Death, Ascension, Heaven, and Hell

Quite the theme for this post, eh?  It really is pretty appropriate, though, since we visited all four by dinner.  The Catacombs, Montmartre, the Sacre Coeur, and Pigalle - the respective synonyms for these Parisian staples fit rather well.  As I mentioned before, I'd never visited the first three, so it was an exciting day.





Death.  The Catacombs of Paris, quite literally, are full of it.  The sign at the entrance warns you: Arrête: C'est ici l'empire de la mort - "Stop: Here is the empire of the dead."  Kind of a grave greeting (pun intended), isn't it?  The catacombs are part of the caves and tunnels carved out of the rock underneath Paris' streets, the only part open to the public.  The rest of the tunnels are shrouded in legend and myth, closed off to the casual visitor yet spanning 280 kilometers in reach.  My favorite story involves police stumbling upon a secret cavern and the eery circumstances of it all.  I mean, it's straight out of a novel or a movie.  The old entrance to the city was right around the current entrance to the tourist site, and it was given the name Hell's Gate.

As for us, halfway through the tunnel we passed under the sign that warned us of our entrance into the actual ossuary, and that's where things got interesting.  Six million people rest there, and you see a lot of them.  Bones upon skulls upon more bones are stacked on each side of the path, often elaborately fit together so that they could fit as many as possible.  Memorials are interspersed throughout and you can touch as many as you want... or none at all, of course (the memorial in the photo above translates to "Come, people of the world, come into these silent abodes and your tranquil soul will be struck by the voice that rises from within.  It's here that the greatest of schoolmasters, the Tomb, holds its school of truth.").  Even in a place so overwhelmed with death and generally-accepted scenes of repulsion, it was actually really peaceful.  I wasn't sure how I'd feel walking through, but I felt much the same as I would in any of the Parisian cathedrals - calm, respectful, in awe, and not at all revolted by any of it.

Ascension.  I was feeling renewed, ready to climb back to the surface and keep climbing up to Montmartre.  Taking one of the longest metro rides possible while still remaining inside the city itself (20 stops on the same line!), we emerged in Montmartre.  The artist's nirvana, it's a village within a metropolis, known for cultivating the talents of Van Gogh, Picasso, Monet, Salvador Dali, Matisse, Toulouse-Lautrec - even Langston Hughes, believe it or not.  Lunch at a nice, if slightly overpriced, bistro felt like Paris in pure form, and I definitely needed a beer after all of the walking we'd done so far.  However, there was still more to be done, and at a steeper clip.  We climbed at least 100 stairs, which look like a 'roided-up version of the stairs from The Exorcist down which the priest gets thrown to his doom, to reach the Sacre Coeur, the highest point in all of Paris.



Paris, from the Sacre Coeur

Heaven.  Well, sort of.  You could see from one end of the city to the other, with familiar glimpses of the Eiffel Tower, the Louvre, the spire of the Sainte-Chappelle, and the Centre Pompidou.  Inside, you are forbidden to talk above a whisper, and you can add it to the list of beautiful cathedrals in Paris.  The big Pope's hat on the hill is a favorite of school kids and couples during the day, and of gypsies and the homeless by night.  I really wish we'd known that we could have climbed up the dome, but we missed out because we had no idea.  Wish #2 from my imaginary Montmartre genie would be that I wish we had a better idea of Montmartre's layout, because we could've visited a few of the cooler places there on the way down from the Sacre Coeur, instead of just bypassing it on the way to Pigalle.  If we're going with the three wishes theme, my last wish would be to have a house in Montmartre, duh.

Hell.  Pigalle.  And I don't mean Pigalle is Hell in that it's a horrible, despicable place, but more so that it's a hub of debauchery and hedonism.  Visiting where I stayed for the first time in Paris, I felt much more comfortable during the day with a few companions than last time, at night by myself.  The sex shops, strip clubs, and brothels-in-disguise looked much less menacing than before.  We ignored the Asian "performer" outside who was playing innocent to try to lure people into their club, but some tourist had no idea what was going on and got sucked in.  Poor guy.  We confirmed that we couldn't afford a show at the Moulin Rouge (80 euros to get in, a lot more than that if you wanted dinner/champagne to with it), so we looked for a bar.

Going through all of the afterlife's various states was exhausting, so a pre-dinner nap was on tap (shocker).  And remember how I said you shouldn't go looking for a decent meal between rue Saint-Jacques and boulevard Saint-Michel?  Yeah, well, we pushed our luck and ended up on the losing side this time.  The food wasn't good, but at least the company was.  Bummed about our dinner misfortune, we turned in early, but drinking wine in the apartment wasn't a bad consolation by any means (and cheaper!).  The benefits of staying in an apartment just kept adding up!

It's possible to have too much of the Champs Elysées

March flowers in the Jardin des Tuileries

It's official, I'm jaded.  What else is better than strolling along one of the most famous streets in the world on a Parisian spring day?  Well, there's a whole list, and I'll go into greater detail in a later blog post, but if you're not shopping then the Champs Elysées is kind of pointless if you've already been there before.  Sometimes there are just way too many other things you can be doing that you feel like you're wasting precious time.  Don't get me wrong, I love the Arc de Triomphe and the history it stands for at the top of the hill, and I love the Grand Palais, Jardin de Tuileries, and l'Orangerie (still haven't been inside, but I want to!) at the Louvre end - but I can do without all of the in-between, unless I'm looking for something specific, like my France jersey, of course!

Before I start sounding like a grumpy old man (too late?), allow me to set this up.  Back when I was studying abroad, I lost my passport and had to go to the American embassy in Paris to get a new one.  The receptionist at my scruffy hotel in Pigalle told me to metro to the Arc de Triomphe and the embassy was right around there.  Wrong.  A thousand times wrong.  Getting off the metro at the Arc left me 2 km away from the embassy.  So, running short on time and having no idea how far I had to go, I ended up running halfway until I finally gave up and took a taxi the rest of the way in order to make my appointment on time.  It got worse from there, but the point is this: bad memories.  No, the Champs Elysées wasn't to blame, but it's all about guilt by association.

On top of that moment, though, it's just hard to get into the stores and cafés around the George V metro stop.  Overpriced and not very reminiscent of vieux Paris, it's just not my bag - I'd rather shop in the Marais, around Châtelet, or, if I had the money, at Place de la Vendôme.  I didn't have all of these thoughts until after the fact, of course, since I was too busy being Grumpy McGee.  I felt like we were wasting an afternoon, but it was my fault for waffling and not coming up with other suggestions.




La tour Eiffel

 The day started out great, though, with a nice metro out to the Eiffel Tower.  I hadn't yet ridden on an above-ground metro in Paris, so part of line 6 provided a welcome break from the underground metro-boulot-dodo (look it up) atmosphere.  It kind of reminded me of Chicago, riding above the street, breeze coming through open windows, green trees lining the sidewalks below.  We did the Eiffel Tower thing, which is always nice because the scenery (the Champ de Mars, Trocadéro, the Seine, etc.) really can make a twisted metal structure look pretty special.  We played the obligatory game of "Dodge the Overbearing Guys Selling Crappy Souvenirs" and ended up getting lunch on a street corner by the Seine.

Sailboats in the fountain, framed by the Musee d'Orsay

One lady even asked if I lived in the neighborhood and if I knew where such-and-such place was.  Stifling a desire to hug her, I shook my head no.  Désolé, mais merci beaucoup !  I'd done it, ladies and gentlemen - I'd finally been mistaken for a local Parisian!  My life's work was complete at that moment, and I could revel in the fact that I nailed my clothing choice, body language, and other comportments that day.  If I could remember how I did it, I'd tell you, but I probably just had a blackout moment and everything clicked.

Another pleasant metro ride took us to the Arc de Triomphe.  The serenity under the Arc is amazing considering the kamikaze driving situation going on around it on the Place Charles de Gaulle.  We even found some street performers that we had seen on our visit back in 2009 in the Latin Quarter, which was awesome!  They're 3 great dancers who always seem to attract big crowds, and I would bet that they pocket some good change for it.  But then came the trek past the countless stores and people (Haagen-Dazs ice cream helped!), and we were spent by the time we reached the Jardin des Tuileries.  At that point, I didn't care about the kids sailing boats in the dormant fountain or the flowers just starting to bloom.  I was exhausted, ready for a pre-dinner nap, and I wasn't the only one.

Our friend Chuck de Gaulle

Luck was on our side as, somehow, we found this great place for cheap in the Latin Quarter for dinner.  They say you shouldn't eat between rue Saint-Jacques and Boulevard Saint-Michel, and I wholeheartedly agree, but we found a place that worked out great.  Hors d'oeuvre, main plate, and dessert for 10 euros, and they were all good.  I don't advise doing this, because the success rate is slim in finding a solid place, but we got incredibly lucky.  We even found this place called The Great Canadian Pub along the river that was everything you'd imagine a stereotypical Canuck pub to be like - hockey and boat racing on TV, all wood interior, Labatt and such on tap - sounds pretty good there, eh?  A few brews there and we were ready to call it a night.

We were excited about the next day, especially me, when we'd visit the Catacombs, the Sacre Coeur, Montmartre, and Pigalle.  I'd never been to any of those places except Pigalle, and even that would be interesting to return to the site where I stayed 2 years ago.  I couldn't wait!

Allez les Bleus !



The goofy author

I woke up and it was game day - kind of like a Hokies gameday, but not - and I needed to equip myself with some FFF (Fédération Française de Football) swag.  We emerged from our quiet little residential oasis on rue des Ecoles, headed in the direction of the Champs Elysées, and more specifically, the Nike Paris store.  I really wish I had some more money to throw around, because the shirts and shoes in there are awesome, and some can't be found in the States.  My new France away jersey seriously depleted my spending money for the day, but it was totally worth it.  The team was only unveiling it later that night at the game, so I was one of the first to score one.  I guess I'm kind of like a girl in that sense, I want to do 2 things with fashion choices: (1) find something that no one else has, and/or (2) get there before everyone else, so I can wear it out before it gets overplayed.  Really though, can you blame me?  Besides, I pulled off both, which is what I like to call The Double Whammy... to answer your question, yes, sometimes I'm ridiculous.

We popped in and out of a few more stores before metro'ing back to the Châtelet area.  Strolling the rest of the way back to the Latin Quarter, crossing the Seine and l'Ile de la Cité, we settled for a croque monsieur, an omelette, and a few beers at a café near the Saint Michel metro stop, where our friends met us.  Feeling recharged after an afternoon nap, we were ready for the footy match.  I donned my new jersey and we hopped on the RER to the Stade de France.  They had some great-smelling street vendors right off the train and we scooped up a few merguez and french fries - and they were delicious.  To tell you the truth, the 4 of us blended in pretty well with the rest of the French fans at the food stations, and we stuffed our faces accordingly.



Le Stade de France

The atmosphere was festive, and it was an experience to just observe the French version of our football pregames.  On our way towards the stadium, the Croatian fan section passed by us - surrounded by a SWAT team escort.  I'm not sure whether they felt that the Croatians needed to be protected or contained, but guys fully clad in riot gear and automatic rifles were somehow deemed necessary.  We found our seats after a lot more walking, and, although we were in the upper deck, we were in the very first row, which gave us perfect views of the action.  We marveled at the teams warming up, the singing of La Marseillaise (their national anthem, in which they sing about killing "infidels" and French fields being watered with their blood - look it up, I'm not lying), and the introductions of each team.  Some of the best and most famous players in the world were playing in front of us, like going to an all-star game in the U.S.



Le stade de France, in its massive splendor

The game itself was pretty entertaining but, unfortunately, ended 0-0.  There was some exciting play and a few great chances, but no dice on goals.  It was the return of Patrice Evra and Franck Ribéry to the Stade de France, and they each got healthily booed - Evra for his World Cup captaincy failure and Ribéry for his World Cup failure along with the whole had-sex-with-an-underage-prostitute-besides-the-fact-that-he's-married thing.  That usually sours public opinion about someone.  The crowd warmed back up to him once they realized that he was the best player on the field that night, and he really did have some slick moves that spiced things up (still talking about soccer here).  During halftime, some French actor bombed his act.  I think it was supposed to be funny, but it really just sucked, frankly.  In the second half, the Croatians, answering my concerns in the previous paragraph, set off a flare in their section (their section was surrounded by a chain link fence) and threw 3 smaller flares onto the field near the corner flag.  Of course, the fans booed and whistled them, but that only made them even more enthusiastic.

After the game, we somehow bypassed a lot of the crowds and got on a train decently quickly to go back into the center of Paris.  We had a few brews at a pub around the corner and I made friends with the bartender at the expense of my English-speaking amis.  As the bar was about to close down, we were still hungry and we knew what time it was - it was kebab time.  It was about 1:30 am, so there really wasn't much of a choice, but if you ever read my old blog from my time abroad in France, you know I was in love with kebabs.  I was ready for another one, as were the rest of our group.  Loaded up on tomato, lettuce, ketchup, mystery kebab meat, pita bread, and french fries, we ambled back to the apartment, tired but completely satisfied that the night had unfolded well.  Sleep felt almost poetic, with the Parisian night sky filtering into the apartment through the 2 skylights.

But that's what Paris is all about, right?  It's the feeling and vibe you get from otherwise mundane activities, stopping and thinking about how it's all just... better.  Everyone feels differently about Paris, but here's how I think about it: imagine the times when you were stressing over exams, and when you finished your last exam each year, ready to go home to the beach for summer, you walked out of the class and let out an audible sigh that spread into a smile, or maybe even a surpressed yelp of joy - a realization that better times had arrived (however temporarily).  Paris makes me constantly feel like that split second of directionless emotion, where you're ready to let loose but you haven't even thought about where and when and with whom - when you just want to hang in that balance before responsibility hits you again.  It even makes me think about and write sappy paragraphs like these!

You know what, I knew I liked this place.

La belle Ville-Lumière