28 August, 2008 | 4 Comments

Pont Royal.

24 May, 2008 | 8 Comments

I spent two days in Paris this week. Ahhhhh, it was lovely. I keep my Paris trips short because I spend too much money while I’m there. I don’t shop, but all those pots of tea in cafés must add up because by the time I get home I’m shocked at how much I’ve spent. Still, it’s worth every centime.

I’ve noticed over the past six months or so that it’s become very important for me to get away when I can. Sometimes I feel an urgent sense that I must flee, at least for a few days. I live in a hall of residence and also work here. It’s an intense environment and I need regular breaks from it. I also work from home mostly and live in a very small room. For the sake of my sanity, I have to get out of here periodically. A couple people have asked me why I keep going back to Paris and don’t venture to another place. In these days of Ryannair and EasyJet, I could fly to almost anywhere in Europe for the same price as the Eurostar ticket to Paris. I guess part of it is laziness. Going to Paris from London is easy. I can walk to the train station and in 2.5 hours I’m in Paris. That’s pretty amazing.

But more important than convenience is what Paris gives me in just a couple days. When I go away for a short break, I crave the sense of being transported to another world. I want to shrug off my normal life and forget about everything. Paris offers me this and more. It tantalizes my senses — senses that, in my ordinary daily life, are dormant. Everything is heightened for me in Paris — the visual beauty, the tastes and smells and sounds. There are lovely cafés everywhere and boutiques and flower stalls, rather than dull and ordinary Costa Coffee and Boots and Tesco on every corner. Blah. Don’t get me wrong — I much prefer living in London. For me, London is more livable. Paris is a dream world that I prefer to experience as a tourist who dips in and out. In Paris I spend my days literally walking for hours and hours, sitting in gardens, going to cafés. Tuning out in this way totally recharges me. I almost always make progress on my novel as well (this time I had another major breakthrough!). The other day a writer friend told me, “Paris is your muse.” I think that’s true.

ranunculuses everywhere!

As for the details of my trip this week, here goes…

I did so much walking that after two days I was in pain by the time I left, but it was a good kind of pain. I wasn’t wearing the right shoes. When I do a lot of walking, I normally wear my athletic shoes, but when I’m in Paris I’m more conscious of my appearance, so I wore black flats instead. This resulted in my calf muscles and feet hurting a lot. You see, putting beauty before comfort is just wrong on every level and violates all my feminist principles.

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18 October, 2007 | 7 Comments

I wrote that I was going to do a long Paris travelogue, but it’s taking me too long to go through my photos. I’m moving in slow motion because I have a cold. So for now, let’s just write about the Louvre, shall we? One of my favorite things to do in Paris is to go to late-opening at the Louvre on Friday night. The price is reduced and the crowds are slim. It’s fabulous. And this time, I got the rare opportunity to take a few photos of the Mona Lisa/Monna Lisa/La Jaconde (she has so many names):

Le score!

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14 October, 2007 | 9 Comments

spring in paris is nice, but i prefer autumn…

The rest of the photos I took in the Lux are here.

9 April, 2007 | 6 Comments

This is my last post about my sister’s visit. Her final weekend à Paris was quite a whirlwind. We hit three cemeteries (Montparnasse, Montmartre and Père Lachaise) and toured sites from the movie Amélie in Montmartre. We both love this film. Like so many other kooky gals, we both recognize parts of ourselves in Amélie, one of the most fabulous movie characters ever created.

If you’ve ever set foot in Montmartre, you know it looks nothing like the world created in Amélie. Filmmakers — they’re such liars! But you can still imagine it. First stop, Café des Deux Moulins on rue Lepic. This is the café where Amélie worked in the film:

Inside, this café is surprisingly dumpy and very tiny. I don’t know how much of the film was actually shot inside this café and how much was shot on a soundstage. Because I have become very pushy since living in Paris (just like the locals), we managed to snag the booth where Nino Quincampoix (Amélie’s crush) sat in the film. If you visit Les Deux Moulins, perhaps the most crowded café in Paris, you are advised to bring an oxygen mask — that is, if you value breathing. The smoking ban can’t come soon enough. Ack!

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1 April, 2007 | 4 Comments

My sister’s friend J. is a wee bit obsessed with Marie Antoinette. Ms. Marie ain’t too popular around these parts. (Really? But why?) I have a guide to Paris cemeteries and I read in my book that Marie Antoinette’s body is interred in the Chapelle Expiatoire, a rather obscure place off the usual tourist path.

