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Intro
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Cybercafé
Vivendi Musée Jacquemart-André
La Samaritaine
Cimitière
du Père Lachaise Gateau
Chocolat
Cybercafé
Vivendi
The next morning, before starting on the day's adventures,
we made one early-morning stop on the quiet Champs-Élysées [right] at a
cybercafé, Vivendi
Universal, so that Amy could e-mail Cameron. This was an interesting experience
in French bureaucracy. |
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The door to the café was guarded by black-suited men
with earpieces and tight security: our backpack was scanned and we had to
walk through a metal detector, as if we were entering an airport. We never did
figure out why such security measures were necessary for a computer café and
bookstore. Next, we had to stand in a line to obtain membership, even though
we'd never use it again. After filling out a form and receiving a
membership card, we had to wait in another line to be assigned a computer
terminal. Then the real fun began!
The French, in their infinite wisdom, have redesigned the
standard computer keyboard just enough that it's impossible to use with any
efficiency by someone from the U.S. (or many other countries)*. The a, q, w, z,
and x have been rearranged, as have the m, semi-colon, and comma, with the
result that Amy had to either type 10 words a minute while watching every finger
stroke, or make so many errors that the e-mail would become unreadable. After
making and correcting innumerable mistakes, Amy soon became paralyzed with
frustration; Jan said he'd never seen her face look quite that way.
But when he asked one of the men in black whether he could take her picture, he
was told emphatically, "Non." Apparently that would have been a
breach of café security! Needless to say, the e-mail eventually sent to Cameron was very
short.
*(For a wonderfully funny
description of another American's experience with the French keyboard, see Adam
Gopnik's book Paris to the Moon.)
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Musée
Jacquemart-André
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Our Eyewitness guidebook led us to this small, private art museum
near the Champs-Élysées on the once exclusive Blvd Haussmann, and we delighted
in feeling that we’d discovered a hidden gem.
Edouard André
built the house in the mid-1800s. He later married Nélie Jacquemart, and
they never had children but traveled widely and filled their home with art. Upon
her death, Nélie left the home as a museum, and it remains in a state similar to
that time.
The private rooms are
beautifully furnished in Victorian style [left, the atrium], and the walls are hung with a superb
collection of Italian Renaissance, Dutch 17th-century, and French 18th-century
art. Included are paintings from artists such as Rembrandt, Van Dyck, Hals,
Botticelli, Canaletto, Mantegna, Bellini, Boucher, Chardin, and Fragonard, as
well as Tiepolo frescoes and 18th-century Flemish tapestries. |
| The blue
walls of one room are room covered with Greek and Roman sculpture. Another quiet
room is filled with precious religious paintings, such as Paolo Uccello's
masterpiece St. George and the Dragon (1435).
A special exhibit during our
visit featured the extensive private collection of drawings—by every
conceivable artist, from Bellini in 1460 to Picasso in
1950—belonging to Jan and Marie-Anne Krugier-Poniatowski.
Outside [right], the entrance is approached through a long, curving
carriage-way, and the grounds are pretty and peaceful. |
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La
Samaritaine
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After our museum tour, we headed toward the Seine and La
Samaritaine, established in 1900. It takes its name from an old water pump
near the Pont Neuf. The 11-floor building was built in 1926 with a
framework of iron and wide expanses of glass. Inside are Art Nouveau ironwork
staircases and hanging galleries under a large dome. Despite the Art Deco style, the merchandise
was comparable to anything in Macy's—but perhaps more
stylish.
We ate lunch in the café upstairs, from which we could see the sun
glinting on the tea-green Seine [left]. How could a trip to Paris be complete
without a croque monsieur?
Then we
shopped in housewares, buying a cheese knife set for Amy’s mother and a small,
stainless steel salt-and-pepper set for ourselves.
This was our only trip souvenir besides a Limoges bell for our Christmas collection and several picture books.
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Cimitière du
Père Lachaise
From the museum we took a subway to reach Cimitière du Père
Lachaise,
outside the central city. Still recovering from his cold, Jan opted to relax in
a nearby café while Amy searched for the dead. The task felt a bit like celebrity stalking, only stranger
because the celebrities were deceased and wouldn’t be able to sign an autograph
even if one found them!
