I am supposed to be captioning my photos, but while I wait for them to upload (there are 350+ of them because I have not been proactive about this) and also for my clothes to dry (this load of laundry has been going, on and off, for eight hours... clearly I will at some point have to give up for the night), I may as well do my blogging for the day.
Today was planned to be an uneventful day, although that wasn't really how it worked out. I started the morning by going for a run, since both my running buddy and I were too wiped out to run last night. As it turns out, I was still pretty wiped out this morning (perhaps from walking a lot, perhaps from the strength-building exercises I am doing in an effort not to turn into a ball of wimpitude in the absence of lifting) and, while I did a decent-length run, it was not exactly brisk.
The first event of the day was my chocolate tour... people have been telling me what a waste of money this was, and I suppose I can see their point, in that perhaps the value of the tour guide's spiel and the value of the chocolate I tasted did not add up to the 25 euros I paid. But, it is likely that if I had not gone on the tour I would have eaten no fancy chocolate at all in Paris, because these places are extremely intimidating (even when you're in them with a tour group!) and that would have been sad. The tour guide was reasonably informative about both chocolate and the Parisian sights we passed (it was by no means geographically comprehensive, but I learned some interesting tidbits), and the amount of chocolate was just right - one small cup of hot chocolate (not at all sweet, but very good) and six pieces (dark chocolate ganache, fennel ganache - my 2nd-favorite, a dark-chocolate wafer with candied nuts and fruits, a choolate-coated orange bit, a chocolate-coated sugar-nut past - my favorite, and another dark ganache from a bean that has a cherry arome) over the course of two hours at three different locations. It was definitely a lot of chocolate, but I didn't feel sick, as I've heard many people do after longer tours involving more food. So, I was pleased.
I was planning on coming home immediately after that, but I ended up wandering into the Fragonard perfume museum, where I spent a few minutes looking at old perfume vials. I did not buy any perfume. I also did a bit more shopping in the neighborhood, including going into a store the tour guide had mentioned, Uniqlo (a Japanese clothing store), where I ended up buying a sweater for 5 euros (yeah, I know, I do not need any more clothes...). I also went into Au Printemps, which is far, far more upscale and scarier than Galaries Lafayette.
Back at home, I started my laundry and etcetera.
After my brief siesta, I headed out to the Louvre. It is open late on Wednesdays on Fridays, when it is also less expensive. My guidebook says it is less crowded at this time as well; I don't see how this state of affairs can continue after guidebooks start mentioning it, but it wasn't particularly bad, so that must be the case. There was basically no line to get in, and only mild crowding in some places. Having already been to the Louvre on my first visit to Paris and having utterly not-enjoyed it, I decided to not worry about seeing the red-letter sights, or about being thorough or comprehensive, and just wander; moreover, I intentionally started in the wing with the least amount of super-famous stuff. This strategy worked extremely well; in the 3.5 hours I was there before they started kicking people out, I saw (cursorily, of course, a significant fraction of the museum), passed through some part of most of the major sections, and visited both the Mona Lisa and Venus de Milo (the two red-letter attractions that I was interested in seeing). I even got someone to take my picture with Venus, after five or ten minutes standing around and being a sissy because I don't like asking people for things and didn't know the French colloquialism for taking a picture (it turns out to be the literal translation, 'prendre un photo', but I thought it might use "faire" and also am not really comfortable using "pourriez" and don't know any other way to ask nicely) and therefore wanted to find someone who obviously spoke English and who wasn't overly busy.
On my way home from the museum, I stopped (on a populated street) at an ATM. While I was using it, a man started talking to me. It seemed, from the tone of his voice (I couldn't understand him, and wasn't really trying to) that he was asking me for something, presumably money or food. I was not happy with this situation, because while there are a large number of beggars in Paris (about the same number as homeless people in NYC, but they are far more aggressive here) and I have been approached by numerous slightly-less-marginal men for no good reason (that is just what they do here, for fun, apparently), being accosted at the ATM, however nonviolently, is threatening. However, I was very Parisienne about it. I did not even look at my interlocuter. I simply said, in a tone of annoyed resignation, "laisse-moi, s'il-vous-plait" (this means, "leave me, please", with bad grammar because the imperative is familiar, which it should not be but I wasn't exactly planning this exchange, and the please is formal; I have heard this is how you tell someone to alone) and he did.
Now, it is time to becaption my photos.
