Now they say Paris in the rain is so romantic.
Maybe, if you've got an overcoat, an umbrella and some jump in your step.
Not so much in a rain poncho with a roulant.
On or way to our first stop, we have a stop to make, because that's how it rolls.
We are at Le Tour Jean Sans Peur on Rue Etienne-Marcel. It was here that pesky Burgundian John the Fearless fled for safety after killing the Duke of Orleans in 1407. The Burgundians also turned over Joan of Arc to the British. Damn them all! Of course his death at the hands of the Dauphin in 1419 led to a brief British resurgency as the new boss was not better than the old boss.
Damn I M Pei
Down the street we come across the Louvre. This building has a storied history, progressing from a garrison to a palace to the premier museum in the world. It is a work of art in and of itself. It's too big to consume in one visit or in ten, perhaps in a hundred. And therein lies it's problem.
There's a status of Athena that includes arms for no extra charge.
And Winged Victory is cool...even if it does look a little worse for wear.
Even the ceiling here is a work of art.
And oh ya, the reason to be here.
It's now covered in glass, behind a barrier and a lot smaller than you'd think.
Just outside the museum we find the min-Arc, the Arc de Triomphe du Carrousel erected by Napoleon in the early 1800's to commemorate his military victories. All that depicted in greater detail than I can explain. Napy built this while he was waiting for the big Arc to be finished. I guess he knew it's unlikely he'd be around for that event.
We continue walking into the Jardin Tuileries built by Catherine De Medici as the gardens to the Tuileries Palace, which was burned to the ground during the Commune of 1871.
It's now just a glorious place to meander with green space and statues, like this one, Cain ruing the day he slew Abel.
The obelisk at Place de la Concorde, formerly Place de la Revolution, where over 2,600 Parisians lost their heads during the Terror.
And this shot, another one of those perspective things.
A few blocks away we come across the Chapelle Expiatoire ....saddest spot in Paris.
The Chapel is dedicated to Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette. It is here their headless bodies were unceremoniously dumped among the remains of 2,600 other victims of the guillotine. They lay here for 21 years before being exhumed and sent to St Denis Basilica with the rest of the dead kings.
Here's a video from inside the chapel.
It's the other 2,598 that make it sad. Oh, wait, there was Robespierre and Danton, that brings it to 2,596...
This was a great find. While it's only a little piece of history, more people who made history ended up in this place than anywhere else.
We continue our march up the Champs, stopping to eat at George V and buy some trinkets at the Peugot store. It's an impressively wide and lively shopping street.
Do the google.
At the top, the Arc De Triomphe, in full size.
Since we're on major monument day let's head to Notre Dame.
Quite the architectural marvel. Statues of Saints, gargoyles galore and flying buttresses.
Oh, there was a hunchback once and probably a mass or two.
Day 7 starts with us taking a cab up to the top of Montmartre where the pasty white opulence of Sacre Coeur waits for us.
It's said that from up here, on a clear day, you can see Paris.
We will have to take their word on that.
Here's another glorious shot of that church.
It occurs to me, seeing how the sky turned a deep shade of blue from this angle, whether you should photo shop paintings by the masters?
I've been inside more churches this week than I have in the past decade. That's saying a lot, even if the count is only 4.
This is a particularly hilly area of town, virtually all the outlying arrondissments include a good deal of vertical walking. Two of our party is spending some time at the Dali Museum, which is currently inaccessible.Cece and I are wandering the side streets in search of Marcel Ayme's grave.
Ya, I know, who's that?
Found the cemetery but not the entrance. To walk around the cemetery would have meant climbing and descending the hill twice...so we rested, took in the two available sites and waited to see Marcel Ayme's master work instead.
This bar has a storied history, used to be called the Cabaret Des Assassins until artist Andre Gill painted the rabbit thing and the name morphed from Le Lapin a Gill to it's current name, Lapin Agile. Visited by the dredges of the Parisian culture and guys like Picasso and Modigliani.
Just adjacent to this bar, a small inner-city winery.
Still on top of the hill we seek out Place Marcel Aymes, where we find this work of art, Passe Muraille.
Pretty close by we see a small park dedicated to the Patron Saint of Paris, St Denis. He was decapitated right about here and chased that head to the basilica named after him, where all the Kings of Paris are buried. Well, it ain't the bible but it's a decent story.
A quick stop along the way to pick up a baguette at this award winning shop.
And a snap shot of where Vincent Van Went, 54 Rue Lepic.
For a couple of years anyway, when he was living off his brother.
We make our way slowly down the steep hills and come out facing the Moulin Rouge. Once a place where obscene things occurred onstage it currently has an almost family-friendly show but obscene prices...as in 200 to 400 euro for dinner and a show.
On Day 8 the rains came and all plans went out the window.
Our first stop is Montparnasse Cemetery.
A famous writer. A true Parnassian before his time, inspiring Rimbaud, he was instrumental in opening up the Beats to a new language. A rather nondescript family plot. Well maintained though. Charles Baudelaire.
A famous couple of writers. Sartre and De Beauvoir.
