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Saturday evening, Hotel Caulaincourt. Our room is located several floors below the lobby in the corner of the building, which quite obviously was not built by someone who favored right angles. The wall paper is a classy pattern of navy and white stripes and fleur-de-lis's, but is ripped and stained. In the small room there are three rickety bunk beds and a tall window from which we can see into apartments across the way, where we see Parisians folding laundry, talking on the phone, drinking wine, and sitting on couches and watching TV...so they are humans like us...
The door to our room opens into a trapezoid-shaped room with a shower stall and sink on the right, a triangular-shaped bathroom straight ahead, and the door to our bunk room on the left wall. The room with the toilet is better described as a triangular closet in which one cannot "utilize the facilities" without sitting diagonally or leaving the door open.
I can only laugh because I know that soon I will be describing this room to others, and when I am much older, I will tell someone young about the hostels I stayed in, about the inconveniences and nastiness, about how we didn't complain or long for the "comforts" of home because we were young and flexible and simply seeking experience. And when I am older I will miss the inconveniences and the nastiness and our flexibility and adventurous spirits. But then again, who says we have to lose our flexibility or adventurous spirits?
We eat dinner at a tiny, low-ceilinged Italian restaurant decorated with knick-knacks and fake plants, tucked in a corner of a narrow back street. And then we go. Onward, to Tour Eiffel. We ride the metro and end up in a square across the street from the end of the lawn that extends from the base of the tower. We're rushing to find it by 10 o'clock because we have heard that it sparkles every hour on the hour. From this perspective we can't see it, but we know it's there. We're all walking so fast we might as well be skipping, and then, there it is. A blue beacon of adventure puncturing the foggy night sky, it's two lights whipping around and around, begging us to stare.
We take our time walking towards it, ogling, gaping, gawking, goggling, gazing--mesmerized. We reach the base of the tower and wait. Laura pulls a bottle of champagne out of her bag and asks someone else to open it. Next thing I know, the bottle is in my hands, we're counting down to 10 o'clock, someone says, "Now!", the tower starts sparkling and the cork shoots at least 25 feet. It occurs to me that this bottle has ridden the metro all the way here with us under Laura's arm. No wonder I almost killed a family of tourists.
(See video at bottom)
We stand in awe, our American jaws hanging open. I am completely mystified by how strongly a sparkling blue tower is affecting me. Why is this so beautiful? I realize that this moment is not wonderful simply because the tower is wonderful--I am coming to the end of a beautiful journey during which I have grown so much it hurts. In a few weeks I will be back in the US, but I'm ready. We cheers, watch, wait, and when the twinkling stops, we ride the metro back to our temporary home in Paris.
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Sunday morning. We look at our map to find out where Montmartre is. Apparently--and please forgive us--we are staying in Montmartre. It's time to climb. We laugh and begin our ascent. Who knew that we were inhabiting sacred bohemian ground? We're walking where the likes of Picasso, Modigliani, Van Gogh, Matisse, Degas, Toulouse-Lautrec and Langston Hughes walked...no biggie. Just another day in Europe.
Although I am tempted to avoid the subject of Montmartre completely, I cannot. I will put it plainly and get it over with: Montmartre is like a Universal Studios attraction with better food and cooler temperatures. Some of its charm remains, but it is merely visual. It is so crowded with tourists that it is hard to walk two steps without bumping into someone. The streets are overflowing with over-priced knick-knacks targeted either at uninspired romantics who want to substantiate their visit to this "hallowed" place or to travel guide junkies who lack any real passion in their lives at all. Perhaps I am being a bit harsh, but it just goes to show how disappointed I was. Visiting Montmartre forced me to accept that all good things come to an end, but also made me wonder what my "good thing" is. It's about time I get one.
We spent most of our time in Montmartre on the steps below Sacre'-Coeur, people-watching. I can say this about Monmartre: I'll be back one day to give it another shot...even if it means I have to go to church at 7:30 AM and sit around until the wee hours of the next morning, waiting for the bohemians to emerge and the freak flags to rise.
Midday, Tuileries Quarter--home of Cartier, Boucheron, the Ritz, etcetera, etcetera. More importantly, it is the quarter in which one finds the Louvre and Jardin du Palais Royal and other beautiful gardens. We hunt down Musee de l'Orangerie with the help of some very helpful ladies. They see that we are struggling to find our way and one of them offers to help us. Apparently she understands how frustrating it is to be lost when you have only a limited amount of time.
We are headed in the right direction and we have a destination in mind, but those definitely aren't good reasons to ignore alluring sights along the way. We arrive at Place de la Concorde and once again, we are hypnotized by the Eiffel tower, the view of which now includes a bed of trees at its base, an ancient obelisk, a statue of the Sun King (Louis XIV), a gargantuan palatial fountain, and a tour bus. It is a clear, sunny day and although the square is bustling, it still feels open; seeing so much blue sky has never been so refreshing.
Inside the relatively small, naturally-lit Musee de l'Orangerie we see Monet's Nympheas, his celebrated water lily series painted at his home in Giverny. Monet donated this series to the museum (to Paris, really), and required that they be displayed in two oval-shaped rooms. The path one walks between the two rooms forms the symbol of infinity.
Of the museums I have visited in Europe thus far, this experience with art is the most intimate. The rest of the works in the museum, all executed by Parisians, are from the Impressionist and inter-war periods. We see works by Cezanne, Renoir, Matisse, Modigliani, and early works by Picasso. As usual, I take too long and I realize everyone's waiting for me (Sorry guys).
Early afternoon. We go in search of Musee' D'Orsay. On the way we see a one-man-band playing a Beatles song in a tunnel leading to Pont Solferino, and we stop to enjoy the views up and down the Seine. We get to the other side of the river and wait in the long, snake-like line outside the museum for quite a while, but the time passes quickly because it is so worth the wait. The people-watching is incredible.
In 1986, after being closed for nearly 50 years, this mainline railroad station became the museum it is today. It displays art created between 1848 and 1914 from a variety of periods, from naturalism and symbolism to art nouveau and neo-impressionism. We spend hours and hours exploring as much as we possibly can, each of us most likely knowing that this will be our last stop in Paris, but we eventually lose our stamina.
Sitting in the central area, where train tracks were once lain and now sculptures watch visitors pass by, we all seem to silently agree that we've reached the end. I now certainly realize the reasons why many Parisians are snobby...and they're good ones. But all I want to do right now is pass out on this bench and have a train deliver me to my rickety bunk in Hotel Caulaincourt. But--that's not what this journey is about.
And we have a plane to catch in a few hours.