Wednesday, July 21, 2010
Tuesday, July 20, 2010
no news is weird news (a very long-winded post, not at all about Paris)
While traveling, I haven't been reading the internets nearly as much. This is largely intentional, since I wanted to be doing different things on my trip than I do at home, including doing different things when I'm sitting in my Parisian apartment than I do when sitting in my New York apartment. However, I've still been more or less keeping up with certain of my favorite blogs, which means I have a very very basic knowledge of recent world news (I'm aware that oil has stopped gushing forth from the ocean and the economy continues in a state of mild-to-medium suckiness, if you average out the reports ranging from "full recovery!" to "disaster!" and that many people are very offended about issues that are in no way new, and I assume by my not having heard of it that there have been no major wars declared involving the United States and that New York City is still more or less standing and not entirely bankrupt) but a much more detailed knowledge of various friends' and acquaintances' children, dogs, and various friendship/ career/ romance/ general happiness quests.
My feed reader is divided up into several categories (there used to be more, including two different categories for academic journal feeds; I culled it substantially before coming to Paris): Friends (people I actually know, very often in real life), People (personal blogs of people I don't know, generally grad students or twenty-first-century hippies who write about the homemade cheese they are making from the milk of their very own goats), Comics, New York Events, Articles (at this point, this section only includes Slate, which I have been reading with probably-absurd dedication for about eight years, although I expect it to flesh out again in time), Econ blogs (a revolving bunch, heavily tilted toward self-professed libertarians, whom proper libertarians tell me are actually not such), and Science Blogs. (Just so you know, it's not that I don't read the news at all. I make it through much of the paper New York Times on weekends, and I use the NYT skimmer when I'm at home, and variously check for updates on the slatest, cnn.com, and washingtonpost.com. I am feeling very defensive, now that I'm in Europe, about my total unfamiliarity with BBC news. I am not a stupid American!)
Anyway, Science Blogs. This is a group that has fluctuated a lot in size and may be on the verge of winking out or being incorporated elsewhere; I only include in this category blogs that are about science (i.e. Carl Zimmer's) or about the doing of science, and the latter has recently become a lot less interesting to me. Many of the science blogs I follow are, or have been affiliated with ScienceBlogs.com, and others are interested in the current kerfluffle there, so I have been reading (or, usually, skimming) a lot about it.
Here is the issue, as I understand it: ScienceBlogs.com is run by Seed Media Group, which was the parent company of the recently-defunct Seed Magazine. The parent company has some other concerns as well, but ScienceBlogs.com is its chief web outlet. The site is exactly what it sounds like - a family of blogs. It is more, I am informed, than a simple indexing; there is a lot of cross-talk and cross-posting among blogs, and the bloggers feel a sense of community. While they do get paid, the amount is probably not huge (they all have other jobs as scientists or science writers), and most of them do it simply because they are devoted to science and like blogging. Now, recently, Seed Media Group invited a blog sponsored by Pepsi to join ScienceBlogs. Supposedly, the blog would be a real scientific exploration of nutrition and whatnot (apparently no posts ever appeared), although still sponsored by Pepsi. There was a vast outpouring of rage, in response to which - over the course of a few days - Seed first decided to label Pepsi's blog an "advertorial" and then decided to pull it entirely.
So, win for the little guy, right? Evil corporate behemoth slain by valiant science bloggers? Um, no. The science bloggerati are still inflamed, and they are still leaving ScienceBlogs in bunches. They are also predicting the site's demise and a new age of science blogging. Moreover they are saying that at the height of its power, Seed Media Group lost its sense of ethics, and its editorial objectivity has been called into question.
Yawn. I know that bloggers are self-important, because apparently I am one, but this is ridiculous. Perhaps Seed Media Group will be driven into the ground, but I suspect that if so, this will be merely one strike among many, two others being the demise of the magazine (its original focus) and the general troubles of ad-supported internet media. Losing a few science bloggers is not going to materially hurt ScienceBlogs.com, in my opinion, because so far the human race has not produced a paucity of people with a great deal to say (um, myself included) so it is not like it is going to be impossible to replace them.
Mostly I am amused by the Great Revelation that a company wishes to make money, and that sometimes its actions are influenced by that We saw something similar when we learned that the banks who had been making or selling troubled mortgages sometimes also bet against them, although perhaps this is worse because people have more idealism about the media than about banks (?). But every publication has a bias; most don't state them outright, although a reasonably-informed reader can usually tell. That doesn't make them bad publications. Magazines like Seed, which are much more features than news, naturally must have a bias - they have to choose what out of all the zillions of possible articles to publish, and that will be informed by a worldview. As will who their advertisers are. Ideally, the worldview and the articles shape who advertises in the magazine, but of course it goes the other way around as well. There's a reason why Cosmo has never (to my knowledge) published an article called You Are Fine As You Are Now Stop Wasting Your Money on Endless Different Shades of Eyeshadow, instead publishing endless articles called, more or less, You Are Fine As You Are But Will Be So Much Better With This Brand-New Eyeshadow... is this because every woman's eyeshadow needs change every month? Is it because they are a slave of their advertisers? No, it's because they know that they are beholden to their advertisers, who give them the money that keeps them afloat, and therefore must keep their worldview sympathetic to their cause.
