How I Spent MSV #3

Weather forecasting in Paris seems to be of the persuasion that, if you tell them it might rain, you’ve done your job. Every day the prediction hovered around 30 or 40 percent chance of rain. While once or twice we got sprinkled on, it never really hauled off and hit us with anything worth noticing. For that matter, even in London we only saw real wetness once, and then not for long. On the other hand, the weather was coolish in both places, mostly in the low 60s, which has to be one of the best possible scenarios for extended touring on foot. Very comfortable, in other words.

Still, at the beginning, before we learned that French weather predicting was an oxymoron, we figured that our first full day, where we had planned to explore outdoors down around the Bastille, would be better spent indoors at the Louvre, so we headed there instead. It was a little drizzly when we arrived, so this was probably a good idea. There was a line of about a hundred people, which took no time at all to move into the building; as you can see, at about noon,

the line stretched out of the picture.

Of course, if you’ve never been to the Louvre, you pretty much have to hit the masterpieces like the Mona Lisa, but every tour group in the universe is doing likewise, making masterpiece stalking a decidedly unpleasant experience, unless I guess you’re the first person in the place. Having dispensed with the proverbial bucket list on our first trip some years ago, now we can visit seeking something else. This time we decided on French paintings of the 19th century (pre-Impressionism) and decorative arts, which includes some palace trappings. This is the sort of stuff that takes your breath away but you don’t have to fight the hordes to enjoy it, aside from the inevitable tourist who has to stand a relative in front of everything and take a photo to prove that they were there, and the other inevitable tourist who has to take a photograph of every painting, period, which is akin to whistling Wagner—it just doesn’t capture the essence. Oh, well. The French paintings are decidedly of the so-called academic variety, lots of history and education and moral illumination, the stuff the Impressionists didn't do when their time came along, which is why they couldn't get into the salons (they were refused, and they took great pride in being refusés). As for decorative arts stuff, well, they did have the odd king and/or emperor living here over the years; the Louvre after all is a former palace. Some pix below.

We put in our usual two or so hours, at which point museum overload always sets in, and we headed outdoors, where it had suddenly turned quite nice. We walked around, heading toward the (eastern) bottom of Ile St. Louis, which is the island next to the Ile de la Cite, which is the island with Notre Dame and the hunchback (the name escapes me but the face rings a bell, if you need a joke punch line to help you out here). St. Louis is quite charming, famous perhaps more than anything for Berthillon ice cream, which is proof that human nature is all too human. You can buy this ice cream at the counter at Berthillon, or at any of a number of other counters within a hundred foot radius. Exact same ice cream. Line at Berthillon? Endless. Line at Berthillon outlets? Virtually non-existent. Since we weren’t exactly in the mood for ice cream when we were there, we skipped it, and I felt that we were probably ruining the entire vacation by so doing and missing out on a world-famous treat, but we were nearby a few days later and made up for it then. It really was good.

We didn’t bother going into Notre Dame, which had yet another endless line, but then again, been there, done that, and there are plenty of other things to go into that don’t have endless lines, especially churches. A Catholic country that’s been in existence since the invention of Catholics tends to have a lot of churches worth visiting. Italy is, of course, the same thing. You can church yourself up endlessly, and if you happen to appreciate architecture, art and/or religion, you will be a happy tourist.

The next day we roamed the Bastille area. The prison itself is long gone, aside from a piece of rock here and there. Nearby is the area where the characters do some of their endless noodling in Before Sunset, the Promenade Plantée. It is, essentially, the Parisian High Line, with the distinction of predating the High Line by about 20 years. No one was filming us as we walked, however.

Following that, the next day we day-tripped out to Giverny. It seems pretty necessary to do a pilgrimage Chez Monet if you’re any sort of Impressionism fan, and if you do, you won’t be disappointed. The place really looks like his paintings. Just photographing the ponds, even when they’re overrun by tourists, looks like Monet’s lily paintings.

We had also planned a day trip to Chartres, which we’ve never seen, but the continuing bleak forecasts coupled with a surprise train strike—the French on strike? Quelle surprise arooni as the Frenchie say—put the kibosh on that one. We substituted a walking tour of the Left Bank.

Some selected pix:

The royal quarters in the Louvre:

That black dot in the top left section is a cannonball:

The city is filled with little courtyards:

Who says the French are a little on the ornate side?

The Parisian High Line:

The house at Giverny:

Nymphéas:

Poppies: