Paris!

Trip Start Sep 15, 2008
1
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Trip End Oct 06, 2008


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Flag of France  , Île-de-France,
Monday, September 29, 2008

We made it!  Despite the rigors of a solid day of travel yesterday--up at 6:15 am, on a train from Norwich to London at 8, a terrifying cab ride across London from one train station to another, a cancelled Eurostar train (but quickly re-scheduled for one an hour later), an unbelievably long taxi line at the Gard du Nord (& hit up by a gypsy who helped load our bags in the cab's trunk)--we made it.  We met the local man from the rental agency  at our apartment on the Ile St. Louis, after a slow crawl in a taxi down the main street of Ile St. Louis.  He led us up the circular stairs to our third-floor flat, and we began to make it home for a week.

It's a tiny  apartment--530 square feet in an ANCIENT building-- but completely remodeled, with elegant but tiny kitchen and 1-1/2 baths.  Tasteful in every way and the best-equipped rental we've ever had (bath, kitchen, closets). We look out on a side street that is very narrow, with 5-6 story buildings cheek by jowl, all with the black wrought iron on the windows, as all Paris windows seem to have (a suggestion of a balcony).  We are a very short walk from the Seine.

We were woken up very early this morning by the ungodly sound of thousands of wine bottles being thrown in a truck--the consumption is truly remarkable.  Got back to sleep.  Then leafed through the  Paris guidebooks I should have perused months ago (along with the language DVD program Rebecca lent to me--cannot understand a damned thing in French, it seems).  \

I came up with a plan to go to the Centre Pompidou, which, to have a mild rant, is not the most visitor-friendly museum I've been to.  Couldn't find information leaflets/maps, couldn't find entrance to external escalators that run up the side of the building.  No forks in the cafe:  pick it up with your hands, or else.  Finally found two warehouse-sized floors of modern and contemporary art.   My God.  Maybe I'm  just ODed on museums, but I wasn't knocked out.   I  prefer retrospectives (even of Francis Bacon)  to outstanding examples of hundreds of artists' work. I wandered, trying to talk myself into APPRECIATING.  I'd occasionally  catch sight of Jerry striding purposefully from gallery to gallery intent on establishing a chronology and semi-defeated by understanding the art.  Finally, exhausted, we sat down in front of a computer and began watching a hilarious video of film clips, mostly American, of actors answering ringing phones and then more of them of actors hanging up, seemingly hundreds of these scenes.  We were wearing headphones and bursting out laughing, probably disgracing ourselves.  Most fun part of the Pompidou for us.

Saw a school group come in to the modern art section with about 40 kids, maybe 10 years old, and a thin young teacher who exasperatedly clapped her hands twice and then bawled them out sternly in French.  After that, not a sound.  Could not imagine this in the US (and she wasn't even a nun!).

The Ile St. Louis in particular, but everywhere we've been so far, is swarming with American tourists.  Yesterday the cab driver could barely get down the rue Boutarel, our street.

Off to a cafe for a glass of wine and then who knows.  Jerry's nodding off waiting for me to finish this.  It's a cyper cafe on the right bank, not far from our apartment,  WITH ENGLISH KEYBOARDS!
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