Moreover, the people at Seed probably didn't add the Pepsi blog for fun or out of evilness. They probably did it because it offered a reliable profit stream that they very much needed. In other words, the Pepsi blog would (in my conjecture) have subsidized the infrastructure that the other blogs run on.
Perhaps if I were a member of ScienceBlogs, I would now be offended enough to leave because somebody in my domain was selling something, and I would presumably feel greater pride in being on Science Blogs than I do in being on Blogspot. But I hope I would not be naive enough to think that my employer was anything other than a corporation, with perhaps a social mission (spreading science knowledge to the masses, etc.) but definitely a desire (and need) to turn a profit.
Much time has passed since my last post. Or, anyway, three days.
On the first of those days, Sunday, I did very little. I was so exhausted from my long day at Versailles that it took me until about eleven a.m. to bestir myself far enough from my apartment to fetch coffee (however, the rest of Paris seems to be similarly slow to get moving on weekends; this is a constant surprise to me because in New York, at least in my neighborhood, nine a.m. is the height of brunch-and-dog-walking-and-visiting-with-neighbors time). After experimenting with the Parisian way of coffee-drinking (slowly, while doing nothing else except watching passersby) I went for a small bout of shopping, to the boulangerie and the fromagerie. Then I went home to sample my purchase, nap, and work on my fiction. Later on, I went for another walk, this time to the Royal Palais and its environs. Still later, I went for a jog; this was perhaps the most notable accomplishment of the day because my running buddy and I ran all the way from Pont Neuf to the Eiffel Tower and back, a five-mile round-trip.
Yesterday I was more active. I spent several hours walking around the Left Bank in the vicinity of the Latin Quarter and did some shopping at Monoprix; I managed to find a few things I liked at good prices but am not as besotted with the store as some people seem to be. The discount clothes are good prices, but they have the trouble of being poorly-organized and unreliable (i.e. they don't have everything in every size); the non-discounted clothes are not particularly good prices (i.e. typically 30 euros for a plain top; Gap here is about the same) but are still the quality you expect of clothes bought in the equivalent of Target. Perhaps my indisposition to these clothes arises from my desire for efficiency; I would like to have a nice wardrobe more than I would like to shop, so if I am buying a blazer or a coat or nice pants or a dress, I would rather spend twice as much and have it be twice as useful or last twice as long (or look twice as good and just not have as many clothes). It seems that this is not the opinion of everybody, though. I also found a used bookstore with a few English-language books and bought one; it looks to be mediocre science fiction, but that is generally better than bad regular fiction, and it is small enough that if I carry it with me it will not totally destroy my packing-lighter goal. Later, I went for a walk to the islands in the evening; their touristyness was undiminished, but fewer things were open. I also bought some creme brulee ice cream, and discovered that I am not terribly fond of this flavor.
Today I took a trip to Chartres. The journey was handicapped by several concerns: it was hot, it was extremely sunny (made worse for me by the fact that I do not have prescription sunglasses), and I was cranky due to waking up early and having no coffee. However, despite all that the trip was mostly hitch-free. I managed to purchase my ticket without incident, in French. In Chartres, it was easy to find the Cathedral by the fact that it dwarfs everything else in the town, and also by following the very loud construction noises, as the Cathedral is apparently under renovation. This could not help but hamper my enjoyment of the Cathedral since (a) most of its front, both inside and out, was invisible due to the scaffolding, and (b) the incessant whining of drills, banging of hammers, and shouts and laughter of workmen do not exactly create an atmosphere of cathedral-like quiet contemplation. However, I did spend a good hour and a half examining the architecture, inside and out, and was particularly impressed by the choir screen and the well-decorated arches (eventually I will upload the many pictures I took). Then I took a walk around the town. It is a very cute place, with old buildings and stairs down to a winding stream, but I was by then a bit grouchy from the heat and from the poor descriptions of my guidebook; eventually, on the way to the train station, I bought a coffee (I am always laughed at when I ask for a noisette, either because I'm mispronouncing it because wanting my coffee to have a little, but not a ton, of milk is so very American... sugar, on the other hand, is freely available) and a sandwich.
After downing my noisette immediately and eating my sandwich on the first half of the train ride back, I felt much less grumpy (funny, that...) and spontaneously disembarked the train at a small town called Epernon which I had seen on the way out and which looked cute. (On non-reserved trains, your ticket is good on any train on the stated route until the end of the next day, so this was totally legitimate.) I spent a pleasant hour walking around the village, which was far, far cuter than Chartres, although I did not take any pictures (because (a) it doesn't feel right to be pulling out a camera and taking pictures of people's houses when they are not trying to attract tourists to their town, and (b) that would have rather sullied my pleasant ramblings). There was a very old church, and uneven streets barely wide enough for a car, and many houses of plaster and stone. It was really exceptionally darling. I also walked a bit outside the town limits and saw some newer houses in a modern version of the style, which sort of shades over into southern-California-hacienda.
