Episode 1- Paris, St. Denis and Epiney-sur-Seine
Wednesday, September 3, 2008
Oh, that first day of overseas travel is a killer. But the flight from Lexington to Detroit was smooth and a lightening storm blew through Detroit while we were saying morning prayers in the waiting lounge. Just at the moment our petition asked God to “Grant us good weather” the rain stopped as if someone had thrown a switch. Have we got pull, or what?
The overseas flight was tolerable. My carry-on weighed 24 pounds and fit in the overhead just fine. Georgia’s bag weighed 29, but that included her purse, which I swear contained a bowling ball. I don’t sleep well on planes so watched the in-flight movie “Sex in the City” that caught me up on popular culture. I’m glad I’m not young and eligible. Air France doesn’t seem to have discovered what’s happening to the rest of air travel. The movie was free. The wine was free. The Champagne was free. The food was good, excellent in fact, and free. But Georgia couldn’t sleep sitting up, and my sensitivity to altitude meant I woke up gasping whenever I managed to drift off. They have little in-flight radar screens that show you where the plane is—so we both stayed awake most of the night watching our little plane crawl across the Atlantic.
Thursday morning, September 4, 2008
We landed at Charles de Gaulle / Bourget Field outside Paris. It’s about three times the size of Detroit and Detroit is BIG. I do swear though, that it seems to get easier each time we travel. Even the problems seem less vexing. I guess that’s because we’ve survived so many adventures and “issues” before, we feel like nothing is going to happen that we can’t manage to get through. And this time we decided that we would depend on the local people more freely. In past trips we found the people helpful, but there was always an element of distrust—a feeling that we could only depend on ourselves. This time we are going to be more relaxed. It must have showed in customs. Checking visas was a snap and neither of us was strip-searched. Poof! We were through and out in the wide, wide, world. Well, out in the wide, wide, Paris subway system! The thousands of combinations of train and bus routes stagger you. The system is SO complex and confusing that even the vandals leave the maps alone so they don’t get lost!
There is in Paris an insane mélange of “gares” or train stations, plus metro and bus stops. Not all of the metros go to all of the stations and none of the train stations connect directly with any of the others. To go from one station to another you take a metro. Each train station is like an octopus sending out tentacles in all directions. You have to take off on a tentacle and look for a place where your tentacle touches the tentacle from the train station you want to reach. Get off your tentacle and grab the other one, but remember that, like jealous octopi these tentacles will naturally be at different depths. And most of them were built in the late 19th century and early 20th so the breath-taking Art Deco stations have multiple flights of stairs that will also take your breath away. There are no fat Parisians. None. Not a one. And I know it’s because of the transportation system. But we made it to “Abbesses”—our metro stop in the north of Paris just at the base of Montmartre, the mount of martyrs.
Suppose there was a mountain fully inhabited since the year 258. Try to picture how many houses and shops and stairs there would be on such a mountain. Wrong. There are many more than that. And flights of stairs that just go up and up and up without landings or places to look for your lost breath. But there are also wonderful parks filled with roses and peonies and even a vineyard in the middle of this urban tree house. The cabaret Lapin Agile, with its rabbit dancing in a frying pan was almost buried under a hundred years worth of wisteria. I swear I could see Toulouse Lautrec sharing a bottle of absinthe with Claude Monet, Gabriel Faure, and Salvadore Dali. I could hear them clinking glasses and laughing at the gasping tourists.
In the steeply sloped park immediately in front of Sacre Coeur sun-bathers gather, and there is a wide landing on the stairs where buskers entertain the crowds. As we walked up we saw a man in a tuxedo playing a golden harp. Can’t imagine how he got a harp up there. Must have had a helicopter. The Basilique itself is made from white marble and fronted by beautifully green patinated equestrian statues. Its multiple gleaming domes are visible from just about all of Paris, except for the bowels of the subway.
