Part 4 of 8 in my travel series from the summer of 2022.
Arriving in Paris (June 13th)
On June 13th I flew to Paris. We have a hotel booked next to the Sorbonne. (The Hotel Cluny Sorbonne is a very inexpensive three-star hotel. It lacks AC, but it has an elevator.) My stepdaughter, Sophia, has been in the city for a few days and earlier today she moved to our hotel. I planned to meet her in the Luxembourg Gardens, right near our hotel.
The Charles de Gaulle airport is an absolute maze of a place. That was my memory of it and that memory was confirmed today. I eventually made my way to the train for Luxembourg by following the B signs for the blue line. The train ride is kind of ridiculous in that EVERYONE has one or more huge suitcases that take up the entire aisle. I immediately recognized the error of my ways after I took a window seat halfway between two exits. I was trapped. And at every stop more and more people got on until it would be hard to fit anyone else. My stop was still a few away, but there was no way I could escape if I had to. Thankfully, there were two stops that had connecting trains, including Gare du Nord, and a good chunk of the train emptied out.
I made my way out of the station (not knowing there was an elevator that could have helped with my heavy bags) and into the gardens to meet Sophia. What a magical and truly quintessentially Parisian place to enter right after disembarking the Métro. I reunited with Sophia and we immediately sought out a restaurant. Of course, we picked a close one that provided a great front-row seat to everyone crossing the street to the gardens. The streets were absolutely teeming with people.
That night, we walked around the exterior of the garden because it closes at 9:15. (That seems like an early time considering how late it is light in Paris in the summer.) We ended up at a sidewalk bar south of the gardens where I enjoyed a mojito while we watched more passersby. People-watching is a favorite pastime in a place with so much café culture on all the sidewalks.
Notre-Dame and the Île de la Cité (June 14th)
I wanted to get up early and roam the Parisian streets with a camera as dawn broke. But that didn’t happen. I did wake up early, but it was because of the trash trucks on the street outside the hotel that seemed to take 15 minutes to collect the trash. I was so zonked I could barely get up before 8:30, despite the early “wake-up call.”
Sophia and I eventually hit the street in search of petit déjeuner. We headed down Rue Victor Cousin toward the Seine to find a café. But first we came across a stunning view of Notre-Dame. It gave me chills to see it with all the restoration underway. Wow! As the crane moved across the sky in front of the morning sun, I was almost moved to tears. (And I’m an atheist. How it must feel for believers.)
This inspired us to delay breakfast and walk around the Île de la Cité (the main island and the original settlement in the Seine, originally called Lutecia) before the crowds set in. We made our way to Pont Neuf, which was completely empty at this time of day. Over by the main government buildings on the island, the roads were closed with a heavy police presence. The French elections were happening and we suspect the heavy security had to do with that.
In our search for food, we ended up stumbling across the very enchanting Place Saint-Michel, just south of the impressive Saint-Michel Fountain. What a great little area nestled among sycamores and cafés. We quickly picked a café and Sophia was able to bust out her helpful French to order breakfast—which by this point was becoming more like lunch.
Reuniting with Catherine
The big agenda item of the day was meeting my wife, Catherine, as she arrived at the Luxembourg Métro stop. The reuniting after almost five weeks apart was wonderful, and soon we found ourselves, where else… at another café, again near Luxembourg. Catherine was pretty perky for someone who just crossed the Atlantic. And she was no sooner in her seat than she was busting out her newly acquired French to order her first meal in France. How sweet it was—mother and daughter (plus me), together in Paris at a café soaking in the hustle and bustle all around.
The Cluny Museum (June 15th)
After being awakened again by the trash trucks (I now know that trash is collected daily in at least this part of Paris—wow, that’s a lot of trash and many more days of us being awakened by this rather obnoxious alarm), we made our way to the Cluny Museum. But first we had to satisfy our morning coffee needs.
