Paris: Day Three (part II)

Arriving back at our Metro station two or three blocks from our new hotel in the Latin Quarter at four o’clock in the afternoon, we were hot, tired, sweaty, hungry, hot, and tired. And hungry. Fortunately, there were a good half-dozen open-air bistros to choose from for a late afternoon lunch.

We selected the St. Andres Café on the Rue Danton, one leg of that triangle of dining hot spots I mentioned yesterday. Rue Danton was much smaller, narrower, and quieter than the busy thoroughfare Boulevard Saint Michel, the other leg. The appeal of the St. Andres Café at this point in time to hot, tired, sweaty, hungry travelers was that it was somewhat empty, or between eating shifts as I began to think of Parisians. The dude running the café reminded me of a middle-aged Mad Max, albeit scrawnier and French. But he was friendly enough, and said we could sit wherever we liked.

Right on the Rue Danton, it turned out. A table for two, raised about a foot off the street, in the shade, where we could watch pedestrians of all stripes walk up and down. There was an automated bike rental station, too, whose operation I gradually discerned over the ninety minutes as I watched perhaps a dozen people borrow and return bicycles, paying with debit card thingies.

I had a mozzarella-and-tomato sandwich (a “Croque Italien”) with a Heineken while the wife had a salad and a glass of wine. The sandwich was fantastically fatty – literally what I needed after my pilgrimage to the Sacre Coeur. It was cooked open, which means I had to eat it with a knife and fork. We had a very relaxing, very recharging time at this café, and talked about many, many things: France, our families, the aspirations of our young cousins, the hopes, dreams, and desires we had for our two little girls. It was a tres enjoyable time.

We leisurely made our way back to the Hotel du Lys two blocks away. The room was uncomfortably hot. There was no air conditioning nor was their any air circulation, even with both windows completely open. My wife crashed on the bed and was out in five minutes. I stripped down to my undies, Homer Simpson-like, and read some of Hunchback and some of Devotion to the Sacred Heart at a chair at a shelf-like-desk at the window. The chair at the shelf-like-desk at the window was just as uncomfortable as the room. But I read for a good hour or so, maybe a little more, before I woke my wife. It was getting on six-thirty, and we needed to shower, get dressed, and make some dinner plans.

Our feet had finally rebelled – at least mine had. My only demand, other than we stay within our budget, was that the restaurant needed to be within walking distance. In this case, a few blocks. We didn’t want to do the Perfect Storm of outdoor bistros just outside our hotel door. So the wife did a quick scan of her Paris Guidebooks as well as a print-out of recommendations her French colleagues had sent her. We picked a well-known and respected place, and got ourselves cleaned up.

By seven-thirty we hit the gloriously cool evening streets. Our destination was a relatively famous eatery called the Balzar Brasserie about six or seven blocks away. We negotiated the burgeoning nightlife in the Triangle, passed the bookstores and the fountains, made a right onto Saint Michel and walked four blocks down to the Rue Ecole. Saint Michel is a busy commercial street, kinda like Fifth Avenue in New York if you stuck it down into Greenwich Village.

The Balzar Brasserie is a bustling indoor café which seated about a hundred – and every seat looked filled. Uh oh. This was the first time I thought we might be turned away from a Parisian restaurant because we lacked reservations. But when my wife gets a mission in her mind, she succeeds. After speaking with the maitre ’d (in what language I couldn’t hear), we were seated all the way to the right rear, three or four tables from the kitchen, sandwiched between other eaters at each of my elbows.

To get through this ordeal, I needed some back-up. I ordered a 50 cl glass of Kronenbourg. I don’t know exactly the English equivalent in size, but the volume was about that of a Foster’s oil can. I was halfway through it when our dinner came, and in a much better state of mind. Being smart, I ordered exactly what my wife ordered (actually, she did a pre-emptive strike and ordered for me in French). We both had mouth-watering, delicious scallops in some sort of risotto sauce. A great meal, one of the best in France, if I had to say so.

