Reading: maps and guidebooks

Moving: walked

15 September 2001: Musée du Moyen Age et Musée d'Orsay

My biggest problem with the language happened over the smallest stupidity--mine, of course. The sign outside the Musée du Moyen Age listed admission for adults at 36 francs so I had 72, in coins and bills, in my paw. The ticket-seller wanted more, that much was clear, and said a number and I hope a reason. She ended up selecting coins from my outstretched palm--and pocketing them, for all I know--totaling the odd sum of 121. Why two admissions cost an odd number I don't know. Whatever.

We had planned to go to Thursday but arrived too late, and then I hoped to go Friday but we did other, better things instead. But now we were here, and we had come to see the tapestries. George Sand discovered them in a French country house and brought them to the attention of a French bishop in the 19th century (not that she could have done so in another).

The six Lady and the Unicorn tapestries are displayed in a dimly lit circular room. I don't know how they can hung without the cumulative weight tearing their fibers, but there they are. They depict the lady indulging in the five senses (in touch, she fondles the unicorn's horn in her hand) and, in the last, largest one, putting aside these earthly pleasures (laying aside her necklace in a chest, turning her back on the unicorn), presumably to focus on more spiritual things. Like the Unicorn in Captivity tapestries in the Cloisters, they represent flora and fauna in detail, specifically. I liked the rabbits and the individual strands of the dog's fur.

Somehow I missed the pig playing an organ though. Damn. And it's carved in wood, which is my favorite material for artistry, more than marble. It's so indulgent and sensual, or so I think with trees so precious. Ivory is too indulgent and makes me feel guilty. I can't look at a chess piece without wincing, or the Franks Casket.

These têtes des lions are somehow ornaments du siège. I must be missing something obvious about their purpose, but anyway I never think of carved glass as a typical medieval medium. Perhaps a Siege Perilous. Part of the museum used to be someone's house, and another older part used to be hot baths. The ceilings were intricately groined. All of it was remarkable.

After that, we lunched on St. Germain at a place called Bouch' Mich' Café. I think the name means something like "Friar Michel Drinks a Lot," given the picture and "bouche" meaning "mouth." I had a croque monsieur, because I had to have one--they're in books all the time. It had too much cheese even for me, and that's saying something. Despite the smoke, I enjoyed this restaurant because there was a dog in it. Occasionally it would trot from the kitchen to the mat in front of the door there to chomp upon whatever the cook had given it. What a great country. (It was a boxer, a much more common breed there than here. Dogs in general are smaller in Europe, like the cars. The few retrievers we saw were even more welcome sights than they usually are to me.) Also we were amused to see two old women, basic granny types, come in and order croques-monsieur (croques-messieur?) and big steins of beer. Europe.

We trotted along la rue Mazarine to the Quais Malaquais et Voltaire, arriving at the Musée d'Orsay much sooner than I thought. I don't know if I thought it moved, the way we often say the mountains move depending on the clarity and humidity of the air. I thought the mountains gnomes stayed with the mountains and didn't cross water. I figure I just didn't know where the museum was, though. And we were admitted to the museum much more quickly than I had anticipated, queuing for perhaps 20 minutes. Wheee! and then we were in.

The Orsay used to be a train station. And looks it. I guess its design has received a lot of flak, maybe because it doesn't look like every other museum you've ever seen in your life, or every other museum its critics had ever seen. When a hotel was built on the site over a century ago, it was carefully designed to complement the Louvre and other nearby buildings. From the outside, it doesn't look like a train station to me, but I'm used to the Amtrak shack in Old Saybrook, Connecticut. It doesn't look like Union Station in Denver or Grand Central in NYC, either. And less like Waterloo or Gare du Nord than the Tate looks like a power station, which was its origin. Anway. It's grand.

The huge archways that used to accommodate trains are now mostly, but not entirely, walled off to separate the space into galleries. Each mid-level gallery within these walled arches has a domed ceiling. I think. In the space that used to be a hotel, the galleries are a little more traditional, long narrow rooms. It was a maze, is all I can say.

