First off, berets are actually really practical in this kind of whether. Fashioned correctly, it protects your head from wind and rain but doesn't mess up your hair, and keeps your ears really warm. Even without an umbrella sometimes, my most worthwhile purchase yet is keeping me warm and dry.
Saturday is a big day for coffee shops and salons du thé, so I thought it would be a good day to finally find a mid-afternoon hang out where I could read a book and enjoy a hot cup of English Breakfast. I struck out at the first couple places I tried: either smoky, or cold, or expensive, or lacking the right Bohemian ambience (as in, no one else was reading a book and I felt totally out of place). As I wandered through St-Germain-des-Près, I took note of a number of restaurants and little chocolate shops that I was dying to try. Finally I popped my head into Au Vieux Colombier, and there I found my perfect café. Filled with young stragglers reading worn copies of everything from Camus to Bridget Jones' Diary, the waitstaff was young and energetic and the tea was only four euros. I spent the rest of my Saturday afternoon camped out here, reading a fabulous French history called La Belle France, and people watching from my window seat. (NB: I highly recommend this book. If you ever intend to visit France, or just like history, this is one of the best books I've ever read, covering French history from Clovis to Chirac. It gives just the right amount of details, sometimes gruesome, sometimes inspiring, and provides an incredibly vivid account of two millenia of Gallic heritage. I really love it.)
I woke up early on Sunday in order to take advantage of early hours at the Musée du Moyen Age (the Middle Ages Museum.)
Heads of statues of Kings of France from the façade of Notre Dame, decapitated during the French Revolution
The French, apparently, define Middle Ages similarly to the way I define Early Modern (or maybe that's just where all the artifacts come from), so it was even more fascinating to me than I had anticipated. Even better, Sunday morning seems to be when young French families take their children to the museum, so I quietly paced behind as parents patiently explained to their curious children what a tapestry is and how it's made, where ivory comes from, and why monastic books were made with glittery paint. This pedantic French, directed at six and seven year olds, was just at my level of comprehension, so it gave me a fascinating look at how the contemporary Frech view medieval history.
At 11:30 I walked over to take mass at Cathedrale de Notre Dame. It was a beautiful mass (albeit a little distracting with lots of ogling tourists, and flash photography), and was done in several languages. Though mostly in French, one reading was conducted in Italian and one in English, and, of course, much of it in Latin. I loved standing there on the tile floor, reciting the Pater Noster with a few hundred others, imagining the women who stood in that very place, admiring the same stained glass window in front of them, shivering in the unheated building, reciting the same prayer word-for-word seven hundred years ago.
I returned to my little Colombier café for a tea and to read the next chapter in my book, Napoleon. Taking advantage of a temporary break in the rain, I rode over to la Sorbonne, and walked around unhurriedly in what truly is the student capital of the city (I'm learning more that my area is a bit more fashion than students). I stopped into a patisserie for an abricotin, and then ducked inside the gates of a very old looking stone terrace off of one of the side streets by the Panthéon.
What I found made me laugh out loud. About a dozen eight-year old boys playing an impropmptu game of soccer, inside the remains of an old, Roman amphitheater. I learned later that this structure used to be the site of wrestling tournaments in Roman Gaul, was where Charlemagne organized troops in the 9th century, where Protestant bodies were unceremoniously burned after the St. Bartholomew's Day massacre in 1572, and was where angry meetings of the sans-coulottes were held during the Revolution. And now, it was a neighborhood soccer park. I sat and watched for a while, just enjoying the history of sitting on the stone, two-thousand-year-old seats.
My last stop of the day was the Institut du Monde Arabe, or Institute of the Arab World. Ordinarily, I think, I probably would not have gone out of my way to visit this place -- it sounds at first like an overly politicized library. But a couple days ago in the Metro, I saw an ad for a temporary exhibition there, entitled "Bonaparte and Egypt." I couldn't resist, so I paid the exorbitantly high entry fee (11 euros) and was guided through an absolutely incredible Napoleonic gallery. Including the books, maps and strategic papers Napoleon took with him to invade Cairo; paintings and written depictions of the battles in Egypt; hand-signed documents from Napoleon to his generals during the occupation (amazing!); and shiploads of plundered treasure French troops removed from Egypt and brought to the Louvre -- this was the best exhibit I have seen so far in Paris. It also seemed to have attracted virtually no tourists, but was jam packed with local Parisians come to see the temporary exhibit. This gave it a charm of it's own, as it was the most crowded of the museums I have yet visited (Moyen Age was positively empty in comparison) but filled with people who know how to handle a museum (no elbowing or pushing).
This morning I woke late and went to a matinée showing of Slumdog Millionaire, at a giant multiplex in the far-flung 13th arrondissement. I had a small popcorn and a Ben & Jerry's ice cream, and got to feel right at home for a while. That is, until I and a group of three middle-aged women found ourselves somehow locked inside the movie theater, and had to call for help for ten minutes before someone came to unlock the doors and rescue us.
Tomorrow: to London!
At 11:30 I walked over to take mass at Cathedrale de Notre Dame. It was a beautiful mass (albeit a little distracting with lots of ogling tourists, and flash photography), and was done in several languages. Though mostly in French, one reading was conducted in Italian and one in English, and, of course, much of it in Latin. I loved standing there on the tile floor, reciting the Pater Noster with a few hundred others, imagining the women who stood in that very place, admiring the same stained glass window in front of them, shivering in the unheated building, reciting the same prayer word-for-word seven hundred years ago.
I returned to my little Colombier café for a tea and to read the next chapter in my book, Napoleon. Taking advantage of a temporary break in the rain, I rode over to la Sorbonne, and walked around unhurriedly in what truly is the student capital of the city (I'm learning more that my area is a bit more fashion than students). I stopped into a patisserie for an abricotin, and then ducked inside the gates of a very old looking stone terrace off of one of the side streets by the Panthéon.
What I found made me laugh out loud. About a dozen eight-year old boys playing an impropmptu game of soccer, inside the remains of an old, Roman amphitheater. I learned later that this structure used to be the site of wrestling tournaments in Roman Gaul, was where Charlemagne organized troops in the 9th century, where Protestant bodies were unceremoniously burned after the St. Bartholomew's Day massacre in 1572, and was where angry meetings of the sans-coulottes were held during the Revolution. And now, it was a neighborhood soccer park. I sat and watched for a while, just enjoying the history of sitting on the stone, two-thousand-year-old seats.My last stop of the day was the Institut du Monde Arabe, or Institute of the Arab World. Ordinarily, I think, I probably would not have gone out of my way to visit this place -- it sounds at first like an overly politicized library. But a couple days ago in the Metro, I saw an ad for a temporary exhibition there, entitled "Bonaparte and Egypt." I couldn't resist, so I paid the exorbitantly high entry fee (11 euros) and was guided through an absolutely incredible Napoleonic gallery. Including the books, maps and strategic papers Napoleon took with him to invade Cairo; paintings and written depictions of the battles in Egypt; hand-signed documents from Napoleon to his generals during the occupation (amazing!); and shiploads of plundered treasure French troops removed from Egypt and brought to the Louvre -- this was the best exhibit I have seen so far in Paris. It also seemed to have attracted virtually no tourists, but was jam packed with local Parisians come to see the temporary exhibit. This gave it a charm of it's own, as it was the most crowded of the museums I have yet visited (Moyen Age was positively empty in comparison) but filled with people who know how to handle a museum (no elbowing or pushing).
This morning I woke late and went to a matinée showing of Slumdog Millionaire, at a giant multiplex in the far-flung 13th arrondissement. I had a small popcorn and a Ben & Jerry's ice cream, and got to feel right at home for a while. That is, until I and a group of three middle-aged women found ourselves somehow locked inside the movie theater, and had to call for help for ten minutes before someone came to unlock the doors and rescue us.
Tomorrow: to London!
