...in Paris

The Adventures of the Anonymous Two in Paris

A year after getting my travel note books from Husband, we were off to Paris again for my birthday. We had also decided to repeat the trip as a nice bookend to the events of the previous year which had of course presented its own issues and challenges – as well as reducing our travel and use of my travel note book.

We both spent hectic mornings at work before meeting at St Pancras International. Husband had had to travel up from the south coast after quickly escaping from meetings while I had had a short tube ride from the office. So it was too late we discovered the Paris forecast included rain and thunder. We had packed on the basis of the current heat wave. Although it would admittedly still be hot – even if wet,

At the passport check the man looked at me, then looked at my passport photo and the long hair pictured, then did a double take back at me and my almost bald head. ‘You’ve changed’ he said. I smiled. Little did he know.

After a short and uneventful Eurostar journey we arrived in a hot, stuffy and airless Paris. Now familiar with the city, we aimed for Metro, procured a book of tickets and set off towards the hotel. The journey required a change of Metro line and we walked through the wide, squat, dimly lit and oppressive underground link tunnels which were untiled, unpainted and liberally graffittied, echoing with bluesy rhythms from unseen sax and trumpet players. You could allow yourself to feel mournful.

 

We quickly found the hotel, nestled on the corner of a busy square in Le Marais. We later found out that this was the gay district so were literally in gap Paris. After a quick freshen up and unpack we went into the square in search of dinner. It was surrounded by cafes and restaurants whose tables spilled out onto the pavements, and were filled with diners. In the middle of the square, a small huddle of people gathered, watching all the restaurants from this central vantage point, like birds of prey, waiting for a table to become free so that they could pounce.

We went for the first place we could get into. As soon as their tables were full and a queue starting to form, they put out further tables. Somehow, that seemed like cheating.

A man came round selling what looked like dried pasta but turned out to be garlands of flowers. A subsequent seller was chased away by a barking dog –which seemed to be popular incident for the diners based on the audible cheer that this raised.

On the table next to us a woman had moules which she ate by sucking them out of the shells in the manner of a ravenous lesbian. She was pregnant and I wondered if she should be eating shellfish at all. I also had moules and tried to eat them in my usual style of using one empty shell as pincers to pull the mussel out of another shell. This was of limited success as the shells lost their spring remarkably quickly, and I needed to change pincers on a somewhat frequent basis. Perhaps the ravenous lesbian had already been through this process and rather given up.

After dinner we amble to Place des Vosges which was curiously absent in atmosphere, then wandered down to the river. The narrow embankment at water level was thronging with people, picnic blankets laid out with sumptuous feasts spread upon them. Other had adopted more simple arrangements. All involved bottles of wine and young people making the most of the warm evening. As we stood, overlooking the scene, couples (bottles of wine in hand) went down the steps intent on finding a space to sit, drink and watch the world go by. It was only a matter of time before the crowds were such that people started to be spilled into the river.

 

Notre Dame loomed, dimly lit in the evening sky. The stream of passing boats was constant, some lined with offensively bright spotlights to show tourists the view which lit up and momentarily exposed the bankside revellers before plunging them once again into the romantic dusk in which they could pretend to a privacy and seclusion that did not exist.

We walked past hoard of ice cream eaters on our return to the hotel before pausing for a final drink in a small bar where we watched an amusing interchange. A chap with crutches was resting his foot on a chair at an empty table. The American bar man didn’t like this and brought him a stool. One of the other tables filled up and the took the recently freed up chair. The bar man instead gave them the crutches man’s stool and put the chair back at the empty table. The crutches man put his foot back on the chair again. This entire debacle repeated a further two time before we left. The bar man was clearly obsessed about that particular empty table having an equally empty chair at it. The crutches chap did at one stage point out that no one was sitting there. The bar man admonished him with ‘no one’s sitting there because you keep putting your foot on the chair’.

We wandered back to the hotel via a chocolate shop in Rue Riudli with amazing chocolate creations – wonderfully coloured and stunningly created shoes, ladybirds, frogs and more.

That nigh we went to bed with the gentle hubbub of late night partying drifting in through the windows.

The following morning we foraged for breakfast in a nearby café which was decorated in white tiles in the style of a gentleman’s public lavatory. Husband went for un oeuf a la coque which turned out to be boiled egg and soldiers.

 

We decided to take the Metro out to our exploring area for the day, and walk back. There are no ‘mind the gap’ warnings on the Paris underground and given the slimness of the Pairs populace that gap is a genuine peril. We went to Place de Clichy and reasonably quickly found the objective of the morning – Monmartre cemetery. It covered a massive area in a sunken dip, surrounded by busy road yet maintaining a cemetery peace and stillness. A city of tall, narrow structures had been built to honour the dead that reminded me in structure of phone boxes. Husband said they were phone boxes to God. These varied in design and ornament. Some had stained glass, while others boasted decorative, gilded mosaic interiors. Husband wondered if this worship of their various musicians, poets, authors was due to the limited opportunity to celebrate their murdered monarchy. A number of the tombs were topped with a bust, presumably intended as a likeness to the deceased. In the main, these depicted bearded men. Beardy and distinguished, said Husband. A sculpture in Paris had obviously once done a roaring trade in beardy and distinguished, potentially irrespective of what the dead person actually looked like. The cemetery comprised wide tree lined boulevards with huge cobbled walkways, and then narrow, rarely trod paths between the tombs. Cats wandered freely, one of which – a ginger one – reminded me of the bully cat who lived in our road at home. No sooner had this thought occurred to me than he rubbed himself around my legs in what can only be fairly described as a friendly manner.

There was a map which marked the locations of the tombs of the more well know occupants. More by luck than judgement, we found the tombs of Dumas and Sax – inventor of the saxophone.

Some graves were still well tended whilst others had been ignored for years and left to the care of the cemetery tenders who had seen fit to allow a small planted grave top shrub to grow into a fully blown tree, literally the tree of life, I mused, imagining its roots entangled in the owners rib cage.

Other graves had stunning bronze statues . On one there was a young girl curled up, with her arms around her head. Her uncovered shoulder felt real, the curvature and sculpted muscle was natural and the bronze was warm beneath the sun.

Although already sunken beneath the modern town which spread across the hill, the cemetery was on many level and someone had seen fit to build a socking great road across the top – the bridge girders plunging down into the cemetery beneath, with the base of the road scraping across the top of the monuments beneath.

 One large hunk of granite memorialised two people who died in 1944 and stated the words Birchenau and Auschwitz. Old graves lay side by side with new one and it was unclear how these spaces in between had been left available. The newly dead were crammed into any remaining nook and cranny. One stone tomb, for reasons that were unclear, seemed to attract and catch ladybirds, and the surface was covered with dead bugs.

Deciding to return to the world of the living we went back to the same lunch venue as last year – the Windmill in Monmartre and sat again in the small, quiet garden outside, in the shade of the windmill sails. While there a not insubstantial spider crawled into my handbag!

At a table next to us were some Americans who ordered snails. I amusing wondered whether, given the standard enormity of US portions, they would still be ravenous after this garlicy delicacy. Oddly French fries were on the menu. Surely here, in France, they were just fries?

Fully replete we wandered round the artist’s quarter where a handful of people cut out silhouettes of passers by as they stood there. It was an incredibly skilled feat and very clever. Just a few minutes with paper and scissors with no room for error.

We ambled back down the hill via a socking great church and then struggled to find the entrance to Galerie la Fayette. Having got inside, we then struggled to find its famous dome and were momentarily lost in what felt like the largest department store in the world. Eventually we happened across it by accident as I went in search of a loo. There was a large hot air balloon model suspended beneath it, with a statue of a man sitting on a platform beneath it and a slated walkway stretching tantalisingly from the balcony to the balloon. This seemed to be tempting an inevitable accident.

The store was packed, and having seen what we were interested in, then set about trying to leave as quickly as possible. Wandering along Boulevard Haussman we saw a shop called Le Plan B which gave Husband the idea of opening a flan shop called Flan B. If it became the victim of a fire presumably it then be the flambee Flan B.

