#18 12-6-17
Spain-France travelogue
Our third and final adventure out of
Minnesota during 2017 was a trip to Barcelona, Avignon and Provence, and Paris.
The trip was retrospectively
overshadowed by events once we returned home:
We got back to Minneapolis on October 14 and Krystin died on October
17. The trip now seems like it was years
ago. However, some stories about the
trip.
Travel, whether abroad or domestic,
is always a learning experience. Our
learning began with our ride to the airport on a Wednesday afternoon in late
September. We tried Lyft for the first
time and had a very gregarious driver.
He informed us he had Irish twins.
Neither Kathy nor I had ever heard the phrase, and when he said it in
the car I thought I had heard incorrectly (since he was Black). Adopted twins from Ireland?
Once at the airport, sipping a beer,
Kathy looked up the term. Google knows
all. Irish twins, in case you didn't
know, are children born less than a year apart—so the mom got pregnant again
within three months of giving birth.
When Kathy signed up for Lyft, the
fare quote was $14 before tip, or about half of what we pay for a cab. I tipped the guy $4 and we still only paid
half of what a cab cost. The guy had
4-year-old Irish twins, and another older child; he needed the extra dollar
more than we did. Besides, he was a
really nice guy, which does get you something in the world sometimes. He told us he'd been a Lyft driver for three
weeks, did it full time, and made a decent income—more than he had as a
regional manager for a beverage company, a job that required travel around the
Midwest during the work week. While I
feel bad for taxi drivers who are losing customers to ride-sharing apps, those
apps seem to be a legitimate way for people to earn a decent living, if that
guy's testimony was worthwhile evidence.
Once we were on the plane, the pilot
announced that they expected "rough weather" during the early part of
the flight. During every flight I have
ever been on (that I can recall), such announcements used the word "turbulence." Is that term perceived as too difficult for
passengers to understand, so the airlines now call it "rough
weather"? Regardless of the words
used, the announcement didn't surprise me:
one of the predicted effects of global warming (let's use the right
term) is a more turbulent atmosphere, which will mean bumpier flights. I read somewhere that "bumpier"
does not translate to less safe, given the way planes are built, but it does
mean less comfortable trips and a lot more drinks spilled in laps.
Gaudi, Dali, Gaudi (plus a few other
things). That's the summary of our
too-short stay in Barcelona. Anyone
reading the news knows that there's been an independence movement in the
Catalonian province of Spain (of which Barcelona is the capital). The referendum was called for October 1, the
third day we were to be there; the Spanish government vowed to prevent it from
occurring. There were widespread
demonstrations and voting took place, although how representative it was is
questionable because those opposed to independence were reported to have
boycotted the vote. We were worried,
before we departed the U.S., that we could be caught in the middle of political
violence, but it turned out that we were not.
To skip ahead a bit, we learned on
the local news on Monday morning—the day after the referendum vote—that the
leaders of the independence movement were calling for a regional strike
beginning the following day. That
Tuesday was the day we were scheduled to leave Barcelona for Avignon, France,
and we became concerned that the trains might not be running. So we decided Monday morning that we should
leave that afternoon (our Scottish friends Rod and Morag reached the same
conclusion; they were also headed to France, although in a different
direction). Kathy got on the web, got us
train tickets and found a hotel for one night in Avignon (because we couldn't
get into our apartment a day early).
Our hotel was on La Rambla, one of
the main arteries in Barcelona. After we
arrived, jet lagged, we went out for a walk down La Rambla.
The day before we left the Twin
Cities, I exchanged text messages with Krystin, reminding her that we were
leaving. She wrote to me "Estoy muy
celosa. Que te diviertas!" ("I
am very jealous. Have fun!") and
told me to practice my Spanish skills. I
told her that "my Spanish [from 7th and 8th grade]
had disappeared. Besides, they speak
Catalan, which I wouldn't understand anyway." Krystin texted back that "that must be
some form of Spanish, because I understood people when I was there." We did observe that many signs in Barcelona
were in Spanish and Catalan—and the two are not the same (the latter has been
significantly influenced by French).
We took a walking tour of the Gothic
part of Barcelona. There isn't much left
of the original, minor Roman city, more of the medieval buildings. We met our Scottish friends Rod and Morag for
lunch and then toured Casa Batllo, one of Antoni Gaudi's masterpieces. Here's my picture of Casa Batllo from the street.
A few of Kathy's photos from Casa
Batllo. Rooftop décor. Those are chimneys in the second one. Gaudi's roofs were as decorated as the rest
of the exterior and the interior.
One of the
fireplaces:
The interior
well, bringing light to the center:
The entrance
stairway:
I wasn't sure I'd like Gaudi. I'd only seen a few pictures of his work and
my impression—that had very little thought behind it—was that they were
weird. Distorted. After going through Casa Batllo, I changed my
mind. It was an ordinary apartment
building that a new owner commissioned Gaudi to redesign in 1904. I cannot really capture the building in a
narrative; if you're curious, there are a number of websites with multiple
pictures of the interior and exterior.
There is a phrase, abbreviated as
ABC, that is used to describe parts of European visits. I originally heard it, many years ago, as a
joke: a Brit is asked about his holiday
on the continent and what they'd seen one day; he replied that it was just
"another bloody cathedral." I
admit that sometimes I've reached that point as well, much though I find the
art and architecture of cathedrals to be awesome. (Even Notre Dame, in Paris, is ABC in some
ways; it's spectacular, but so are many, many other medieval churches.)
Sagrada Familia is Gaudi's cathedral
in Barcelona, although it didn't start out that way. The full name of the structure is Expiatory
Temple of the Holy Family (the Sagrada Familia); the fact that it was built is
due to a chap who founded the Spiritual Association of Devotees of Saint
Joseph. That group campaigned "for
the construction of an expiatory temple dedicated to the Holy
Family."
Construction
began in 1882; it was to be a traditional Gothic cathedral. The first architect quit in about a year;
Antoni Gaudi was chosen to replace him.
Gaudi worked on Sagrada Familia from 1883 until his death in 1926 (when
he was killed in a tram accident at age 74).