Now I’m one who definitely appreciates the European approach to coffee. I like a double espresso with milk as much as anyone. But the small quantities always leave me wanting more. So I hate to admit it, but now that there are Starbucks in Paris, I’m going there. Catherine and I made our way to a nearby Starbucks and ordered a venti whatever. Here the whatever is a bit of a mystery. In cafés we order a café crème, which is a very standard drink. It appears to be espresso with steamed milk, and how it differs from a latte I’m not exactly sure. But in any case, that’s what we ordered, despite it not actually being on the Starbucks menu, and we got something quite serviceable. Caffeine headaches were avoided and the day got underway.
The Musée de Cluny (for which our hotel derives its name) is a newly redesigned museum of medieval artifacts that just recently reopened. It’s built among and into the large ruins of a 3rd-century Roman bathhouse and the Hôtel de Cluny (a medieval estate)—the oldest “building” in Paris.
The collections are vast, and the crown jewel is the enormous six-panel tapestry of the Lady and the Unicorn. The tapestry is amazingly beautiful and quite well preserved. It either somehow survived the years in a very protected environment or was meticulously conserved, or a bit of both. In any case, I’ve never considered myself a fan of tapestries, but this one is very impressive and well worth the price of admission alone.
I loved the scale of the tapestries. It seems to me that the scale of things like these tapestries and the enormous paintings that followed in the 18th and 19th century (not to mention fresco paintings) were early immersive experiences designed to dissociate the viewer from their everyday world and transport them somewhere else, usually with a religious intent in mind.
When I visit museums such as the Cluny with all its artifacts, or places like the Louvre, I’m always struck by the enormity and complexity of the creative output of humanity. The artistry, craftsmanship, and sheer volume of production, by many people who are anonymous to history, just leaves me in awe. It also leaves me a little tired. But Catherine and Sophia soaked it all up and even bought things in the bookstore.
That evening we walked along the Seine on the Île de la Cité. It turns out it’s one long party. The banks are completely overrun with thousands of young people drinking wine and smoking pot. And this is a Monday. It made for an interesting stroll. I thoroughly enjoyed the enormous, collective chill vibe. Maybe when we return to Paris we can get a couple of bottles and join the party.
Bloomsday at Shakespeare and Company (June 16th)
Back in art school in Philadelphia in the mid-80s, I had the good sense to take a class called The Big Fat Juicy Novel. In that class we read War and Peace, Ulysses, and Moby Dick and wrote about each one. Our professor, the incomparable Dr. Toby Zinman, would pull apart those books in a way that just left the class in awe. The depth of her understanding and her ability to bring the class into the subtext of the writing was nothing short of incredible. Her classes were the best I ever had. Toby was a Joyce scholar and Ulysses was really her world. She attended Joyce conferences, for goodness’ sake. So we were fortunate to have such an expert school us on Joyce.
Ulysses by James Joyce is considered by many to be the first modernist novel. After being rejected by many publishers, it was finally published in 1922 by Sylvia Beach, the owner of the Shakespeare and Company Bookstore—a cultural treasure and travelers’ mecca across from Notre-Dame. (My brother and I first visited the store in 1984, when we spent eight months in Europe.) In Ulysses, the main character, Leopold Bloom, traverses Dublin all day long on June 16, 1904. So June 16, 2022, the hundredth anniversary of the publishing of the novel, marks the 100th Bloomsday, when events recognizing the day are held worldwide. In Dublin that entails retracing Bloom’s steps.
Not really even knowing what day it was (when I travel extensively, I often lose track of even what day of the week it is), we made our way over to Shakespeare and Company Bookstore. Out front was a sign announcing the momentous occasion. Thankfully, we got to the store early enough to avoid the 50-person line we saw there the day before. There was no line at all, so we went right in and browsed for quite a while. Of course we bought books, because I love to carry heavy books while traveling.
The 16th was also the day Sophia was departing to study Russian in Kazakhstan for the next two months. Sophia attends IU’s Flagship Russian program and is doing a summer abroad in the city of Almaty. While Catherine and I were busy making our load heavier at Shakespeare and Company, Sophia was getting ready to depart. We met up to do some photos in the garden before Sophia’s impending departure, and then we had our last lunch together before Sophia got in the back of an Uber with her heavy suitcases.
