Day Four: Friday

We actually got going pretty well this morning - I even had time to write while waiting for breakfast to arrive. This is a shot of the room - I'll have to write more about our hotel, but it's an old building that's been redone to look like this. You can see the original beams, however, weathered and heavy. We learned that Sartre lived here for awhile. But then, somebody has lived everywhere in Paris; really - there's this amazing combination of old and new that live side by side very comfortably. I'm the one in the chair.

 

I think I could live here in this old/new setting, looking out a window onto Paris and writing.

At any rate, we'd dressed, breakfasted, coffee-fueled, and walked out the door by 10 a.m. to metro across town to the Musee de Arte Moderne to a retrospective of Giorgio de Chirico's.

This Museum of Modern Art of the City of Paris was designed as part of the 1937 world fair on art and technology - that world's fair that shocked people into the 20th Century - but was only officially opened in 1961. Next door - or really part of but separated by a patio - is the Palais de Tokyo, another contemporary art museum although I don't know much about it. 

The museum has a huge collection of French and European art from the the 20th century, and more than we could absorb in one day, but I'd found the article on di Chirco on one of the web sites I'd researched before coming and really wanted to see the show. So we found the museum.  

From the art history days when I discovered him, I liked his view - solitary, shadows stretching across plazas, a melancholy that wasn't over-blown, a metaphysical vision that precluded the surrealists. It was marvelous, da'ling. An artist who lived, even in melancholy, through his years as a young man during the first world war, the second, the surrealists and dadists, the cubists, and the post-modern era to die as late as the 1970s. That's quite a span. And while I didn't take many photos, I certainly stored the images and ideas in my mind. A brief note I wrote to myself on my program while looking at his work on perspective and boxes and mannequins reads, "We're all trapped by our memories and buildings and edifices, our boxes; we need a new perspective in order to see." At times, his faceless mannequins were weighted at their shoulders by ringed weights like the ones weight-lifters attach to the ends of their bars; and sometimes the figures sat with their laps full of boxes and broken buildings. Weighted down. 

 

I'd determined to take more photos of people and today I had a chance to do that. This young boy at the museum attracted my attention. He looked very French and stylish. From time to time, he'd stand in front of a painting and simply study it, scratch his head, stick his hands back in his pockets and just look again at the painting. I never did get a shot of his face, but this one says a lot about him.

 

His parents were with him along with a baby girl in a stroller, but the parents seemed to trust him to wander and look at his leisure. And he seemed to trust himself. 

 

 

 

 

 

Here are some of the images for my fascination: solitude, mysticism, a sense of travel and wandering the world, of shadows and shapes. All the fragments that have held a resonance for me over the years.

And I am reminded once again of how we are trapped by our memories as if they are weights on our shoulders.

Perhaps the questions for today revolve around that challenging perspective: how many boxes do we keep, for some are valuable, and how many do we discard - or redesign. How do we ride the train into the future with lightness and grace? It seems that in this time of transition from one - what - era? certainly century - we are called to that question again. And it's hard to put down weights that have become familiar. It feels scary.

 It was a big show - several rooms - and we wandered and looked for over two hours. Our heads filled with images and colors and blocks (oh, yeah, I also really like colors in blocks), so we decided to walk out to the sidewalk cafe on the museum grounds. As we stepped out the door, this was the view between two museum pillars:

 

  

 "Well, hello!," I said.

What a surpise! It was the first we'd seen the Eiffel Tower and completely unexpected. Below, the Seine ran between us and the left bank where the tower stands. You can barely see the river below the white folded up table umbrella. I took another couple of shots over rooftops as we left the cafe and museum and walked back up the street to the metro, but this was the surprise.

 

 We sat and ordered lunch. Ordering food in French is sort of a surprise in itself. Sometimes there's an English more or less translation below the French, many times there wasn't. At the museum, there wasn't. I ordered something that included lasagne after seeing a delicious looking plate at the next table. And it was good. The French cheese, as most of you know, is astonishing.

 

Having vowed to take more photos of people, I captured a few. One table of artist-looking young people sat at one side and a charming little girl who wanted both her sister's attention and her parents - none of whom would give her the satisfaction of attention, but then she probably needed it often and they'd all learned to ignore her.

