Month: March 2001

Two great things to do in Paris

Of course I mean eating and walking. If I weren’t here by myself, there would be at least one other thing to add to the list, but I am, more’s the pity — c’est la vie.

Last night, after buttoning up the computer, I realized I was slightly hungry, so I left my hotel, turned left down the Boulevard Haussmann and continued on as it turned into Boulevard Montmartre, eventually deciding to turn around just before reaching Place de la République. I spotted a creperie and got a crepe with marmalade to go, then took the Metro back to the hotel. One of the things I really enjoy about Paris is being able to take a nice walk and have a nice snack at 11pm — or even later, if I only had the energy.

This morning dawned early, and only slightly wet. The Louvre and Musee de Orsay had been closed yesterday due to a strike, and no one knew if they’d be open today (the hotel called and got no answer, but they weren’t sure if it was because of the strike, the time change, or both). I didn’t want to waste my only full free day hoping to find an open museum, so I decided to see if I could make the Paris Walks tour of Montmartre that the Mercury News had so kindly written about last Sunday. The article had omitted small details, like the time of the tour, but they gave the phone number (+33 1 48 09 21 40). The person who answered the phone didn’t bother saying “bonjour” — their clientele speaks English, and so do they. As it happened, I had about a half-hour before the tour, so I dashed to the Metro and made it to the Abbesses stop with ten minutes to spare.

Our guide, Iris, came from the Bronx and had been in Paris for about three years, with no plans to leave. She took us on a two-hour walk through Montmartre, mostly up! Unfortunately, it was cold and raining the entire time (and I’d forgotten to bring my sweater), so I wasn’t able to take as many pictures as I’d’ve liked to (those of you reading this page on a dial-up connection may be grateful).

We started by talking about the history of the district (even though there are churches in the area dating to the 12th Century, Montmartre wasn’t annexed to Paris until about 1860), then walked along Rue des Abbesses, where we stopped near the house where Van Gogh lived with his brother. I couldn’t get a picture of that house, but one of his neighbors was Toulouse Lautrec, who worked in a house about two blocks away (Lautrec’s house is the one behind the traffic light, with the “D”-shaped top window and the very large window beneath that):

lautrec house: The house where Toulouse Lautrec worked is the one with the big picture window one floor down and the 'D' on the top floor.

We continued on our way towards Sacre-Coeur, with many stops along the way; at one, Iris told us the story behind this picture:

through walls:

The statue, at Place Marcel Aymé, is based on a story by Marcel Aymé about a mild-mannered man who discovers that he can walk through walls. Eventually, he builds a life of crime on this talent, uses it to escape from prison, finds a lover whose husband locks her in a room with no windows every night (no problem for this guy!), but then loses his power while leaving her one night.

sacre-coeur:

Our tour ended at Sacre-Coeur; most of the way, we’d been by ourselves, but here we returned to Tourist Paris, loaded with postcard vendors and overpriced restaurants. The view was good, but I bet it’s spectacular on a clear day.

paris from sacre-coeur:

The Mercury News article recommended spending the rest of the day wandering around Montmartre on your own, and even suggested a few cafés to try, but I was cold and wanted to go back to the hotel.

Once there, I grabbed my sweater and set out again; after a quick lunch (how un-Parisian of me!), I joined my second Paris Walks tour of the day, this one through the Marais.

The Marais is one of the oldest sections of Paris; the name means “swamp”, but it’s been drained for centuries. And it’s the heart of Paris’s Jewish community.

synagogue de Rue Pavee:

This is the Synagogue de Rue Pavee (this was the first paved street in the Marais, hence the name). It was built in 1913 to handle the influx of Polish Jews fleeing the pogroms; after World War II, the congregation was replentished with Sephardic Jews from the former French colonies in North Africa.

by Guimard:

Hector Guimard was the architect; he is probably more famous for having been the man who designed many of the original Metro stations.

parce que nes Juifs:

During World War II, the Nazis attempted to exterminate the Jews in the territory they controlled, and the Vichy government, which controlled Paris, cooperated in that attempt. This plaque is on the wall of the Ecole des Travail, in memory of the director, staff, and students of the school, all of whom were sent to Auschwitz where they were killed.

fallafel:

But, though the Nazis killed six million Jews, they failed to exterminate us, and there is now a large, vibrant Jewish community in Paris. Falafel and shwarma probably weren’t common before the war, but they are now, and seeing this shop gave me a pretty good idea of what I was going to have for dinner (though I wound up eating across the street at L’As du Fallafel).