Notre-Dame Restoration, the Conciergerie, and Sainte-Chapelle (June 17th)
The weather is heating up. At first it was rather cool in Paris. But now it’s in the 90s. Today, Catherine and I went to see the restoration efforts at Notre-Dame and the Conciergerie and the Sainte-Chapelle, all on the Île de la Cité.
A good portion of the perimeter of Notre-Dame is surrounded by a wall showcasing the efforts involved in restoring the cathedral. Out front they employed half a dozen cartoonists/illustrators to depict the efforts, and all along the north side there are enormous photographs showing the work. Besides the sheer scale of the undertaking, what really struck us was the talent needed to do extensive stone restoration while rappelling the walls of the cathedral. It’s nothing short of crazy. How do you find even one person who has that kind of expertise, never mind dozens? The work goes on 24 hours a day. The scale of this operation feels comparable to the original construction, but done in a fraction of the time. “Impressive” is a word that falls far short in describing what’s happening.
The Conciergerie is part of the royal palace on the north side of the island that has been several things over the years and rebuilt multiple times. At one point, it was a jail (more like a dungeon) and held Marie Antoinette before her execution.
The French Revolution is a very confusing thing, with its counter-revolution and various uprisings and then Napoleon taking power and declaring it all over. It isn’t nearly as simple as the American Revolution. I’m still not completely clear on it, and the visit to the Conciergerie didn’t really clarify much. Thousands of people were imprisoned here during the revolution, or maybe the counter-revolution, or maybe both. I’m not sure. In either case, a lot of execution sentences were handed out there.
They had a really cool augmented reality tour. You got an iPad and once you scanned various kiosks located throughout the building, you could hold it up and see what the space looked like hundreds of years ago.
Also at the Conciergerie, Catherine had her first involved French conversation of the trip. She asked the ticket taker about water, and she was nice enough to not only take us to a spigot in the wall on the other side of the building, but she also got a cup for us. After we were done with the tour, we ran into her as she got off her shift, and the two of them had a long talk. Catherine has absolutely no reservations or self-consciousness about approaching anyone and practicing her French. Good thing, because it’s the reason we’re here.
The Sainte-Chapelle is a royal chapel also located on the old palace grounds (so whatever king it was wouldn’t have to leave the gates to go to church). It’s a masterpiece of Gothic architecture that features expansive stained glass windows. These windows have undergone extensive restorations over the years, the most recent completed in 2015. The Chapelle suffered a lot during the revolution and the years afterward, before restoration work started in the 1840s. It’s a truly beautiful place to behold. Sadly, I had a dumb camera moment while there that I could not figure out until afterward, so I wasn’t able to photograph much except with my phone.
The Louis Vuitton Foundation (June 18th)
It was a full-on 100 degrees today. Ouch. We wanted to be in an air-conditioned space for at least the heat of the day, so we decided to visit the Fondation Louis Vuitton. The foundation has nothing to do with fashion. The foundation supports the arts and has a huge Frank Gehry building in the Bois de Boulogne, west of downtown. We hopped on a Métro, and after a few stops we walked into the park. Approaching the building is quite impressive. It has the scale and all the curved forms you would expect in a Gehry building.
By now the full heat of the sun was blasting down on us, and when we got to the building it was immediately apparent that Gehry didn’t give any consideration to protecting people from the elements as they stood in line and waited to go through security. I found a small patch of shade under a tree while Catherine went to ask which of the multiple lines we should get in. Suddenly we were whisked to another entrance and let right in. Hmm… what magic words did Catherine say? She told them that I had skin cancer and just couldn’t be waiting out in the blazing sun. It’s not a complete fabrication, as I’ve had my bouts with skin cancer and it’s only going to get worse.
There’s nothing modest about this museum. The space is grand and feels like the modern incarnation of the European cathedral. The exhibitions were good. The main show was a full retrospective of a guy I never heard of before named Simon Hantaï. He was a painter who mainly worked with folding canvases before applying paint. Some of them I liked a lot. The more repetitive patterny ones really didn’t do much for me.