 

 

Finally, she sat at table and just sat - and pouted. Her sister is the pigtail head on the right.

The little girl had wanted to play hide and seek and had stood at a pillar beyond the table and up a couple of steps, hid her eyes, and counted. Her sister went down to the table with her parents and sat. So when the little girl lifted her head and looked around, saw her sister obviously NOT hiding, she began calling and then yelling at her. The sister did nothing, the parents did nothing. Finally, the little girl came down the steps to the table and sat disgrundled.

 

 

 At the opposite end of the cafe, a table of young artists talked and laughed and gestured in the air. I took a shot of them since they looked so obviously artists in an artist setting.

  

Watching people watching people seems a favorite passtime in Paris. We watch the people sitting at tables watching people passing a cafe, and we watch people watching - well, whatever - the river Seine below and across a grassy knoll, each other, passing traffic. People are observant and it's fun to watch them watching. Watching -walking - and eating seem to be the main passtimes for everyone, including us.

 

Ascension is a national holiday in France and so this weekend was a long holiday weekend. Paris went to the country and the country came to Paris. Everywhere we went crowds of people went with us. This Museum of Modern Art with the next door Musee Toyko had a lot of people, but wasn't absolutely slammed. Perhaps a little more out of the way than the Louvre.

 We were lulled by the smaller crowds at the modern art museum into an "oops, maybe we shouldn't have come here" decision to go to Montmartre. So back to the metro we went.  Paris, as you probably know, has a very old metro and some of the cars are ancient looking with layers of graffeti, but the stations for the most part are pretty clean: a metro shot.

 

 I was absolutely determined to take photos of people in Paris, so although these people are across some train tracks, I took photos of people - a couple talking, a single woman with a book. 

 What's also interesting about this shot is it says something more about people and the metro. People traveling with someone else talk, people traveling alone read books. I've seen people all over reading - in cafes, subways, on street benches, in parks. And for the most partl, they read books. Once in awhile I'll see a young woman reading a Vogue or fashion magazine, but for the most part, people read books.

 Remember when Americans read??

And then we arrived in Montmartre. And came out of the metro into masses and masses of people.  

 This is the shot of Sacre-Coeur from the street below. You can see the crowds along the railing in front of the church and in the grass below.

We walked up the street to the tram that carries those who wish to ride rather than climb the stairway - with masses of people - and waited in line with masses of people - while a man dressed in black with a gay neckerchief played a violin in accompanment to some recorded music from a hidden machine. If I'd have thought, I could have a quite good photo of him, but there were so many people, I'd gone into overhwhelm mode. So I watched some boys playing soccor in the open space beside the tram. But that's another thing about lines and metros, someone is always playing music, not so different from New York or Washington DC. The instrument is only a little different and therefore exotic. 

When we finally reached the top, we walked over to about the middle of the railing you can see there in front of the lower arches. And stood looking out over the city. Here's what we saw in front of us.

 

 These are the church steps, the street in front, the lawn leading down to the lower street. For a perspective, you can either picture us as two of the little figures at the above railing or one of the very little figures (which basically you can't see) standing in the street in front of that building down center (or up center as the case may be) white with five rows of windows; i.e. a very long way away which is why we took the tram.

 

 

 

 And here's what we saw in back of us.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

 And this is a photo a young man kindly offered to take of the two of us.

 

 

He'd seen us unsuccessfully trying the photo-of-self-and-friends-taken-with-outstretched-arm that young people seem to be unerringly successful doing. We were not. I won't stun you with the shot we got, but it seems mostly a close up of nostrils. And frowns. If one can imagine nostrils and frowns in the same shot. Sort of like one of those modern art things.

 

And that's the scene at Sacre-Coeur - at least on a holiday weekend.

 We followed the crowds inside. A service was in progress, and as the crowds entered, a little man dressed in black shushed and hushed and gestured for men to remove their hats, for young women who were scantily topped to put on their shirts or jackets and cover their shoulders. Shuuush....shuush, gesture gesture. We slid into a pew at the back and watched for awhile. A steady five foot wide stream of people entered one side to walk around behind the altar and stream out the other side. It didn't look like fun so we decided to slide to the other end of our pew and escape.