However, the entertainment was even better. Next to us, to my left, sat two older gentlemen in their fifties. Now, it was a little bit warm in the Brasserie, but the man diagonally across from me was soaked in sweat. Literally dripped from his hair onto his shirt. He had rosacea or some otherwise reddishness along his upper cheeks. During our hour-long dinner we found ourselves listening to their conversation, and from that we extrapolated their personalities and probable careers, and amused ourselves comparing notes on the walk home.

For instance, sweaty rosacea man was an American. Most of their conversation is in English, but he is trying to learn French. According to my wife his vocabulary is superb but his pronunciation is awful. His companion is a suave older Frenchman, who in the beginning seemed to benignly tolerate the American, but as dinner progressed, seemed genuinely friendly with the man. Their talk turned to philosophy and my ears perked up; the American mentioned Camus and my hopes deflated a bit. “I’m trying to learn French by reading Camus,” he said. “If there’s a word or phrase I don’t understand, I put it into my translator and the right word comes out, only it’s just a little off.” He actually plucks a white-covered copy of a Camus paperback (it wasn’t The Stranger or The Plague, thank God), thumbs through it, and places it on the table.

Who are these dining men?

We decided that rosacea guy is a genius. A Steve Wozniak-type genius; he works in computers. His company has sent him over to France on a year-long contract to overhaul their operating systems or their server technology or whatever. He has no family, he’s not socially adept, he’s a nerdy outsider brilliant shy competent expert in his field. The company he’s contracted to, a French company, has either hired his companion or his companion is the computer guy in the French company who has to work with this American. Now, the French guy is out of his league compared to what our Woz can do, but our Woz needs the French guy to navigate his new life. Ergo, their regular after-evening get-togethers in the bistros of Paris.

Fun, isn’t it?

By the time dinner was over, around 10 p.m., it was finally getting dark. In fact, by the time we paid the bill and got back on the Boulevard Saint Michel, it was dark. But Saint Michel is a vibrant street, and store fronts and apartments and cars and streetlights all kept our path home well-lit and well-populated. No possibility of a trashcanman mugging here. So we meandered northward at a slow pace, enjoying the atmosphere and each other’s company.

There was sidewalk book fair under a canopy a block or so into our journey. Books were kept in boxes, spines up. A sign marked SCIENCE FICTION caught my attention, and I thumbed through the box. Now, all these books were in French, but if I could get a copy of Bradbury or Clark or Heinlein or whomever in French, I’d buy it in a heartbeat. (Side note: the next day I would find a French copy of David Lindsay’s A Voyage to Arcturus, but I could not justify buying it, though it is definitely on my list of books to re-read.) However, SCIENCE FICTION must not mean the same thing in Paris as it does, say, in New Jersey. There were no science fiction, but there were books on science and books of fiction in that box.

Suddenly – Crash! Gasps and shrieks. I turned around, spotted my wife (okay), and then my gaze went to the street ten feet away. It seems a bicyclist moving very fast in the dark had slammed into a pedestrian making his way into the street. Though we were not at any intersection, there were white “pedestrian crossings” at the spot. The bicyclist was helping the dazed man up, apologizing profusely and asking if the man was okay. The small crowd that gathered quickly dispersed as the pedestrian shook it off and assured every one he was okay. We, too, resumed our walk back to the hotel.

Before we knew it it was eleven o’clock as we climbed the endless floors of the spiral staircase to our room. The room was still hot, though not as bad as it was in the late afternoon. We took showers, and they were wonderful, luxuriating showers, even if the shower tiles were cracked and peeling and a little bit moldy. Rejuvenated, we dressed in comfortably but light sleep clothes because we knew it’d be warm. We laid in bed and called the girls back home, knowing it would be just before suppertime for them. Little One had field day at her school, and did well, though she insisted she “broke a muscle.”