I thought I got lucky on the train I caught in Epernon, because it was air-conditioned, but then there was a forty-minute delay while we stopped in a series of rail yards. My French is not great, but I'm pretty sure it was not explained; the announcements were very much in the "The train has stopped. We will be moving shortly. Thank you for your patience." vein. At Versailles, many people got on. I had been sitting alone in a family grouping (this is apparently what two sets of two seats facing each other is called) and an older woman sat across from me, then a man sat next to me, then a woman sat across from him. When she started talking to him, I thought they knew each other, but it quickly became apparent they did not. He was young - no more than twenty-five - and quite attractive; she was definitely middle-aged (fifty, maybe?) and average-looking; she had the look of someone who spends a lot of time making sure that not one of her hairs will ever move from its ordained place, without much attention to whether stiffness is the desired quality in hair. I tell you this because their large age difference made the fact that she was pretty clearly flirting with him a bit odd to my American ear.. granted, I may not know what French rules are, but I do know what a woman looks like when she is being coquettish and trying to impress a man by how awesome she thinks he is, and I am guessing it doesn't change on different continents or as people age. I was particularly struck by how he seemed to not mind her flirtation and was perfectly friendly to her. I cannot imagine seeing such an interchange in the states; even the whole "cougar" business, to whatever extent such people exist, is supposedly about sex more than innocent flirting on trains.
On reaching Paris, I decided that obviously I should walk home from the train station. I had taken the metro there in the morning, but this would be a bit of a hassle with the transfer and the crowdedness of trains, and I wasn't pressed for time. Of course, outside it was a bit hot and extremely sunny, so this may not have been the best idea... by the time I got home, my headache, which had come on in Chartres and come and gone all day, was quite bad. Water, a nap, dinner (dinner! and i had lunch! and breakfast! a whole day of regular meals... what is becoming of me?), and a shower all helped a bit, although I'm still feeling the effects of a day outside in quite a lot of sun.
One final anecdote that I almost forgot: On my way home, a man called out to me, Bonjour, mademoiselle. I ignored him, assuming he was either selling me something or hitting on me, as strange men who call out to one generally are doing one of those things. In New York, this is what you do when people are trying to talk to you against your wishes: keep walking, don't make eye contact, don't respond. They don't usually try again. But here, this method does not work. As usual, the man assumed (apparently) that I hadn't heard him, and called out to me again: Bonjour, mademoiselle! Mademoiselle? Attends! For a moment, I worried (as I always do at this point) that he was someone I knew (I could only barely see him in my peripheral vision and might not have recognized the voice of someone I didn't know well, although one would think any such person would use my name and/or speak in English) or that I had dropped something important. Then he made the farty-mouth noise of disgust and annoyance that men here make when you won't talk to them (Oh, you rude, snotty American, refusing to entertain my unwanted solicitations to relieve you of your money), so I knew he was not anybody I needed to concern myself with. Then he called out, to another woman: Bonjour, Madam. Her response - immediate and forceful, which ended his conversation with her - was simply, Non.
So, basically, French women get to unabashedly flirt with men half their age and rudely brush off unwanted accosters. This might be worth a little bit of caffeine deprivation.
On the first of those days, Sunday, I did very little. I was so exhausted from my long day at Versailles that it took me until about eleven a.m. to bestir myself far enough from my apartment to fetch coffee (however, the rest of Paris seems to be similarly slow to get moving on weekends; this is a constant surprise to me because in New York, at least in my neighborhood, nine a.m. is the height of brunch-and-dog-walking-and-visiting-with-neighbors time). After experimenting with the Parisian way of coffee-drinking (slowly, while doing nothing else except watching passersby) I went for a small bout of shopping, to the boulangerie and the fromagerie. Then I went home to sample my purchase, nap, and work on my fiction. Later on, I went for another walk, this time to the Royal Palais and its environs. Still later, I went for a jog; this was perhaps the most notable accomplishment of the day because my running buddy and I ran all the way from Pont Neuf to the Eiffel Tower and back, a five-mile round-trip.
