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sienamysticFrom the notes I kept while in Paris:
My reward for waiting several dull hours for business this morning was getting to go to the Louvre. I mastered the Metro - intimidating at first but easy to pick up, because it's well laid-out and goes everywhere you want to go - and spent about four hours wandering the corridors of a museum that can only be described as mammoth. It's really all too much when every wall has a masterpiece. You can't slow down for every one - you find yourself scooting past them an an appalling rate. You're looking at the Titian of the hottie guy with the glove, and then you pass something that was on your slide test, and there's one that's featured in every single Art History 101 class ever taught. So you pick a few to deliberately find, and on your way to them you are happily surprised by others (OMG the Penitent Magdalene is here! I totally forgot!) and when you leave you realize that you totally, absolutely meant to see this list of other works and now it's too late because your feet are ready to seize control and make you SIT DOWN ALREADY.
Poor Venus de Milo, and poor Mona Lisa. People just want to have their pictures taken in front of them, not to actually look at them. The Louvre was a really difficult museum not just because of its size, but because it was completely swamped with people in most of the galleries, and it's hard to sit and look at something when you're aware that you're simply blocking the flow of traffic for most people.
A cariatid. Lovely, isn't she?
I love how this photo came out. There are the people, dwarfed by the huge paintings looming over them.
My only self-photo, taken in a mirror in the apartments of Napoleon III.
So when I left the Louvre, I clearly needed a place to relax for a bit. Some place...with edibles. I consulted my trusty guidebook (Time Out: Paris, for those who want to know. Perfectly serviceable.) and wound up a short walk from the Louvre at Angelina's, drinking a hot chocolate so dark and rich that they call it L'Africane. It comes in a wee little pitcher that holds about two cups, and has a side dish of whipped cream to add to the chocolate. My choices for what decadent pastry to eat with it were numerous: a fig tart, a fresh strawberry tart, their signature Mont Blanc, which involves chestnut paste, various things that looked like eclaires but which had different names, tiny chocolate cakes, and, what I finally settled on: a citron tart with tiny supremes of candied grapefruit on top.
Reader, I could have died that hour and gone to heaven a happy woman.
When I finally left, resisting the temptation to steal the little pitcher, I wasn't sure where to go. I decided on Notre Dame, even though it would be too late to get inside
The cathedral at dusk
A quick side note - when I found out I was going to be going to Paris on business, I decided to bring clothing that was a little more formal but that would allow me to play the tourist as well. Hopefully I'd be able to blend in a little more. I suppose I was partly successful - I was asked a couple of times if I was Italian or German - but I realized I was lacking one major accessory that would help me hide in the crowd. I had no scarf.
Now, it wasn't particularly cold while I was there. But every Parisian had obviously made the mental switch to fall, and the big indicator of this was that every man, woman, and child I saw had some sort of scarf wound around their necks. Pashminas, silk scarves, knit ones in funky yarns, those "terrorist" Arab-esque ones that are ragingly popular right now despite Rachel Ray and her Dunkin' Donuts Debacle, whatever - everybody had one elegantly draped and tucked and knotted. So despite the fact that I was already sweating like crazy from all the walking I was doing, I decided to pick up a scarf when I could. And just around the corner from Notre Dame, down a stretch of road, were tourist traps ready, willing, and able to cater to my scarf-lust. I picked up a light one in a brilliant blue. Mind you, I knew it was probably a pretty cheap scarf, and that I'd be paying too much for it, but at this point I was a little frenzied, so I forked over my five euros and wound it around my neck. And proceeded to walk around a little more, and then take the Metro back to my hotel, where I realized the dye had been coming off on my hands, and neck, and jacket. I looked like a dead Smurf. So I soaked it in cold running water, getting rid of as much of the excess dye as I could, and left it to dry in my bathroom while I went for dinner.
Dinner, my feet decided, would have to be somewhere nearby. Thankfully there was a street near where I was that had a string of small restaurants, and I opted for Chinese. It was cheap, really tasty, and they had prawn crackers! Bonus! Thus fed, I went back to the hotel to sleep the sleep of the exhausted tourist.
My reward for waiting several dull hours for business this morning was getting to go to the Louvre. I mastered the Metro - intimidating at first but easy to pick up, because it's well laid-out and goes everywhere you want to go - and spent about four hours wandering the corridors of a museum that can only be described as mammoth. It's really all too much when every wall has a masterpiece. You can't slow down for every one - you find yourself scooting past them an an appalling rate. You're looking at the Titian of the hottie guy with the glove, and then you pass something that was on your slide test, and there's one that's featured in every single Art History 101 class ever taught. So you pick a few to deliberately find, and on your way to them you are happily surprised by others (OMG the Penitent Magdalene is here! I totally forgot!) and when you leave you realize that you totally, absolutely meant to see this list of other works and now it's too late because your feet are ready to seize control and make you SIT DOWN ALREADY.