Considering our change of venues, our trip up to the Basilique du Sacre Coeur, our two different dining experiences, as well as the fact today was the hottest, most humid day of the trip so far, we were plain exhausted. I thought leaving both windows wide open to the Parisian night would be an acceptable idea, and we both wished the room had at least a ceiling fan. Lights went out around 11:30, and we were asleep in minutes.

Only to be awoken by midnight. The walls were paper-thin, the ceilings and floor not much thicker. The square “courtyard” our two windows faced only served to add reverb and volume to any conversation had in any room. All through the night, every ten or twenty or thirty minutes, some drunken French couple (or tourist couple, I’ll concede) would noisily return, making sleep for us impossible. Some guy below us took an opportunity to make extended noise like the unwrapping of birthday presents. A woman slid hangers across a metal pole for five minutes. The couple above us seemed to drop everything possible on the floor, furniture included. Showers ran, toilets flushed, all making running water noises up and down the pipes just outside our windows.

Finally, after an hour or two (I lost count), I gave up. I grabbed a pillow and went into the bathroom with my books. I lay on the hard, cold, tile floor and tried to read. Couldn’t, so I broke out a pad and pen and tried to brainstorm ideas for various projects I’m working on. Had better luck. But just so exhausted, and so craving sleep. Finally, around three in the morning, I crept back in bed, next to the wife who was also tossing and turning, and it was like someone just flicked the switch on my back to OFF and I knew nothing more of those way-early morning hours.

Paris: Day Three (part I)

As exciting as Days One and Two were in the City of Lights, Day Three promised even more thrills: for the first time we would be, truly, on our own. A second Breakfast in Bed royal room service treatment followed (again with the two-man crew bustling, tidying up our room as we scurried about, tying back the heavy dark drapes, making me sign the 75 euro itemized receipt, and eagerly accepting my 5 euro gratuity), and what we didn’t eat we made sure to stow away in our carry-on bags. You see, we were going to leave the Crillon this morning and venture out to a hotel in the Latin Quarter, south of the River Seine, for a room we were going to pay with our own dime. Hence, we were unsure whether we’d eat breakfast in Paris again.

This Thursday morning dragged on as subconsciously we were melancholy about leaving the wonderful five-star hotel. Our showers were a bit longer, our dressing took an extra half-hour, our packing twice that. Finally, we took one last circuit of the room, ostensibly to make sure we weren’t forgetting anything, but I think we just wanted to soak it all in for a few final minutes. Then, our suitcases in the red carpeted hallway, we closed the door behind us, headed down to the fourth-floor elevator, and descended to the lobby.

Check out went smoothly. A young lady with a beaming smile wanted to make sure our stay was excellent – and we assured her it was. My wife mentioned that we wanted to get back but was upset that the hotel would be closing for two whole years. “Well, you’ll have to come back and visit us before than!” the young lady bubbled. Two not-quite-bellboys-not-quite-concierges approached us and pleaded with us to take our bags. They asked our destination, and when we told them we’d need a taxi, they assured us they would have one ready and waiting.

Which they did, of course. A two-dollar euro coin for that man (we were a little more than halfway through our money not quite halfway through our trip; tips had to be rationed now). Our bags were already in the taxi’s trunk, and we got in to ride to the Hotel du Lys, about a mile-and-a-quarter as the crow flies, but twice that taking the winding semi-cobbled streets of Paris into account. The car was a fairly new black Volkswagen; the interior was pleasant, as was its smell. The driver was a polite Frenchman in his mid-50s. Like most French professionals, he was wearing a jacket, a tweed jacked in this case, and wore some sort of a cap.

(It must be noted here that I was keeping an unofficial beret watch. Bonus points if the beret-wearer was also wearing a blue-and-white horizontal-striped shirt. And if said person was also a mime – well, I done think my head would explode. Anyway, at this point in the trip, the count was at ... one. I’d see another only at the airport on the way home. My wife saw a beret and a blue-and-white horizontal-striped shirt once each, on different individuals. Another French cliché shot down, I suppose. The taxi driver’s cap, you might be wondering, did not qualify as a beret.)