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cemetery, begun in 1803 by Napoleon and enlarged six times over the 19th
century, is packed tight, with markers inches away from
headstones only inches away from mausoleums. Some of the older, larger tombs,
placed together on lanes with names such as Ave des Thuyas and Ave Feuillant, looked like odd row
houses for ghosts [right]. Interestingly, new graves are still being installed,
and one wonders how the cemetery can
make room for them. (Are older ones being removed for bad behavior?)
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A good map was not available, and the graves were not
numbered, so finding a particular site required careful hunting. In an hour and
a half, Amy managed to find only three graves: Polish composer Frédéric Chopin, with a sweet
sorrowful angel pining above him and many fresh flowers placed in tribute
[left]; Molière, in a plain stone box on a
dais (the 17th century dramatist was transferred in 1817 to add historic
glamour to the new cemetery); and painter Eugene Delacroix, in a stern, black marble tomb.
Others who reside
there but remained hidden include painters Seurat, Ingres, and David, Honoré de Balzac,
Sarah Bernhardt, Edith Piaf,
Isadora Duncan, Colette, Oscar Wilde, Marcel Proust, Yves Montand, Simone
Signoret, and
Jim Morrison.
The old cobblestones were rough underfoot, the trees high above dappled everything below, and the quiet
solemnity was only occasionally disrupted by the voices of fellow celebrity
seekers.
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Gateau Chocolat
After our visit to the cemetery and a subway ride back to
the Jardin des Plantes Quarter, we embarked on a search for gateau chocolat.
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On the way, we stopped at the Arène de Lutèce, the remains of a vast Roman
arena from the late 2nd century tucked away in a quiet neighborhood.
Its
destruction began toward the end of the 3rd century at the hands of the
Barbarians, and later, parts of it were used to build the walls of the Ile de la
Cité. It was then gradually buried and only rediscovered in 1869 during
construction of the Rue Monge. Restoration did not begin until 1918. |
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With a
seating capacity of 15,000 arranged in 35 tiers, the Arène was originally used
both for theatrical performances and as an amphitheater for gladiator fights, a
combined purpose peculiar to Gaul.
This afternoon, it was filled with noisy boys
practicing after-school soccer and men seriously studying their moves for jeu de
boules, or pétanque [left], which appeared to be
a French version of bocci. |
Next we wandered east, through the peaceful Jardin du
Luxembourg, fountains sputtering among manicured lawns, statues
watching over flower-lined paths, the lowering sun peeking through the trees. We
continued on to the Latin Quarter, where we walked beneath the gold dome of the
Panthéon. Farther on, we entered the St-Germain-de-Prés Quarter. We walked
past the neo-classical, columned façade of the Théàtre National de l'Odéon,
built in 1779 and former home of the Comédie-Française.
| Finally, on the corner of Blvd Saint-Germain and Rue
de l'Ancienne Comédie, we came upon the café Relais Odéon, which included
gateau chocolat on its menu.
Sitting at a sidewalk table in the late afternoon sun, Jan enjoyed a beer, Amy
slowly savored every bite of cake, and we both watched the fascinating parade of
Parisians and tourists, young and old, punk and chic, on foot, on bicycle, on
rollerblades, with dogs, groceries, briefcases, cell phones, flower bouquets,
packages, and baguettes. What a show! |
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Our last dinner was in the Latin Quarter at Le Grand
Bistrot,
a restaurant we had enjoyed during our previous visit to Paris.
Although the rustic, informal atmosphere was the same, our second visit was much
more noisy and hectic than we had remembered. Amy had steak, and Jan had raclette
savoyarde. The raclette required a special tabletop heater to melt a huge chunk
of cheese, which Jan then ate on vegetables.
Although we were seated for dinner without a wait, by the time we left, eager
diners were lined up out the door and down Rue Saint-Séverin to get in.
A walk through the lively,
lit streets of the Latin Quarter and one last subway ride returned us once again
to Patrick's apartment. What a wonderful trip!
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