Story: Paris for the Unoriginal Traveller

When you grow up in southern California you become accustomed to palm trees and department stores, development tracts and late night neon. History, there, is measured in minutes; my parents’ 30-year-old house is a historical landmark of olive-colored paint and faux wood paneling. And when you step away from California, and from the United States, you quickly become aware of the mankind’s hard-earned history and culture, and you become aware that Taco Bell does not constitute exotic and ambitious architecture.

Paris was not my first such experience outside of the United States, but as Hemingway said, it stays with you, living and continuing inside as you go on.

We almost missed our train in London due to unforeseen traffic, and our own sluggishness. The bus from Oxford to London was slow and plodding, and by the time we had reached the train station, we were initially told we had arrived just a minute too late. But the train had not yet departed, and kind workers let us have our way. The quick-going locomotive was moving before we found our seats.

You read about elegant hotels with old-world charm, ornate chandeliers, art on the walls, smiles all around; you read about secret gems, places not mentioned in guidebooks, prices unreasonably good. You read about it, but then you stay at the cheapest, most reasonable stucco-covered place you can find. Our hotel was sort of amusing in its Spartan attempts at luxury. It could so easily have been a sleazy place earlier on, but had been fixed and furnished, and now the friendly staff are doing their best to class it up by filling it with terrible art and modern digital amenities. Countless prints of painted flowering bulbs and pears and fruit cover the walls; cardboard cutouts of exquisite French statuary line the lobby. But it is the fancy kind of cardboard, perhaps even laminated, and other such touches lighten up the place as well as your heart, because you wish you could afford something better and you decide to laugh instead of something else, because there is a cardboard statue in the lobby.

The limited dimensionality of the statuary was not apparent in the photos I had viewed online. But that is quite unimportant, once you are there.

The Notre Dame de Paris, like most cathedrals, is not something that can easily or appropriately be articulated with words by the common writer. It is a dim place, pronouncing the scale and majesty of the stained glass, humbling you as it should. I see, just there, Napoleon placing the crown upon his head. When we were nearing the back of the church, the organ began to absolutely boom, and a choir started singing, and great wisps of smoke rose from a tray of burning incense, and these clouds caught the light from the great rose windows, and I was given a new reference point for beauty. It knocks the cynicism out of my gut to think of it.

There is not a great deal to be said about the Eiffel Tower that you do not know or cannot be said in simple pictures. It is unquestionably the most iconic structure in this world of ours; it’s more beautiful at night, I think, glowing orange in a dark sky. Every hour, on the hour, strobe lights covering the entire structure frantically flash and dance and sparkle. It glitters for miles and I don’t think anyone in Paris can will themselves to look away. To be within the girders, looking up towards the top, when these lights burst, is disorienting in a wondrous way, like a child’s first Fourth of July, like a teen at the wheel of a lumbering car for the first time, like a first spark between two star-crossed people. You do not forget it.

We went to the Louvre. The building itself is a sight, a palace spanning several city blocks, with that famous glass pyramid at its center. Of course it takes most of a day and most of your energy to see a fraction of its collection, and you leave with a high-class sort of cabin fever, angsty from the crowds, from the endless halls, from the lack of sun and air. But like Paris itself the art leaves with you, you belonging to it and the culture to you, and you leave with pride from this understanding.

Most of all you think about how you will work it into conversations, that you’ve been to the Louvre, yes in France-Paris-France thank you very much, and you will demonstrate that you are indeed that well-cultured. You will find ways to mention the Louvre in the grocery store, at work, to anyone. Y’know, you’ll say to the young girl at the register of the coffee shop back home, this reminds me of something I saw when I was at the Louvre. In France-Paris-France. She will not be impressed and you will not leave a tip.

We went to Versailles. There was nothing surprising in its opulence. We went boating in the waters of Versailles. Versailles! In a boat! There are no profound moments to be had in a rowboat, but it is fun. There were men outside Versailles selling, among other things, flapping toy birds that flew clumsily when thrown. Little plastic ornithopters. Not uncommon toys, but the connection to French royalty escapes me. I had one as a child.

I do believe the hot chocolate from Angelina, another café, in addition to the formidable chocolate at Les Deux Magots, has lined the entirety of my innards with a smooth, high quality, rich layer of the stuff. I do not know what the long term effects will be, though I would imagine that I am now ineligible to donate a kidney. That is, of course, unless the recipient has undergone a similar cocoa transfusion. I now understand, fear, and sympathize with, Count Chocula.

The Musee d’Orsay, a train station converted into a museum, known primarily for its collection of Impressionist paintings, was worth the two hour wait. We had advance ticket to the Louvre, but hadn’t planned ahead for d’Orsay. I only had little more than an hour to spend inside, unfortunately. It was stunning.

We stopped briefly at Les Deux Magots, a café in the Latin Quarter where, in an older time, famed artists and writers once congregated. Wonder what old Hem would’ve had. Probably not the hot chocolate, which was wonderful and sweet and so thick it seemed sinful. It was a meal.

The café sits at the intersection of busy streets and under the view of an old abbey tower; it is a place where you can sit without thinking and witness life in its various shapes. You order something warm to drink from the waiters with bowties and you foolishly forget the hunger which had brought you there. And as you sit, and sip your hot chocolate, brief glimpses of strangers affect you. You sit and sip and realize how lost you get in the dedication to work and unimportant things, how narrow-visioned, disregarding the smaller times. It is easy to lose meaning when output is the only measure, you think to yourself. This café and the warm light and the beautiful French chatter, passing like a butterfly with colors unfamiliar, affects you unconsciously, and then you know the empty moments sitting in the weak sunlight as it begins to rain, sitting between a pale old woman with a small black dog, its curly fur hanging into its eyes, and a young woman with red lipstick, a friend you’ve known for years, but who still has mystery in what is unsaid, sitting here with your hot chocolate and watching the waiters in their long aprons and black vests rushing from table to table with steaming plates and tea kettles, enjoying the air and the sound of old friends telling inclusive stories and laughing and loving, and knowing that it is all passing, are the moments in which we truly live. The times not measured are the times of significance.

As the moment drips slowly into your head you drink the chocolate and think without words, in hope the words will come later. It is the moment in which you desire not return home. But the tower of the old neighboring abbey watches this on your face like an agéd man who had lived in darker times and wishes you to appreciate what you have.

I didn’t bother with pictures.

The departure of our train was delayed by twenty or so minutes, due to “an accident involving a person.” Terribly grim, but I do appreciate the additional minutes I was able to spend in Paris, waiting and watching out the train window at the empty tracks, not yet ready to go.

I have one unused Metro ticket, for next time.