Paris Journal 2012 – Barbara Joy Cooley Home: barbarajoycooley.com
Find me on Facebook 2011
Paris Journal ← Previous Next
→ Go back to the beginning
|
After Tom returned from having his hair cut by the North-African-French guys at Look Coiffure, we headed for the metro station at Emile Zola. It was time to go greet Dan (Tom’s son), and our granddaughters, Olivia and Sarah. We had two strange encounters just in the short distance between the apartment and the metro station. Ahead of us, I noticed one of the Red Cross or Doctors Without Borders volunteers who was soliciting donations. This is not unusual; we often see these fundraising volunteers. They are not allowed to solicit donations from foreigners, so my usual response is to politely respond to their greetings by smiling and saying, “Bonjour,” but then I add “je suis Americaine” That normally results in their withdrawing politely, with a smile, and wishing me a good day. But this volunteer that I saw ahead of us yesterday was not being polite. He appeared to be angry with a woman who just declined to speak with him. I could see the anger in his face, and his lips seemed to be forming harsh words, which I could not yet hear because we were still too far away. But a moment later, when we were closer, he addressed us. Tom explained that he was a tourist. We kept walking. To our backs, the volunteer called Tom a stupid beast (my French is good enough to understand these insults). I made the mistake of telling Tom what the guy had said. Tom stopped, anger flashing in his eyes. For a moment I thought he was going to turn back and tell the guy off. But I said, “No, remember he’s nuts – you saw how he was speaking to the woman just before he addressed us.” Tom agreed. We went down the steps into the Émile Zola metro station. When we reached the platform, there were only two other people there: a woman, who was staying close to the entrance, and a man a bit farther along the platform who was making strange, loud whistling noises and kicking a vending machine with such violence that the sound boomed through the space. A young man had joined us on the platform. We moved to position ourselves between this normal young man and the normal young woman. We normal people were almost huddled up at the beginning of the platform. Safety in numbers, we seemed to be thinking. Soon, a few other people joined us, and the train arrived. We got on the first car, up near the driver. But we didn’t need to be concerned because the metro was packed with people. Besides, the crazy violent guy got on a separate car, and in this Paris metro, one cannot move from car to car. That’s life in the city. When there are this many people around, you are going to encounter the fringe elements. But all was normal and well when we left the metro at the Mabillon station, and walked the short distance to the apartment in the 6th. There we found that Dan and the girls had just arrived, and Ron and Elisabeth were showing them around the apartment. When we had things situated and the girls had collapsed into a nap in the middle room, Dan and I went out to the new Carrefour City on the rue de Vaugirard and the rue Jean Bart. Dan bought basic starter groceries. Ron and Tom stayed back at the apartment as the girls slept, and went over Ron’s rhymed translation of the Rimbaud poem that has recently been etched onto the long wall of the former seminary (now Finance Ministry offices) along the rue Férou. Tom gave Ron an A- for his efforts. I was surprised he gave him a grade at all. “I thought you were tired of, and retired from, grading papers,” I said. We got the girls to wake up and get ready to go for a very late lunch/early dinner (“linner”), and a walk. Tom remembered that one can dine anytime, even at 3PM (the strange time that is too late for lunch and too early for dinner), even at 3AM (all through the night) at the Café Mondrian at the corner of the rue de Seine and the boulevard Saint Germain. Olivia and I entered first; as soon as the three men working in the Mondrian saw us, there were bright smiles and greetings. Going about Paris with two charming 11-year-olds is different from going about Paris as a couple of aging adults. It makes sense. These servers are all of an age that they probably have kids, and they love to see kids come into the brasserie. Especially polite kids who say “bonjour, monsieur” even though they’re English speakers. I said bonjour and asked if we could please have a table for five. We were given our choice of tables. We selected a booth. The girls were great at saying “merci” a lot as things were delivered to the table: hot chocolate topped with whipped cream, coca cola in a bottle, with a glass and ice on the side, a big plate of fries, two different kinds of crepes (one was stuffed with chocolate), French onion soup (mostly for Tom and me), a bottle of San Pellegrino sparkling water, and a grilled ham and cheese with fries for Dan. The charmed