Paris, Nov 2003
Friday 21 November 2003
We take the 12.09 Eurostar to Gare du Nord, which arrives a little late due to "an incident" (unspecificed) at the station. We take a tortuous taxi journey in the rush hour to the Hotel Relais le Vieux Paris in Rue Git le Coeur. Hotel is awful - cramped, smelly and over-poweringly decorated. We go to another one, the Villa d'Estrees, some 20 yards up the road which is nicer and less expensive and settle in.
We explore the environs and have tea and coffee in the Cafe Latin at the end of the road. Dinner that night is at the Relais Odeon, touristy and indifferent but we are too fagged to care greatly.
Saturday 22 November 2003
Up early for a stroll while Cat sleeps. Buy croissants at cafe behind large Gibert Jaune bookshop in Place St Michel, then wander along past St Severin, and up to the Sorbonne. Stop to say hello to Montaigne opposite the Sorbonne then stop for a cafe and croissant while the rain passes - sitting across the road (Rue des Ecoles) from the Champo cinema which is screening Drugstore Cowboy. I continue to Rue Monsieur le Prince and then down to the Seine, along the quais, across the Pont Neuf and back to the hotel, where Cat is just dressing.
Having asked about maternity clothes, we are advised to head to Galeries Lafayette, which we duly do but leave very rapidly, as it is not dissimilar to Selfridges on a Saturday. We wander past the Opera and down to Faubourg St Honore, buying clothes for Georgia (a pink sheepskin jacket, cashmere jumper and hat). As we amble, we see a terrible German "Patsy", dolled up in short skirt and something vaguely leopard-skin-like, probably about 55, being filmed in one of those second-rate fashion boutiques by a German film crew and then being interviewed bya sub-Karl Lagerfeld clone with bouffant hairdo. Hilariously awful.
Seeing an array of cherries, we buy half a kilo and a small bottle of Badoit for 17 euros, the terrible injustice of which puts me into a trance for about 15 minutes and memories of which punctuate the day ("12 fscking quid for a pound of cherries! You'd better eat the stones as well for that"). Cat spots a great poster for an exhibition about memories of Algiers (probably not that pleasant for the French, I should have thought), but sadly it is in Marseilles so we cannot visit. We pass the Tuileries and cross the Pont Royal back to the Rive Gauche, spending a happy hour with a nice young man who looks like an asexual Bruce Chatwin (hang on, I though Bruce Chatwin was asexual !) in a shop called Othello in la Rue des Saints Peres, looking at and buying some rather nice jewellery for her - a pair of silver earrings, and her "Doctor Who" triple, eternity ring.
We lunch in Rue St Benoit at the Relais l'Entrecote, having steak (unsuprising, given the name, as Cat points out, though I had not twigged until the waitress announced that there was no menu, but "seulement l'entrecote") and chips. Cat has a vague "I can't eat that" moment, but settles for salad and chips, and brightens considerably at tarte aux pommes with ice cream.
A shop called Biella in Rue de l'Ancienne Comedie sells Ermenegildo Zegna clothes and I buy a charcoal sweatshirt, a zip-neck brown shirt, some brown trousers, a blue with dark blue stripes shirt and a pair of elegant desert boots. We are then directed to Rue St Sulpice for the fabled maternity shop, but this turns out to be nothing more than a branch of 'Formes', so we head back through the increasing crowds to the hotel.
Before having a nap, I nip out to Gibert Jaune and buy a copy of Montaigne's complete works in the Pleiade editions, then sleep for an hour before a "nice hot bath". Then out to disappointing Jacques Cagna for dinner - pretentious and overblown French food, in an oppressive environment, and with nothing on the menu that Cat can eat. As soon as the management decided we are not in for the long haul (i.e. going to spend large amounts of cash) they ignore us, so we settle for salad ("Mesclun") for her and some turbot for me and leave as quickly as propriety allows.
Then I write up these notes and off to sleep.
Sunday 23 November 2003
Breakfast is delivered to our room at 9 o'clock this morning and we then head for the Musee de Cluny, wandering up the Rue de Hachette, past Notre Dame and the old church of St Jacques - where people are gathering after mass - and then on via Saint Severin.
