France is like a treasured scrapbook, lovingly constructed of the sweetest and grandest memories and moments, handed down and added to from generation to generation. It's a brilliant patchwork of homages and memorials, dedicated to the most illustrious and beloved figures to have walked its land. Every school, every street, every official building and restaurant and park and museum, every avenue and allée, each fountain and square, is named for a famous writer, artist, engineer, political or social leader, saint, resistant fighter (during WWII), activist, teacher, philosopher, historian, singer, and of course, citizen. And if this scrapbook has a heart, a center, a point of convergence of all the souvenirs and tributes collected over the centuries, it is most definitely Paris.
The scrapbook is enormous, and it continues to grow and evolve as the years pass on. Thus it was without any hesitation that I decided to return to Paris this past weekend. After all, there's so much to see!
We (myself and two other assistants, Danielle and Finn) departed early on Friday morning (11.11.11) and headed to Versailles through a thick fog, that did not lift for the whole day. We arrived at the chateau and promptly spent another hour or so slowly driving around trying to find orange juice (because Danielle had a craving), getting pulled over for an illegal u-turn, and attempting to find parking that didn't cost les yeux de la tête. It was a wasted excursion, because we didn't find orange juice, and ended up springing for the 12 euro fee to park at Versailles, plus incurring a 22 euro fee for the u-turn. OUCH!
The chateau was very interesting to see, but it was the gardens that fascinated me most of all. Miles and miles of gardens, stretching to infinity in every direction, made it seem like heaven and earth had converged. The fog added mysterious white shadows to the larger-than-life landscape.
I loved this staircase in the garden:
It's the same staircase Kirsten Dunst is posing on in this unforgettable Marie Antoinette Vogue photo shoot, shot by Annie Liebovitz, where the actress wore a fantastic black dress by John Galliano for Dior, made of aluminum foil sewn into organza:
After finishing our tour of Versailles, we headed off towards Paris, by way of a tunnel that took slightly less than ten minutes to go through, and that was probably the most tense place I have ever been in in my life. The ceilings were barely high enough for cars, and the space stretched on for miles, with endless turns and a monotonous, sci-fi-esque characteristic. It rather reminded me of the escape scene from the film Hanna, with its intensely freakish Chemical Brothers soundtrack.
We finally made it to Paris, just in time for Friday afternoon traffic, which was even more hair-bending thanks to the holiday. Everywhere we went, we had brushes with death. Our hotel was in the neighbourhood of Bastille, and in order to get there we had to navigate the Place de la Bastille, a large roundabout with multiple cars going and coming at once, in all directions. Finn handled it quite well, and he is now confidently ready to take on the Place de l'Etoile. *Right*.
That evening, after a pizza dinner, we went to watch the soccer match between France and the USA. USA lost. *Moving on...* No, in fact, we had a really wonderful time at the game. The Stade de France is huge, and I could hear NTM playing in my head when we arrived at Seine Saint-Denis.
We spent the next day exploring Paris: Notre Dame cathedral with the Discover Walks tour, which is free and which I highly recommend (my parents went on a few of them when they were in Paris in April and loved them); then a long stroll through the Latin Quarter, around the Panthéon, and down the lovely Rue Mouffetard, followed by a gelato break (I had a cup with four flavours: Amareno, which tasted like Amaretto mixed with fresh cherries, Marron Glacé, which translates to Iced Chestnut, Banana, and Limoncello sorbet; amaaaazing); a quick walk through the Jardin des Plantes and mainly its beautiful Labyrinth; a claustrophobia-inducing rush through the Salon de Thé at the Grande Mosquée de Paris (I will go back on a calmer day, because there were far too many people, but the place is stunningly gorgeous, decorated in Moroccan tiles and painting); dinner (delicious onion soup, for me) in the Latin Quarter; and finally a visit to La Défense, for M's birthday party (soirée de ouf malade; thanks to Jane for the expression!).
We finished our weekend on Sunday with a long stroll through Père Lachaise cemetery. None of us had ever seen it, and I had been wanting to for a long time, but I had not even imagined how enjoyable it would be. The leaves were falling, but the grand trees and autumn colours created the perfect backdrop for the spectacular tombs all around the graveyard. We didn't buy a map (big mistake), and therefore had trouble finding the famous graves, but we did hunt down Oscar Wilde's tomb, only to find it was being restored. N'empêche; the very sign posted on it was covered in kisses for the brilliant writer.
Everywhere we went, we felt history staring back at us: in the images of Abélard and Héloïse (France's real-life Romeo and Juliet) on the door of the home where they met; in the statues of Montaigne, Ronsard, Rousseau, etc., that we encountered on the streets; in the names of the avenues and boulevards that recall great events and figures; even in the titles of parking complexes (Parking Camille Claudel, for example). This history greeted us, but not with a stark, museum coldness; rather, in a friendly, warm manner, as if to say, "I lived, I laughed, I loved, I left." Even the leaves at Père Lachaise seem to remember, like leaves of a book of memories...
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| Paris Autumn |
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