Paris: Day Two (part II)

After the tour my wife decided to hit the boutique. I had enough of Chanel, so I said, “Stay here on the Rue Cambon” as she disappeared inside. Then I moseyed back southward toward the Tuileries, toward the Metro stop we came out of. There was a book store I wanted to check out, but it turned out to be too corporate. I walked a block back and found a mysterious Church recessed at the intersection. I went inside.

It was comfortably, meditatively cool inside. Dark. I sat down and took in the atmosphere, took in the gold and the artwork and all the religious symbols I have grown to love. A sense of peace fell over me. An old man was a few pews in front, casually thumbing a bible in his lap. Across the church I spotted a Sacred Heart statute. I went there, prayed, and realized: all the signs in the church are Slavic. Or Polish. Odd.

Back outside I sat on the stone wall to the Church steps. A great way to spend time in Paris: sitting on masonry, watching the world walk by. I saw a young couple passionately embrace and kiss for several minutes on the sidewalk twenty yards away. Being Parisiens, they both had lit cigarettes they held away from each other while making contact. A Korean tourist family sat down next to me. A metrosexual on a bike stopped by, too. This easy mood lasted a good half-hour until a crazy man walked into the courtyard. Spotting pigeons, he immediately and angrily started dancing in front of them. Then he started talking, way too loud, to people who weren’t really there. Most of us on the steps drifted away, rather quickly.

Where was my wife? I wondered. I walked a block back up to the Chanel boutique, and there she was – visibly nervous, on the verge of becoming upset. “Do you know how upset I am?” she asked. Uh oh, loaded question. “I’ve been waiting here for 45 minutes! Where were you?” I told her of my movements the past three-quarters of an hour. “You said to stay right here!” she said, pointing at the step in fron of the boutique. “No,” I said, laughing, “I said ‘stay right here on the Rue Cambon.’” Needless to say, my laughing didn’t alleviate her anger / frustration / relief. She thought I’d gotten clipped by a bicyclist or something, and was en route to a French hospital, me who can only stutter, je ne comprand pas l’francaise …

It was around five-ish, and we were hot, sweaty, uncomfortable in our clothes after walking the past six hours or so in hot, sweaty, uncomfortable Paris. Well, I speak only of the weather. Unseasonably warm, at least ten degrees warmer than what we packed for, so we were always slightly overdressed. We headed back to the Rue Rivoli, where the Metro station and my book store were, turned right, and headed the couple of blocks west to the Crillon. My wife took a nap; then we both showered and changed into clothes more appropriate for dinner.

By six-thirty we were back in the Crillon’s large, marble-floored reception room, and my wife was working the concierges again. The concierges were working my wallet again. The plan was to eat something special near the Louvre, and then tour the grand museum. Thirty euros lighter, we left and walked back down the Rue Rivoli, and continued on east nearly half-a-mile past the Rue Cambon, the Tuileries to our right behind stone walls and iron fences, and scores of tourist gift shops to our left.

Our destination was the Marley Café, and it proved impossible to find. Its street address simply did not exist. Up and down we walked, on both sides of the Rue Rivoli, up and down side streets, searching in vain for this little bistro which held our dinner reservations. The wife asked several shopowners and rival maitre d’s and we were pointed in the direction of the Louvre. Well, actually the Louvre, a massive courtyard enclosed by three or four-story high buildings at least two, maybe three centuries old. My wife thought it best just to walk toward the museum, keeping our eyes open. I thought it best to demand my ten euros back from Serge.

Then, among the Grecian pillars along the perimeter of the courtyard, we spotted the red banner of the Marley Café. Ah! Food at last, and not too late! We opted to eat inside (i.e., so as not to get a nicotine bath), and two beers and a half-bottle of wine quickly disposed of my foul mood. My wife has delicious scallops and I had raw salmon. I insisted that the dish was presented to me inaccurately, but my wife insisted that, yes, the waitress did indeed call it “salmon tartar.” I decided then and there that every subsequent meal I would eat in France would be the same meal she ordered.