The piece of information that most surprised me was that Sacre-Coeur is only about a century old (built between 1875 and 1919). One expects it to be ancient I guess - and maybe it is to the young people who visited. There are others of us who are beginning to understand just how short a century is. The white "plaster of Paris" exterior comes from the underlying gypsum - mines once dotted the hillside in the 1700s. And the view from below looking up at the shining dome against a blue blue sky is spectactular.

We sat in a pew at the back and watched for awhile then left - too many people, not enough God space, much like Norte Dame felt to us. Which takes away neither the beauty or the importance of either church, rather says more about us and people.

We walked around Sacre-Coeur and up to the town square to visit another church, St. Pierre-de-Montmartre, an exquisite chapel, all that's left of a once large Benedictine abby of monks and nuns from the 12th Century - the chapel built in 1147 (first of all, can you even imagine a church built in 1147??). At the time, the hillside was full of vineyards and the Benedictines master wine makers. 

 A quiet chapel. One or two people visiting, but neither the noise of the square outside or the crowds of people passed through the stone walls - only the light through stained glass windows, lighting the place with otherworldly glow and shadow.

The church houses the tombstone and perhaps the remains of Adelaide, wife to King Louis VI, and benefactress to the abbey.

Some of Montemarte's history says the name comes from the Roman "Mount of Mars" and two ancient columns beside the altar, one of which you can see dimly on the left of the photo, may have come from a Roman temple on the hill. Others say the name Montmarte comes from the time of Saint Denis' beheading and means Mount of the Martyrs. So there you are again, legends and stories all mixed into the pastiche of the city's stone and mortar.

But grateful always for the Internet and the research that can be accomplished, even far from one's home haunts, here's some interesting information I found on line at the travel site, Old and Sold. "That legitimate interest one takes to be primarily the fact of the martyrdom, upon this hill, some sundry centuries ago, of the first apostle of the Gauls, that same Saint-Denis who, sent from Rome in the beginning of the Christian Era, converted the Parisii, and was put to death by order of the Roman governor. The epoch of Saint-Denis is uncertain, but the tradition which indicates the summit of Montmartre as the place of his death and which places his tomb where is now the city of Saint-Denis has never been contested."

Part of the history of Paris tells of a main road that crossed the Ile de la Cite, or the island in the center of the Seine, south and north. The northern road led to this hilltop where the chapel was built. 

 The queen's tombstone is along the left wall of the chapel along with this carved wooden statue of Saint Vincent. The plaque at his feet says he's the patron saint of winemakers. The wood that looks pretty old. I'd like to think the wood came from the original abbey - or the original wine trellises. Maybe it did. At any rate, Saint Vincent holds a bunch of grapes in his hands. A nice touch.

 

 And then from the quiet of the chapel, we entered the village square again, thronged with people and noise. The square the famous Place du Tertre, lined with cafes (full of people) and artists painting at easels or mostly setting up paintings to sell - or postcards or prints or or or. This the square where Renoir, Picasso, Van Gogh sat, talked, drank wine. Looked at the light.

 

It's hard to imagine Picasso or anyone else, for that matter, wanting to live up here in this press of people. And now throngs of people come to see it - all together. Although I suppose that the throngs were less throngingly when Picasso lived here.

 

 

 

 

 

 

This bakery, it's said, is the one that Gertrude Stein came to whenever she came to Montmartre to visit Picasso's studio. So there is is, La Galette des Moulin, with people. Well, I'd wanted to take some shots of people! One of the people that's there is Cliff, reflected in the window, turning to speak to me as we stood across the street trying to get this shot. He's the white head  with blue and white shirt in the window just above the man in the orange shirt with the sunglasses on his head (Cliff's the reflection, not the white haired man in black). Odd things happened in Paris, and taking a shot of Cliff reflected in a bakery window was one of them.

 

  

 

 

 

 

After the bakery shot, I turned uphill again and took a photo of the tops of buildings as they may have looked when the impressionist painters came here - the white of Sacre-Coeur, the gray pointed roof of the ancient chapel, the red awning, and the green green trees. All the colors so vibrant in the amazing light.