When we arrived at the guesthouse of St. Ephrem in the convent attached to Sacre Coeur our room was ready. We had to sit in the vestibule for 30 minutes or so anyway—the sisters were terribly understaffed. The time was well spent, though, visiting with a young Italian priest named Allesandro Sabotelli who was there on retreat. He practiced his halting but competent English on us and we practiced our dreadful Italian on him.
A beautiful young nun was trying to check us in, but continually interrupted by phone calls and other nuns arriving with minor crises. The Pope, Benedict XVI, was arriving in Paris in a few days for a mission trip and many, many people wanted to stay at the guesthouse. I’m glad we made reservations well in advance. She remained so calm, I think her name must surely have been Sister Placida.
Our room was on the fourth of five floors but because Sacre Coeur is also on top of the tallest mountain in Paris the view from our room stretched out over the Parisian rooftops. It reminded me of the chimneysweeps’ view of London in Mary Poppins. But we could see such a wide swath of the city it was also somewhat disheartening. It was instantly obvious that we were not going to be able to see the entire city. Very different from the view we had in Florence that gave us the illusion of a tidy little city, easily walkable with everything close at hand. Paris looked gigantic and spread out below us like a jumble of toy blocks on a wrinkled blanket under a leaden sky. There was no way we were going to see everything. But before we ventured out we thought we’d better rest our eyes.
Two hours later, about 4pm, we decided to find a little “smackerel” of something. We had to explore the church first, of course. The Basilique is dedicated to perpetual adoration, where Jesus in the consecrated host is visible for adoration. There is an enormous, mosaic of Jesus on the back wall of the apse, under the main dome, with his arms outstretched facing the suspended monstrance and embracing the congregation.
The nuns sing the hours in the choir located just below him to the accompaniment of a dulcimer. Unlike most Gregorian chant these nuns sing in parts and the harmonies are haunting. When you sing the hours you try to sing only loudly enough to be heard by the person on either side of you. Louder than that and you are too loud. And yet, the sweet voices of the sixteen sisters filled that enormous space. If we had moved the chairs we could have set up goal posts and played a game of football, but you would play by candlelight. The votive candles lit by pilgrims were stacked on rows and rows of candle stands. The soft glow was warm and inviting.
Out behind the church we found a creperie and had our first Nutella-filled crepe. Nutella is a peanut-butter-like confection made from chocolate and hazel nuts. We also had a “baguette au jambon et fromage”—ham and cheese. We walked around trading crepes back and forth. Whoever had the ham and cheese was also wiped Nutella off the other one’s kisser.
I’ve never been to Disneyland, but I suspect that they try to capture in plastic what Montmartre embodies in cobblestones and brick and mortar. There were strolling portraiteurs, street musicians including the essential accordion player playing “dos de val e dad” for pennies. We passed museums but our rubber legs weren’t up to any more stairs so we just circled the mountain-top. We rested in a lovely little park looking out over an iron railing down 30 or 40 feet into the backyard of a little pensione where three groups of elderly men and women were playing spirited games of bocce ball (boules) on a dirt court. It’s akin to bowling but the object is to get your 4-pound ball closer to a little golf ball than your opponents. Knocking their ball away produces a wonderful cacophony of French insults.
I suspect that the main difference between Montmartre and Disneyland is the smell. Montmartre smells like New Orleans’ French quarter at Mardi Gras. Maybe it’s a French thing? Your typical men in both cities make casual water against walls, and you must always navigate the ever-present dog-poo on the sidewalks. There are, of course, pay toilets, but why in the world would you need one as long as there are perfectly good wizzing walls?
In an hour or so we headed back to Ephrem for supper. It came with the room. I certainly wouldn’t have ordered it otherwise. It consisted chiefly of some sort of leek-filled ham roll and a watery soup made out of thin grass-like threads. But we had a nice bottle of wine and that helps anything go down more smoothly. And we had an interesting conversation with Padre Allesandro, and a taciturn Frenchman whose name I never learned. Padre Allesandro was from Ravenna and led a charismatic/Pentecostal-style parish, though it is hard to picture him jumping with Holy Fire. He was thin and good looking, with brown hair. Probably 5’9”. He reminded me more of a young lawyer than a fire-breathing Holy-Ghost-filled evangelist. “But I’m not crazy,” he assured us.
