuf quarante-neuf wasn't so hard) and I don't want the receipt thank you. So I hope ma soeur likes son cadeau. I bought some books at the Louvre bookshops for some of the shorties in my life.
The other treat of this trip, besides going at all and seeing Emlet, was to see my old college friend KREL and her family. Her husband picked us up after work, which was a kindness I hardly expected, and we introduced ourselves and it was all pleasant and comfortable from the start. He brought us back to their lovely apartment in the 16th arrondisement and the next person I saw was not KREL but her older daughter, who threw herself at us, and then the younger, and then KREL herself, who has not changed one iota in the ten years since I last saw her. She must have a portrait up in the attic somewhere.
Her children are spectacularly adorable and charming and, which reassured me about Emlet, completely bilingual. There are some things they know how to say in one language but not another, but they chattered easily in both. I have worried that my absence of French will leave me unable to talk with Emlet after her "Lo lo lo" and "Ba ba ba" resolve into speech, but these two girls are in the same position, Usan mother and French father, and they speak both languages as well as any monolingual child of their ages might.
We had two wonderful dinners with KREL, at a brasserie on the Trocadero Friday with just the tall folks and en famille Saturday, which meant I got to sing ELL to sleep. Also it was RJH's birthday, so we called him in Connecticut, startling him rather.
In between, on Saturday, RDC and I wandered over the Île de la Cité and the Île Saint Louis.
We visited the Sainte Chapelle, and when Melissa tells you to go somewhere, you should go. It felt intimate even with a crowd, and then the school group left and it felt even smaller. We toured le Crypte Archéologique, more than two millennia of buildings and walls and roads and the edges of the island. We went through Notre Dame again, this time with time to go through the treasury with the Holy Hand Grenade and a human femur (whose, it did not say). I was, cue foreshadowing, coming down with a cold, and not interested in queuing in the rain for a climb to the top--despite having just read The Hunchback of Notre Dame--which is titled with Hugo's intended protagonist in French, just Notre Dame de Paris--which was my main reason for a second visit.
By the Pont St. Louis we crossed to l'Île Saint Louis, which is as touristy as Commercial Street in Provincetown if not quite so tacky. RDC startled me by wanting to shop by actually going into shops instead of just looking in their windows. We had crêpes in a little hole in the wall, and eventually ice cream at Berthillon's, just as everyone, and I do mean everyone, I know who has been to Paris, commanded us.
I am pretty sure I have never eaten an ice cream cone while walking along in the rain, but I wasn't going to miss the chance. That was some good skeam.
Sunday I was definitely sick. We scampered into the 7th arrondisement toward the Musée Rodin (which gets points for being one of the few sites with its own site), where we planned to meet KREL at 10:30. A walk like this is the sort that makes me resent Usan cities, but resenting anywhere for being insufficiently Parisien is about the stupidest possible attitiude. It was Sunday, there was little traffic, many places were closed, but a little boulangerie that was open sold the most tempting array of noshables I have ever seen. We both spotted a pastry and--okay, my French is really bad, so I'm proud of these little moments where a Frenchie and I understood each other--I asked, "Ces sont aux pommes?" where I mentally patted myself on the back for saying "aux" (and heard the "x" in my head) instead of "avec." The clerk said, "Non, poires." Pears are good too, so we bought those and called them breakfast and devoured them.
A reason I was anxious to go to the Rodin was the jardin aux roses. Is that grammatically correct? Whatever. Mid-May is now the perfect time to go to Paris, because of those roses. The house itself is lovely but the grounds are endless roses, heavily perfumed and smelling even stronger in the misty rain. I managed not to think of Petals on the Wind for some hours. We saw Le Penser et Les Burghers de Calais and the gates of the Inferno, which had the Thinker on top. I only just learned that Le Penser is Dante. We saw Balzac a few times and The Kiss, the Eternal Idol (which I prefer to the Kiss for sensuality), and Springtime.
We also saw KREL and her older daughter, who continued to bewitch me. She drew everything--really well--and I asked her for a drawing for my refrigerator.
I really liked The Hand of God because the hand was finished while the marble it loosely clasped remained unworked, The Danaide for her hair and back, and The Secret for the unknown within the hands. I was not so much taken with his drawings and was glad they were not his day job.
After that we separated, the Parisians to a baptism and we to a special exhibit of Magritte in the Tuilieres. This I would have liked better if I had not been ill. Often and often I do not get Magritte's point, and nearly as often I don't find the paintings aesthetically pleasing. But there were many that I did (La Magie Noire, La clé des champs--translated not as the Key of the Fields but as the Door to Freedom, which means I will never understand idiom) and RDC really enjoyed it, so that was fine. Magritte drew a lot of birds, or bird-like thingies, always a good thing. Les Grâces naturelles and its variations I particularly liked, birds growing out of leaves. (Searching for images, I found a Rhodesian Ridgeback puppy named Magritte. Though neither Labs nor dalmation/basset crosses nor black, Ridgebacks are gorgeous dogs.)
Saturday and Sunday had had sprinklings of rain and sun. Monday, in contrast, pissed with rain, and these fucking smokers have got to stop. Both of these conditions made leaving very easy. But flying, with dry air and changings of pressure, when my ears and sinuses were clogged, was less than no fun.
Home. Home home home home home by early evening.
This is one of those books I can Appreciate but do not Love. I hadn't read it for ten years, and now I read it in Paris, and it's RDC's favorite, but except for some really lovely paragraphs about fishing and swimming and even bull-fighting, where some emotion shows, I wasn't in love.
When Mike responds to someone's question how he went bankrupt, he says, "Two ways. Gradually then suddenly." I laughed and told RDC that sounded like something Cary Grant would say. He sighed at my ignorance, telling me how much the book informed script-writing (and everything else). He quoted "Philadelphia Story," though not a Cary Grant line: "Belts will be worn tighter this year."