The Most Interesting this I did this year (2014)

If you have Alan Parson's I Robot album you've seen this.

I guess the most interesting thing I did this year was visit Paris in April.  I’d always heard there was this city there in France and by god it turned out to be true, when I got on a plane and flew out there.  A little over 8 hours strapped into your tiny coach seat on a United Airlines flight from Chicago and you are at Charles de Gaulle-Roissy airport.  The French did not hassle me much about getting into the country or leaving it, unlike the customs at O’Hare. 

Anyway it is a real country with all these people speaking a language other than English.  A lot of French people were on holiday over what turned out to be Easter holiday and this complicated my plans to visit museums and all.  I thought that over

The Musee d'Orsay used to be a train station

Easter the Louvre and the Musee d’Orsay would be closed and unfortunately even if they translate their regs into English you still need some kind of interpreter.  So for example I discovered rather too late that the Louvre, the biggest art museum in the world, was having an “exceptional opening” on Easter Sunday.  What this meant was that the museum was open on Easter Sunday whereas on a normal Sunday it would be closed.  

You could take this picture from inside the Musee d'Orsay

They allow you to take pictures in the Louvre and I did, and ended up visiting the museum twice.  They do not allow you to take pictures in the Musee d’Orsay, in fact, in the Musee d’Orsay they are incredibly anal about everything.  I had to wait about two hours in line before even gaining admission to the museum then when admitted they strictly forbade picture taking.  I did end up taking pictures of non-art and the inside of the giant clock on the top floor, but no art.    While waiting in line there was this Indian fellow who served as kind of the line Nazi who yelled at people to get off walls and other stuff.  That’s what he did all day.  When I left several hours later, he was still yelling at people to get off certain things people naturally wanted to sit on while waiting to get into the museum. 

The Louvre however was okay with photography and in fact didn’t blink when I brought in three cameras,

This painting is humongous.

all hanging around my neck.  I went to see the Mona Lisa which is really a small painting, perhaps 2 feet by 3 feet behind a glass barrier and with maybe 200 onlookers in front of it. 

La Joconde as it is called by the French

I didn’t have the patience to get really close to it, and photographed it from an angle.  On the wall opposite was Veronese’s “the Wedding at Cana” which is a truly enormous work of art.  I think it was something that Napoleon ripped off when he was in Italy.  I am mystified how one could get a painting like that into the museum without some kind of divine intervention.  It was I think about 20 feet by 50 feet.  It was very hard to get an unobstructed view of the painting simply because other people kept posing in front of it.  I got tired of waiting for them to leave and starting taking pictures with them in them.

There are of course signature works that the Louvre is known for, and the Mona Lisa is one of those. 

Others are the Venus de Milo and the Winged Victory.  The winged victory and the whole gallery of the museum where it was located was under renovation however so I may never get to see that one.  The Winged Victory was in poor condition as it lacks a head and of course the Venus de Milo is minus a couple of arms. 

Another day I went out to the Palace at Versailles,  which was where Louis the XIV, the sun king had his stately pleasure dome.  It is quite a palace.  I took a train ride out there to see it, and there is a short walk from the station to get to the palace proper. Then there was a long wait in a serpentine line that stretched back and forth in the massive cobblestone courtyard area.

The Hall of Mirrors

   I saw the inside of the palace and the hall of mirrors, the royal bedrooms, etc.  the place is decorated with angels and naked women and cherubim and lions and other things standing on the brink of the rooftops,  there are paintings on the ceilings, faces emerging from the tops of doorways,  etc.  The gates were gilded.  In short the place was decorated to within an inch of its life. 

Maintaining and restoring it must have been an enormous project, but fortunately American philanthropists have come to its rescue, if not Republican France. 

   After that there were the gardens, the many statues lining the paths of the gardens,  the huge canals where holiday goers could rent boats and row themselves around with their girlfriends, their family, or in one case their dog. 

Some had their girlfriends rowing for them.   They have a lot of topiary at Versailles, and fountains, and hidden among the trees and flowers, classical baroque music playing everywhere.  It goes on for miles.  I never did walk entirely around the canal,  I only got as far as the middle of it. 