Yesterday I was more active. I spent several hours walking around the Left Bank in the vicinity of the Latin Quarter and did some shopping at Monoprix; I managed to find a few things I liked at good prices but am not as besotted with the store as some people seem to be. The discount clothes are good prices, but they have the trouble of being poorly-organized and unreliable (i.e. they don't have everything in every size); the non-discounted clothes are not particularly good prices (i.e. typically 30 euros for a plain top; Gap here is about the same) but are still the quality you expect of clothes bought in the equivalent of Target. Perhaps my indisposition to these clothes arises from my desire for efficiency; I would like to have a nice wardrobe more than I would like to shop, so if I am buying a blazer or a coat or nice pants or a dress, I would rather spend twice as much and have it be twice as useful or last twice as long (or look twice as good and just not have as many clothes). It seems that this is not the opinion of everybody, though. I also found a used bookstore with a few English-language books and bought one; it looks to be mediocre science fiction, but that is generally better than bad regular fiction, and it is small enough that if I carry it with me it will not totally destroy my packing-lighter goal. Later, I went for a walk to the islands in the evening; their touristyness was undiminished, but fewer things were open. I also bought some creme brulee ice cream, and discovered that I am not terribly fond of this flavor.
Today I took a trip to Chartres. The journey was handicapped by several concerns: it was hot, it was extremely sunny (made worse for me by the fact that I do not have prescription sunglasses), and I was cranky due to waking up early and having no coffee. However, despite all that the trip was mostly hitch-free. I managed to purchase my ticket without incident, in French. In Chartres, it was easy to find the Cathedral by the fact that it dwarfs everything else in the town, and also by following the very loud construction noises, as the Cathedral is apparently under renovation. This could not help but hamper my enjoyment of the Cathedral since (a) most of its front, both inside and out, was invisible due to the scaffolding, and (b) the incessant whining of drills, banging of hammers, and shouts and laughter of workmen do not exactly create an atmosphere of cathedral-like quiet contemplation. However, I did spend a good hour and a half examining the architecture, inside and out, and was particularly impressed by the choir screen and the well-decorated arches (eventually I will upload the many pictures I took). Then I took a walk around the town. It is a very cute place, with old buildings and stairs down to a winding stream, but I was by then a bit grouchy from the heat and from the poor descriptions of my guidebook; eventually, on the way to the train station, I bought a coffee (I am always laughed at when I ask for a noisette, either because I'm mispronouncing it because wanting my coffee to have a little, but not a ton, of milk is so very American... sugar, on the other hand, is freely available) and a sandwich.
After downing my noisette immediately and eating my sandwich on the first half of the train ride back, I felt much less grumpy (funny, that...) and spontaneously disembarked the train at a small town called Epernon which I had seen on the way out and which looked cute. (On non-reserved trains, your ticket is good on any train on the stated route until the end of the next day, so this was totally legitimate.) I spent a pleasant hour walking around the village, which was far, far cuter than Chartres, although I did not take any pictures (because (a) it doesn't feel right to be pulling out a camera and taking pictures of people's houses when they are not trying to attract tourists to their town, and (b) that would have rather sullied my pleasant ramblings). There was a very old church, and uneven streets barely wide enough for a car, and many houses of plaster and stone. It was really exceptionally darling. I also walked a bit outside the town limits and saw some newer houses in a modern version of the style, which sort of shades over into southern-California-hacienda.
I thought I got lucky on the train I caught in Epernon, because it was air-conditioned, but then there was a forty-minute delay while we stopped in a series of rail yards. My French is not great, but I'm pretty sure it was not explained; the announcements were very much in the "The train has stopped. We will be moving shortly. Thank you for your patience." vein. At Versailles, many people got on. I had been sitting alone in a family grouping (this is apparently what two sets of two seats facing each other is called) and an older woman sat across from me, then a man sat next to me, then a woman sat across from him. When she started talking to him, I thought they knew each other, but it quickly became apparent they did not. He was young - no more than twenty-five - and quite attractive; she was definitely middle-aged (fifty, maybe?) and average-looking; she had the look of someone who spends a lot of time making sure that not one of her hairs will ever move from its ordained place, without much attention to whether stiffness is the desired quality in hair. I tell you this because their large age difference made the fact that she was pretty clearly flirting with him a bit odd to my American ear.. granted, I may not know what French rules are, but I do know what a woman looks like when she is being coquettish and trying to impress a man by how awesome she thinks he is, and I am guessing it doesn't change on different continents or as people age. I was particularly struck by how he seemed to not mind her flirtation and was perfectly friendly to her. I cannot imagine seeing such an interchange in the states; even the whole "cougar" business, to whatever extent such people exist, is supposedly about sex more than innocent flirting on trains.
On reaching Paris, I decided that obviously I should walk home from the train station. I had taken the metro there in the morning, but this would be a bit of a hassle with the transfer and the crowdedness of trains, and I wasn't pressed for time. Of course, outside it was a bit hot and extremely sunny, so this may not have been the best idea... by the time I got home, my headache, which had come on in Chartres and come and gone all day, was quite bad. Water, a nap, dinner (dinner! and i had lunch! and breakfast! a whole day of regular meals... what is becoming of me?), and a shower all helped a bit, although I'm still feeling the effects of a day outside in quite a lot of sun.