(From a personal perspective, Gaudi worked on the cathedral for as long
as my career at the University: 43
years.) From 1914 on, Gaudi worked on no
other project (so there is no "late Gaudi" architecture), and the
last part of his life he lived on site.
(Gaudi was deeply committed to his Catholic beliefs. He included Christian symbolism in much of
his work and earned the nickname "God's Architect" as well as
nomination for beatification that it doesn't appear ever came to fruition.) Although I can't find any information on the
question, I suspect that Gaudi never charged the Church for his work.
Anyway, when
Gaudi took over the project in 1883, he began re-imagining it. It is emphatically not another bloody cathedral.
We were, to use a phrase from our younger years, blown away. Here are pictures Kathy took, and as always
with such photos, they do not do justice to the experience.
What was perhaps most striking about
the interior was how light it was and how the mix of colors from the stained
glass played over the ceiling, interior walls, and columns. Even when they have a lot of stained glass,
cathedrals can be dark even on a sunny day, because much of the glass is dark
hues. Gaudi managed to use a rainbow of
colors and made even the greens and blues lighten up the interior, so it was
far brighter than any other cathedral I've seen.
This picture
captures the baldachin over the central altar as well as the light streaming
in. That certainly isn't a conventional
baldachin, to say the least, but I think it meets the definition of a cover
over the altar.
Here's a
picture from the Wikipedia website, looking straight up at the intersection of
the central nave and the transepts. As
you can see from this and one of Kathy's pictures, the pillars supporting the
roof look like trees; Gaudi emphasized nature in his work. (And yes, the columns are different colors.)
It is an absolutely stunning
building. It's not done yet; it's 70%
completed, but they expect to finish it in time for the centenary of Gaudi's
death, in 2026. Most of what remains are
the towers, of which there are to be a total of 18. "18 towers has a special significance. In the middle is the tower dedicated to Jesus
Christ and around it are four towers representing the Gospels; the books
containing the life and teachings of Jesus. The tower above the apse, crowned by a star,
represents his mother the Virgin Mary, while the remaining 12 towers represent
the 12 Apostles, witnesses to his words and deeds." Although it has taken over 100 years to even
get to 70% completion, they are now using modern methods of stone carving
(mechanical rather than by hand) and expect to be able to finish in about 10
years. They've also started generating
more revenue than in previous decades, from visitor fees, which has helped move
the project toward completion.
The last period of Gaudi's life wasn't altogether happy. The years after 1910 saw the death of his
niece as well as of several of his close friends, which is why (it is
speculated) he gave up his practice and directed all his attention to the
Sagrada Familia. Gaudi never
married. He wrote, after these events,
that "My good
friends are dead; I have no family and no clients, no fortune nor
anything. Now I can dedicate myself
entirely to the Church."
One aspect
of the post-Gaudi construction that surprised me is that the successor
architects have stuck as closely as possible to Gaudi's original design. Some of the models and paperwork were lost
during the Spanish Civil War, but enough was saved that they are able to build
pretty much exactly as Gaudi had planned.
I would think it very difficult for an architect to resist the urge to
add their own touches and flare to a building—theirs is a creative profession,
after all—but apparently they have not done so, except where there's a gap in
knowledge about Gaudi's intentions.
In any
event, anyone who goes to Barcelona would have to put the Sagrada Familia at
the top of the list of places to see.
Before we
went to the Sagrada Familia (as part of a tour), we also went to Park Guell, a
large park outside central Barcelona that only exists because of a failed real
estate development. Originally intended
to be subdivided into large lots for the affluent to build homes on, it was too
far from the city (this was around the turn of the 20th century) so
transportation was difficult. One of
Gaudi's patrons, Eusebi Guell, was behind the project, but there was only one
house (out of a projected 60) built.
Gaudi redesigned one building already on the property, however, and
lived in it from 1906 until he moved to the Sagrada Familia in 1925. The entrance to Park Guell:
On what turned out to be our last
day in Barcelona, the Monday after the referendum, before we took an early
train to France, we did our last Gaudi, La Pedrera, or Casa Milà. Gaudi designed it for a wealthy couple; it was
to be their residence as well as apartments to be rented out.
The
roof. We walked all over up there. A lot of chimneys.
The interior
well, lighting up the central rooms:
The apartments in La Pedrera were
ones that Kathy and I could have lived in.
The square footage is larger than our home—each apartment has servants'
quarters! (There's only one apartment
per floor, and if you go back and look at the photo of the exterior, you can
see that those are spacious residences.
There are residents in the apartments even now; must be great to have
all these visitors tromping up and down the stairwells to the roof. We who visit see the original residence—but, oddly,
we didn't see a kitchen.)
I noticed a
resemblance between Gaudi, Frank Lloyd Wright, and Charles Rennie
Mackintosh: they all designed everything
in their buildings, down to the furniture and the doorknobs. I've decided the primary difference between
Gaudi and Wright is that Gaudi used curves while Wright used primarily lines
and angles.
In between
Gaudi days came Dali. The day of the
independence referendum in Catalonia—October 1—saw us out of the city visiting
Salvador Dali's home in Cadaques and the Dali museum in Figueres. A couple of days later, while we were on the
train from Barcelona to Avignon, I told Kathy that I have given her 1½ days of
my life for Dali—half a day in St. Petersburg a couple of years ago, at the
Dali museum there, and now a full day in Spain—and that was enough. I'm all done with Dali. I really just don't care much for his
work. (Now—I could certainly live in his
house, but I could live in almost any house sitting on the coast of northeast
Spain looking out on the Mediterranean.)
Despite not being thrilled with Dali, it was a pleasant day for a trip
and I enjoyed the experience.
In the lobby
of the Dali museum in Figueres, an old theater that Dali redesigned and
expanded to house many of his works.
A ceiling in
the museum.
A large
piece. I don't get it.
Kathy in
front of Dali's house in Figueres.
The view
from one of the many staircases around the house and on the grounds. Like I said, I could live in this setting.