On another day I walked from the Gare Du Nord, where my hotel was located over to Cimitiere Pere Lachaise.  The cemetery is enormous, and really unlike anything I had seen in America or even in London.

  Maybe the closest approximation might be the cemeteries of New Orleans.  Once at the cemetery I bought a map of the cemetery which has mapped out all the famous people buried there.  It is a long, long list, and I can’t say I found all the ones I was looking for, although, I found quite a few, as well as some I wasn’t looking for.  Many of course I didn’t even recognize.  I have to say that the ingenuity of grave decoration in the old world far surpasses anything I’ve seen in the new.  Many sculptures, busts, angels, photographs, relics, rusting crosses, etc.  There was a crematorium off to one side of the cemetery, which levels out and forms a grid on the eastern side, whereas the cemetery on the western side is very hilly, with hillsides festooned with graves.  There is hardly any grass to cut, and only the necessary maintenance might be to pull some weeds or volunteer trees on the premises.    I found the graves of Marcel Proust, Jim Morrison, Chopin, Oscar Wilde, Eugene Delacroix, and Honore Balzac. 

I also visited Notre Dame, which is a beautiful cathedral and waited a couple of hours in line in order to visit the Gargoyles in the towers. 

Gargoyle contemplating Paris

The reason it took so long is pretty clear once you got up there.  You had to walk up a very long and very narrow spiral staircase up and descend an equally narrow and long spiral staircase down.  The number and variety of them is astonishing, the view of the plaza in front of the cathedral is breathtaking.  Not sure what the purpose of gargoyles is, perhaps to keep evil spirits away. 

Other things I visited were the Eifel Tower and the Arc de Triomphe.  I only went to the second level halfway up the tower.  Naturally there were huge lines but they moved pretty fast and other than the presence of soldiers with automatic weapons and being told that I had to drink my cans of diet coke before going up, it seemed normal.  

There seemed to be a lot of French visiting the tower that day, based on the languages used.  Of course there were also American and British tourists there.   The most useful bits of Frenc

h in all the time I was there was "Parlez vous Ingles?” and “Ou est la Toilette?”

Speaking of Toilettes the automatic ones I saw in a couple of places around Paris were an interesting technological advance on old pissoir, which I did not see anywhere in Paris.  These inventions go through an elaborate cleaning cycle after each use, which takes about two minutes between uses.  I had to wait about half an hour to use the one near Notre Dame.    Fortunately French brasseries keep their toilets downstairs in the front of the restaurant instead of in back.   If you have to go you have to go, I say.  Rick Steves recommends just inviting yourself in and using them.   Better to use them first and apologise for your bodily functions afterwards.  I told the proprietor “Merci” and went forth. 

The only bad thing that happened to me during the whole trip was that I had my wallet lifted by a pickpocket as I was entering a train to go back to the airport.

Fun times at the Gare du Nord

  Voila!  He thus got almost all my money, my credit cards, my driver’s license, and I was left standing there on the train while he beat a retreat back to the platform while the train moved out.   Thank God he didn’t get my passport otherwise I would still be over there.  I had about 8 euros in my pocket in change therefore when I flew back to America.  He also got my train ticket which I needed to exit the station.  Fortunately on arriving at CDG-Roissy airport I got the attendant at the other end to let me leave the station without it. 

I made my plane and I didn’t need much money on my way back to Chicago anyway, but it certainly put me in a black mood for much of the trip back.  My seat mate was someone I took for a British national and I said something unwise to him, saying somewhat bitterly that  “I’ll be glad to be back to a land where they speak English”.  He then informed me in English that he was French and studiously ignored me, speaking French with someone across the aisle.  At this I glared at him, which apparently made him so uncomfortable that he moved to another seat. 

The unexpected benefit of this turn of events  was that I had two seats to occupy on my way back as I gloomily reflected on all the stuff the thief would buy with my credit cards in the 9 or so hours it would take for me to get back to Chicago.   I did not enjoy my trip back very much as a result.

 I contemplated bleakly the possible consequences.  I was unable to cancel my credit card until I was back in Chicago 9 hours later.   When I picked up my car I apologised to the driver  for not having any cash to give him, so I gave him a 2 euro coin which delighted him, because he was a coin collector.