One final anecdote that I almost forgot: On my way home, a man called out to me, Bonjour, mademoiselle. I ignored him, assuming he was either selling me something or hitting on me, as strange men who call out to one generally are doing one of those things. In New York, this is what you do when people are trying to talk to you against your wishes: keep walking, don't make eye contact, don't respond. They don't usually try again. But here, this method does not work. As usual, the man assumed (apparently) that I hadn't heard him, and called out to me again: Bonjour, mademoiselle! Mademoiselle? Attends! For a moment, I worried (as I always do at this point) that he was someone I knew (I could only barely see him in my peripheral vision and might not have recognized the voice of someone I didn't know well, although one would think any such person would use my name and/or speak in English) or that I had dropped something important. Then he made the farty-mouth noise of disgust and annoyance that men here make when you won't talk to them (Oh, you rude, snotty American, refusing to entertain my unwanted solicitations to relieve you of your money), so I knew he was not anybody I needed to concern myself with. Then he called out, to another woman: Bonjour, Madam. Her response - immediate and forceful, which ended his conversation with her - was simply, Non.
So, basically, French women get to unabashedly flirt with men half their age and rudely brush off unwanted accosters. This might be worth a little bit of caffeine deprivation.
Saturday, July 17, 2010
Things I did not get pictures of
- Yesterday I went to the Marmottan Monet Museum, where picture-taking was not allowed. The temporary exhibit was "Monet and Abstraction"... it was interesting to see how Monet's later works became gradually less impressionistic and more abstract, but I thought they were reaching a bit in comparing his works to, e.g. Jackson Pollack. But I'm no art historian. I enjoyed seeing the many Monets, and perhaps even more the two rooms of paintings by Berthe Morisot, another Impressionist. The upstairs was, quite annoyingly, devoted mostly to perfectly-good-but-not-monetish illuminatins and other Medieval art.
- I walked back from the museum, seeing some interesting outer-Paris neighborhoods as well as the Trocadero square north of the Eiffel tower (a rather stark contrast between normal-nontouristiness and crazy-touristiness).
- Last night was another evening of "outdoor wine-related activities". We didn't get anything thrown at us this time, but we also didn't have cheese. When I came home, I was quite hungry (due to running right before, and due to having had tea - my customary I've-been-out-until-late-afternoon-without-lunch major meal of the day - but no dinner) and warmed up the pain au chocolate I'd been planning to eat for breakfast today. It was extremely much better warm than the other one I've had (granted, from a different boulangerie) was cold.
- This morning I went to Versailles. I got a not-super-early start, but the trip out was devoid of major hassles.
- After my camera's revolutionary outburt, there were several more rooms of the Kings and Queen's Chambers (which is most of what the pictures of the Chateau are of... you can't tell b/c all the original furniture was removed in the Revolution, and instead of restoring it to how it used to look, they just filled all the rooms with paintings and/or tourists). Then I went through the Dauphin and Dauphine's rooms and the Mesdames Rooms. These were actually some of the best rooms in the palace, and I was sad that my camera had died. There was a table organ with real pipes, and a library with a dropped ceiling and beautifully lacquered cabinets, and several rooms that were truly delightful in their decoration and/or furnishings (these had been restored to some facsimile of the original style and configuration). Rick Steve, in one of his many displays of opinionation-that-I-really-don't-agree-with, says this is not worth seeing.
- On fountain days, the last thing that happens before the Jardins close is the Neptune fountain runs for ten minutes while music plays, and everyone sits in front of it and watches. But it's not a dancing fountain like the one I took so many pictures of earlier; it's just tons of water coming out of giant metal fixtures and spraying really high, continuously, for ten minutes. It reminded me of the Chateau itself: all pomp and bombast and demonstration of power (these are the original pipes still being used), at the expense of actual visual beauty.
- After leaving the palace grounds, I walked a bit in the town of Versailles. It's a cute town, with an interesting combination of real-lifeiness (large outdoor market) and tourism (right by the palace exit, a whole row of shoe-and-purse stores with higher-than-Paris prices).
- On leaving Versailles, I had to wait in line to buy a ticket back. This annoyed me, because (a) a sensible person would have bought a return ticket in the first place, but that would have required having use of a sensible ticket machine that would allow such a thing, which I did not, (b) many tourists seemed genuinely confused that the machines only accepted coins and French credit cards, despite the fact that this is true of all transport machines, and in particular of whatever machine they had used to buy their ticket on the way out, and (c) French people do not seem to queue by the same rules as Americans, i.e. the FIFO protocol; instead, they just enter the queue wherever they feel like it, i.e. as near the front as possible. However, due to my last couple years' of Aggressiveness Lessons (otherwise known as living in New York) I managed to get my ticket and get on a train in a reasonable amount of time.