After supper we walked back down the hill to the Abbesses Metro stop. We stood and watched a juggler entertain the crowd ebbing and flowing through the famous art-deco wrought-iron entrance. Across the tree filled park there was an Internet-Access shop where you could rent a computer for 30 minutes for 50 cents, euro. We got an email from Amy that her third ultrasound confirmed that she and Judge were going to have a little boy! They didn’t have a name picked out yet. We left the shop walking on a cloud and strolled along the Parisian streets until we found a charming corner café. We took a table in the back under a nineteenth-century mahogany-framed mirror. There we toasted Amy, Judge, and the newest twig on our family tree with French champagne in a French café in Paris. Someday we’ll have to bring little “whatsisname” here to see it for himself.
The stream of pedestrians on the sidewalk was incessant but there was one little girl oblivious to them. She must have been 9 or 10 and she was dancing on the sidewalk to the beat of her own interior rhythm section. Her dance partner was a 3-foot tall steel pipe buried in concrete to provide a barrier from any car so ill-mannered as to try to usurp the sidewalk Round and round, swaying to and fro; dipping and bobbing, her honey-colored hair swinging in time to that different drummer. And then her father, mother, and little brother materialized from somewhere to collect her. The father seemed slightly exasperated but placed his hand protectively on her back to steer her, dancing, through the Parisian traffic.
Friday morning, September 5, 2008
We got up early for Mass and the early hours. I decided to really try, on this trip, to use what little French I have. No fear. We sat behind Alice, a student from Dijon, but now in international banking in Paris, and then ate breakfast with her as well. She comes to stay at the guesthouse, she says, when she needs to recharge her batteries.
We caught the train for St Denis, and walked past St. Oest but couldn’t get in. It was locked. The little town of St Denis now looks like a village in Morocco or Algiers. The women in caftans and scarves, the men in skull-caps, and the children in multi-colored soccer shirts. I know there was a time when colonialism seemed like a good idea—and maybe it was, but it’s awfully hard to say which culture has been changed more—the colonizer or the colonized? Colonizing the mid-east and North Africa has led to undercutting traditional French culture “back home.” But then, of course, the French Revolution may have played some small part in the decline as well.
The Basilique St. Denis, was the traditional place where the coronation and burial of France’s kings and queens took place. The stained glass was being refurbished—at least some of it—though there was still plenty to admire, especially the small windows in the crypt and the large window near the tomb of Marie Antoinette. Speaking of Marie and her royal relatives, they were in various states of dishabille. King Henry II and Catherine De Medici were both completely nude.
Looks like they gave up the illusion of semi-divinity at the end. Kind of a nice touch of humility, I guess, or maybe the ribald humor of their descendents? But poor Marie. It’s bad enough to lose your head but then to have a nude statue on your tomb. And it was obvious from the dirt and grime that her breasts were receiving a good bit of unwanted attention from the rabble taking liberties with her person. If she weren’t dead already I’m sure the chagrin would have killed her.
We took a bus to Epiney-sur-Seine. I wanted to see the banks of the Seine, where so many of the Impressionists had painted landscapes. It didn’t disappoint.
We walked an old towpath for a mile or so past gracefully bowing willows who murmured their quiet secrets to the clear brown water. From time to time there were small alleys leading to the village. We turned at one to find some bread and cheese. Then we sat on a bench in the middle of a little traffic island for an intimate picnic. We were just drinking in the ambience, shielded by beautiful swaying pampas grass when a toothless old man accosted us: “Oh great,” I thought, “homeless Frenchmen.” How do you say “Buzz-off Bud?” in French?