It was a surprisingly long walk to Au Trappiste by which time we were much in need of a restorative beer. The new modern décor did not provide the same cosy atmosphere we had enjoyed on our first visit, but we were warming to it. We were given some olives in chilli oil, one of which had brown marks on that made it look like a small mouse face. And it had a stalk ‘tail’. There was an extensive menu of beers – hence our liking for this venue, and a large moules menu albeit much curtailed from our very first time here. The beers were listed by country. Under UK, it listed on – Newcastle Brown. Annoyingly, Indian Pale Ale was listed under the USA. Husband was tempted to bring over a crate of fine English ales and queried how to say ‘fucking indignant’ in French.

Husband chatted away merrily to the French waitress. He wanted to know the French for hops – as he likes hoppy beer. I warned him about the dual English meaning for this word and he may find himself asking for beers that allowed him to bounce around on one leg. He said that you would need to mindful if the French translation was plus de bouncier.

Gently working our way through the beer menu, Husband order a St Stephanus beer. This was served in a rather fine St Stephanus glass that he took a liking to so he practised saying ‘je m’appelle Stephanus. Je voudrais acheter la verre’. Miraculously the waitress understood and after disappearing for a minute or two to speak to the manager came back with the new ‘un cadeau’. His next beer, Cuvee de Trolles, came in an even better glass and for a moment he was close to saying to the waitress ’je m’appelle Stephanus and je suis un troll’. It seemed better to quit while we were ahead.

Looking through our phrase book – it had been needed a lot in the last few minutes – I noticed it didn’t include the French for I can or I need, but more usefully it did have eyebrow wax. Husband said that was fortunate as he wanted one and wasn’t sure how to tell me so thought it was best to say it in French.

We had many beers, including some mistakes. Gueuze, for example, is disgusting. Husband ate a whole pickle to disguise the flavour. Our attempts at soaking up the drink with a plate of meats and plate of cheese was not entirely successful. Husband said we needed to be able to walk out in a straight line – the reputation of England depended on it. So we ate more – moules and pudding. We took a picture of pudding – adorned with redcurrants. Then Husband ate the redcurrants and took another picture of the stalk – sans berries, he said. Which made us wonder why you could get berries in Sainsbury’s.

As so much of the beer was of monastic origin, Husband was proud to claim that a couple of monks had ruined him with their monk juice.

We saw a hotel conveniently placed directly opposite and took a note of its name before staggering back to our hotel and succumbing to alcohol infused oblivion.

The following day we rose late and navigated by the sun to Peres Laischelles – which was a fun in this day and age of modern technology. On the quiet streets we wandered down there was a pot bellied homeless man playing recorder – possibly the only useful thing his school had taught him. It was a long walk to the cemetery, which was bigger and more touristy than the one at Monmartre. But also slightly more unkempt. Perhaps because of its size, making neatness an impossible task. Weeds grew prolifically on and between the graves.

The cemetery was on a hill and at various intersections of the cobbled roads were larger memorials , monuments and chapels. We saw the tomb of Chopin – which was broadly ignored, and the tomb of Jim Morrison which was barricaded of and surrounded by substantial crowds. A grave opposite had a vast number of fresh bouquets, almost as a reminder that other dead people are available.

A number of graves marked deaths in 1914 with the bland statement ‘died for France’. It was unclear if the deceased was military or civilian casualties.

We looked in the door of a pyramid shaped tomb. The interior went deep below ground level and was a large chamber that looked like a container for coffins.

The newer section of the cemetery had more of the look of what you would expect from a modern cemetery, with smaller tombstones rather than the huge stone edifices of the older part. We saw the grave of Edith Piaf, again , largely ignored, and then went in search of Oscar Wilde. The crowds gave the clue of where he was. Pleasingly it was a substantially larger crowd than that surrounding Jim Morrison’s final resting place. The grave was surrounded by Perspex with a polite request not to desecrate the tomb. The statue behind the Perspex was adorned with a multitude of lipstick kisses, prior to its protective surround being installed. The testes of the monument’s statue had been broken off – it was unclear whether as a trophy or in protest. A poem engraved on the memorial ended poignantly with ‘his mourners will be outcast me, and outcasts always mourn’.