On our walk to the museum we passed a restaurant that advertised air conditioning. So we planned to have lunch there on our way back to the Métro stop. But when we got there it was closed. We found a patch of shade so we could regroup and find a place to eat with AC. (If you’ve never been to Europe before, know that AC is not a common thing, neither is ice in your drinks.) We located a place not far from our hotel that advertised AC, so we set off for our cool destination. It took some walking, and some sweating, and some climbing of hills, but eventually, despite the brutal 100° heat, we made it. I even took a picture of Catherine at the front door of the restaurant. But oddly, the front door was open. Who runs AC with the front door open? We went in and asked about the AC. “Yes, of course,” they said. And then they led us to a seat by a fan. What? A fan is not AC. It wasn’t great, but it would do. As we were eating, I happened to notice that they indeed had an AC unit right above the front door. Perhaps it was broken, because if you aren’t turning it on when it’s 100°, when are you?
Musée d’Orsay (June 19th)
Yes, they even collect the trash on Sundays, just slightly later.
We set aside today to go to the Musée d’Orsay. The Orsay train station was converted into a major art museum in the late 1980s, if I recall correctly. I’ve never been there before. Catherine was there a few years ago and loved the collection. It has an extraordinary collection of Impressionism (moved from the Louvre, which, despite its enormous size, was running out of room and had thousands of things in storage). The museum is like a hall of fame of famous paintings. I loved the space and our time there.
The Louvre (June 20th)
You can’t go to Paris without going to the Louvre. What a building. What a collection. What a crowd. There’s nothing I can say about the Louvre that has not already been said. When I was in Paris in 1984, they were building the famous I.M. Pei pyramids. When I was back in Paris in 2012, Amalia and I went to the Louvre and I was finally able to see them. But I honestly couldn’t recall much about them. It’s hard to imagine the place without them and the underground connections that bridge the two wings of the museum (otherwise you would have to walk the entire “U” to get from one wing to another, and that’s no small feat).
Yes, it can be very hard to see the art because of the crowds. Forget the Mona Lisa. I’m not waiting in a 30-minute line for a two-second glimpse. Winged Victory, at the top of some steps, was a literal crowd-stopper. I get it. It’s amazing to behold, and now I have a better appreciation for the orientation of the sculpture. The wall text explained how the piece is much more sophisticated from a particular angle, because it was intended to be seen from that angle according to how it was originally placed. I never realized that.
My one regret is that I did not see Venus de Milo. My tank was out of gas after four hours of crowd-fighting, and I had to go back to the hotel to recover and to move into a room overlooking the courtyard, away from the early-morning trash truck alarm.
We grabbed dinner at an outdoor café called the Tabac that is on the square in front of the Sorbonne. We’ve been going to a couple of the cafés somewhat regularly, and the waiters have been charmed with Catherine’s French. It’s very entertaining. Catherine’s honest approach to learning the language charms everyone, so we never experienced the famous gruff French waiter.
We usually get a salad of some sort and wine or an Aperol spritz. The French love Aperol spritzes. I see way more drinking of spritzes and cocktails than I do red wine, the supposed secret that keeps the French svelte despite the cheese, white bread, delicious butter, the patisseries on every other corner, never mind the 1:1 ratio of chocolatier to French citizen, the late-night eating, and the alcohol-with-lunch custom. So if red wine isn’t the secret, then what is? I can’t say I see that many runners, or gyms, here for that matter. (Maybe it’s small portions, healthy food without a lot of additives, and a lot of walking and biking.)
Portrait of a Waiter (June 21st)
Today was regroup day. No sightseeing on the agenda. Just errands like laundry and shopping. In the evening we ended up back at the Tabac, and Catherine asked our usual waiter, Philippe, if I could take a portrait of him. He agreed and I jumped into action.
Of course, nobody gets what exactly I’m asking for with a giant Mamiya camera. They probably think I’m going to use my phone. So I have to be extremely fast, and that can be hard with a camera like that which can take so long to focus. I got one or two shots, and as I did, everyone in the café looked on and a group of young people at the table next to us took out their phones and shot me shooting Philippe. I saw some of the pics and they sent them to me.
