Paris au Printemps

Before I begin getting into the detail of this trip, I am going to subject you to a flashback. Sorry, but it is actually vitally important that I impart some understanding of my first trip to Paris in order for you to get a feel not only for my second visit there, but for my development as a traveler.

Four years ago, I went to Paris for a week with my high school French class. I was sixteen, a high school junior, and a third-year student not only of French but also more generally of Mrs. Quinlan (whom I still know as Q), who in addition to being an excellent French teacher was a close mentor of mine all throughout high school--I was in her classroom literally every single day of my high school career. Those eight days in Paris were life-changing for me.

Dad paid for the trip and I supplied my spending money. There were around 25 of us on the trip altogether. Q had naturally been to Paris several times, both with and without students, and her personality was singularly suited to taking students on trips. She was hilarious and always completely relaxed; meticulously organized with remarkable flexibility. Q is a person you want with you when you're having a great time and when there's a crisis.

Paris was the first significant city I traveled to (well, I'd been to LA, which I don't count, and I had vague memories of DC), and the first time I traveled without my parents. Q treated us like fledglings learning to fly; the first day we did everything in a giant pack, but as the days wore on we were set loose more and more frequently for larger intervals of time. Finally, at the end of the week, we had an entire day to explore Paris on our own (provided we were in groups of four and told Q where we planned to go). Q led by example, striking the difficult balance between ridiculous tourist (encouraging us to buy Eiffel Tower keychains and insisting on taking pictures of us all jumping on the Point Zero plaque in front of Notre Dame) and seasoned traveler (teaching us how to avoid the gypsies at Sacre-Coeur and recommending less-frequented museums and churches). Without that trip, I would have been a much less confident and less ambitious traveler later in life. Finding out that at 16 I was perfectly capable of safely navigating Paris for a day on my own was a remarkable revelation, and I wonder if I would have ever considered last summer's road trip without that week in Paris.

In addition, Paris for a long time was the only European city I had seen. Combined with the fact that it was my first big travel destination, my memories of it were all superlative. The Paris of my memory was beautiful, inviolable, perfect. I remembered the metro being astoundingly useful, the city streets being lovely, the crowds of people exciting, the museums enchanting. When I returned to America at the end of that week I had not a single complaint about Paris; it was the most amazing city on earth, as far as I was concerned, and no one could say anything against its marvels.

These impressions of Paris stayed with me even after I arrived in London; within the first few weeks here I had booked my tickets for Paris. My classmates here, returning from their own Paris excursions, all had various issues with the city--Parisians were rude, the city smelled, the metro was dirty. But these complaints did not come near my deeply held convictions of Paris' majesty.

But this excursion was a strange one for me. To begin with, as the day of departure approached, I found I did not have much emotion about going. Perhaps traveling has truly become habitual for me; I could not even really rouse significant excitement until I'd been on the Eurostar train for more than an hour. The Eurostar train ride was itself a huge letdown, by the way. I had wanted to travel on it for years. It turned out to be the most convenient--and, since I booked early, cheapest--way to go, but it was really not at all interesting. In fact the train I was on smelled really awful, a sort of rotten sour smell, so I spent the whole ride vaguely nauseous and unable to read anything as a result.

I found myself at the Gare du Nord quite suddenly. Automatically I went to the ticket window and got tickets; instinctively I paused in front of the metro map and worked out how to get to my hostel; and then I was on the metro. While on the metro I was mentally yelling at myself: "You're in Paris! You're back in Paris!" But my only response at that point was that the metro was filthy compared to the London tube, and surely they could modernise the trains a bit. At the hostel I encountered my first ever stereotypically rude Parisian, which especially irritated me considering all the energy I have spent defending the French. The man behind reception clearly spoke English, but spoke to me only in French. That by itself was OK; I was in his country, after all, and should not expect anyone to deal in English. What made me angry was that he then proceeded to openly mock my broken French to his coworkers. Annoyed, I made my way to my room, which was sketchy at best. To get to it you had to go out on a terrace, and there was only one key, which was to be left with reception whenever you left the room. I really didn't feel safe there and considering my fairly low standards for security, that is saying something.

I dropped off my backpack and headed for the Eiffel Tower; it was about 10 PM (Thursday) at this point. It meant getting back on the metro, and I noticed as I walked to the station and to the platform that the place did in fact smell pretty terrible. Was Paris this dirty four years ago? Did I really not notice it then, or had I just written it out of my memory? It's hard to say. First I actually went to the Eiffel Tower, forgetting that the best place to see it is actually Trocadero, a park/square across the Seine from the Tower. While wandering around the base of the Tower, I was so successfully in not appearing touristy that even the souvenir salesmen left me alone. Unsurprisingly, the place was crowded with people. I took a couple pictures, then decided to walk over to Trocadero to get a proper view of the whole Tower. It was only a ten minute walk, and then I had a proper sight of the Eiffel Tower, lit up against the night.