So, on to Avignon. A four-hour train ride from Barcelona, we
arrived about 8:45, in the dark, to a train station that was nearly
deserted. There were no cabs in
sight. We went to the place behind the
station where the cabs were supposed to pick people up, according to a guy in
the station, but there was nothing. A
few lights, otherwise dark. It was us, a
Chinese student visiting France, and some French guy. Kathy called our hotel and asked if they
could send a cab; they gave her a number to call. She did, could not figure out what was going
on, and fortunately the French guy took over and got a cab that took all of us
to our respective locations. Avignon is
not that large a town, but it took us from 8:45 until 10:00 to get to our
hotel. After we checked in, we found an
Irish pub just down the street and had a couple glasses of wine. (We learned later that the train station we
arrived at is for the national trains; Avignon Central has all the local trains
and has people around all the time.)
Sometimes advertisements for flats through
VRBO or Airbnb don't mention elements of living that Americans take for
granted. For instance, our flat in
Avignon had no outlet in the bathroom, it had no shower mounted on the wall (so
you are either holding the hose to rinse or you've laid it down to wash), it
had only one coffee cup (!), and it had no elevator to the 4th
floor. We probably should have caught
the last feature. After walking and
walking and walking, we didn't need to walk up four flights of stairs.
I had an amusing food venture in
Avignon. I like to drink (skim) milk and
it's one of the things I miss when traveling abroad. I never even try to order milk in restaurants
and never see it on a menu. By using
Airbnb or VRBO the last few trips, we always have a kitchen, so we can purchase
groceries that require refrigeration.
Traveling in the U.S., obviously we have no problem reading labels. In France (among other places) that is not
the case.
I wanted to
buy milk, but there was none in the cooler at a good-sized grocery store (by
European standards—all the grocery stores we've seen in Europe are small by
American chain standards). We had picked
out cheese, crackers, eggs, etc., but could not find the milk, so I asked at
the check-out: "there is no
milk." I am quite sure, from
further exchanges with her, that the young woman understood little of what I
was saying, but she understood "no milk" and expressed surprise. So she walked us back to the end shelves of a
row of groceries and pointed to about 4-5 shelves of milk. Milk is not refrigerated in French grocery
stores; no wonder I couldn't find it. I
had seen the containers but figured they were fake milk or baby liquid or
whatever.
Next I asked
her which one was the skim milk. She had
no idea what I was talking about, so I tried "no fat." She began picking up the containers with
different colored labels and pointing to the French word for fat. They had no milk with 0% fat, but I was happy
to get 1% milk. So buying milk turned
out to be about a 15-minute production, but I knew what to buy when I went back
for more!
Alas, I did
not meet with similar success in Paris.
I knew to look on the shelves, not in the cooler, but the labels and
descriptions were different from those in Avignon. I finally picked one that looked right, but I
think it was cream, and within 2 days it had turned sour and curdled. So I came home needing my milk fix.
The main attraction in Avignon is
the Palais des Papes, home to the popes from 1309 to 1370. The palace is a jumble, in my opinion; it's
two buildings joined together, an old one and a new one, build by two
successive popes resident in Avignon.
Here's a picture of it.
I am a lone voice in the wilderness
in calling for the authorities to renovate such buildings so that they are
decorated and furnished as they were at the time they were occupied (with a key
caveat: when the historians are
reasonably certain they know what the exterior and interior really looked like). There seems to be plenty of documentation
about what the interior of the papal palace looked like; right now its
cavernous rooms are bare stone walls and floors. The popes and other officials who lived there
would be horrified to see what it looks like now. "When the French Revolution broke out in
1789 it was already in a bad state when it was seized and sacked by
revolutionary forces. . . . The Palais
was subsequently taken over by the Napoleonic French state for use as a
military barracks and prison. Although
it was further damaged by the military occupation, especially under the
anti-clerical Third Republic, when the remaining interior woodwork was cleared
away for use of the structure as stables – the frescos were covered over and
largely destroyed – ironically this ensured the shell of the building's
physical survival. It was only vacated
in 1906, when it became a national museum." It's been undergoing almost continuous
preservation and restoration since 1906.
I'd accept, as a poor second choice,
a video or wall-sized imagined depictions of the rooms (of any ruins or ancient
building stripped of color and furniture).
We enjoyed Avignon, a pleasant,
walkable city with a number of small but excellent museums. Even though we need more art to hang on our
walls like I need more leaves to rake, of course we stopped and bought two
watercolors from a local artist on the main plaza in front of the papal palace.
We took a
couple of tours of the area, such as a train ride to Arles to see a number of
the venues where van Gogh painted about 300 pictures in two years (to the
considerable annoyance of the good people of Arles, while van Gogh painted much
while living in Arles, there is not one single van Gogh painting in Arles).
I suppose
because I never thought about it, and I didn't read in advance, I was surprised
at the extent of the Roman ruins in Arles (and elsewhere in Provence). But of course; Gaul was a Roman province for
a very long time. Both the amphitheater
(arena) and the theater still stand—and are still used for events (after the
empire fell, it contained houses, until the 1820s). I have the feeling that our two new stadiums
in Minneapolis, the University's football stadium and the Vikings' newer
stadium, won't be in use in 4017. The
amphitheater originally held about 20,000 people; the population of Arles
during the fourth century is estimated to have been 75,000 – 100,000. For a modern stadium to hold the same
percentage of the urban population, the Twin Cities would need a stadium that
would hold roughly 750,000 people. Talk
about an eyesore. Here's a picture of
the amphitheater:
They are hard
to see in my photo, but there are metal risers supplementing the stone
seats. It wouldn't be a comfortable
place to watch an event unless you brought cushions. The Roman theater also continues to be used
(e.g., for concerts).
As part of a
5-hour driving tour (nice guide, but too much time driving), we visited the
Ponte du Gard, the remains of a 31-mile Roman aqueduct that brought water to
the city of Nimes, built in the 1st century CE/AD. It's over 900 feet long—the part that
remains, that bridges the Gardon River—and 160 feet high. Not only is the architecture and
accomplishment something to behold, so is the fact that it has survived 2000
years (most of the aqueduct was underground and is long gone).