Perhaps because we were above the smog of the city, or the humidity, or because of the height, or whatever it was... Mars energy?? the light made everything look as clear as it does through a prism. Bright colors, hard edged shadows, white walls, and blue blue blue. I can understand how a painter would like looking at it all. And thinking about it, I can also see what may have influenced Picasso's cubes of color and light.

As we left the main square and walked down the hill, the crowds dispersed, preferring the square's shops and activity to silent stones. I liked the looks of the streets sans people and could image how an artist would like living here.

 

This is one of those views that says, "if stones could talk."

Sure, there are cars on the street, but they are almost incidental - something has been coming and going on these streets for over a thousand years, might as well be cars now.

As we walked down this hillside street, we too grew quiet and just walked, holding hands again because we could, looking in gates along the wall, looking in open doorways. yes, it's easy to understand how a person could put up with the occasional days of tourism to enjoy this.

   Paris has history bursting from every nook and cranny as you might imagine. But then every place does, I guess, if you just knew about it. And the years of Paris fame have made sure you know about it!

At the bottom of this hill, we came upon one of Paris' surprises - a sculpture piece - oddness itself.

 

 

 I'd found and printed off a series of pages of little "hidden places in Paris" notes and this was one of them. But I hadn't remembered it was on Montmartre until we came upon it.

A portrait of a well-known writer, Marcel Ayme, the sculpture is mounted on the wall to represent one of Ayme's famous characters from the story, "Passer through Walls" which he wrote in 1943. The story was turned then turned into a musical and even ran for a time on Broadway - and named "Amour."

 

That's all there was to it - the sculpture piece mounted on a stone wall - a little square with a couple of benches - a tree beyond. The writer lived nearby until his death in 1967 and perhaps the little square was a favorite spot to sit and watch as people passed by - or a way station to rest before climbing the rest of the above hill. 

 

 We kept looking for the Moulin Rouge, which we knew was somewere in the general vicinity, but not really knowing and somehow losing track of streets and places, we just continued walking.

 

 

 

And since we were still heading downhill, we thought we'd come to something.

 

I like these streets. I like the curve and light to them, the flower pots on the window sills, the surprises in the details. Some of the older buildings have goddesses in niches, or words, or scrolls and curls. And some have flower pots.

After awhile, it's easy to recognize the hand of Haussmann at work in the style of the buildings, remaking the city to conform to his idea of neat and orderly. George Sand wrote about strolling down the broad new boulevards as did many others. And they certainly are clean and the sewers no longer open - for which we are all blessed.

Van Gough lived down at the bottom of this hill on the left and Toulouse-Lautrec across the street on the right. Once we found the notation for Toulouse-Lautrec, we figured the Moulin Rouge couldn't be far - after all, how far could Toulouse walk every day? Obviously, farther than we could.

Finally, wearing thin, we sat at a corner cafe and had ice cream. That helped. Across the way, a little corner street fair was filled with people and artists and lively music. A charming scene. And once again, one filled with light and color.

 

 

 

So we sat and watched people for awhile: people drinking coffee and eating ice cream and wandering around and watching children play. So we rested and ate ice cream.

 

 And when we began walking down Rue Lepec again, following the metro signs - and we found the metro but missed Moulin Rouge somehow but couldn't think about going back - so we didn't.

 

 

And then we got back on the metro and came back to our hotel. Fortunately, our room has a large bathroom with a large tub where I soak every afternoon after returning so I can go again in the evening.

 So in the evening, we walked around the corner of Rue du Dragon to a sweet little restaurant with floor to ceiling windows open to the street, where we sat with wine and watched the quiet evening come - it stays light until nearly ten at night so it's easy to watch. I had a most amazing dish - an egg - shirred I think with cream and butter - with fois gras at the bottom. My goodness. I must learn how to make this. Later, we met up with Fatima, sitting at Cafe du Flore, just up the street, and where Hemmingway, Picasso, Albert Camus, Sartre, and Jim Morrison hung out. Not now, however. Just a lot of people to sit and drink and watch the ever changing foot traffic. A long day, all in all, since sitting and drinking wine until after one o'clock in the morning seems to be the thing to do in Paris. And we all walked back to our hotel, laughing and linking arms. And no one paid much attention.