goldenberg:

There are Kosher (err…Cacher) restaurants representing many cuisines in the area; I saw sushi, pizza, and steak, to name but three. And, of course, there’s New York style deli; this restaurant, Jo Goldenberg’s, isn’t actually Kosher, but it’s noteworthy because it was the site of a bombing in the 1980s. You can see a memorial to the victims, including newspaper articles about the bombing, on the rightmost portion of the left-hand wall, just to the left of the center of the picture.

hotel des sorbes:

There’s more to the Marais than the Jewish community, and we continued onward to look at some of the old mansions which have survived (many have had their courtyards filled in and been converted to apartments, stores, and the like). The Hotel des Sorbes (I may have misspelled that) is now part of the National Archives; it was owned by one of Louis XIV’s official mistresses.

louis xiv:

Only one statue of Louis XIV survived the French Revolution; it’s now in the Museum of the City of Paris.

Our tour ended at the Place de Vosges, a huge square dating back to Henri II (or before). I took pictures, but they don’t do it justice.

If you’re going to be in Paris, I highly recommend Paris Walks; they offer many more tours than the two I took, and I wish I could take some more on this trip.

After the tour, I visited some of the Judaica shops (I saw more Judaica in the Marais than I did on my trip to Israel last week; of course, I also spent more time touring this afternoon than I did during my entire trip to Israel) and picked up a Matzah platter (inscribed in Hebrew, of course) and had dinner. I tried to visit the Jewish Museum, but there were only 15 minutes before closing and they wouldn’t let me in, so I went back to my hotel.

Daylight Savings Time started here this morning, and it felt too early to give up and do e-mail, so I decided to do one traditional tourist thing and visit the Eiffel Tower.

The last time I was here, the front of the tower was adorned with a giant countdown to the year 2000; fortunately, that particular problem is behind us, and I was curious to see what the tower looked like without the timer, so I took the Metro to the Trocadero to take advantage of the view of the tower from across the Seine:

eiffel tower:

But some unsung genius, probably in the city government, decided that the Eiffel Tower wasn’t beautiful enough as it was. So they affixed a bunch of strobe lights which started flashing on and off in random patterns shortly before 8pm, like this:

eiffel tower with sparkles:

No one asked me, but I don’t think the tower needed improving — and they didn’t succeed, either.

I didn’t come to Paris to play tourist; I’m here for two days of internal IBM meetings out at La Defense. I’d like to blow them off and tour some more, but I’d probably be found out (hi, boss!), but I hope to do a little sightseeing in the evenings after the meetings end. If I can stay awake, that is — we’re starting awfully early, and I have a feeling the room is going to be hot, stuffy, and full. At least it’ll be a non-smoking hot, stuffy, and full room.

Though I have to admit, I’ve been pleasantly surprised by how well Parisians honor no-smoking signs. Why, I haven’t seen anyone smoking within nearly a foot of any of the signs I’ve seen!

And on that note, it’s time for bed…or maybe to go out for a snack. It’s only 11pm, so the evening’s still young!

Paris in the rain


paris in the the spring:

When I was a kid, our elementary school library had a book of puzzles, one of which is pictured above. The book claimed that if you look quickly at the picture, you’ll read it as “Paris in the spring” — if you did, take a closer look (and let me know that it worked!).

Well, it’s spring, and I’m in Paris — but the weather is not the stuff of legend — or maybe it is, but not the kind of legend I like telling.

My flight to Charles de Gaulle airport left late and arrived late (like almost every flight I take these days, now that I think of it), but was basically pleasant — even though we were only in the air for 40 minutes, they managed to feed us our choice of sandwiches, unlike US airlines, which have given up on food for flights of under 2 hours or flights which don’t take off or land when they think people should be hungry. The delay was due to weather, which should have made me think — but it didn’t, so I decided to save the company some money and take the RoissyBus into town (48 francs, about $7, instead of 250-300 francs for a taxi); I knew my hotel was only a few hundred meters from the end of the bus ride and I didn’t expect to have any trouble finding it.

And finding the hotel was easy, and it was only a ten-minute walk — but by the time I got there, I was drenched, because a weather system caught up with us, and it was pouring down rain. I managed to register (it’s not easy when you can’t read the form because your glasses are wet, and when you drip all over the form when you try to sign it) and went up to the room to dry off. A few minutes later, I felt far better, and the rain had stopped, so I went out to look around and have a bite of lunch (the sandwich on the plane wasn’t very filling, but it was better than peanuts). I also splurged and spent 35 francs ($5) on an umbrella, since the day was rather gloomy.