Our last day
in Avignon—we'd had an extra day on the front end of our visit, because we
bailed out of Barcelona early, so we had more time in Avignon than we expected—we
took the bus to visit the Benedictine abbey, which is inside Fort Saint-Andre,
across the Rhone from central Avignon. A
place of solitude with lovely gardens, it's also the only intact medieval fort
I've ever been in (it dates from the early 1300s). Here a shot while I was standing on the
ramparts.
I joked with Krystin via email from
Avignon that "I've always thought French the most euphonious
language. I liked it even more when I
learned (when buying it) the words for pink grapefruit juice: pamplemousse rose." She responded that I should learn the
language because "then you and Kathy can converse together in French! :D" Except that we couldn't, because Kathy's
French is as rusty as my German—it hasn't been used in 40 years.
So on to Paris. (In all cases exaggerating:) just as
Barcelona was Gaudi, Dali, Gaudi, and Avignon (Arles) was Vernet and van Gogh,
Paris was Monet, Monet, Rodin (plus a few others thrown in, like Manet,
Pissarro, Delacroix, Cezanne, Gaugin, and so on). While I had been to Paris before, in 2006,
Kathy had not, so we saw a few places that I'd seen before (but was happy to
see again), such as Notre Dame, the Eiffel Tower, and the Louvre.
I determined, after a few days in
Paris, that I clearly needed to get a scarf if I wanted to look like a
local. I'd guess the majority of French
men wear scarves around their neck.
In Paris we had a wonderful
apartment. It was a bachelor pad; a
friend of the owner manages it for him.
The friend told us that the owner is "in film" and spends part
of his time in Los Angeles and part in Paris—and while he's in LA, he rents out
his Paris apartment. Two floors, well-appointed
and decorated, a shower almost as large as our entire master bath, and every
accoutrement you could want in a modern kitchen. And, like Avignon, a washing machine. Anyone who travels for more than a few days
at a time knows the high value of a washing machine! Fairly crappy views out the window but the
location was great. I imagine this flat,
were it to go on the market, would be expensive.
The stove troubled me. I wanted to make eggs for breakfast. It had digital controls for the electric
burners (heating spots), but I would turn on the burner and nothing would happen. I fiddled and fiddled and could not get any
heat, despite the fact I'd set the number at 5, for medium. The number, no matter what I set it at, just
kept blinking. In frustration, I finally
just tossed the pan on the burner—and the light stopped blinking and heat came
immediately. Pretty nifty technology
(that I'm sure lots of stoves in the U.S. have as well): the heat won't start until there's a pan of
some kind on the cooking surface. (As
folks who have only has gas stoves, the technology associated with electric
stoves and cooking surfaces is alien to me.) I did finally get our eggs made.
Paris architecture has long puzzled
me because many of the buildings look alike.
One of our tour guides explained why, an answer that my later reading
confirmed. Up to the middle of the 19th
century, Paris was dark, unhealthy, dangerous, and dirty. After a revolution in 1848 that threw out the
king, Napoleon's nephew, Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte, was elected president. When his term expired in 1851, he staged a
coup and proclaimed himself Emperor Napoleon III. Wikipedia and our tour guide report that
Napoleon III "had been especially impressed by London, with its wide
streets, squares and large public parks. In 1852 he gave a public speech declaring: 'Paris is the heart of France. Let us apply our efforts to embellishing this
great city. Let us open new streets,
make the working class quarters, which lack air and light, more healthy, and
let the beneficial sunlight reach everywhere within our walls.'" So he ordered about 60% of the city bulldozed;
his lieutenant, Georges Eugène Haussmann, led the effort for many years to
widen the streets to create boulevards, to connect the parts of the city, and
to make it more beautiful. It was
controversial but Hausmann was largely successful (the work continued through
1927) and the Paris we see today is his.
The buildings on the new boulevards were all the same, Second
Empire. Which is why so much of Paris
looks the same.
Last summer, when having dinner with
our friends Andy and Carolyn Collins, we discovered that the four of us were
going to be in Paris at the same time!
It was purely coincidental: we'd
planned our trip and the Collinses had planned theirs, in their case to
celebrate their 50th wedding anniversary. Paris was the end of our trip; Paris was the
start of theirs—after which they went on a river cruise on the Rhone (so went
to, among other places, Avignon and Arles).
Andy and Carolyn sent back an email with pictures later on their cruise
that read in part:
Dear Gary
and Kathy,
We bought flowers for Krystin to
send down the Rhône River in her memory on Saturday afternoon.
Some of them escaped our camera
lens but we managed to catch a couple of them before the current took them
away. All too soon . . .
Of course we
planned some joint activities and several dinners with the Collinses. (Andy is a retired professor of child
development and at one time had Krystin in one of his studies. Carolyn is one of the world's leading experts
on Lucy Maud Montgomery and the Anne of
Green Gables books and the culture of Prince Edward Island. I've known them for 30 years and Kathy has
known them for as long as she's known me.)
When we (Elliott, Pat, and me—and
Krystin in the hospital) were in Paris in 2006, after several days of wandering
into local eateries without having looked at any website for recommendations,
Elliott commented that it appeared to be difficult to get a bad meal in France
(or at least in Paris). Our trip this
year confirmed the accuracy of Elliott's observation. We often just sat down at a place because it
was convenient and we wanted to take a rest from walking; we almost without
exception had splendid salads and sandwiches.
We didn't get any bad wine, either, even though we invariably ordered
the house wine.
When in France. . . . I usually had a glass of wine with
lunch. I *never* have alcohol at lunch
at home, even at lunch with friends now that I'm retired, because a beer or
glass of wine makes me sleepy and need a nap in the afternoon. I don't want to nap away my afternoons. Of course, sometimes naps happen anyway,
which the cats appreciate as they jockey to determine which one is going to
sleep on my lap. A couple of times in
France I was slightly drowsy for whatever afternoon adventure we set out on.
Perhaps only in France: Three lunches stood out, none of them at
places we received recommendations about.