A famous singer, Serge Gainsborough, with his birth name inscribed. Subway tickets all over the place.
All their graves adorned with artifacts left behind by their fans.
Then a respite from the rain at a cafe where we decide there's not much sense in climbing the Montparnasse Tower as there is nothing but clouds to see.
On our way home we catch a glimpse of this stunning statue of Louis XIV, the Sun King.
We spend the rest of this day skipping the lines at L'Orangerie and D'Orsay.
On Day 9 the rain is still with us. I start with an early morning walk in our neighbourhood where we have two ancient homes, still standing.
The first, on Rue Montmorency, is a 15th Century home, built in 1407.
Now I'm told the owner of this home, an alchemist named Nicolas Flamel, is of some interest to fans of Harry Potter and the Philosophers Stone.
Here's a close up of the entrance.
The second, on Rue Volta, is a 12th century home, currently serving Pho cuisine.
Only a few doors away from our apartment we have the quiet environs of the Cat Cafe.
No flash, don't feed them and don't wake them.
I put a cushion down so this guy could get comfortable on Cece's chair.
This place had a lovely basement escape for the cats as well.
So today we are in the Centre Pompidou. I've been denigrating it all week as an architectural monstrosity.
That's because I hadn't gone inside. Shows how little I know. Because the innards are on the outside you are afforded a wonderful perspective of the city.
It was a rainy day. A great view of the Tour Saint Jacques, a gothic tower built in 1509, the last remains of a church.
The Centre Pompidou is a modern art museum. Way beyond my ability to comprehend.
It doesn't really come across in a photo.
Here's a video of a video piece called So Much I Want To Say. Sound ON for this one.
And another video about sand.
At the exit, the OPEN video. Of course.
The museum also has stuff made with paint and brushes.
Like Luxe by Matisse
And La Muse by Picasso.
And now time for a little self-indulgence.Arthur Rimbaud.
I is another.
Looking for Rimbaud's statue with the vowels got us lost early on our trip. That should have clued me in to something. The final leg of our European Tour includes a night in Luxembourg...a new country to visit. The real reason we added that is so we could be close to Rimbaud's hometown, Charleville-Mezieres, on a day other than a Monday. You see, Cece and I were in 2002 but the Rimbaud Museum is closed on Mondays. We got his boyhood home and his grave...but not the museum.
But I digress.
I came across Rimbaud through a few lines found in a Dylan song:
"Situations have ended sad
Relationships have all been bad
Mine’ve been like Verlaine’s and Rimbaud...."
Here's a close up of that painting we saw earlier. The older, married but questioning Verlaine on the left and the striking portrayal of a young, vibrant Rimbaud.
And off I was to do the research. Interesting stories. The most amazing thing about Rimbaud, who was muse and more to his contemporary Verlaine, who was found-again by the Beat poets and the libertines that made up the counter-culture in the '60's...is that he stopped writing poetry at age 21. Only stuff we have from him is between the ages of 15 and 21. He quit the game and made his way through the rest of his short life trading in colonial Africa. Illuminations, Season En Fer (A Season in Hell), Voyelles and La Bateaux Ivre (The Drunken Boat)...pretty well sums it up.
We did find the statue, not the best time of day for picture taking though.
If you could see more detail on this photo you would see the vowels of the alphabet that are sculpted.
In honour of Rimbaud's poem, Voyelles, where much like in his real life he tries to find another self in vowels.
Voyelles
A black, E white, I red, U green, O blue: vowels
Someday I’ll talk about your secret birth-cries,
A, black furry corset of brilliant flies
That buzz around cruel stenches,
Gulfs of shadow; E, whiteness of vapours and of tents,
Lances of proud glaciers, white kings, shivers of umbel;
I, purples, spat blood, smile of beautiful lips
In anger or in the raptures of penitence;
U, waves, divine shudders of viridian seas,
Peace of pastures dotted with animals, peace of furrows
Which alchemy prints on broad studious foreheads;
O, sublime Trumpet full of strange stridencies,
Silences crossed by Worlds and by Angels:
O the Omega, violet ray of Her Eyes!
In Luxembourg our hotel bar was named La Bateaux Ivre. I found this surreptitious.
The cemetery in Charleville-Mezieres was an easy find,
his family plot still the best kept of them all.
Didn't see this post office box last time I was here.
And now it's off to the Rimbaud Museum where I hope to see a pen he used once.
It's not Monday but it's closed for renovations. Will open...wait for it...tomorrow.
In the square at the train station, a last memorial to the young poet.
What better place to wrap this up than at a point where I'm making an argument to return.
Best times for me were when we found the most serene spots in a city that is in perpetual motion.
The locks on the Canal Saint Martin, the Rose Garden, the Chapelle Expiatoire, the courtyard at Musee Cluny, Anne Frank Garden, the early morning hunt for ancient houses, the Cat Cafe, the Duplex bar before the crowd showed up. There are likely a hundred of these places for every Notre Dame, Eiffel Tower, Arc De Triomphe and Louvre type attraction. I wish upon you all the opportunity to seek some out.
Next up; The Black Forest and Luxembourg.