One thing I positively adored about European museums was how much natural light they had. Parts of the Met that open to enclosed gardens get some natural light, and some of the galleries in the MFA, but not a lot. From the huge windows on the north side where we feasted on eyes on Van Gogh and Cézanne and Manet and Renoir and Monet (okay, I am the only Monet fan in this house) and Dégas, we got an eyeful of Sacré Cœur. The bits at the far right are the huge chunks of stone, lightly worked, on the balcony of the museum itself. Across the Seine (the Orsay borders the Seine) is the Jarden Des Tuilieres and Paris, Paris, Paris. I loved those buildings.

Inside the Orsay was impressive too. We saw Whistler's La Mere de l'auteur, the import of which painting continues to elude me, Manet's Œillets et clématis dans un vase de cristal, which I loved probably for the violet, lots of Renoirs including at least two PSA used to send me in birthday cards, Bal du Moulin de la Galette et Dance à la ville, another two Monet painting-birthday cards, Essai de figure en plain air, both left and right figures and I don't remember which he sent me, a self-portrait of van Gogh, Chaumes à Cordeville, and La Meridienne ou La Sieste with its scythes, sabots, and his remarkable contrasts of blue and orange, and Monet's Rouen Cathedral, Harmony in Blue.

Before the Denver Art Museum had its Winslow Homer exhibit, I had it in my head that I dislike both William Turner and Homer because I can't tell them apart. Well slap my 'hind with a melon rind, because I am wrong. I still don't like Turner, but I can damn well distinguish between him and my man Homer, who gave me both Girl on a Hill Overlooking the Water, which I saw in Denver, and this Summer Night.

We were in the Naturalism gallery (obviously) when we saw this. A woman standing near me sneezed and I said "Gesundheit" and she thanked me, looked at me again, and asked if I spoke English. I suppressed a snort and said yes, I'm U.S. Which is another oddity, because most Usans say they're American. See, I was wearing my Oscar de la Renta scarf (a hand-me-down from CLH, full of blue and teal and violet). So continental, moi. Anyway, we started talking with them, and they were the first Usans we'd talked to since the 11th. Except the New Yorkers at breakfast the morning before, whom I have forgotten until writing this. That's funny, I had remembered this art-dealing couple in the Orsay as the first Usans, besides Nisou of course, we had talked to since Tuesday, completely forgetting the art deco furniture collectors. Anyway. I guess she thought I might be what, German? because I had wished her good health instead of kowtowing to a superstition that your soul leaves your body when you sneeze (in the form of snot, presumably). I was standing in front of this Homer and said how much I liked it, and the man, a dealer, told me this and that about it, none of which I remember and throughout which monologue I did a lot of nodding. The woman and I wished each other safe journey before we separated.

The sky had cleared while we were in the Orsay and we walked home--Pass. Solferíno, Quai Tuilieres, through the Place de la Concord, and up Champs Elysées--in the sun. Friday at lunch we had planned to meet Nisou et SPG and Tom and Édith at Sacré Cœur at 7:00. I was delighted with this plan, because I had wanted very much to see the cathedral but it was way away from everything else we planned and we were not going, this time, to see it. But Tom lives in Montmartre so it would be the logical place. On the steps, he'd said. "Aren't there a lot of steps?" I asked. He clarified the actual two or three steps of the actual cathedral. Ah. We took the métro from Charles de Gaulle Étoile to Anvers. Our entry point was therefore hard by l'Arc de Triomphe, and I must confess that my reaction to it was perhaps slightly irreverent. I thought of the prayer in the public school of "Monty Python and the Meaning of Life." "Ooo, You are so big...so absolutely huge...we're all really impressed down here, I can tell You."

Park Street Station still confuses me on the MBTA sometimes--I never can find red or green incoming or outgoing--and that's in my own language. We board the blue line headed toward Nation, emerged at Anvers with no idea in which way the cathedral might lie, figured uphill would be the best choice, and headed steeply up. This was the right way, and up we went, up a narrow street teeming with people and foolhardy cars to a green hill with a white marble monument on top. We climbed up and up and up, turning for the view, and climbed some more. Sacré Cœur.