All three were at locations by default, chosen for convenience, although
not with any objection, but not at places where you would necessarily expect to
have an excellent meal. (1) Our first
meal in Paris was at the Gare de Lyon (one of the central Paris train stations)
when we arrived, while waiting to meet the guy who was going to let us into our
flat. The Montreux Jazz Café was created
by the founder of the Montreux Jazz Festival and has only a few locations (Abu
Dhabi, Lausanne, Geneva, Montreux, Paris, and Zurich) and holds itself out as
having a creative cuisine in line with the music of the festival. We found the food and the people-watching in
the train station to be excellent. (We
first thought we'd go to the upstairs upscale restaurant in the Gare de Lyon,
but found that it was fully booked. The
waiters wore tuxes and the tables all had crystal and linens; I looked at the
menu and realized lunch would have cost well over 100 €, or approximately
$120. Just as well we ate at Montreux,
which only cost half that much.)
(2)
We had skip-the-line tickets (and a tour) of the Eiffel Tower one
mid-morning. At the end of the visit to
the Tower, we were hungry and didn't want to go walking for blocks to find a
place to eat. So we opted for 58 Tour
Eiffel, the upscale restaurant on the second tourist level of the Tower. Once again, the food was excellent and
well-served. Not surprisingly in that
location, it was also more expensive than our usual lunches.
(3)
The Collinses arrived in Paris the day after we did, and the day after
that (to let them get at least partially recovered from jet lag) we made museum
day. When we were in Paris in 2006, we could
not get into either the Musée de l'Orangerie or the Musée d'Orsay because the
employees were on strike. (Oddly, the
Louvre was open.) This time we could get
in, so we and the Collinses began with l'Orangerie, then moved to d'Orsay. Again, by the time we were ready to be done
with d'Orsay, we were hungry—and we didn't want to walk blocks looking for
food. So (after having some trouble
figuring how to get to it), we opted for the in-house restaurant, the restaurant
of what was the Hôtel d'Orsay that opened originally in 1900. (The Musée d'Orsay is in what used to be a
train station, built 1898-1900, and the restaurant was in the hotel that
adjoined the station; the station became the museum but the restaurant
remained.) It is a Beaux-Arts building, ornate
and neo-classical; the restaurant has gilt on the walls and ceilings and
crystal chandeliers. (Andy Collins is
lower left.)
We had a
great meal here, served with panache.
Museums often have passable if not great cafes, but none has a place as
elegant as this (if you like Beaux-Arts décor and serving staff in white
shirts, black vests, and ties) and with such a full menu of multi-course meals.
Our first morning in Paris was a
guided walking tour of Île de la Cité, one of two islands in the Seine in the
city, on which sits both Notre Dame and St. Chapelle. It's "Notre-Dame de Paris" or
"Our Lady of Paris." Along
with the Eiffel Tower, surely one of the two most-known landmarks of Paris. It's a large Gothic cathedral, begun in 1160
and largely completed by the mid-1200s, and probably as well-known for its flying
buttresses as anything. It was one of
the first buildings anywhere to use them—and they were born of necessity,
because the walls began to show fractures as the ceiling vaults were pressing
against the side walls. The buttresses
were added to prevent the walls from collapsing as they pressed outward from
the weight.
Notre Dame has not always been
treated well.
It was periodically vandalized
over the turbulent centuries that followed. Rioting Huguenots damaged parts of
the building they believed to be idolatrous in the mid–16th century. During the French Revolution, mobs of people
carted off or smashed some of its paintings and statues . . . with crowds
destroying 28 statues of monarchs from the building’s Gallery of Kings. . .
. Much damage was done to Notre Dame in
the name of reason: the bell tower and spire from the 13th century was removed,
some of the bells were melted down and repurposed, . . . the church itself was
made into a Temple of Reason, and finally the church was made into a storage
hall and stable. . . . Stained glasses
were dismantled and replaced with clear glass in order to let in more light. .
. . During the Revolution Notre Dame had been used as a saltpetre plant. By the nineteenth century it had suffered so
much neglect that builders wanted to reuse its stones for bridge construction.
Although Napoleon had himself
crowned as emperor in Notre Dame in 1804, after he lost power the building was
neglected and deteriorating. It appears
that Victor Hugo played a significant role in saving Notre Dame by writing The Hunchback of Notre Dame, published
in 1831. "The book’s original title
was Notre-Dame de Paris, signaling
that the main protagonist from the author’s viewpoint was the church, not any
of the characters in the novel. . . . Gothic
art was then regarded as ugly and offensive; so Hugo’s choice of the location
was deliberate: it linked the grotesque characters with the ugly art. The first three chapters of the novel are a
plea to preserve Gothic architecture."
From what I read of the history, one cannot be certain that Hugo wrote
the book specifically to save Notre
Dame, but the popularity of the book inspired increased tourist traffic to see
the building and eventually led to a (bad) restoration of the church in the middle
of the 19th century. It has
been undergoing restoration and maintenance work ever since, but the only
remaining original stained glass is the north and south rose windows. The church the tourist sees today, however,
is not the church that parishioners saw in the 1400s.
Notre Dame claims to have the crown
of thorns that Jesus reputedly wore.
Even our guide, a practicing Catholic, expressed considerable skepticism
about its authenticity.
Here's my
bad shot of the interior (none of the rose windows are visible):
Here's one
of the rose windows, taken from the web (but about the perspective we had when
inside):
After Notre Dame we did the
Louvre. More accurately, we walked
around with a tour guide and heard short lectures on a couple of dozen of the
major pieces—and saw hundreds of other pieces as we walked from room to
room. I was unimpressed with this tour;
we didn't see very much in two hours of tramping around. Kathy thought it was about as much as could
reasonably be included in a "highlights" tour, but I thought they
could be a lot more efficient with the time and cover 50-100% more pieces. I think I would only return to the Louvre if
it could be part of a longer-term, collection-by-collection or era-by-era
review of the works, spread over a couple or three months. Since we have no plans to live in Paris for
three months, I may never see more of the Louvre. Here's Kathy at one end of one of the long
halls of art.
I have decided that I do not to see
any more artwork, anywhere, ever, that depicts the two most-painted figures in
Western art: Jesus and Mary. The two of them, and the attendant figures
(kings, shepherds, angels, Joseph, John the Baptist, and so on) must have been
painted several times per day for several centuries by hundreds of artists,
given the enormous number of depictions of them that are contained in the
collections of museums across Europe.
