In Which We Make a Short Springtime Jaunt

Okay, I am aware that this is one sweet gig:  lovely apartment in cozy little Baar, with a view of green hills and (if it clears) distant snow-capped Alps; a short auto drive from great skiing in winter and the rest of the year hiking amidst stunning views; and a location in the middle of Europe, a matter of hours from about any place one would want to visit.  Perhaps it’s karma, offsetting having spent my first 18 years in Wyoming, which though wonderful in itself is a loooong way from anywhere else.

So, last week, when The Spouse had to attend a business conference, I felt it my wifely duty to accompany him – to Paris.  Couldn’t have him spending his evenings alone, could I? 

Bearing tickets purchased from Baar’s SBB office (in a transaction conducted totally in German, I’m proud to say) I boarded the train at the station across from my apartment building and arrived in the heart of Paris about five and a half hours and three changes later.  In a romantic twist, TS flew in after a trip back to the US and we met at our hotel on the Boulevard Montparnasse.

I realize that for some a trip to The City of Light is one of those once-in-a-lifetime events.  While wandering Parisian streets I observed many couples for whom this seemed to be the case – walking arm-in-arm along the Seine or in the bustling heart of the Left Bank.  But living a few hours away changes one’s experience.  First of all, even though Switzerland isn’t officially part of the European Union, going to a “foreign country” is not a big deal.  In fact, when one travels via Basel, one simply passes through an unattended door to connect to trains heading toward westward.  If you hoped to pick up a French stamp for your passport, no luck.

Moreover, TS and I have been to Paris quite a few times, beginning with graduate school days.  Over the years, we have checked off the big-ticket things that tourists are supposed to do – Eiffel Tower, Invalides, Louvre, Versailles, Notre-Dame, Sainte-Chapelle, boat ride on the Seine.  The great pleasure of revisiting a place like Paris is that you don’t feel compelled to pack every possible experience into a short time span.  You can return to particularly beloved places or explore a few of the less famous sites.  Or you can get a bit of a taste of how residents experience the city by savoring the daily ebb and flow of life on the streets and in the parks and cafés.

And of course, you can eat.  After six months of the incredibly high cost of eating out in Switzerland, we had expected to enjoy paying less in Paris – only to find that prices there are higher still.  Nonetheless, we started at a classic restaurant on the Boulevard Montparnasse specializing in fish – something that has been hard to find in winter in Switzerland.  The food was fantastic, but just as enjoyable was watching the large corps of waiters exercising their craft with the skill and energy of a ballet troupe.

On the afternoon after our arrival we strolled through the surrounding neighborhood and paid our first visit to the famous Cimetiére du Montparnasse.  It contains the final resting places of many well-known figures from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, including the poet Charles Baudelaire, playwright Samuel Beckett and philosophers Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir.  Although many tombs were decorated with flowers, the Sartre/de Beauvoir monument was the first I’d ever seen bedecked with kiss-shaped lipstick.

 

During our four days we were doubly blessed with sunny, warm weather that made it all the more appealing to spend as much time outdoors as possible.  On my first day on my own I walked to the Luxembourg Gardens, just a few minutes from our hotel, to find a pleasant place to sit and read a book in which I was quite engaged – The Woodcutter by Reginald Hill, one of my favorite writers.  (I had made a special trip to the English bookstore in Zürich to get it; look for it when it comes out in the US later this year.)  I soon realized that during the week the Gardens serve as outdoor sports grounds for the city’s school children; the long alleés are perfect for footraces.  But there is plenty of space, and everyone seems to find a spot to sit alone or in twos and threes.

Graffiti at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts

After taking in the sun, I set out to walk from the Gardens to the Musée d’Orsay along the Rue Bonaparte, passing favorite sights such as St-Sulpice and St-Germain-des-Pré churches and window-shopping in clothing and antique stores and galleries along the way.  

I wanted to revisit the Musée d’Orsay because it is one of my favorite museums.  It spans the period between 1848 and 1914, most appropriately within what was originally a train station, the Gare d’Orsay, built at the beginning of the nineteenth century by the Orléans railroad as its Paris terminus.   The interior retains the magnificent scale of a grand train station – without the noise and smoke – although ongoing major renovations have made things pretty topsy-turvy.

Afterward I walked along the Seine, enjoying the view of trees just beginning to unfurl their leaves in the sun.  I was amused by the bookstalls with their offerings of old books, prints and postcards, and wondered what would replace second-hand books in a coming age of e-print.  In fact, during our visit TS and I were struck by the large number of bookstores – the French seem to be relatively slow in moving into the digital age.

Place Dauphine

Another afternoon I took a bus to the Seine and strolled along the Isle de la Cité to the Place Dauphine near its far end, one of my favorite squares.  As I arrived, a group of lawyers was assembling on the steps of the Palais de Justice, the court building that borders the wide end of the triangular park, for what seemed to be a formal photograph.  A group of schoolchildren – it must have been field trip week, for everywhere I went there were troops of children – also observed the lawyers.  They ran to the balustrade overlooking the Palais and serenaded them with a shrill rendition of La Marseillaise.  I have no idea why.

 On our last full day, The Spouse was free after noon.  We took a bus to the Bastille, bought baguettes at a boucherie and ate lunch in the Place des Voges.  We agreed that, though we find the absolute symmetry of the Renaissance era square a bit dull, the more human scale is restful after the vast reaches of the grand spaces in the rest of the city.  Always historians, we enjoyed several hours poring through the voluminous collection of nick-nacks from the city’s history at the Musée Carnavalet.  My favorite exhibit is the complete Fouquet Jewelry Boutique designed in 1900 by the Czech artist Alphonse Moucha, leader of the Art Nouveau movement.  Afterward we strolled through the Marais district and had dinner at an excellent little Corsican restaurant.

Your Author and HS at Versailles in 2003

One of the great pleasures of the visit was bumping into ghost memories of previous stages of my life.  Seeing Notre-Dame brought to mind my first time in Paris, arriving at daybreak after an all-night train ride from Marseille (no TGV then).  At the Luxembourg Gardens, I could see TS and me and four-year-old Handsome Son riding the carousel.  I saw the three of us, all older now, visiting in 2003 while the city was abuzz with protest over America’s invasion of Iraq – though everyone was unfailingly polite to us.  I saw myself with my mother and sisters three years ago in the Place des Vosge – the leaves were out on the trees then but it was much colder.  Each visit lays down vivid splashes of color to an ongoing work of art that is my Paris.

Jardin des Plantes