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| Houseboats along the Seine, near Ile St-Louis |
So by now, I can safely say we've become professional flâneurs, those who roam around with no
particular agenda, taking in the scenery and enjoying the beautiful
weather. After a few days where there
were occasional rain showers, Thursday was absolutely gorgeous, sunny in the
low 70’s – perfect weather for more strolling!
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| Hôtel de Ville, much fancier than City Hall in Westfield! |
After munching on some delicious ham, egg & cheese
crêpes in St-Michel, Kasey and I walked all the way up past Hôtel de Ville
(city hall) to the St-Paul metro stop where my parents had rented an apartment
when they visited me last time. There’s
a really cool store there called ConfoDeco where they have all sorts of
interesting home furnishings, and I found this cute ceramic owl to take with me
to Forbach as a reminder of my time spent in Paris.
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| Delicious pastries in the window of "Aux Désirs de Manon," one of my favorite pâtisseries in Paris |
From there, we headed back to the neighborhood
where we went to classes at Sweet Briar and ended up sitting with our feet up
on a chair in the Jardin du Luxembourg, where we were consequently scolded by
an older lady who was mad that we were putting our feet where people sit…even
though she clearly didn’t look around us because everyone else was doing the
same thing! We sat basking in the
sunlight, enjoying the peace and quiet, the trickle of fountains and the
chirping of birds.
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| Jardin du Luxembourg, with the French Senate building in the back |
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| It's hard to take bad pictures when you have such gorgeous subject matter to work with! |
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| Enjoying a break in the sunshine |
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| Apparently this is forbidden, but just for us |
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| Beautiful flowers with Le Panthéon in the background |
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| Le Panthéon, getting a facelift |
I enjoyed yet another French delicacy at Les P’tites
Indécises in the Oberkampf neighborhood: parmentier de boudin noir.
In layman’s terms: blood sausage!
That’s right folks, sausage filled with blood.
This dish in particular was especially delicious – a fluffy layer of
chunky mashed potatoes was topped with ground up blood sausage, smothered in a
light sauce made from apples and onions, YUM!!
It’s really a matter of mind over matter, because if you can get past
the idea of what you’re eating, you can really appreciate how great it is. That’s one of my mottoes while traveling:
step outside your comfort zone and try everything at least once, otherwise you
might miss something great! I had had boudin noir before and loved it, so it
was great to give it another go. And
remember, just because it’s something we don’t eat at home doesn't mean it’s
necessarily bad! Keep an open mind and
you never know what discoveries you’ll make!
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| My parmentier de boudin noir! Yum yum yum! |
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| Strolling along the Canal St-Martin |
Next, we
walked over to the Laudrette Théâtre next to Canal St-Martin to go see a play
by the existentialist writer Jean-Paul Sartre called “Huis Clos” (“No
Exit”). This was a play I had read a
couple times for various classes in college and found really interesting; the
play’s tagline is « L’enfer, c’est
les autres » (“Hell is other
people”). Existentialism’s philosophy
has to do with the fact that your actions define who you are, and that
pretending you’re something other than you are is pointless; one must live life "authentically." The play is centered on 3 people who are in
the author’s version of hell: they are locked in a hotel room after they die
and stuck with each other for eternity, while they all despise each other and
can never close their eyes to go to sleep.
And while their hell lacks fire and brimstone, each person drives the
other ones crazy. It might sound strange
to those who are unfamiliar with Sartre’s work, but believe me when I say it’s
a very interesting play – this coming from someone who despises reading theater
to begin with! And to top it all off, I
had found the tickets on the French Groupon site and they only cost 9€ each
instead of the usual 19€…I remain a bargain hunter even in foreign lands!
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| Waiting for Huis Clos to begin |
Friday – you
guessed it, more strolling! I almost wish I had a pedometer to track how many
miles we walked throughout the course of the week. Paris is only half the size of Boston, but
I’m pretty sure we took enough steps to cover the equivalent of all its
streets! That morning I made a solo
voyage to Musée d’Orsay, home to the works of the Impressionists & a place
where I spent lots of time during my semester here. It’s a shame you can’t take pictures of the
artworks inside, because they’re simply incredible! But, there is this amazing site by Google, called ArtProject,
which uses its familiar street-view technology to give visitors virtual tours
of lots of the world’s museums, even providing the viewer with extreme
close-ups of the art; Musée d’Orsay happens to be featured on this site!
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| Inside Musée d'Orsay, housed in a beautifully restored former train station |
Click
here to take your own virtual stroll through the museum! The first floor has
sculpture, pre-Impressionist and early-Impressionist works, while the second
floor houses post-Impressionist works, and the fifth floor shelters the magnificent
Impressionist works. Using the panel on
the left-hand side of the screen, you can select which floor to look at and
then click through on the right side of the screen to “walk” around. Really amazing stuff, I could spend all day
on this site!
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| The window behind this clock offers amazing views of Paris |
And, for a great example of the super-zoom feature that
belongs to lots of the collection’s more famous paintings, check out
this. If you roll over the smaller version of the
painting on the right side of the screen, you can move the slider to zoom
waaaaaaaaaaaayyyyyyyy in, and then move the little box around on the smaller
painting in order to see amazing details of the real painting. With this Renoir, you can see every little
brush stroke, and even right down to the texture of the canvas in some spots.
Bravo, Google, you've outdone yourself once again!
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| Sacre-Coeur as seen from the clock window |
We grabbed
some sandwiches on crispy baguettes and then walked over to Ile St-Louis’
famous ice cream shop, Chez Berthillon, for a refreshing afternoon treat. While their ice cream is a little pricey –
pretty sure I paid a bit more than 4€ for two scoops on a sugar cone – the
taste is to die for! A velvety scoop of
dark chocolate perched atop some salted butter caramel ice cream…miam miam! Buyer beware: many cafés on Ile St-Louis
advertise that they sell Berthillon’s ice cream, but don’t be fooled! Go straight to the source: it’s on the main
drag almost all the way at the island’s farthest end from Ile de la Cite, with
a brown façade on the right hand side!
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| Chez Berthillon |
Enjoying our glace from Berthillon’s we meandered
down along the Seine to the Jardin des
Plantes, Paris’ botanical gardens.
While the peak season for blooming flowers is behind us, they did have a
lovely garden full of dahlias and sunflowers, making for a picturesque
afternoon.
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| At the Jardin des Plantes |
Right around
the corner from the park is one of the city’s ancient Roman vestiges: Les Arènes de Lutèce. Tucked away around the block from the Jussieu
metro stop you’ll find the remains of an arena/amphitheater built to hold
15,000 people during the 1st century AD, when Paris was then the
Roman settlement of Lutetia (or Lutèce, en
français). Now more of a park with
free wifi access and a place where kids kick around soccer balls down on center
stage, les arènes aren’t the only
remnants of Antiquity still visible in Paris.
Les thermes de Cluny, remains
of a large bath house, are located near the St-Michel neighborhood and form
part of the Musée de Cluny, a museum highlighting works from the Middle
Ages. There’s also the crypte archéologique located under the
square in front of Notre-Dame – while I’ve yet to visit it, I hear that there
are excavations from Roman times as well as settlements from the Middle Ages
here…it’s definitely on my To-Do List next time I’m in town!
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| Les Arènes de Lutèce |
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| Part of Les Thermes de Cluny |
We decided to
save a bit of money that night by cooking at our apartment. Kasey, Eric and I concocted a gourmet feast
of chicken with sautéed peppers and onions cooked in a red pepper pesto sauce,
all served over rice, had a bottle of wine each, bread with an
expertly-selected cheese plate, and finished it all off with some cheesecake
topped with blackberry glaze. Our
apartment at 125 rue de la Glacière may not have been a 5-star restaurant, but
it worked for us!
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| Our gourmet home-made dinner! |
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| You can see the Eiffel Tower's spotlight from our living room |
Saturday was
my last full day in Paris, so I got up early and once again returned to
Montmartre, easily one of my favorite neighborhoods. Although it can be crowded with tourists at
times, the area is so artsy and quirky that I can’t help but love it. Paris is a relatively flat city, but
Montmartre is the one spot where it gets a little steep – literally meaning
“hill of the martyr,” you get a good workout walking up steep sidewalks and
climbing endless stairs to reach the top, but the view and cultural attractions
found there are definitely worth it.
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| One of the neighborhood's many street performers |
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| Oh, Paris... |
I had just
recently discovered that there exists a Musée de Montmartre. Housed in an old building once home to
Renoir’s studio, the museum exhibits a vast array of posters, paintings,
drawings and lithographs all from the hands of artists who called Montmartre
home at one point or another.
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| Fresh pears waiting to be picked in the museum's gardens |
Through
the artwork you get a sense of the convivial atmosphere that pulsed through the
neighborhood during the late 19th and early 20th
centuries. From posters advertising
entertainment venues like Le Chat Noir and Le Lapin Agile to sketches of
burlesque performers dancing the can-can by Toulouse-Lautrec, this relatively small museum had a
surprisingly impressive array of artwork on display.
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| An original poster from the collection at the Musée de Montmartre |
The property
also includes Les Jardins de Renoir (“Renoir’s Gardens”), whose various
characteristics provided the inspiration for some of his most famous paintings. For example, the swing in the backyard was
central to Renoir’s “La Balançoire,” and when you take a seat in the yard, with
a bit of imagination, you can almost see the artist posed with his easel and
palette just beyond the tree…
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| Renoir's "La Balançoire" |
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| The swing from his garden, serving as his inspiration |
The backside
of the property is home to one of Montmartre’s best-kept secrets: les vignes. I had no idea that Paris still had a
fully-functioning vineyard in its boundaries, but my nose led me to the sweet
smell of ripe grapes and voilà. While
the vineyard isn’t open for visits, I hear they have a harvest festival there
sometime in October where you can volunteer to help pick the grapes right off
the vines…maybe I’ll add that to my bucket list?
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| Les Vignes de Montmartre |
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| Harvest season's right around the corner |
And then it
was once again time to pack all my life away back into my 2 suitcases, for
Sunday I was finally moving to Forbach.
I’ll attribute my superb packing skills to all the time I've spent
playing Tetris on my phone over the years…
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| "In an old house in Paris, covered in vines..." |
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