Except I didn't really feel much, as I gazed at it. It was pretty. There were a lot of tourists; even from here I could make out the camera flashes of people on the Tower. Normally when I'm looking at really famous things I get this exciting rush of disbelief and admiration; it did not come, that night at Trocadero. I hung around the square for a bit, taking a few pictures and watching it twinkle. Then, still nonplussed, I figured it was time to call it a night (I'd worked all day before catching the Eurostar). I went back to my room in the hostel in Montmartre, to find that two other people had arrived and were already asleep--the door onto the terrace (the only door) had been left open out of necessity. The only key was inside the room, so unless the two people inside had wanted to get up and let every other person in, they had to leave the door unlocked. It made good sense, except that when the door was unlocked it didn't actually shut. So I stuffed my really valuable things--bank card and passport--into my pillowcase and fell into an uneasy and chilly sleep. Contributing to my troubled sleep was the fact that I still wasn't really excited about being in Paris.

I had breakfast in the hostel (it was included, which was nice) and then checked out and left. I'd waited until the last minute to book my hostel for Paris, and had been unable to find anything for all three nights. As a result I had to spend the last two nights in a different place than the first. It had been troublesome at the time, but I was all too happy to leave behind this first hostel. My first stop Friday was Pere Lachaise cemetery. I hadn't been there on my first trip to Paris, and I wanted to visit Oscar Wilde's grave. The cemetery was an odd place. It felt like a small town. It was surrounded by high walls and had its own streets; there was no grass, which seemed odd. And many of the graves seemed to be above ground, in tombs or above-ground crypts. Furthermore it was completely packed with graves and memorials; it did not seem like a peaceful resting place at all. It was also huge. It took me a long time to get to Wilde's grave; he was buried across the cemetery from where I entered. He had a large white marble memorial which was completely covered in lipstick kisses and graffiti. Apparently it's customary to either actually kiss the memorial while wearing a lot of lipstick or to draw on a lipstick kiss; I wished I had brought along some lipstick but I hadn't. It struck me as odd, though, considering that Wilde had been imprisoned for homosexuality. He probably would have approved of it as a great joke.


By the time I got to Wilde's grave, my backpack was getting uncomfortably heavy and Pere-Lachaise was beginning to creep me out, so I struck out for my next hostel. It was too early to check in, but I hoped they would be able to store my backpack for the day. The hostel was really nice, leaps and bounds ahead of the first place I had stayed in. They let me leave my backpack in the luggage room until check-in, so I dropped it off and then ventured out into Paris again.

I went to the Musee Rodin. I adore Rodin and my visit to the museum's gardens the first time I went to Paris was one of the most intense art encounters of my life. I was pleased that it hadn't changed, although this time around I was too old to get in for free and had to pay four euro. The sculpture The Gates of Hell, which had so enthralled me on my first visit, was still breathtaking. There, in the gardens of the Rodin museum, I finally felt the excitement I'd been searching for since arriving at Gare du Nord the previous day--I was in Paris and it was beautiful. I spent a long time in the museum, thoroughly exploring both the gardens (where Le Penseur resides, lost in eternal thought) and the museum proper (where one can see Rodin's The Kiss, one of the most romantic pieces of art in existence).

From the museum I ambled blissfully through the city to les Jardins des Tuileries, which I could not recall ever visiting. The sun was dazzling and it was plenty warm enough for me to remove my coat as I walked. When I got to les Tuileries, I was actually disappointed because the park had no grass. It had dirt. I walked through it for a bit, and saw some grass, but it was all meticulously fenced off with signs informing people that the grass was off-limits. I did find a bench beneath some pretty trees within sight of the beautiful Font des Medicis, though, so I suppose I can't complain. My next stop was the Pantheon, which was just on the other side of les Tuileries. It has an interesting history, the Pantheon. It looks every inch a classical Greek temple, but was originally built as a Christian basilica. However, during the Revolution when religion was fiercely censored, it became a sort of secular temple--a place for great, solemn state events. During the reign of Napoleon, it was partially restored to its function as a Christian place of worship, but retained some of its secular significance. During the restoration of the monarchy, it became fully a Christian site again. But later, when the monarchy was removed again, it became a secular site (this transition was clearly marked by the great state funeral of the novelist Victor Hugo) and today it remains a secular temple dedicated to the achievements of mankind. As a Unitarian Universalist, an atheist, a scientist, a bibliophile, an aesthete, and a romantic this whole history pleased me very much. Upon entering the first thing you see is Foucault's Pendulum, the first demonstration of the earth's rotation about its axis. How wonderful, to enter a lavishly and solemnly beautiful temple and see enshrined there humanity, not divinity. There were monuments to the Revolution. In the crypts, I paid my respects to Voltaire, Rousseau, Dumas, Hugo, and the Curies. I spent a long time in the Pantheon.