server drew a cartoon of himself and signed it for the girls. After consuming much of the food, the girls were finally awake enough that they were excited about the possibilities – all the places that we could walk! In Paris! Tom showed them the quaint rue de Furstemberg and its fountain. We held their hands and walked through Flamant, a decorating/home store that we like so much. We like the space that it is in, not so much the store and its overpriced merchandise. In this commercial space, there is a preserved piece of the original wall of the Chapel of the Virgin that was once part of the old Abbey at Saint Germain des Prés. Here’s an explanation of the chapel ruins from the oldandsold.com web site: Gathered together in the small park which opens from a corner of the church are fragments of the great chapel to the Virgin, the chef-d'oeuvre of Pierre de Montereau, a chapel resembling in style and disposition his existing monument, the Sainte-Chapelle. A particularly handsome fragment is also displayed in the garden of the Cluny Museum. From this debris, constituting gargoyles, balustrades, columns, and ornaments, found in a garden at the corner of the Rue de l'Abbaye and Rue Furstemberg, as well as from the many contemporary descriptions one can build up some idea of the beauty of this celebrated chapel. It was begun under the abbe Hugues of Issy (d. 1247) and completed under Thomas de Mauleon, who resigned in 1255, and like the Sainte-Chapelle belongs entirely to the reign of Saint-Louis. Smaller than the chapel of the Palais, it was one hundred feet long, twenty-seven feet wide, and forty-seven feet in height. The door of the chapel, sculptured with great finesse, and the statue of the Virgin from its pier are at Saint-Denis. Exiting Flamant, we strolled up the rue de Seine toward the Seine, window shopping along the way. The girls were enchanted by many things in the shops, like a great collection of Russian dolls. I won’t be putting photos of the girls’ faces on this web site. Those are being emailed to family only. But I must say that I did take lots of cute photos of them. We went into the courtyard and grounds of the École Nationale Superieure des Beaux Arts and wandered around, because it was open and because it is so old and interesting. (The school is situated on the site of a former convent – hence the cloisters – which was, for a while, used to house Alexandre Lenoir’s collection of artifacts from destroyed church properties – hence the damaged statues here and there.) We looked at the Pont des Arts – the pedestrian bridge decorated by thousands of padlocks placed by lovers. Then we took the steps down to the cobblestones along the Seine, pausing to admire all the carved faces on the Pont Neuf, the oldest bridge in Paris. Up we went to the Île de la Cite to the Parvis Notre Dame, where we saw people feeding sparrows from their hands. We know it isn’t good to feed the wildlife, but in this case, the sparrows have become domesticated from hundreds of years of being fed by people. A friendly and philosophical man named Stephane was helping people get the hang of the technique that works best for getting the sparrows to land on one’s hand, and to eat bread from it. He was a bright, engaging fellow, fluent in at least French and English. The girls were attracted to the idea of feeding the sparrows, and we spent quite a while there. After some time, Stephane was drawn to us. He explained that he could tell by looking at us, and by our manner, that we were smart, highly educated people. No, he was not begging for money. This man was simply very interested in people. We had a delightful conversation with him. At last, the girls were ready to move on so we walked around Notre Dame, through the pretty park called the Square Jean XXIII. When we arrived back at the Parvis, it was clear that the line to get into Notre Dame was just too long. We ventured over to the entrance to the crypt, but it had closed 20 minutes earlier. It was just as well. Dan and the girls were getting very tired again; jet lag will be a factor until sometime later today, I suspect. We walked back down the rue Dauphine and through the busy, pedestrianized Carrefour de Buci, and once again found ourselves at the rue de Seine and the boulevard Saint Germain. The plan was then for Dan and the girls to visit the Luxembourg Gardens (7:30PM), and Tom and I were going to catch the line 10 and go home. But I doubt that Dan and the girls made it to the park. They looked so tired. I think they probably went back to their apartment to relax for the evening. More later . . . .
|
Friday, July 20, 2012
Russian
dolls (matryoshka)
in a shop window on the rue de Seine.
Scenes
from the grounds of the École Nationale Superieure des Beaux
Arts (Art School, above and below).
The
girls enjoyed feeding sparrows at Notre Dame (an activity that has gone on
for hundreds of years), and admiring a mother duck and ducklings on the
Seine.
|