 

Day Four:  Saturday.

 This was a slow day. Really slow. We'd planned to go to the Impressionists museum, The Musee d'Orsay, which we did, and since it's not far from our hotel we walked. Slowly.

I don't have a lot from today - I'm not in the habit of taking photos of paintings - most of the can be found in one or another book or on line anyway. But I have pieces. Most impressive is this old train station which was turned into a museum in the 1970s to house 19th Century French art. What's nice is that the lower floors house academy painting and the upper the Impressionists so you get a chronological look at a century of art.

The museum deserves much more time and energy than we had but just being in it was wonderful.

 

When we first arrived, we found these bronzes outside sitting along the veranda in front of the museum entrance. They were the women of the world: Imperial Rome, Asia, Native America, Polynesia, Africa, Australia. Their faces proud and fearless.

 

Notice at the end of the line of women the image of a Legion of Honor medal on the building across the street. I didn't notice it until we had finished at the Orsay and were heading back to our hotel. But I'll add that visit at the end.

 

 

This is the shot from the entrance, looking back on the wings. There's five floors, six if you count the cafe on the top terrace, but the museum is do-able.

 

 

 Admittedly, there were still a lot of people, but again, manageable.

  

I liked the building's shape as if it were a womb for light and art, and the weighted sculptural pieces sitting along the lower floor and on the balcony - there at the arches on the sides.

 

Here's a shot from the other end.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It's a little easier to see the shape of the museum with this shot because I was on a higher level. I don't think we saw everything, but there were some glorious moments, like walking into the grand ball room which reminded us of the hall of mirrors at Versailles. And at the far end, behind that clock, there's a glorious room where they've put a cafe. Very elegant with original gilt trimming the cornices. No, unfortunately I didn't take a photo of either room, but if you imagine gold and pastel colors and murals of ladies and gentlemen and fruit and vines, and crystal chandeliers, you get the idea.

 

Here's a closeup of the clock you see hanging over the entrance.

 The lamps alongside are hanging from the ceiling, not the clock.

 

   

We walked through the pre-impressionists and the academy, through the impressionist rooms and the post-impressionists. We walked and walked.

  

And looked at statuary and sculpture. Here's an example of statuary - St. Michael again, slaying the dragon. Each of the galleries opened out to the balcony - a wonderful architectural detail.

 

 

 

 

 

 

And people. We watched a lot of people.

 

 

 

One of my favorite moments of the day was coming across this group of school children and a sleeping teacher. I understood.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Yes, a nap.... please.

 I had to laugh at the kids tussling and talking and the adult grabbing a moment of nap. The kids seemed to understand and gave her the space she needed to stop.

 

 

 I did take a couple of photos of art. One of Toulouse-Lautrec's dancing lady - which made me laugh right out loud - and one of a detail from Rodin's Gates of Hell.

 

 

 

 

I loved the look on her face. And the way the piece has been lighted. There've been times I've felt like this while dancing. And too, I didn't know Toulouse-Lautrec had done sculpture so that added to the surprise of the piece.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And maybe I took the section from the Gates of Hell because.... well, the days have been long.

 

 

 

 

Many of the Rodin sculptures in this museum are the plaster manques he made before casting in bronze. We'd planned to visit Rodin's museum after the Impressionists, but we'd just run out of gas and legs, so decided to go back to the hotel and rest.

 

But on our way out the door, we saw another museum on the opposite street. Remember that above image at the end of the row of bronze women of the world? The Museum of the Legion of Honor and Orders of Chivalry - doncha love it!! And since my dad's grandfather served in the French Foreign Legion in Algeria in the mid-1800s, it seemed a must.

 By this time, my camera battery had given out along with our legs, but we did look through the museum and saw medals dating from the middle ages to present time - early ones of metal overlaid with gold, later ones bedecked with jewels - emeralds and diamonds and rubies. And paintings of Napoleon wearing some of them. And two floors, both of which we saw - French decorations for "honor and glory," Ordres Royaux (big pieces that Napolon wore), the Legion of Honor metals, and the Order for Foreigners - I guess the "foreigners" part might be where Dad's grandfather fit or perhaps the Legion d'Honneur.