We could see the Pompidou, which is striped in blue white and red and sticks out awkwardly, Notre Dame, the Orsay, a bunch of other buildings I never sorted out--palais and hotel this and that--but not the Arc de Triomphe. As with Notre Dame, we should have climbed to the top of the cathedral. Next time. This is the reverse of the view above, except the Orsay is only two thirds into the background instead of on the horizon. The tall thing on the far right over the trees is the black monolith at Montparnasse.

Nisou et SPG and Tom et Édith arrived, introductions were made, and we all trooped into the Basilica (what's the difference between a cathedral and a basilica? I'm working on the assumption they're interchangeable terms). Tom passes through it often since he lives so close, and he said he had never seen so many votive candles even at Christmastime. I said Notre Dame hadn't seemed so lit up and both he and Nisou suggested ND is much more touristy. We wandered through Montmartre for a bit, a vibrant neighborhood, and decided on Chez la Mère Catherine for supper.

Édith is Catalane--I'm not sure of the adjectival form--from Barcelona and spoke Catalan, Spanish, and French. Tom and I are native English speakers and he has much more French than I have. SPG is native French and speaks great English, with even a good th diphthong. RDC's Spanish is much, much better than my French and unaccented to boot. But he didn't know about Nisou. The six of us sat chatting in French and English and greeted the table next to us, who were four German and Swiss folks. RDC was flabbergasted when Nisou began talking with them in fluent German. I suggested he try her Spanish next, or maybe Italian. Or ask her how to greet someone in Arabic or Mandarin. And he was picking up French unfairly quickly, I thought, learning and remembering "to share" when Tom and Édith split some of their dishes. I bet he would remember it now; I don't and am guessing "partegière." Édith and Mary Lou had met in a beauty salon when someone pointed out they both speak Spanish. I don't know how similar Mexican and Castillan Spanish are--is it only the lisping c and differences like Usan and British truck and lorry, or are there greater differences? And from Édith Nisou wanted to learn Catalan. Her first word was something we'd just seen flit about the turrets of the Basilica: rata piñata, the hanging rat, a bat. This is the new name for the Impending One.

The German man with the best English took our photograph--this time I remembered to ask someone--and, as we stood to leave, shook our hands in both of his and said he wanted us to know that all Europe stands beside the United States now. He was very sweet.

Which reminds me. As we were served our first drinks over dinner, the first toasts were facetious and we giggled. Then I caught Nisou's eye and proposed, "À pais." To peace, echoed everyone--including, perhaps, the Germans and Swiss; is that how we started talking?

In the drinks came a garnish that no one knew the name of: a closed flower whose petals were perhaps leaves, papery, yellow, growing from a stem at one end to a point at the other. Also attached to the stem, hidden in the flower, was a little yellow fruit. I have no idea what it could be.

More wandering around Montmartre led us to a café where some of us had mulled wine. This might have been when RDC first alerted everyone to the sport of spotting me make my Wine Face. I'm not proud of the fact that I can't even sip it without going into paroxysms of disgust, and knowing people were watching made me feel like I was faking it. So there was no Wine Face to be spotted. Nisou and SPG had until Wednesday, though. And I do keep trying the stuff. I'm sure it's not its fault that it's foul, sour-pussing, throat-constricting, stuff.

Édith, who had gamely put up with my bumbling French all night, now had a much better conversation in Spanish with RDC. She reassured us that we could take the métro home, that one last would leave each terminus at 12:30. This was true, but ticket offices were closed. When we descended into the station, there was someone in the booth but he gestured slicing with his arms, "Fermée." Closed. RDC said something about a taxi, which is an international word, and one of the three gendarmes loitering nearby said "Non, non, voilà" as he pulled his wallet from his pocket and laid it on the turnstile. He must have had a card in it that would override the permissions. The turnstile light changed from red to green, I said my other French phrase ("Vous êtes très gentil") and we were off.

If possible, l'Arc de Triomphe is even more impressive at night. I'm not sure that, if I had such a thing hanging around, I would build a traffic circle around it, but there it was.