Poor Venus de Milo, and poor Mona Lisa. People just want to have their pictures taken in front of them, not to actually look at them. The Louvre was a really difficult museum not just because of its size, but because it was completely swamped with people in most of the galleries, and it's hard to sit and look at something when you're aware that you're simply blocking the flow of traffic for most people.
A cariatid. Lovely, isn't she?
I love how this photo came out. There are the people, dwarfed by the huge paintings looming over them.
My only self-photo, taken in a mirror in the apartments of Napoleon III.
So when I left the Louvre, I clearly needed a place to relax for a bit. Some place...with edibles. I consulted my trusty guidebook (Time Out: Paris, for those who want to know. Perfectly serviceable.) and wound up a short walk from the Louvre at Angelina's, drinking a hot chocolate so dark and rich that they call it L'Africane. It comes in a wee little pitcher that holds about two cups, and has a side dish of whipped cream to add to the chocolate. My choices for what decadent pastry to eat with it were numerous: a fig tart, a fresh strawberry tart, their signature Mont Blanc, which involves chestnut paste, various things that looked like eclaires but which had different names, tiny chocolate cakes, and, what I finally settled on: a citron tart with tiny supremes of candied grapefruit on top.
Reader, I could have died that hour and gone to heaven a happy woman.
When I finally left, resisting the temptation to steal the little pitcher, I wasn't sure where to go. I decided on Notre Dame, even though it would be too late to get inside
The cathedral at dusk
A quick side note - when I found out I was going to be going to Paris on business, I decided to bring clothing that was a little more formal but that would allow me to play the tourist as well. Hopefully I'd be able to blend in a little more. I suppose I was partly successful - I was asked a couple of times if I was Italian or German - but I realized I was lacking one major accessory that would help me hide in the crowd. I had no scarf.
Now, it wasn't particularly cold while I was there. But every Parisian had obviously made the mental switch to fall, and the big indicator of this was that every man, woman, and child I saw had some sort of scarf wound around their necks. Pashminas, silk scarves, knit ones in funky yarns, those "terrorist" Arab-esque ones that are ragingly popular right now despite Rachel Ray and her Dunkin' Donuts Debacle, whatever - everybody had one elegantly draped and tucked and knotted. So despite the fact that I was already sweating like crazy from all the walking I was doing, I decided to pick up a scarf when I could. And just around the corner from Notre Dame, down a stretch of road, were tourist traps ready, willing, and able to cater to my scarf-lust. I picked up a light one in a brilliant blue. Mind you, I knew it was probably a pretty cheap scarf, and that I'd be paying too much for it, but at this point I was a little frenzied, so I forked over my five euros and wound it around my neck. And proceeded to walk around a little more, and then take the Metro back to my hotel, where I realized the dye had been coming off on my hands, and neck, and jacket. I looked like a dead Smurf. So I soaked it in cold running water, getting rid of as much of the excess dye as I could, and left it to dry in my bathroom while I went for dinner.
Dinner, my feet decided, would have to be somewhere nearby. Thankfully there was a street near where I was that had a string of small restaurants, and I opted for Chinese. It was cheap, really tasty, and they had prawn crackers! Bonus! Thus fed, I went back to the hotel to sleep the sleep of the exhausted tourist.
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(no subject)
Date: 2008-10-15 07:27 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-10-15 08:36 pm (UTC)I think I can, however, do better accessorizing. I need more exciting necklaces, stat!
(no subject)
Date: 2008-10-15 08:38 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-10-16 02:20 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-10-16 02:34 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-10-16 02:18 am (UTC)I don't remember if you knit. If so there's a nce description of scarves in Paris (and versatile scarf pattern) at Knitty's Clapotis.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-10-16 02:32 pm (UTC)I do knit, but indifferently and with a definite lack of skill. I actually took along my "get back into knitting" scarf that I' currently working on, where I knit it in any way I feel like jut to be knitting again. I'd love to have a Clapotis, but I don't think I could manage it without some hand-holding. I wonder if there's a local place that does classes.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-10-16 12:47 pm (UTC)Were the Parisians friendly?
I feel your layering pain, btw. Bostonians do the scarf thing too once it gets below, say, 80-85 degrees. I have neither the knack nor the body temperature for it.
-Kate-h
(no subject)
Date: 2008-10-16 02:29 pm (UTC)Everybody I met in Paris was either outright friendly, or at least polite and helpful. I apologized for my lack of English, said please and thank you a lot, and overall I was neither sneered at nor snubbed. And the people I had to work with were mostly quite nice and professional, although there was a tendency to vanish without telling any of us where they were going and when they'd be back.