The Musee de Cluny is, partly, wonderful. I'm afraid tapestries leave me rather unmoved, so all the fuss about La Dame et la Licorne is lost on me - it's nice enough, but I much preferred the Gallo-Roman stuff, the baths, the statuary from Notre Dame, the frigidarium and the reliefs of Hercules on the pillars that are being restored. Good carving, too, on the capitals of some of the other pillars they have on display and some interesting everyday artefacts, especially the shoes. I rather liked the beautifully detailed waffle irons (!) they have in the upstairs galleries.
We buy a couple of items from the souvenir shop, for Georgia and Anna, and then head off to explore the Latin Quarter. I'm afraid to say it is rather disappointing, and not full of the quaint little lanes I had been expecting. The hill (Montagne Ste-Genevieve?) is quite nice, but the Pantheon is awful, a big - actually enormous - ugly and slab-sided monstrousity which seems to have been built in an effort to out-Roman the Romans. Compare it to the original in Rome, which is much nicer.
By now we are ready for lunch and stop at the Brasserie Escholiers in the Place de la Sorbonne: salade nicoise, sandwich de jambon de pays, frites, Badoit, coffee and a tarte tatin for Cat. It's a pleasant spot and the weather is unseasonably mild, meaning that we can comfortably sit outside.
At the table next door two young Americans are shortly are joined by an American girl: my hackles rise, as do Cat's; every sentence is punctuated liberally with "like" and "y'know", which is less offensive than their complete ignorance of world events - though they are plainly graduate students - and amazement that anyone could think badly of Americans generally and their president in particular. They were appalled at the depiction of said president in the film "Love Actually" and, when I came back from having a pee, Cat was quivering with rage at one of their more asinine, yet arrogant comments about the IMF: "It's just terrible, man. The IMF loans these countries money and then they don't do what they're, like, supposed to, so America has to go in and make them do what they're meant to. And everyone hates us for that. Jeez." Aaaaaaagggghhh.
Still slightly simmering, we take a taxi over to the Grand Palais for the Gauguin and Vuillard exhibitions. Given the size of the queue for the former, we go to the latter which turns out to be disappointing - Vuillard emerges as rather a timid little man (he lived with his mother until he was into his 50s), who obsessed about one of his friends' wives - in a passive, do-nothing way - and seems to have spent most of his time sitting in the corner watching people and then doing rather dull paintings of them in their rooms. Indeed, on the rare occasions when he did paint exteriors he did them like interiors - heavy trees overhang the subjects, the colours are the same as the interiors he normally painted, and people are largely doing outside what they normally do inside. Not at all like Bonnard, with whom he is usually linked. And the portraits...my God. In the whole exhibition (and it was extensive enough) there were only about 2 or 3 pictures that I cared for. No catalogue this time round.
Another taxi takes us to the Musee Rodin (though bizarrely, as it is right next to Les Invalides, the driver has never heard of it), which is rather fun, though I am not a big Rodin fan. His Balzacs are fun, especially the big fat naked one, and there are even a couple in the "my best friend's wife genre". The gardens are delightful.
Too fagged to go much further by now - it is about 4pm and we have been out and about since 10 o'clock this morning - we have a coffee in the Place du Palais Bourbon and watch the beau monde walk past: the style here is very 7eme arrondissement; as Cat rightly puts it, Dan Aykroyd's original girlfriend in Trading Places would have lived here. It's all Hermes, Gucci, Range Rovers and the larger sort of Mercedes.
Hopping into a taxi, we are whisked - occasionally terrifyingly - at warp speed down Boulevard St Germain to Place Cluny and then totter back to the hotel, where Cat now lies asleep as I type up these notes.
Monday 24 November 2003
Again, I am up early for a walk. Notre Dame is, despite all the cliches, a most wonderful building and I stand in front of it, the only observer, for a few minutes taking in its combination of weight and delicacy. Passing round the Hotel de Ville, I see a plaque that notes some poor sods - the Superintendent of Paris and his father-in-law - who were put to death on this spot on 22 July 1789. One wonders how.