Next followed one of the true highlights of our trip to Paris: the Louvre. Every human being on the planet should spend some time in this, the most glorious museum on the face of the earth. (How’s that for a ringing endorsement?) Serge at the Crillon had given us our tickets, so we needn’t wait in any lines (not that there were huge lines at 8 o’clock on a Wednesday night, but there were crowds constantly entering and exiting). We approached the futuristic-ish glass pyramid in the center of the courtyard that was the entrance to the Louvre. A few years back when it was first built, this thing of modern art caused quite a stir in Paris – and all negative. Looking back, it did look slightly odd and out-of-place, but not unnaturally so. And I am not a big fan of modern art.

We descended two floors by a giant escalator, then found an English map of the museum. Being tourists and wanting to do all the touristy stuff, the obvious first thing to see was … the Mona Lisa. And I, Hopper, stood not ten feet away from the most famous painting in the entire world. Didn’t get much of a chance to study it, mind you, as a crowd was always around it, snapping photos and jockeying for better positions. But see it I did, and the wife took a pair of pictures of it. (By the way, the Museum of Modern Art in New York City does not allow any pictures to be taken within its walls; a position entirely opposite to that of the Louvre’s. This puzzled us, and we initially felt like criminals taking pictures of all the paintings and whatnot).

There were other famous exhibits that we eventually got to in the ninety minutes we spent there. The Libertie, Egalitie, Fraternetie painting of the flag-wiedling woman leading the French Revolution. The portrait of St. Thomas Aquinas you’ll see in just about any biography of the Church Doctor. A massive painting of Napoleon crowning himself in the presence of the Pope. That painting alone neared twenty-five feet across and twenty-feet high. Entire galleries devoted to French and Italian painters, all larger-than-lifesize, impressive, dominating, humbling. A truly unique and wonderful experience to see them all.

The many museums in New York City are buildings which hold great pieces of work. The Louvre is itself a phenomenal work of art that holds countless other great pieces of work. Every gallery had ornate, golden domed ceilings, many with painted images of their own. The museum had the aire of a 16th century palace, which it probably once was. Even the additions had an aesthetic component to them that I just simply have not experienced anywhere else. The bottom line is you can spend all five days of your vacation in Paris and still not have enough time to appreciate this masterpiece.

We also visited the Greek, Roman, and Egyptians wings. Venus de Milo, the statue of the famous – and armless – Greek deity. Winged Victory. Busts of Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. Sarcophagi. Mummies. Rameses III. Partial pyramids and burial tombs. I read on the English map of the Louvre that the tablets containing the Code of Hammurabi were somewhere within this area, but we were unable to find them.

The museum closed at 9:30, and around 9:15 we found ourselves quite lost within the Egyptian section. Our attempts at following signs marked Sortie only seemed to get us more and more lost. We took elevators we weren’t supposed to. We followed other visitors until it appeared they were as lost as we were. Our feet were aching and we were itching to get topside and began the mile-long walk back to the comforts of the Crillon.

Eventually we did make it out, and it was wonderfully cool outside in the Parisian twilight. We leisurely strolled as far as we could into the Tuileries, until barred gates forced us to turn right and exit onto the Rue Rivoli. Then, it was a slow walk back to the hotel, passing and being passed by French natives and more adventurous tourists, many carrying bottles or walking arm-in-arm. We laughed and talked about the wonders we’d just seen, and how we absolutely had to make it back to this city soon.

We made it to the Crillon a little after ten with literally swollen feet. The air conditioning was, at that moment, perhaps the greatest thing I had ever felt in my life. After taking hot showers, we changed into some comfy sleep clothes and settled into that massive, comfy bed, and called the little ones half-a-world away. Little One, as usual, had us in hysterics. “I can’t talk right now, Mommy,” she said matter-of-factly over the speakerphone, “I’m on the toilet. Here’s Grammy.”

Thus, our final night in the Crillon began, that is, with exhausted us immediately falling into deep and uninterrupted sleep. That is, until that brisk, no-nonsense knocking erupted at the door at a way-to-early nine a.m. the following morning.