Another thing I learned is that French taxi drivers are not much different from New York City taxi drivers. Well, that’s not exactly true, because never at any point in the ride did I feel my life was threatened. But there was a bit of jerkiness, and bit of lane changing, sudden bursts of acceleration, and expletives, only in a language I didn’t understand. Well, not that I understand New York City cab driver-ese either. Once a driver on a perpendicular street got “caught in the box” and blocked our forward progress. Our driver honked, muttered a frustrated “Ahng” and raised his hand backside towards the stuck car. That driver honked back and duplicated the gesture.

A twenty-minute drive through traffic brought us to the Hotel du Lys on Rue Serpente (how sinister a street name! The back of my mind wondered if there would be intrigue or foul-play of perhaps a voodoo-ish sort during our stay). Serpente was one of those iconic Parisien streets: narrow, winding, and canyonesque, with sand-colored buildings six or seven stories high. The trip there cost twelve euros; I gave the driver a twenty and got back a five.

We wheeled our luggage through glass doors into a pleasant, dark-wood lobby. Not bad, I thought, surely this is a great deal for the $125/night we booked! The desk clerk, however, shot this down fairly quickly. After my wife asked him (in French) if he spoke English, he instantly grew bored with us. Checked us in, handed us a key attached to a large block of wood the size of a DVD case, and told us “Room 14 up the stairs.” He pointed the way without getting up. All touristy smiles, we thanked him and followed his finger-line.

Around the bend was a spiraling staircase (one built in to the walls, not a stand-alone) which felt as if it was built around the turn of the century. The eighteenth century. That is, none of the steps were parallel to its neighbors in any dimension and in any direction. During the next two days more than a few times we almost went tumbling forward descending the stairs, because of this. You know, your body kinda becomes accustomed to where the step is going to be. Not on the staircase of the Hotel du Lys. But the biggest problem with the staircase was getting all the luggage up unassisted. Room 14 was on the fourth floor (but since floors were staggered it was like the sixth or seventh – go figure, I still can’t), and I nearly dropped dead of a heart attack hauling 140 pounds of luggage up in two trips.

The room was small and L-shaped. The bedroom took up most of it, most of it being something like ten-by-fifteen square feet. The bathroom hooked off to the far left as you stood in the doorway. When you opened the bathroom window you saw the interior of the bedroom through that window. The teevee was small and mounted in a far corner above an armoire. Inside the armoire was a safe for your possessions and money, although I don’t think it could be called a “safe” since it refused to lock shut.

There was no air-conditioning. Of this we were aware. What we did not expect were temperatures a dozen degrees warmer than what Paris is used to this time of year. Subsequently, or consequently, it was stifling inside, even with both windows cracked open. Probably because both windows opened to a wall fifteen feet away. One painted that sandstone color, which radiated heat and sunlight back at us.

So, there would be no hanging out in the hotel room. Du Lys was forcing us out onto the streets to explore the city. Okay, well and good. It was still on the south side of noon, and our bellies were still full from Crillon breakfast. Today was the day we would visit the Basilique du Sacre Coeur, the Basilica of the Sacred Heart. Only problem was that it was getting there. The Basilique lies about two miles due north of our position, back over the Seine, past the heart of Touriste Paris, in a hilly area that makes it the second highest point in the city.

A taxi was out of the question; cab fare would bankrupt us. Walking was, too, since the Eiffel Tower, the Avenue des Champs-Élysées, the Tuileries, the Louvre, et al, literally destroyed our feet. The only way to get there was Paris famed Metro. Which we were veterans of, somewhat. Consulting the map, however, dampened our spirits as no single route ran to the Basilique, or anywhere near it. Still, my wife was game, even if I was thinking of calling it off (to my eternal shame). However, being the stronger-willed of us in situations like these, she prevailed, and we hit the pavement.