- And now, I have done pretty much all the major touristy things I wanted to do. As a reward, I get to spend tomorrow pretending to be French. Until 8 p.m., when I am supposed to run from Pont Neuf to the Eiffel Tower and back, which I'm pretty sure will disqualify me from all possible types of Frenchness.
Thursday, July 15, 2010
Today's Adventure
It is very hard to argue with all the people who think Americans are stupid when I am so very dumb myself. Even as a fully-grown, college-educated, passport-carrying American, I still have trouble with the concept of "lunch". Here is my tale of (semi-)woe:
This morning I had a somewhat late breakfast at a coffee shop after the obligatory checking-of-the-internet and after writing 1000 words of fiction (yay!). After I finished my coffee and pastry, I was feeling quite full (French pastries are two-thirds composed of butter). I said to myself, in my first display of stupidity today, "Well! I am so full, I'm not going to be hungry for hours and hours!" Then I merrily went to the Carrousel du Louvre, which is a small (for Parisian royal objects, meaning "huge") arch that divides the Louvre and Tuileries grounds, to meet my Paris Greeter for my Paris Greeter Stroll. The greeter was a software developer married to an American academic, and the only other person on the tour was a Swedish woman, so it was interesting. We walked around the touristy bits and I learned some things I hadn't known, and eventually made our way to the Eiffel tower (which is not close even if you walk directly, which we did not). On the way we saw the American Library, several universities, and were introduced to the guide's neighborhood.
After bidding farewell to the tour guide, I looked at my watch: 12:30. "Well!" I said to myself in a very self-satisfied manner. "It looks like I was correct. Here it is lunchtime and I am not the least bit hungry." Here I made one explicit and one implicit error. The first is that when one eats breakfast at 9:30, lunchtime more reasonably falls at 1:30 or even later (especially in Paris). The second is that the tone of my (silent; I'm not that crazy, yet) commentary very clearly suggested that I would not become hungry anytime soon and in fact would likely not need lunch at all.
So, I set off in a southesterly direction. I walked to Les Invalides and then along Rue Varenne, which in the 18th century was a fashionable neighborhood and is now populated largely by ministries and consulates (in the same buildings that used to be mansions); each building had at least one guard stationed in front. Eventually I arrived at the Rodin Museum. I think this wins the award for Most Overrated Museum in Paris (so far), as several guidebooks raved about it but it was not actually all that impressive. This was partly because the price-to-content ratio was somewhat out of line (relative to other museums here), partly my personal taste, and partly the many many tourists who had clearly read the rave reviews in their guidebooks. My favorite part of the museum was actually the building it was housed in, this glorious old mansion with high, decorated ceilings and huge fireplaces and mirrors. (In case you're wondering, my vote for the most underrated museum so far goes to the Musee des Arts Decoratifs, which is phenomenal and often skipped over in guidebooks (yes, I have acquired even more guidebooks... my apartment came with several. A big part of getting ready to leave the apartment is selecting the optimal one for the days' activities). I would have taken and posted quite literally three hundred pictures of it, but picture-taking wasn't allowed.)
When I left the Rodin Museum it was around 2:30 p.m. Now, an intelligent person might have taken a survey of herself to check for signs of hunger. She might even have said to herself, "Self, give that you have a history of forgetting to be hungry until it is far too late, I have decided that it is time to eat." What I actually did, however, was set off in a continued Easterly progression, taking Rue Varennes to Rue St. Germaine, which links up to the Latin Quarter. My goal was to visit a particular English-language bookstore, although I expected (and I was right) that it would be just as expensive and inhospitable as all the others. But it was an excuse to wander in a semi-directed way. This was quite pleasant, and I saw much Frenchness. However, I soon found myself unconsciously seeking out restaurants.
Here is where I ran into trouble. I was far too hungry to make intelligent decisions about food. I didn't want to go to a proper restaurant, because they are intimidating and I was too hungry to deal with it. There were occasional crepe stands, but nowhere to sit while eating one's crepe, and I was very thirsty and running low on water. I wanted to sit down at a little sandwich shop type place, but those were rare and crowded. Basically, I have no good excuse, I just suddenly became too hungry to procure myself food. (In my defense, I'd been walking for basically the entire five hours since finishing breakfast, which was not exactly a feast.)
Eventually, I exhausted myself wandering the western half of the Latin Quarter and made my way to the Tuileries, where I knew I could get water. Then I headed home. But instead of going the most direct route, I was sort of locked into a wandering pace and ended up taking quite possibly the least direct route. I saw passages (covered streetlets with extremely fussy stores and art galleries), the Royal Palais, which I'd been reading about in a memoir all week but hadn't ever stumbled into, and a stately avenue with the Opera at one end and a massive hotel at the other.