Between my Spanish and Cliff's Latin, we've been able to read and understand much more than we expected - and there's a few bits left from my college years. Not enough to converse in French, or to understand much of the verbal language, but we can get the gist of things reading.

I also understand the idea of the "honor" medals coming out of the Age of Chivalry - the romanticism of that time has draw my attention for a very long time - probably since plowing those endless fields in the summer on the farm and dreaming my time away with whatever story of knights and ladies I was reading at the time. So it was a pretty cool visit to someplace we hadn't know about or read about - i.e. another of the surprises that we are so fond of having - in anything - food, wine, or visions.

 And then we slowly walked back to our hotel and took an evening off. We did manage to walk the three blocks over to Cafe Flore for a light supper and a glass of wine after resting, but that seems to be a pattern we do - one long day, one short day. Or something like that. At any rate, this was a short day.

 

Day Five: Sunday

I guess it was a very smart thing to have a short day yesterday because today we outdid ourselves, taking an afternoon stroll of about six hours. It hadn't quite started out to be so long - we had our usual late breakfast on a tray in our room and fortified with coffee and baguettes, cream and butter, we decided to walk down to a lion my friend Kathy had lived near and had told us about. Go see the lion, she said, and found the place on our map. It hardly seemed that far. 

So, after breakfast and descending four floors on the two person elevator, saying hello to the staff, and shuffling out to the street, we emerged before noon. Not bad for a Sunday. The street quiet, few people about. We decided to walk down a different street than the one we lived on just as an exploration and because - well, because we could. Armed with our Google maps and guide books, we began. 

The street a block over from our hotel is named Rue du Dragon. The name came from an arch, no longer there, decorated with a carved dragon, I read. Seemed an odd name for a street and since, well, since it was there, we decided to take it down towards Luxenbourg Gardens, the first stop on our journey to the lion. I'd made sure I had a charged battery with me for this walk so you may wind up seeing more of Paris than you'd really planned to look at. I suppose photos of one's journeys whether on a slide show in the 50s, or a photograph album in the 80s, or now in a blog are pretty much all the same. Photos that mean a lot to us, perhaps less to you. But if you've come this far, I suppose you'll continue. 

 

 I laughed right out loud at this restaurant of presidents with boureoise food. I mean, really? What did that mean? Bourgeoise food for a president? Maybe like Obama getting into the presidential limo and driving across the river to eat a hamburger - I don't know.

 

We also passed a sign for Academie Jullian which looked like a place I'd seen in a movie of shorts about Paris - one of the many things I looked at or read before coming here. The Academie, I've found out, is more traditional than the Beaux-Arts. But interesting to pass. Another of the pieces of Paris history.

Rue du Dragon is short - a couple blocks at most, and leads through a variety of dress and shoe shops. We walked down to a crossroads - well, not exactly a crossroad since six streets all meet - I think called a "carrefour" where we'd been before and had turned to go to Saint Sulpice - and found the same sculpture piece we'd seen before. A most remarkable - well - piece - with scrawled messages or names on the sides from spray paint - whatever graffiti is called in Paris. The piece, up on a pedestal, is called Centaur of Cesar - Cesar being a famous French artist - and made of welded together metal pieces and gears - and a broom (metal) and golf club as part of the tail. Why didn't I take a photo of it? I'm not sure. It may become one of the many "want tos" that don't get accomplished this trip.... this trip? How long can I live? It's taken me forty years to make this one!!

At any rate we wandered through a tangle of streets as we looked at a piece of Google map I'd printed out before coming until we stumbled across rue d'Assas which looked like it would lead us to another carefour called Port-Royal where we could find the street that led to the lion. 

We walked and walked and saw more of the styles of blocks that looked as if they had been part of the Haussmann reign of rebuilding from the mid 1800s.  

 

I particularly liked this street and the way it had been personalized over the ensuing decades. In particular, I liked the middle building with the iron fretwork and little wrought iron balconies and especially the crowning piece of what looked liked greenhouse windows at the top or at least really nice windows for a spectatular view.

Another reason I took this photo is because Cliff pointed out the horsemeat for sale sign, there on the red awning shop, reading Chevelaline. And while Americans may feel squeamish about eating horseflesh, it's still available and considered a delicacy in France.