The biggest pro for the Hotel du Lys was its location: just off the Rue Saint-Michel. However, before you reached this main thoroughfare (which brought you to the bridge to City Isle, where the Notre Dame Cathedral lay), you walked into a triangular orientation of one-lane streets which features the Perfect Storm of sidewalk cafes. Five or six of them; hard to tell because they all sort of merged into each other. They were always busy, from the time we usually left the hotel (about 11 am) until way past our bedtime (midnight). Sandwiching the Bistro Triangle were a pair of bookstores, a fountain where young ’uns played music and did European break-dancing, and two Metro stations.

The first one, natch, had no live tellers to help us nor any machines to dispense ticketry. The second one, across the Rue Michel, did. I must admit to being very intimidated by the large post-modern map in the underground tunnel. But the wife thought it doable. If we bought a ticket on the blue B line north a handful of stations to the Gare du Nord, we’d be within a couple hundred meters of the Basilique. Something in my mind said “Do it!” so I said, “Let’s go!”

Again for the standard fare of 1.40 euros, we bought a ticket each and boarded the appropriate train (not until after boarding a yellow C line train by mistake, and jumping off just as the doors were closing). The trip was quick, a pack of noisy kids behind us I labeled “French Stomp” notwithstanding, perhaps ten minutes. We got off at Gare du Nord, or North Station, if my French is up to any type of speed. A massive train depot not unlike a cross between Penn Station and the biggest mall you can think of. We negotiated the maze and made our way surfaceward, exiting in bright sunlight of an 85-degree, superhumid Gallic day. Then we negotiated a maze of stinky panhandlers and street vendors, and eventually crossed into the shadier side of the street.

If my bearings were any good, we were about a quarter mile southeast of Sacre Coeur. Very quickly we realized that this part of Paris, so far northward from the touristy, sight-driven environs, was a lot more city-like. Meaning, more like the New York I and to a much-greater-extent, my wife, is used to. A little dirtier, a little skankier, a little more dangerous, a little more business-is-business instead of business-is-tourism. I noticed myself not making eye contact with people. One man shouted at me from a store door to come in and buy some pants – and, strangely enough, there was little friendliness in his voice. “Just ignore everyone,” my wife said, making a beeline towards where we thought the Basilique might be.

We had to consult the map a few times, but at last we were in sight. We had crossed a busy street (Boulevard de Rochechouart) that had a train line run down its middle, then found ourselves in the Arabic clothing district of Paris. The streets got very hilly, very narrow, and all cobblestone, and we passed a dozen or more open markets where cloth and clothes of an Arabic, Persian, and other middle Eastern styles were sold. It was not too busy an area, but it was definitely the most run-down section of Paris we’d been in. Fortunately, the sparkling white tiles of the Byzantine turrets of the Basilique were visible over the shabby storefronts we were passing by. We zeroed in, and before we knew it, were in front of what appeared to be a gated forest sanctuary, an oasis in this Algerian quadrant we found ourselves in. It also was the base of a giant mountain. Our feet wept in anguish.

I entered, taking the lead, my excitement growing. I wanted to see this Basilique and pray here. Three years earlier, in a hospital bed, recovering from painful surgery on my pulmonary vein, I saw a prayer card containing the Sacred Heart of Christ, and the thought this is what you should devote yourself to entered my mind and has stayed there, off and on, over the past thousand days. I felt, due to the whole strangeness of how this trip fell into our laps, that I should visit this shrine.

There was a few winding, very steep but paved paths leading upward, until suddenly we were in a wide-open pavilion, filled with hundreds of tourists, pilgrims, water bottle vendors, and, uh, pickpockets, I suppose. We were at the technical foot of the Basilique. Looking upward, you saw grassy fields reaching towards the church at somewhere between a thirty and forty-five degree angle for some two hundred yards. Right down the middle were a series of stairs for the brave and for those with prominent calves, quads, and hams. Off to the left were more sensible, winding pathways in the cool shade. We sat down on a free piece of real estate, when my wife realized we had neither food nor water. I told her to stay put and went down to the main streets, but towards a large group of mingling people, figuring there’d be food and drink in that direction. There was; I found an open-air shop and, forgetting the word for water was l’eau, asked for, inexplicably, agua.