Give me water lilies (see later) or Dali rather than more holy family.
The Eiffel
Tower is a tower. You get great views. As with many such sites around the world, you
have to be there to be impressed; pictures are inadequate. It was scheduled to be torn down a number of
years after the 1889 World's Fair (for which it served as the entrance),
although Gustave Eiffel was given the income the tower generated during the
fair and for 20 years after to recoup his investment (he personally put up
about 75% of the total cost). A large
group of local artists protested the tower:
We, writers, painters, sculptors,
architects and passionate devotees of the hitherto untouched beauty of Paris,
protest with all our strength, with all our indignation in the name of slighted
French taste, against the erection . . . of this useless and monstrous Eiffel
Tower. . . . To bring our arguments
home, imagine for a moment a giddy, ridiculous tower dominating Paris like a
gigantic black smokestack, crushing under its barbaric bulk Notre Dame, the
Tour Saint-Jacques, the Louvre, the Dome of les Invalides, the Arc de Triomphe,
all of our humiliated monuments will disappear in this ghastly dream. And for
twenty years . . . we shall see stretching like a blot of ink the hateful
shadow of the hateful column of bolted sheet metal. . . .
Some of the protesters changed
their minds when the tower was built; others remained unconvinced. . . . By 1918, it had become a symbol of Paris and
of France after Guillaume Apollinaire wrote a nationalist poem in the shape of
the tower (a calligram) to express his feelings about the war against
Germany. Today, it is widely considered
to be a remarkable piece of structural art.
Of course,
it became the iconic symbol of Paris and was never torn down. According to Wikipedia, it is "the
most-visited paid monument in the world."
That Tuesday
was an up-and-down day. Literally. Following our visit up in the Eiffel Tower
and lunch, we went down into the Catacombs.
The gist of the history is that by the late 1700s the cemeteries in
Paris had more bodies than they could accommodate. For several centuries the limestone
underneath parts of Paris had been mined for building stones, leading to a
large network of hollowed-out tunnels. (One
of the reasons there are no tall buildings in central Paris is because of this
labyrinth of mining tunnels, which makes it difficult to construct footings for
tall buildings.) Both cemeteries and the
mining tunnels were starting to collapse, so the Parisian government decided to
move the remains of over six million dead to the mining tunnels, which were
reinforced to receive the remains.
The need to eliminate Les
Innocents [cemetery, the primary Paris cemetery from the 12th
century on] gained urgency from May 30, 1780, when a basement wall in a
property adjoining the cemetery collapsed under the weight of the mass grave
behind it. The cemetery was closed to
the public and all [within-the-city] burials were forbidden after 1780. The
problem of what to do with the remains . . .
was still unresolved.
In the meantime, there had been a
series of mine collapses beginning in the mid-1770s. The passageways were turned into reinforced
inspection tours.
The mine renovation and cemetery
closures were both issues within the jurisdiction of the Police Prefect Police
Lieutenant-General Alexandre Lenoir, who had been directly involved in the
creation of a mine inspection service. Lenoir endorsed the idea of moving
Parisian dead to the subterranean passageways that were renovated during 1782 .
. . [and] the idea became law during late 1785.
A well within a walled property
above one of the principal subterranean passageways was dug to receive Les
Innocents' unearthed remains, and the property itself was transformed into a
sort of museum for all the headstones, sculptures and other artifacts
recuperated from the former cemetery. Beginning from an opening ceremony on 7
April [1785], the route between Les Innocents and the [mining tunnels] became a
nightly procession of black cloth-covered wagons carrying the millions of
Parisian dead. It would take two years to empty the majority of Paris
cemeteries.
It opened to
the public in 1874. It is actually a
huge ossuary. Here are a couple of pictures
I took.
Personally, I find all the
neatly-arranged skulls and bones to be macabre.
One Facebook friend, when she saw the pictures, was horrified at the
mass murder. But, as I noted, it wasn't;
these are all bodies from cemeteries.
There are hundreds of feet of tunnels with walls of bones and
skulls. I suppose it's innocent enough,
but it still seems grisly. At times in
these long tunnels we were the only ones there; I wasn't scared or worried but
it did seem a little creepy.
And my new favorite
new shopping source for gifts (we didn't really go in):
Let me turn to museums. Musée de l'Orangerie is all things Monet and
houses the famous water lily paintings in two large oval rooms, four paintings
per room. Monet designed the rooms. Here's a view of one of them. My photo wasn't very good so I picked this
one off the web:
There are
other paintings in l'Orangerie as well.
Kathy was frustrated that we had too
little time in the Musée d'Orsay. It is
simply a fabulous museum, one of the ones that you can "do" in a
reasonable amount of time (like a few days), unlike the Louvre or the British
Museum, which could take you decades to get through completely. But after l'Orangerie and two hours in
d'Orsay, we were ready to sit and we were hungry. If we return to Paris, we will certainly
return here.
The third museum of the day was the
Rodin, which was great fun, both the sculpture garden and all his works inside.
On another venture, Kathy and I went
to the Marmottan museum, which was also all things Monet. He sure did like water lilies; he painted
them dozens and dozens of times.
We returned to Île de la Cité later
in the week to visit Sainte-Chapelle, a chapel (consecrated in 1248) for the
monarchs, housed inside Palais de la Cité, the royal residence until the
1300s. Sainte-Chapelle is not large, but
its stained glass is spectacular.
Originally designed to hold Christian relics collected by Louis IX,
including the crown of thorns (later moved to Notre Dame), it contains (I
believe I read) the only medieval stained glass left in Paris (it dates from
the original construction in the mid-1200s).
It has 5 windows, each about 19 feet high, and contains 1,113 scenes
from the Bible, from the beginning of the world until the time when the relics
are brought to the chapel. There is much
stained glass in Europe; what is remarkable about Sainte-Chapelle is the large
proportion of the vertical surfaces that are stained glass (versus wall) and the
sheer amount of stained glass. The
overall effect is stunning. (My pictures
from the interior weren't very good, so here's one from the web that represents
what we saw, and one I did take of one of the windows. If you look closely at the one I took, you
can see multiple scenes in each panel.)