(to be continued)
Wednesday, September 3, 2008
Oh, that first day of overseas travel is a killer. But the flight from Lexington to Detroit was smooth and a lightening storm blew through Detroit while we were saying morning prayers in the waiting lounge. Just at the moment our petition asked God to “Grant us good weather” the rain stopped as if someone had thrown a switch. Have we got pull, or what?
The overseas flight was tolerable. My carry-on weighed 24 pounds and fit in the overhead just fine. Georgia’s bag weighed 29, but that included her purse, which I swear contained a bowling ball. I don’t sleep well on planes so watched the in-flight movie “Sex in the City” that caught me up on popular culture. I’m glad I’m not young and eligible. Air France doesn’t seem to have discovered what’s happening to the rest of air travel. The movie was free. The wine was free. The Champagne was free. The food was good, excellent in fact, and free. But Georgia couldn’t sleep sitting up, and my sensitivity to altitude meant I woke up gasping whenever I managed to drift off. They have little in-flight radar screens that show you where the plane is—so we both stayed awake most of the night watching our little plane crawl across the Atlantic.
Thursday morning, September 4, 2008
We landed at Charles de Gaulle / Bourget Field outside Paris. It’s about three times the size of Detroit and Detroit is BIG. I do swear though, that it seems to get easier each time we travel. Even the problems seem less vexing. I guess that’s because we’ve survived so many adventures and “issues” before, we feel like nothing is going to happen that we can’t manage to get through. And this time we decided that we would depend on the local people more freely. In past trips we found the people helpful, but there was always an element of distrust—a feeling that we could only depend on ourselves. This time we are going to be more relaxed. It must have showed in customs. Checking visas was a snap and neither of us was strip-searched. Poof! We were through and out in the wide, wide, world. Well, out in the wide, wide, Paris subway system! The thousands of combinations of train and bus routes stagger you. The system is SO complex and confusing that even the vandals leave the maps alone so they don’t get lost!
There is in Paris an insane mélange of “gares” or train stations, plus metro and bus stops. Not all of the metros go to all of the stations and none of the train stations connect directly with any of the others. To go from one station to another you take a metro. Each train station is like an octopus sending out tentacles in all directions. You have to take off on a tentacle and look for a place where your tentacle touches the tentacle from the train station you want to reach. Get off your tentacle and grab the other one, but remember that, like jealous octopi these tentacles will naturally be at different depths. And most of them were built in the late 19th century and early 20th so the breath-taking Art Deco stations have multiple flights of stairs that will also take your breath away. There are no fat Parisians. None. Not a one. And I know it’s because of the transportation system. But we made it to “Abbesses”—our metro stop in the north of Paris just at the base of Montmartre, the mount of martyrs.
Suppose there was a mountain fully inhabited since the year 258. Try to picture how many houses and shops and stairs there would be on such a mountain. Wrong. There are many more than that. And flights of stairs that just go up and up and up without landings or places to look for your lost breath. But there are also wonderful parks filled with roses and peonies and even a vineyard in the middle of this urban tree house. The cabaret Lapin Agile, with its rabbit dancing in a frying pan was almost buried under a hundred years worth of wisteria. I swear I could see Toulouse Lautrec sharing a bottle of absinthe with Claude Monet, Gabriel Faure, and Salvadore Dali. I could hear them clinking glasses and laughing at the gasping tourists.
In the steeply sloped park immediately in front of Sacre Coeur sun-bathers gather, and there is a wide landing on the stairs where buskers entertain the crowds. As we walked up we saw a man in a tuxedo playing a golden harp. Can’t imagine how he got a harp up there. Must have had a helicopter. The Basilique itself is made from white marble and fronted by beautifully green patinated equestrian statues. Its multiple gleaming domes are visible from just about all of Paris, except for the bowels of the subway.