 

And so we walked and we walked down rue d'Assas, admiring various buildings with carvings - lions, ladies faces, gorgon looking faces, on the columns and pediments. Finally, we saw a corner gate entrance to the Luxembourg Gardens and went in to visit.

What a surprise!

There, ahead of us, were several green, folding type chairs set out at the edge of the grass. We sat. And watched. The gardens are huge as you might know - a 60 acre park like "an Impressionist painting brought to life" as Rick Steves tour book says. It was easy to just sit and watch - watch joggers and walkers and other people sitting in the sun on the same type of chairs across the grass strip from us.

 

The sun was so strong all day and the colors as vivid and strong. To the right of this photo, you can see the people sitting in chairs in the shade, just as we had found chairs in the shade on our side.

Unfortunately, the flower beds around the statue are washed out in the light, but flower beds surrounded the statue, were laid out at corners and crossroads, were in fact all over. It's easy to see why Steves called this an Impressionist painting brought to life. When the sun shines in Paris, colors are vibrant and almost shout for attention. At least that's the way it looks in May. August must have a very different shade of light and color.

Notice also the little building in the left of the photo. I wondered what that was - sort of looked like a gardner's storage shed, but I was curious about all the accompanying little roofs I saw - not curious enough to leave my seat in the shade and go look, but curious enough to just sit and look at it, wondering.

 

 

As I watched, I noticed flying insects and suddenly realized the little roof tops were bee hives and the grouping an apiary. Well, think of that. Bees in an area where humans gather. And set apart some, yes, and wise humans probably don't bother them, but isn't that an interesting idea - bees in a garden. I've been planting bee-attracting plants in my garden for a few years now and am delighted when they show up - and they do - and know that honey bees are disappearing, at least in the United States, at an alarming rate because of too many pesticides, but there's some evidence here that insects and humans can live together in a semblance of peace.

 

This particular apiary, I've found out in my copious and scattered notes on things to do and see in Paris, was founded in 1856 and instrumental in starting a bee-keeping school. Fancy that. Seems Parisians are installing beehives on balconies and rooftops now. Good. I'm glad bees are alive and well in Paris at least.

But the day was lagging away as we sat, so onward toward the the carrefour at Port-Royal. Hard to leave the shade though. So when we arrived at the circle at Port-Royal, we were happy to have a tree-lined shaded walk - where we became distracted with a little family out for a walk, a baby in a stroller and a little boy about three ready to dash across the street when his father caught him.

 

A really lovely flower shop occupied a stretch along the curve of the circle and while this photo doesn't give justice to the banks of flowers, the orchids in the window, and the potted minature roses for sale on the other side of the shop, it does give some idea of the love of color and the wonderful abundance of bright surprises for the eyes. Eye candy of a different sort, I guess you could say.

 

We found Avenue Denfert-Rochereau and walked on. Past a hospital, Saint-Vincent de Paul that where we saw two young mothers with babies entering - I wondered if there were appointments on Sundays - at a sign that indicated a maternity clinic - and which hospital went on and on - several blocks down the street - or maybe just two - it seemed a long walk beside a wall that showed tips of buildings beyond and the peaked roof of a church.

And finally, ahead of us, we saw The Lion. And a lion it is.

The pedestal reads A La Defense Nationale 1870-1871 and refers to the French-Prussian War and the lion, a copy of one sculptured by Bartholdi, pays tribute to colonel Denfert-Rochereau who defended Paris in 1870.

Ah, war. It does create some glorious monuments.

The lion is indeed glorious.

We were ready for another rest by then and found a two-person mobile crepe-making kitchen on wheels on the far side of this square which also bordered a little triangular park with benches (how perfect!). The crepes, for those of you who have not eaten crepes on Paris streets, are about 18 inches in diameter, cooked fast on a hot griddle, and folded into a triangle so walk and eat. In this case, both a piece of aluminum foil and a paper towel encased the bottom of our crepe triangle. Cliff ordered one with Gran Marnier and I with Nutella, a chocolate hazelnut spread with which I'd first become fondly acquainted in the 1970s when I lived in Germany.