The stained glass has seen extensive cleaning and restoration in recent
years.
Two of our
guided walking tours are worth a remark.
One was with a young woman, Belén Roncoroni, who (when we asked) told us
she was from Argentina but came to France to finish college; she subsequently
earned her Master's degree in Art History from the Sorbonne. She works for the Musée d'Orsay as curator
and does other things with Paris museums.
We had stumbled on a gem of a guide—who obviously spoke three languages
(her native Spanish from Argentina, French, and English like she was a native
Midwesterner).
We had
engaged Belén for a walk in Montmartre, a section of Paris on a high hill
overlooking much of the city, that has been an "artists' quarter"
since the late 19th century.
(Some of the artists who worked in or near Montmartre were Modigliani,
Monet, Renoir, Toulouse-Lautrec, Piet Mondrian, Picasso, Pissarro, and van
Gogh.) We ended up receiving—in addition to the tour highlights—a marvelous
lesson in art history from impressionism forward. We kept asking her questions and she kept on
telling us more; Belén said at the end of the tour she worried she had talked
too much. We assured her she had not. I wish I had been taking notes! If I could remember one fact from every
college lecture I've sat through, I'd know more facts than anyone on the
planet. In the case of Belén's two-hour
art history lecture, I do remember that she told us that what Cubists
introduced, following from the Impressionists and Post-Impressionists and
Neo-Impressionists: the element of
time. Cubism suddenly made more sense to
me. (I confessed that I had a hard time
distinguishing between Impressionists, pre, post, and neo; they looked a lot
alike to my untrained eye.)
One place Belén took us was a small
square where there is a daily art fair, a location for which artists wait a
long time to get a spot. Once they
obtain it, they have to be there almost every day or they lose it. We of course browsed the works on offer;
there were some extremely talented artists displaying watercolors, oils, and portraits. Of course we had to buy a watercolor. As we were chatting with the artist, a late
middle-aged woman, in her broken English and Kathy's broken French, she asked
where we were from. We told her the
United States. She asked where in the
U.S. We said one of the north central
states that borders Canada, Minnesota.
She asked us where we were from in Minnesota, an unusual question. We told her we lived in Minneapolis. She said she knew exactly where we lived; she
has relatives (maybe a sister? I don't
remember) who live in Minnetonka and she's been to the Mall of America and our
winters are really cold. We were
startled to be buying from a French artist who'd been to within a few miles of
where we live. Here's the street scene
where we bought the painting.
Another site Belén
brought us to was one of the Paris landmarks, Sacre Coeur, a large church on the
highest high hill in Paris, a few miles from the Louvre, Tuileries, etc. It's a basilica (not a cathedral) but it's
still huge. It also has a somewhat
controversial history. It is, per
Wikipedia,
a double monument, political and
cultural, both a national penance for the defeat of France in the 1870
Franco-Prussian War and the socialist Paris Commune of 1871, crowning its most
rebellious neighborhood, and an embodiment of conservative moral order. . .
.
The inspiration for Sacré Cœur's
design originated . . . with a speech by Bishop Fournier attributing the defeat
of French troops during the Franco-Prussian War to a divine punishment after
"a century of moral decline" since the French Revolution, in the wake
of the division in French society . . . between devout Catholics and legitimist
royalists on one side, and democrats, secularists, socialists, and radicals on
the other [that] became particularly pronounced after the 1870 withdrawal of
the French military garrison protecting the Vatican in Rome to the front of the
Franco-Prussian War by Napoleon III, the secular uprising of the Paris Commune
of 1870-1871, and the subsequent 1871 defeat of France in the Franco-Prussian
War.
Though today the basilica is
asserted to be dedicated in honor of the 58,000 who lost their lives during the
war, the decree of the Assemblée nationale 24 July 1873, responding to a
request by the archbishop of Paris and voting its construction, specifies that
it is to "expiate the crimes of the Commune." Montmartre had been the site of the Commune's
first insurrection, and the Communards had executed Georges Darboy, Archbishop
of Paris, who became a martyr for the resurgent Catholic Church. His successor
Guibert, climbing the Butte Montmartre in October 1872, was reported to have
had a vision as clouds dispersed over the panorama: "It is here, it is
here where the martyrs are, it is here that the Sacred Heart must reign so that
it can beckon all to come."
Belén told
us that many in Paris viewed the church as a symbol of German victory in the
1870-71 war and, as with the Eiffel Tower, wanted it torn down. That won't happen, she said, but Sacre Coeur
isn't a happy reminder of events in French history.
Sacre Coeur is a mishmash of
architectural styles, described as "Romano-Byzantine." When we were walking in the interior (gawking
at one of the largest mosaics of Christ in the world), we noticed a poster with
a picture of Sacre Coeur—and from the angle of the photo, it looked remarkably
like the Taj Mahal. Belén nodded when I
pointed out the resemblance; there are aspects of Asian architecture in the
church, she observed. The mosaic (picture
from the web).
After hearing the history of Sacre
Coeur, it dawned on me that the three quintessential landmarks of Paris all
have somewhat shaky histories. Notre
Dame was on the verge of being dismantled so its stones could be used for other
buildings, some wanted Sacre Coeur demolished, and there were those vehemently
opposed to building, and then retaining, the Eiffel Tower.
Adjacent to Sacre Coeur, and with a
much more interesting history, is Saint Pierre de Montmartre. It is said—it claims to be—where the Society
of Jesus (the Jesuits) were founded. (Wikipedia
confirms the claim, even though the founder was a Basque nobleman: "On 15 August 1534, Ignatius of Loyola
(born Íñigo López de Loyola), a Spaniard from the Basque city of Loyola, and
six others mostly of Castilian origin, all students at the University of Paris,
met in Montmartre outside Paris, in a crypt beneath the church of Saint Denis,
now Saint Pierre de Montmartre, to pronounce the religious vows of poverty,
chastity, and obedience.") It
stands where the Roman temple to Mars was built, a couple of columns from which
are incorporated in the existing church.