When we arrived at the guesthouse of St. Ephrem in the convent attached to Sacre Coeur our room was ready. We had to sit in the vestibule for 30 minutes or so anyway—the sisters were terribly understaffed. The time was well spent, though, visiting with a young Italian priest named Allesandro Sabotelli who was there on retreat. He practiced his halting but competent English on us and we practiced our dreadful Italian on him.
A beautiful young nun was trying to check us in, but continually interrupted by phone calls and other nuns arriving with minor crises. The Pope, Benedict XVI, was arriving in Paris in a few days for a mission trip and many, many people wanted to stay at the guesthouse. I’m glad we made reservations well in advance. She remained so calm, I think her name must surely have been Sister Placida.
Our room was on the fourth of five floors but because Sacre Coeur is also on top of the tallest mountain in Paris the view from our room stretched out over the Parisian rooftops. It reminded me of the chimneysweeps’ view of London in Mary Poppins. But we could see such a wide swath of the city it was also somewhat disheartening. It was instantly obvious that we were not going to be able to see the entire city. Very different from the view we had in Florence that gave us the illusion of a tidy little city, easily walkable with everything close at hand. Paris looked gigantic and spread out below us like a jumble of toy blocks on a wrinkled blanket under a leaden sky. There was no way we were going to see everything. But before we ventured out we thought we’d better rest our eyes.
Two hours later, about 4pm, we decided to find a little “smackerel” of something. We had to explore the church first, of course. The Basilique is dedicated to perpetual adoration, where Jesus in the consecrated host is visible for adoration. There is an enormous, mosaic of Jesus on the back wall of the apse, under the main dome, with his arms outstretched facing the suspended monstrance and embracing the congregation.
The nuns sing the hours in the choir located just below him to the accompaniment of a dulcimer. Unlike most Gregorian chant these nuns sing in parts and the harmonies are haunting. When you sing the hours you try to sing only loudly enough to be heard by the person on either side of you. Louder than that and you are too loud. And yet, the sweet voices of the sixteen sisters filled that enormous space. If we had moved the chairs we could have set up goal posts and played a game of football, but you would play by candlelight. The votive candles lit by pilgrims were stacked on rows and rows of candle stands. The soft glow was warm and inviting.
Out behind the church we found a creperie and had our first Nutella-filled crepe. Nutella is a peanut-butter-like confection made from chocolate and hazel nuts. We also had a “baguette au jambon et fromage”—ham and cheese. We walked around trading crepes back and forth. Whoever had the ham and cheese was also wiped Nutella off the other one’s kisser.
I’ve never been to Disneyland, but I suspect that they try to capture in plastic what Montmartre embodies in cobblestones and brick and mortar. There were strolling portraiteurs, street musicians including the essential accordion player playing “dos de val e dad” for pennies. We passed museums but our rubber legs weren’t up to any more stairs so we just circled the mountain-top. We rested in a lovely little park looking out over an iron railing down 30 or 40 feet into the backyard of a little pensione where three groups of elderly men and women were playing spirited games of bocce ball (boules) on a dirt court. It’s akin to bowling but the object is to get your 4-pound ball closer to a little golf ball than your opponents. Knocking their ball away produces a wonderful cacophony of French insults.
I suspect that the main difference between Montmartre and Disneyland is the smell. Montmartre smells like New Orleans’ French quarter at Mardi Gras. Maybe it’s a French thing? Your typical men in both cities make casual water against walls, and you must always navigate the ever-present dog-poo on the sidewalks. There are, of course, pay toilets, but why in the world would you need one as long as there are perfectly good wizzing walls?
In an hour or so we headed back to Ephrem for supper. It came with the room. I certainly wouldn’t have ordered it otherwise. It consisted chiefly of some sort of leek-filled ham roll and a watery soup made out of thin grass-like threads. But we had a nice bottle of wine and that helps anything go down more smoothly. And we had an interesting conversation with Padre Allesandro, and a taciturn Frenchman whose name I never learned. Padre Allesandro was from Ravenna and led a charismatic/Pentecostal-style parish, though it is hard to picture him jumping with Holy Fire. He was thin and good looking, with brown hair. Probably 5’9”. He reminded me more of a young lawyer than a fire-breathing Holy-Ghost-filled evangelist. “But I’m not crazy,” he assured us.
