Where yesterday's walk north of the Seine had been a stroll amidst the classics of Parisian monuments, today we would take in the other side of the river, where the heroes and giants of the time hadn't been afraid to get a little dirt beneath their fingernails.
But first breakfast was in order, and what better than bread and chocolate and a cup of frothy caffeine taken upon the sidewalk? The nearest cafe was the oddly named Cafe Winston, after Churchill of course, but I couldn't help think of 1984, as Orwell too had spent time in this city, and had penned one of my favorite books about it. It was we who did the watching however, not Big Brother, as the passersby on their way to work offered endless entertainment.
Closer to the river, we forewent for a moment the sound and sights of the city by ducking into the Paroisse Saint-Pierre de Caillot, a hulk of a building that was as monolithic as the Arc de Triomphe just up the street. This was church as fortress, a square squat edifice originally built in the 11th Century, but redesigned in the 1930's. It quickly became my favorite church in Paris as it was completely without pretense, free from spikes and towers and gargoyles, though those too have their charm. I suppose I liked it because its minimalism could almost be Buddhist.
A short walk away was the river, and La Flamme de la Liberté, modeled upon the Statue of Liberty's torch. At its base lay a number of flowers to Lady Diana, killed as she was in the tunnel beneath nineteen years before.
Crossing the river now, Eiffel's creation rising sharply to our right. The left bank of the Seine was as noisy, as hurried as the right. We tried to ignore it, hugging the shore of the river as we went, but like yesterday, we never seemed free of the roar of cars, and what seemed the near incessant scream of sirens. The latter was a constant for the three days we were there. Despite its reputation as the apotheosis of Western culture, Paris is almost Asian in its chaos. The hordes of people with their hard closed faces, throwing accusative glares your way as if deciding what part you play in the whole melee of aggressively pushing along the crowded streets, constantly on their mobile phones, constantly arguing. Motorbikes raced through and around the stand-still traffic, and on the sidewalks, very large men patrolled with very large weapons.
The traffic was horrendous, the flow of the streets poorly planned. It was with great relief that we escaped into the Musee d'Orsay. I loved how it maintained its look of old railway station, albeit one quite short. How pleasant it was to walk where the rails had once been, overlooked by the statues of marble and bronze. I liked too how it picked up where the Louvre left off chronologically (and the Pompidou Center likewise picks up the story from there). Unlike that more visited museum across the river, the d'Orsay had a steady even tone to her collection, rather than wing after wing of overlooked works, followed by the sudden crescendo of a Mona Lisa or Venus de Milo. More friendly too was the scale, which lessened the possibility of burnout. (My trip to the Louvre a decade ago made more understandable Godard's famous scene shot there, and I found myself constantly looking out the tall and plentiful windows, wishing to just get on with it and return to the snow-covered streets outside.)
Ironically, it was nature brought indoors that I appreciated most today. The big names of Impressionism wowed me, as I knew they would, but what I took away from the museum was a newfound appreciation for Sisley and his landscapes. As a writer I've always envied painters their ability to capture light, as it is something that can't be done well with words. And Sisley presented light perfectly. Scanning my eyes across the far wall, I found myself surprised that there were so many shades of blue.
Sadly that blue wasn't with us outdoors as well. Clouds and rain had been a persistent travel companion from prehistoric UK, down the Rhine from Amsterdam to Basel, and now again in Paris. I was beginning to learn it was quite a wet city, a fact I recalled from films and paintings where the light glared off the city's slick streets.
After a quick visit to the Beat Hotel and its old photos and ghosts of tobacco past we decided to reward our other senses with a meal. Hemingway took his initial immoveable feast at a good cafe on the Place Saint-Michel and we did the same, though I've already forgotten its name. We left the bustle of the plaza for the uphill climb past the old Roman baths, past the more Greek looking Pantheon and Clovis' ancient Saint-Étienne-du-Mont. Here began the Sorbonne, and further on, the quiet, somewhat run down neighborhood where Hemingway had cut his teeth as a writer.
It was a shift downhill from here, then a quick diversion across the islands to Notre Dame. I'd been of course, and the long queue turned me off, so I carried on back across the Seine over its oldest bridge, Henri IV's ironically named "Pont Neuf." Not far from here was the famed Shakespeare & Co. bookstore (or at least an homage to Sylvia Beach's original), which I had made a priority on this visit. Unfortunately I had made an appointment which I now needed to rush to keep. What I remembered from 2005 as a slow pleasant meander through snowy streets was now a dash in the steady rain.
I arrived at Cafe Deux Magots a bit late. Richard Dindo, a well-know Swiss documentary filmmaker, was waiting at what had been Hemingway's favorite table. A fifty year resident of the Left Bank, he told me a number of tales about his life and history here. It was a easy relaxed conversation, where we discussed French filmmakers and Japanese poets.
The day was growing late so we did what the economically-minded Hemingway rarely did: catch a taxi. It was a mad ride, the stresses of which dissipated with the magic-hour views from the rooftop of our Hotel Raphael.
There was one more stop for the day. During my last visit to France in March I read Colette's classic, "Gigi," and upon returning to Japan, had watched the film with my musical-crazed daughter. The most memorable scenes had taken place in Maxim's. Pleasantly surprised that it still existed, we decided that we needed to visit. Walking through the door was very literally a time-warp to the Belle Epoque, where waiters in long coats offered a level of service rarely seen anymore. Amidst a very red interior of mirror and velvet, we sat beside what later in the night would become a dance floor, and from somewhere behind the darkness of the stage a woman began a chanson croon.
There was yet another day, with drinks at the Buddha Bar (in the darkened basement of Hemingway's Crillion Hotel), a side trip to a tourist infested Versailles, and an oasis of quiet found within the Rodin Museum and garden. But by then we were growing a little tired of Paris and its roar. (Though we agreed that we'd like to come back a spend at least a week next time, to mop up the final sites as it were, to take in the lesser visited crumbs.) For now we would set the plate aside. Going beyond the metaphor, we were in fact quite looking forward to time spent in the south, to the quiet meals we'd have there. Though Paris does deserve its food reputation and its constellation of Michelin stars, the feasts were always a little too bombastic (a criticism that could equally be leveled at Saint-Tropez). Even with my limited time here, I was quickly beginning to realize that the best meals in France could be found in its villages, of a renown that went little further than its confines. To quote LYL, why go out for a meal that is inferior to one that you can make yourself? And there would be plenty of those too.
So we left Paris with a simple breakfast of croissant and cafe, taken at Gare de Lyon's Le Train Bleu, where we awaited our own. It took us south, over hills rolling long and green, eventually beginning to shorten into a softer, cafe au lait brown populated with short trees and sheep. These shortened ever still into higher rocky spires, then fell away completely with the sea.
On the turntable: Bill Withers, "Best of Bill Withers"