Eventually, I ended up at home. My feet hurt in several places, the back of my legs were more or less numb, and my hair was downright schizophrenic. I was barely competent to fry myself a pair of eggs. However, it is hard to rue my stupidity, because when I am not completely exhausted, I am frequently too goal-directed to notice or take such interesting detours.
This morning I had a somewhat late breakfast at a coffee shop after the obligatory checking-of-the-internet and after writing 1000 words of fiction (yay!). After I finished my coffee and pastry, I was feeling quite full (French pastries are two-thirds composed of butter). I said to myself, in my first display of stupidity today, "Well! I am so full, I'm not going to be hungry for hours and hours!" Then I merrily went to the Carrousel du Louvre, which is a small (for Parisian royal objects, meaning "huge") arch that divides the Louvre and Tuileries grounds, to meet my Paris Greeter for my Paris Greeter Stroll. The greeter was a software developer married to an American academic, and the only other person on the tour was a Swedish woman, so it was interesting. We walked around the touristy bits and I learned some things I hadn't known, and eventually made our way to the Eiffel tower (which is not close even if you walk directly, which we did not). On the way we saw the American Library, several universities, and were introduced to the guide's neighborhood.
After bidding farewell to the tour guide, I looked at my watch: 12:30. "Well!" I said to myself in a very self-satisfied manner. "It looks like I was correct. Here it is lunchtime and I am not the least bit hungry." Here I made one explicit and one implicit error. The first is that when one eats breakfast at 9:30, lunchtime more reasonably falls at 1:30 or even later (especially in Paris). The second is that the tone of my (silent; I'm not that crazy, yet) commentary very clearly suggested that I would not become hungry anytime soon and in fact would likely not need lunch at all.
So, I set off in a southesterly direction. I walked to Les Invalides and then along Rue Varenne, which in the 18th century was a fashionable neighborhood and is now populated largely by ministries and consulates (in the same buildings that used to be mansions); each building had at least one guard stationed in front. Eventually I arrived at the Rodin Museum. I think this wins the award for Most Overrated Museum in Paris (so far), as several guidebooks raved about it but it was not actually all that impressive. This was partly because the price-to-content ratio was somewhat out of line (relative to other museums here), partly my personal taste, and partly the many many tourists who had clearly read the rave reviews in their guidebooks. My favorite part of the museum was actually the building it was housed in, this glorious old mansion with high, decorated ceilings and huge fireplaces and mirrors. (In case you're wondering, my vote for the most underrated museum so far goes to the Musee des Arts Decoratifs, which is phenomenal and often skipped over in guidebooks (yes, I have acquired even more guidebooks... my apartment came with several. A big part of getting ready to leave the apartment is selecting the optimal one for the days' activities). I would have taken and posted quite literally three hundred pictures of it, but picture-taking wasn't allowed.)
When I left the Rodin Museum it was around 2:30 p.m. Now, an intelligent person might have taken a survey of herself to check for signs of hunger. She might even have said to herself, "Self, give that you have a history of forgetting to be hungry until it is far too late, I have decided that it is time to eat." What I actually did, however, was set off in a continued Easterly progression, taking Rue Varennes to Rue St. Germaine, which links up to the Latin Quarter. My goal was to visit a particular English-language bookstore, although I expected (and I was right) that it would be just as expensive and inhospitable as all the others. But it was an excuse to wander in a semi-directed way. This was quite pleasant, and I saw much Frenchness. However, I soon found myself unconsciously seeking out restaurants.
Here is where I ran into trouble. I was far too hungry to make intelligent decisions about food. I didn't want to go to a proper restaurant, because they are intimidating and I was too hungry to deal with it. There were occasional crepe stands, but nowhere to sit while eating one's crepe, and I was very thirsty and running low on water. I wanted to sit down at a little sandwich shop type place, but those were rare and crowded. Basically, I have no good excuse, I just suddenly became too hungry to procure myself food. (In my defense, I'd been walking for basically the entire five hours since finishing breakfast, which was not exactly a feast.)
Eventually, I exhausted myself wandering the western half of the Latin Quarter and made my way to the Tuileries, where I knew I could get water. Then I headed home. But instead of going the most direct route, I was sort of locked into a wandering pace and ended up taking quite possibly the least direct route. I saw passages (covered streetlets with extremely fussy stores and art galleries), the Royal Palais, which I'd been reading about in a memoir all week but hadn't ever stumbled into, and a stately avenue with the Opera at one end and a massive hotel at the other.
Eventually, I ended up at home. My feet hurt in several places, the back of my legs were more or less numb, and my hair was downright schizophrenic. I was barely competent to fry myself a pair of eggs. However, it is hard to rue my stupidity, because when I am not completely exhausted, I am frequently too goal-directed to notice or take such interesting detours.
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