After supper we walked back down the hill to the Abbesses Metro stop. We stood and watched a juggler entertain the crowd ebbing and flowing through the famous art-deco wrought-iron entrance. Across the tree filled park there was an Internet-Access shop where you could rent a computer for 30 minutes for 50 cents, euro. We got an email from Amy that her third ultrasound confirmed that she and Judge were going to have a little boy! They didn’t have a name picked out yet. We left the shop walking on a cloud and strolled along the Parisian streets until we found a charming corner café. We took a table in the back under a nineteenth-century mahogany-framed mirror. There we toasted Amy, Judge, and the newest twig on our family tree with French champagne in a French café in Paris. Someday we’ll have to bring little “whatsisname” here to see it for himself.
The stream of pedestrians on the sidewalk was incessant but there was one little girl oblivious to them. She must have been 9 or 10 and she was dancing on the sidewalk to the beat of her own interior rhythm section. Her dance partner was a 3-foot tall steel pipe buried in concrete to provide a barrier from any car so ill-mannered as to try to usurp the sidewalk Round and round, swaying to and fro; dipping and bobbing, her honey-colored hair swinging in time to that different drummer. And then her father, mother, and little brother materialized from somewhere to collect her. The father seemed slightly exasperated but placed his hand protectively on her back to steer her, dancing, through the Parisian traffic.
Friday morning, September 5, 2008
We got up early for Mass and the early hours. I decided to really try, on this trip, to use what little French I have. No fear. We sat behind Alice, a student from Dijon, but now in international banking in Paris, and then ate breakfast with her as well. She comes to stay at the guesthouse, she says, when she needs to recharge her batteries.
We caught the train for St Denis, and walked past St. Oest but couldn’t get in. It was locked. The little town of St Denis now looks like a village in Morocco or Algiers. The women in caftans and scarves, the men in skull-caps, and the children in multi-colored soccer shirts. I know there was a time when colonialism seemed like a good idea—and maybe it was, but it’s awfully hard to say which culture has been changed more—the colonizer or the colonized? Colonizing the mid-east and North Africa has led to undercutting traditional French culture “back home.” But then, of course, the French Revolution may have played some small part in the decline as well.
The Basilique St. Denis, was the traditional place where the coronation and burial of France’s kings and queens took place. The stained glass was being refurbished—at least some of it—though there was still plenty to admire, especially the small windows in the crypt and the large window near the tomb of Marie Antoinette. Speaking of Marie and her royal relatives, they were in various states of dishabille. King Henry II and Catherine De Medici were both completely nude.
Looks like they gave up the illusion of semi-divinity at the end. Kind of a nice touch of humility, I guess, or maybe the ribald humor of their descendents? But poor Marie. It’s bad enough to lose your head but then to have a nude statue on your tomb. And it was obvious from the dirt and grime that her breasts were receiving a good bit of unwanted attention from the rabble taking liberties with her person. If she weren’t dead already I’m sure the chagrin would have killed her.
We took a bus to Epiney-sur-Seine. I wanted to see the banks of the Seine, where so many of the Impressionists had painted landscapes. It didn’t disappoint.
We walked an old towpath for a mile or so past gracefully bowing willows who murmured their quiet secrets to the clear brown water. From time to time there were small alleys leading to the village. We turned at one to find some bread and cheese. Then we sat on a bench in the middle of a little traffic island for an intimate picnic. We were just drinking in the ambience, shielded by beautiful swaying pampas grass when a toothless old man accosted us: “Oh great,” I thought, “homeless Frenchmen.” How do you say “Buzz-off Bud?” in French?
(to be continued)
Last edited: