Shopping in France, on the other hand, is actually kinda fun. First of all, it’s all little shops. You wander about the store fronts, the merchants wares out front, with none of that high pressure salesmen following you about offering to “help” (read: buy or leave). I had great fun trying on scarves the other day, and I think the salesgirl got a bit of a kick out of helping me pick a good color. But even aside from clothes, there’s all these neat little stalls you can wander past, pick up a munchie from, or even just window shop places that sell things you didn’t know were sold. I came SO close to buying an antique crystal perfume mister, but sensibility and fear of airport baggage handlers interfered.
I did pick up a few rounds of stinky cheese for breakfast at the local open air food stalls:
I don’t think the picture does this justice, think of this street going on for blocks, filled with these open air food stalls, selling specialty food, at pretty reasonable prices (my cheese rounds set me back about 8 Euro for a pound, not cheap, but I know what artisan cheese costs in the US). But the big thing is that all the neighborhood comes here, and it forms sort of an outdoor social scene. You don’t see groups of mothers with children in tow chatting it up at the local Albertson’s. And the merchants clearly enjoy talking with the customers. It’s part of the daily rhythm of life.
A BIG cheese and fresh fruit breakfast later, we headed to Notre Dame.
Now, for a study in contrasts, we couldn’t have done better than to do Notre Dame right after the Sacre Coeur Basilica. Notre Dame is a complete circus. I have no idea why anyone would actually try to pray there, what with the hordes of tourists (yes, including me) milling about with their cameras.
There is no question that it’s incredibly beautiful, and the stained glass rosette is the size of many medium sized houses (my photo of that didn't come out, but this window did)
But there are many, many beautiful churches in Paris. If one wanted to have something of a spiritual moment, I think almost anyone of them would be a better choice.
The climb to the tower was equally crowded, but believe or not, worth it. It was a good half hour in the rain before we were let in (they sensibly meter the crowds). I passed the time reading my brochure and practicing French with the bilingual line monitor lady.
“So,” I asked her, “how does one say ‘how much longer before we can go in’ en Francais?” She was polite enough to laugh at this. razz
Anyway, the wait was probably a good thing, as the rain had fair much cleared up by the time we got up the three hundred odd steps to the top.
The guide book claimed that we took the exact path Victor Hugo described Quasimodo as taking when he escaped with Esmerelda. A bit of a touristy thing to mention, but still kind of cool. The views were dramatic, but perhaps the neatest thing were the chimeras and gargoyles. BTW, I learned a bit of trivia—gargoyle is the term for the water spigots, chimeras are the purely ornamental statues. There were a lot of both. If you’ve seen photos of gargoyles, you’ve seen some of these already.
We also got to go all the way to the top of the bell tower, which had, perhaps unsurprisingly, a bell.
Unfortunately, we didn’t get to ring it, and there was no view (they need to protect it from the elements), so then it was off to the rooftops and a grand view of all Paris. Again, I truly had my doubts about Notre Dame sitting in line, but once you make it to the top, you’ll find it’s worth it, crowds and all.
Shakespeare's, the English Bookstore we'd visited, from Notre Dame (the red front to the right, and the oldest church in Paris next to the garden
That evening, we set out for more music. Oxy had been perusing the Pariscope (highly recommended for event listings) and had found several free concerts listed. Tonight’s offering was at Les Invalides, and apparently was something by some members of the Azerbaijani national orchestra. Since my main familiarity with Azerbaijan was from the Eddie Izzard comedy routine where he uses it the name of an unlikely country to actually go to, I figured this would be pretty obscure. Visions of folding chairs in a school auditorium floated in my head.
Um, no. This is Paris. First of all, as all of you who are better educated than I know, Les Invalides is a huge palatial building.
We spent the better part of a half hour traipsing about the outside before finding a well guarded entrance. It seems that, far from being obscure, it was an invite only black tie and evening gown event welcoming the Azerbaijani ambassador and the Minister of Culture for both France and Azerbaijan. Er.
But what about the ParisScope entry? Oxy went off to talk to the gendarmes, who were very polite and even saluted him. They gave us all the once over, and for the millionth time, I felt frumpy, even with my scarf. Then they told us to wait. I decided it was a nice evening for being outside on the streets of Paris, the city lights stretched out before us and the Eiffel Tower doing an evening light show. Life could be worse.
But then they said there was some room available and let us in eek We (and a few others who were in our situation) walked alone across cobblestone courtyards. It felt like getting an invite to see the King or something like that. I kept expecting to get tapped on the shoulder and asked to leave. But nothing like that happened, and instead we got treated to a few hours of exquisite vocal (some GREAT pipes on those soloists) and instrumental music, much by Azerbaijani composers. Great stuff, for the most part, often reminiscent of Copeland with a bit of Bartok. But I would have been content to just sit there in the huge chapel that Napoleon had wrought, just staring at the immensity of it all.
“There’s a hell of a universe next door, let’s go—“
-e. e. cummings
Just a small person in a big, big universe,
V.