At that point it was late in the afternoon, and all my walking and marveling had exhausted me. I made my way back to the hostel and checked in properly. The room was awesome. It was a 10-bed room that was actually big enough to be a 10-bed room. Each bed had a curtain around it and its own little reading light and electrical outlets, as well as a designated locker beneath the bed. It was comfortable and secure, and I settled down for a nap without hesitation. I went to Montmartre to procure dinner, which was quite close to my hostel. I found a restaurant with a set menu at 12 euro for three courses, which seemed a steal. And it was. The food was amazing--I had onion soup, beouf bourginon (I know I spelled that wrong), and chocolate mousse. It was my splurge for the weekend, and well worth it. As the sun was setting I climbed up to Sacre-Coeur. Let me tell you this about the bluff of Montmartre: yes, Sacre-Coeur is gorgeous, but to reach it one must endure a hellish number of steps, all of which smell strongly of urine and are full of gypsies accosting you for money. But I made it through and found a pleasant seat on the grass near the stairs, where I settled down to read some more of Victor Hugo's Les Miserables (I always try to find appropriate weekend reading). There was a talented street musician playing in front of the basilica, and I was utterly content with my life for that stretch of time. La vie, c'est vraiment belle.

The next day, Saturday, I woke up and went to the Catacombs. The Catacombs are a vast underground burial ground. Starting in the 18th century, mass graves around Paris were linked to widespread disease. The solution the authorities decided upon was to exhume these graves and remove the bones to the Catacombs, which had already been partially excavated because excellent limestone was quarried there and used for building projects. I was apprehensive about this visit; I'd seen pictures and documentaries and knew that there were lots of human bones. But my curiosity outweighed my fear, and I found myself in a long queue that sunny Saturday morning waiting for my turn to glimpse the great ossuaries.

After a lot of stairs leading underground, there was perhaps a 15 minute walk through mostly empty tunnels whose walls bore informative placards about the creation of the catacombs. I was already creeped out just from in the dimly lit underground alone; I made sure to keep the people just ahead of me always in sight. Then I got to the actual ossuary part...and it was terrifying at first. Although I'd had a vague idea of what to expect, nothing prepares you for seeing that massive volume of human bones. They were piled up at least five feet high (taller than me, in some places) and probably 3-4 ft thick, with skulls grinning all over the place. And it just went on and on, wall of bones after wall of bones, interspersed with quotes about death and mortality. It was perhaps a thirty-minute walk through human bones. Oddly enough, I became accustomed to the macabre setting after a few minutes and became less and less bothered by the bones, and was actually able to pause and read the quotes and ponder the bones. This phase of interest lasted until I got to the drippy bit. Near the end of the Catacombs, the ceiling was dripping slightly. Nothing major, just occasional falling drops of water. But the shock of the water droplets (and the thought that these water drops were quite likely filtered through bones) combined with the piles of bones was just too much for my taxed nervous system, and I hurried through to the end and the stairway that led me back to daylight.

I took a long walk after leaving the Catacombs, from the neighborhood of Montparnasse to the Latin Quarter and l'Ile de Cite. I stopped by the Montparnasse Cemetery on the way to pay my respects to the Existentialist writer and philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre. My sunny walk through Paris was magnificent. I stopped and got a baguette with ham and butter on le Boul-Mich and took my sandwich to the banks of the Seine. There, sitting on a stairway in the shadow of Notre-Dame de Paris, I ate lunch and marveled not only at my beautiful surroundings but at how astounding my life was. I never thought I'd be back in Paris. When I was done eating I went over to the cathedral and found the Point Zero plaque in front of it--legend has it that if you jump on the plaque, you will return to Paris. It worked for me before, so I hopped on it again. Then I bought a Nutella crepe from a street vendor, which I devoured in the gardens behind Notre-Dame. While I enjoyed my crepe, the bells of Notre-Dame struck 2:00 and life was utterly perfect. Then I joined the queue to go inside the cathedral. My visit to Notre-Dame was somewhat disappointing because it was so crowded and noisy. I know that being a tourist in a church bothers some people. I don't have any qualms about visiting churches because I know that I am always respectful; I turn off my camera flash, am quiet, don't swear, and usually donate money. The tourists in Notre-Dame that afternoon were astoundingly disrespectful, and it left a bad taste in my mouth. That place is holy; people go there to pray and practice their faith; why can't visitors respect that? Were I Catholic I would have been offended. They should limit the number of people they let in at a time, or something.

This post is already overly long; I'll finish it later.