 

 We took our respite treats to a bench in the shade of the garden where I took what may be my favorite photo of the day - the lion and the crepes. Never mind the lion, the witch, and the wardrobe... this lion presided over chocolate. And flowers.

You can see the end of the little crepe wagon just as the edge of the trees on the right - that slanted roof in front of the garden gate.

 

Another nice place to just sit. As others were doing. Just sit and look at the day. And find the excessive liquidy treat of Nutella/Grand Marnier drained into the slowly savored bottom of our crepe triangle.

We'd found Kathy's lion - and thanked her for sending us on this particular quest.

So then, the question arose - what next? We hadn't really looked much at the Luxembourg Gardens other than that little corner, and the Pantheon lay not too far on the opposite side from where we'd walked previously, so foregoing the catecombs, which we really hadn't planned to see anyway, I mean, how many dead heads can you see - Jerry Garcia notwithstanding - we headed back to the Luxembourg Gardens.

It took us longer than it probably needed to had we not turned onto the wrong one of many streets branching out from the square-carrefour confusion. But we did. And found ourselves on the front side of Saint Vincent de Paul hospital where there are gardens and a glass fronted entrance instead of the stern wall and wooden gate for mothers and children. Oops, we said, and went back to studying our Google map sheet of paper. We found our location and where we needed to go and took a right hand turn back over to Port Royal.

But another of the remarkable Paris moments occurred as we passed a plain-fronted, low building where we heard singing and saw a sign for a Korean church. The voices were lovely, a couple of young men lounged on the concrete step in front, a boy played with a stick. The grounds behind the church held a garden, several paces below street level and slanting down into a little stream - the steeple of St. Vincent de Paul poked itself above the treetops - and the fence offered a safe haven to lean and rest and watch the garden as we listened to the music for a few minutes. And then we walked on to Port Royal. After all the walking we'd done, I knew the first thing I needed to find was a pharmacy, so as we reached the circle - after asking a kind couple who were about our age and from Belgium as it turned out - if they had an idea whether we should turn left or right on Montparnesse to reach the circle - and they did, and we turned, and there was the circle with a green cross indicating a pharmacy on the far side. First stop, ibuprophen. Which, interestingly enough, come in a box of 24 tablets. Perhaps the French have fewer aches and pains and certainly fewer headaches. I tossed down the tablets and we were off, walking up Boulevard Saint-Michael toward the Luxembourg Gardens.

And we walked. Several blocks. And I said, "This is about where I need one of those folding chairs from the park." Cliff pointed. "There's a bench." And there was, just at the side of the street, convenient for anyone who needed another stopping place. We did. How civilized.

 

 

 

People sitting in the sun and lying in the sun reading books and children sailing remote controlled boats on the pond - sort of a modern day version of Seurat's Sunday in the park. Or, given the amount of skin sunning, maybe Manet's. A glorious setting - we understood why people came here. 

The building in the background, the Luxembourg Palace, was begun by Marie de Medici in the early 1600s but now houses the French Senate.

 

We didn't visit the palace, but we did enjoy watching Paris at play on a Sunday afternoon.

I enjoyed watching this older man, oblivious to the young girls coming behind him, intent on his newspaper.                                                                 

He simply sat and read. Abet a bit off center in his chair.

 

People read a lot in Paris. On the metro, waiting for a bus, in the parks, sitting on a bench along the street. Paris reads.

 The other thing Paris likes doing is eating.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Almost anywhere at anytime. Which also became one of our quests. Not food exactly, but something to drink. So we walked out of the park toward the metro stop and saw many sidewalk vendors - some selling ice cream and others selling crepes, but we wanted to have something cold to drink. That's when Cliff spotted the magic McDonalds sign and we crossed the road to familiar sights on a menu even if the words were different.

So here we are, out of the sublime and into the absurd. A Big Mac and a Coke. In French. And airconditioning.

 

You gotta love it. 

 

 

But the most wonderful Paris photo happened from here. I was looking over Cliff's shoulder out to the sidewalk and captured a most Parisian scene.

 

A man, painting on a piece of paper on the sidewalk, a woman and a dog watching. That's all - nothing amazing or life changing or even particularly amazing. Just a man drawing, a woman and a dog watching.