It was late enough in the day by this point that I didn’t think it was worth going to any museums, but I definitely wanted to be out rather than spending the afternoon in my hotel room, so I decided to do a favor for a friend and take a picture of the hotel he’ll be staying at in June, the Hotel de Trois Colleges near the Pantheon. Actually, I took six pictures, but I won’t post any of them here — but I did take a picture of the Pantheon as long as I was in the neighborhood.

pantheon:

Ever since my first trip to Paris, a few years ago, I’ve liked wandering around the city — it’s just a wonderful city to walk through. Everywhere you turn, there’s another typically Parisian scene, like this one on the Rue Lagrange (in the 6th, just a few blocks from Notre Dame).

rue lagrange:

By this time, it was drizzling again — which seems to have been very typical this year. The Seine is very wide and high (not to mention brown and fast-flowing); it’s so full, in fact, that there’s no sidewalk by the sightseeing boats.

sunken sidewalk:

And at other places, you can see that the river has taken out the paths which are normally a pleasant place to walk.

flooded seine:

Buildings near the river’s edge are in trouble, too.

flooded seine 2:

I wanted to visit the Musee de la Deportation, which commemorates the Jews (and others) who were sent from France to concentration camps, mostly to be killed by the Nazis. The museum is just across the street from Notre Dame, descending from street level down to river level, but the flooding meant that it was off limits.

musee de la deportation:

By this time, I was just across from Ile St. Louis, which houses one of the best ice cream makers in the world, Bertillion; I wanted to eat before having my ice cream, so I set off in search of a restaurant (not a difficult task in Paris!). I intended to follow Tim Bray’s rule — find a busy restaurant on a busy corner and the odds are with you — but I didn’t see anything I wanted to eat at the first few places, so I kept walking. And then the rain started. My umbrella kept me dry, or so I thought — but then the wind blew my pants up against my legs and I realized that I was soaked from the knees down. So I dashed into the next restaurant I saw and got the last table in the place.

The food was good, and they happened to sell Bertillion ice cream and sorbet, so I was happy and well-filled by the time the rain diminished enough to leave. I walked to the nearest Metro station and hopped a train towards my hotel. But I got off a stop too early and wandered around some more, first through Galleries Lafayette (entering that store 15 minutes before closing is a frustrating experience, but I guess it saved me money!), and then somewhat randomly around the area. In the process, I found an area with many kosher restaurants, but, of course, they were closed because it was still Shabbat. After a while, though, I decided I was ready to go back to the hotel and take off my wet clothes, so I took out my GPS and discovered that it’s very hard to see view of enough of the sky in Paris to get a position — but eventually, I figured out what direction I had to go in to find my hotel, and here I am.

I haven’t had the courage to check the weather forecast for tomorrow. Whatever it is, I’ll be out in it!

Foot-and-Mouth

On Thursday, I wrote about how Israelis didn’t seem to be letting the “situation” affect their lives too much and wondered how that reaction compared to what foot-and-mouth was doing to the English. I’d have to say that foot-and-mouth is having a much more significant effect — for example, the road into IBM had straw on it — straw with antibiotics, to kill any germs that might be on tires on cars driving in and out of the property (IBM Hursley is in a rural area). And there was a scare a week ago, where it looked as though foot-and-mouth had been detected nearby; if that had happened, no one would have been allowed in or out of the area, and IBM Hursley might have had to close down for a while.

There were also ads in the newspaper and on the radio telling people that the countryside was not completely closed for visiting, and giving a phone number to call for details — but many activities have been cancelled.

At the airport, every shop selling food had a sign informing customers that it was now illegal to take milk, meat, milk products, or meat products out of the country (even to eat on one’s flight), and that some countries (including the US) were banning the import of British milk chocolate.

In France, there were a few signs asking people who’d been on a farm to report to Customs to have their shoes disinfected and to stay off of farms in France, but there wasn’t any strong effort made to check, or even to make sure that incoming passengers read the signs — certainly, the person who glanced at my passport didn’t say anything to me (literally! Nor did he stamp my passport, but that’s fine; I already have a French stamp and I’m running out of room anyway), and I doubt I was alone in being ignored.

But when I looked at the 8pm French news, I could tell that foot-and-mouth was the lead story here, too. I just couldn’t tell if they were talking about the outbreak in England or cases on the Continent.