Our next objective was Gard de Lyon and Le Train Bleu restaurant. After a long, hot walk we arrived to find it closed for refurbishment. It was a baking hot day and we were tired and hungry but decided to head for Andy Pandy’s rather than settle for something mediocre. We went via Jardin de Plantes and lunched sumptuously at the same table we had sat at on our very first visit 11 years earlier.

We returned to the hotel, witnessing an unexpected fly past over Hotel de Ville, to shower and rest which ended up spending the evening in.

It rained in the night and the morning was cooler, with more showers threatened. I opened birthday cards and we pondered our plan for the day. It seemed like a good day to be indoors at Musee des Artes e Metiers. We had a pleasant walk through Le Marais. Inky black men started to pour out of shops with wheeled soft bags bulging with tat to try to flog to tourists. We passed a man who was either gay or had lost a bet very badly and shortly afterwards arrived at the museum, only to find that it was closed on Mondays. We had pondered between the museum or La Defense or Montparnasse. We decided to take the Metro to La Defense. The Metro station was decorated like the inside of a copper tun. The tube train will pulled in had no divisions between the carriages so it was like being inside a huge worm and you could see all the bends and winds and ups and downs as the train moved through the tunnels.

It was challenging to find a way out from the station at La Defense. It certainly seemed remarkably well defended. The stones of the steps leading up to the Grande Arche hadn’t been cemented in and were noticeably loose. ‘It’ll be nice when it’s finished’ said Husband.

We couldn’t go up it as the lifts were broken. So we decided to make for Montparnasse and sat right at the front of the Metro train, like a driver. Some children got on who wanted to be at the front, but we weren’t moving.

The guide books had been unflattering about Montparnasse, and we perhaps didn’t find the nicer bits. We did find the cemetery and visited Sautre-Beauvoir and Man Ray tombs before back towards St Germaine de Pres. We popped in to a large church on the way whose walls and ceilings were plain stone, or granite. No plaster or paint. And you could see where the rain had got in. We continued on to Les Deux Magot for lunch before coming back via Palais Royal where the fountain was blowing in the wind, soaking young children to the shrieking delight. Beneath one of the palace archways a violinist and cellist played in the echoing shadows.

We wandered alongside Jacques Tower. There were lots of statues with their breasts out which seemed a statutory requirement in times of great victory or great mourning.

That night we went to Julian’s for dinner via the Metro. Initially we went to the platform going in the wrong direction and as you couldn’t rectify this from inside the system, we had to exit and use another ticket to go to the correct side. It was scorching on the train and dancing people with a loudspeaker got on and were moving from carriage to carriage – which was clearly mortifying for repressed English people with a sense of public decorum. When we arrived at Julian’s it was closed. For some period of time. It had been that kind of day so we came back to the square by our hotel. We sat next to an Italian couple, which included a bald women. She looked at my attempt at hair. And we both wondered.

For pudding I had Le Fameux Cremaux which was a hard chocolate shell with mousse inside and I wondered how it was made. Husband said it would be done upside down. It had a biscuit base which Husband suggested was a hob nob.

The promised rain never came and the heat had built with the day. Finally, it was now cooling.

 

We woke on our final day and now it really did look like rain. We went to the brasserie round the corner for breakfast and then on to Au Trappiste – where else would you rather be. Initially the plan was just to have coffee but we decided to go for a final beer each – Hopus and Mont des Cats. Outside it was cool, grey and quiet.

As the time to leave approached we went to Chatelet Metro. Naturally both of the nearest entrances were closed!

As we arrived at Gard de Nord we realised that we hadn’t ever arrived here by Metro, we had always walked. We left a cool, grey France and came back to a hot and stuffy England. And a passport control woman who wished me happy birthday for yesterday.