("Montmartre" is the modern translation of "Mound of
Mars.") Saint Pierre de Montmartre
replaced, in the early 1100s, an earlier church. The present structure didn't survive the
centuries unscathed; much of the stained glass, for example, was designed and
installed in the 1950s. A much simpler
interior than many churches (picture from the web, but what we saw).
Perhaps it is appropriate that the
afternoon of our last day in Paris, Friday the 13th, we took a
cemetery tour, the second tour worth remark.
Most people would likely not have a cemetery as a first choice for a
guided walking tour, but I did (Kathy kindly consented). Père Lachaise may be the most famous cemetery
in the world; I had known about it for years and wanted to visit it when we
were in Paris in 2006, but Krystin's hospitalization meant we didn't have the
time. Kathy and I had seen the Milan
cemetery (which I think is on few tourist guides) and thought this would be an
interesting comparison. (I read that
Père Lachaise has about 3.5 million visitors per year; it is the most-visited
cemetery in the world.)
Our tour guide, Tomas, was the one
who developed the tour (part of a company that offers various Paris tours), and
he'd done a fair bit of research on the cemetery, so he seemed to know what he
was talking about. Initially, Père
Lachaise wasn't all that popular as a burial site (it opened in 1804 with 13
graves); it was one of several that opened in outlying areas when the existing
Paris cemeteries were filling up. So
those managing the cemetery decided to do some marketing (!); they publicized
the fact that they had transferred Jean de la Fontaine and Moliere to Père
Lachaise. The number of burials in the
cemetery increased. In 1817 the managers
scored a coup, which they trumpeted to the public, when they moved the
(purported) remains of Abelard and Heloise to Père Lachaise. (You can Google the story of Pierre Abélard
and Héloïse d'Argenteuil. Some see it as
a tragic love story; others, Tomas related, see it as the story of a
40-year-old man seducing an 18-year-old woman.
I guess you have to read their love letters and draw your own
conclusion.) After Abélard and Héloïse,
everyone wanted to be buried there.
One of the most-visited graves in Père
Lachaise is that of Jim Morrison (he of The Doors); it was in danger of being
damaged by admiring fans so is now surrounded by a fence. I was indifferent to his grave, but we did
see a number of graves of the famous:
Chopin, Edith Piaf, Oscar Wilde.
In the case of the latter, to our continuing puzzlement, it has to be
protected with a plexiglass surround to keep women from kissing the gravestone
and leaving lipstick marks all over it.
Here it is; you can make out the shield.
Tomas did
not know the (largely apocryphal) story about Wilde's last words. Legend has it that they were, "The
wallpaper and I are fighting a duel to the death. One or the other of us has to
go." He did say that, but weeks
before his death. His true last words
were, probably, a mumbled Catholic prayer.
Chopin's grave. I took this exact same picture, but a web
version was better.
(Someone was
playing Chopin's music at his gravesite.)
Unlike U.S. cemeteries (presumably
because there is much more room in the United States), the grave markers and
mausoleums are jammed together. The
families are responsible for maintaining them, and in many cases they have not
done so: the stone markers are worn, the
names no longer readable, and they're often covered in moss or even broken. (Apparently some members of Oscar Wilde's
family maintain his gravesite.) Perhaps
the family died out, perhaps the family members didn't care. Père Lachaise still accepts burials, although
there's a waiting list and it's difficult to get in. You can purchase graves for 10, 30, or 50
years, or one that is in perpetuity. The
10-year choice is the cheapest; after the 10 years, the remains are moved to a
central ossuary. The ashes of many more
are in the columbarium. About 1 million
people have been buried in Père Lachaise, and when account is taken of the
remains in the ossuary and columbarium that came from other Paris cemeteries,
the total number is between two and three million. Two pictures, just to give a sense of the
place. Multiply it times 110 acres. Tomas the tour guide told us that Père
Lachaise has 10% of the trees in Paris.
Given how few trees there are on many Parisian streets, that number
doesn't surprise me. (There aren't a lot
of trees on the streets of many medieval European cities, at least not in the
central parts, so Paris is no exception.)
While we were waiting for Tomas, I
noticed this establishment across the street from the main entrance to Père
Lachaise:
As I looked
up and down the street, I counted six different establishments offering funeral
and burial services. So you can have a
drink in Purgatory while awaiting arrangements for the coffin or cremation and
entrance into Père Lachaise.
A paragraph that wanders: While we were in Paris Kathy developed
something she self-diagnosed as golfer's vasculitis, the details of which you
can look up on the web if you wish; the pertinent point is that it made it
difficult for her to walk. The Paris
metro system is a nightmare for anyone with problems walking. Steps up and down everywhere, sometimes long
tunnels between train stops. I would
like to see a three-dimensional model of the Paris metro; it would be
mind-bogglingly complicated. Kathy
figured out that a compression stocking would help—and received wonderful
assistance from a pharmacist. Except she
probably wasn't a pharmacist. Pharmacies
are signaled by green neon crosses and there seem to be one every other block;
I stood on one corner and I could see 6 of them. Judging from the age of some of the
employees, I'm pretty sure they're not pharmacists. When Kathy got home and went to the doctor,
she told the resident what she'd concluded.
The resident examined her and then went to meet with her attending
physician. Kathy related that both the
resident and the physician were "giddy" when they came back in to see
her—because she was manifesting a medical condition they'd never heard of nor
ever seen before and they were excited about it. The physician related that normally when they
go on the web for medical literature about a particular condition, they will
get hundreds of hits. For this one they
got six. As of the time I compose this,
Kathy's condition has gotten only mildly better and she'll return to the doctor
in the near future.
We came home without incident. The only slight cause of concern was the
major traffic jam at Charles DeGaulle airport in Paris—at 7:00 on a Saturday
morning! I always fret about flying
until I'm within walking distance of the departure gate, and we made it on time
despite the delay. We were glad to get
back, as we always are after a long trip.
I'm just relieved to see the house still standing and the plants and cat
still alive and well. (Thank you,
Elliott.) Krystin texted me
"Welcome home!!" shortly after we arrived, which made me feel good.
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