I returned to the wife and we rehydrated. Thus energized, we hoofed it up the central stairs all the way up to the Basilique, stopping frequently to appreciate the hazy view of southern Paris and to catch our breath. Then we reached the top, and I entered the Basilica of the Sacred Heart.

At the door is a prohibition to be quiet (people would be praying), to not take pictures, and to dress modestly. Imagine the tumult and outrage if St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York had signs like that outside its doors (if it does, kudos to them). Immediately, as I generally do and really did in Paris, I felt a supreme sense of peace and serenity flow into me as we stepped into the church. There was a slow-moving line of folks moseying in a great circle about the interior, seeing all the ... displays, I guess, for lack of a better word. There were posters of when Pope John Paul II blessed the church in the early 80s. There were statues of the Holy Family and other saints. There was a large statue of Christ, arms outstretched, Sacred Heart prominent on his breast. I stood in line, then was in front of it. I prayed for healing, dropped a euro in the poor box, and moved on.

There was a gift shop, and I went in, but everything, as usual, was too expensive for our budget (i.e., Rosaries for 18 euros). There was also, oddly, what I thought to be a recruiting office. A funnily dressed small man was chatting with a nun inside. I was unsure who was recruiting who. Finally we returned to our entrance at the rear of the church, but instead of exiting, we walked up the middle aisle and sat down.

Aside from having beautifully large stained glass windows, the ceiling of the Basilique is incredibly awe-inspiring. Magnificent stone arch architecture a hundred feet up, but that’s really just a guess. What caught and held my attention was the ceiling itself – a massive mosaic of Christ, with golden beams emanating from His Sacred Heart. Other iconography was present, but my eyes always returned to that golden Sacred Heart. I recall sweat dripping off my half-inch-long hair onto the back of my neck, but I kept looking up, kept staring at the eyes of Christ, and felt at peace.

What must have been ten minutes or more passed in the twinkling of an eye. We got up to leave and as we exited I passed an old beggar-woman dressed in black and holding a cup. Something moved me to drop pocket change into that cup, maybe a grand total of a euro. We walked back into the sun and examined the Parisien skyline again, though it was too hazy in the distance to make out the Eiffel tower or other landmarks two miles distant. My wife began descending, this time by those winding pathways on our right. I lingered until she was nearly there, then turned and dropped some more coins in the woman’s cup. “Merci,” she said, and it sounded like “Mercy.”

We spent the next twenty minutes walking down to the streets via this walkway. We passed a small, cavelike grotto, where someone thoughtfully left a half-consumed bottle of Diet Pepsi. We passed two Chinese musicians, one strumming an acoustic guitar (and looking up tab on his iPhone) while his partner played that skinny Chinese cello-thingie. Let me tell you, it was a lot easier going down than going up, even more so in the heat and humidity. By three o’clock we were at the foot of the Basilique du Sacre Coeur, and twenty-minutes later we had made our way to a Metro station much closer than the Gare du Nord. Twenty minutes after that we were back in the Latin Quarter of Paris.

Entracte

It's how you say "intermezzo" in French.

Haven't had the time to write, really. And I'm starting to panic, because I don't want to forget details from the last two days of our trip to Paris (as well as the return flight). Amusing stuff, funny stuff, stuff I'm mentally holding in my brain by long, tight, white bandages which happen to be invisible. Afraid it'll fall out and roll down the nearest drain. Know what I mean?

Worked almost seven hours overtime this week to catch up at the job. And somehow the nights seem to fly by too fast. What with all the reading I like to do (and I have to do, for therapeutic reasons). Plus I'm very fatigued very early in the evening.

Thus ... the entracte, because, well, basically, uh, I haven't finished writing the Parisien Diaries. And I blame it on everything but me!

Tomorrow, though, the journey will continue. Probably post something around dinner-time, as I intend to do a lot of writing in the afternoon ...