After Marie Antoinette and others were guillotined in what is now the Place de la Concorde, their bodies were dumped into a mass grave near the Madeleine and sprinkled with quicklime to hasten decomposition. To make a long story short, Louis XVIII eventually recovered the bodies of his family, built a chapel on top of the original mass grave and interred them here to “beg pardon for France”

So we set off to the Chapelle Expiatoire last Tuesday, a bright sunny day. We were bursting with excitement to see the grave. Alas, in typical French fashion the place is only open Thursday to Saturday from 1:00 to 5:00. [Stay open five days a week? Work full-time? Mais non!!!] We were heartbroken and annoyed, given that we have a tight schedule and were desperate to cross this off our list. We agreed we would return on Friday.

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2 December, 2006 | 5 Comments

Go to the Louvre! It’s open until 9:30 and after 6:00, the admission price is reduced. Plus, there are fewer crowds. Bliss!

I can’t understand why they’ve parked the Venus de Milo in front of a horribly ugly, drab olive-green wall. Perhaps they’re building her a new home. Let’s hope.

I just think this looks too much like Laura Petrie:

More Louvre photos.

26 November, 2006 | Comments

Yesterday I visited the Musée Rodin. I waited until the roses in the world-famous rose garden were no longer in bloom. Great timing! On the plus side, an exhibition of Rodin’s erotic drawings has just opened. There was a sign outside warning that children weren’t allowed in, but I’m sure this was just a ploy to increase ticket sales. The drawings were extremely explicit, however, bordering on the grotesque. The most interesting thing from my perspective was that the women in the drawings (women who were all quite flexible) would be considered fat by today’s standards. I plan to write more about this in the future, about the female forms on display in this city and how they look very different from what we consider the “ideal” today.

After spending 30 minutes or so rubbing shoulders with some of Paris’s finest pervs, I went to the main museum, housed in a glorious light-filled mansion that was at one point divided up into artists’ studios. Rodin lived in one of the studios until his death. (Matisse, Rilke and Isadora Duncan also had studios there at various times.) My favorite sculpture was The Kiss (pictured above), which is probably almost everyone’s favorite. Interestingly, if you look at the statue close-up, the male of the pair is missing a rather important body part. Ahem. I thought this was very strange. Someone should do a dissertation on this. The world needs to know why.

I also loved the sculptures by Camille Claudel. (If you’ve ever seen the movie Camille Claudel, then you might remember the scene where Isabelle Adjani as the going-mad Camille stands outside the window exquisitely screaming Rooooddddddiiiiiiinnnnnn!!!!! I kept hearing that in my head as I walked around the museum. That movie sorta poisoned my view of Rodin forever.)

You can see more of my photos here. Here’s an image of The Thinker with the Eiffel Tower behind it. Oh. So. Lovely.

20 November, 2006 | Comments

Descending in the elevator at La Grande Arche.

A movie shoot I almost walked right into.

Riding the métro.

[FYI: These movies look crystal clear on my computer. YouTube destroys them.]

20 November, 2006 | 5 Comments

On Saturday I went with a friend to visit La Défense, the “big city” section of Paris. All of the city’s skyscrapers are herded together there and kept under close guard, lest one of them attempts to make a run for central Paris and ruins the city’s photogenic beauty. I told a friend from home about La Défense and she expressed disbelief that such a part of town even existed. It’s a few métro stops from the Arc de Triomphe, but not visible from most parts of central Paris. Thank goodness.

What makes La Défense worth a look is La Grande Arche, a stunningly massive cube that is part of the axis that begins with the glass Pyramid at the Louvre, runs through the Tuileries, the Place de la Concorde and up the Champs Elysées to the Arc de Triomphe. This is France, so you don’t just plop a giant cube down anywhere. Noooooo. The Arche was one of Mitterand’s major construction projects. It is so huge that Notre Dame Cathedral could fit inside of it. As you might imagine, it’s quite dizzying and magnificent in person. It contains offices, an exhibition gallery and more. At the top there’s an observation deck that requires a ride in a glass elevator, but for some reason this didn’t scare me.

I took a bunch o’ photos you can see here if you want. For some reason, I particularly like this one — a carousel in front of a skyscraper. I think this sums up modern France in a weird way.

18 November, 2006 | 6 Comments

Taken this evening especially for you, my lovelies.

Kisses,

Anglofille xxx

16 November, 2006 | 2 Comments

I live just a few minutes walk from the Place de la République, one of Paris’s grandes places. Paris is filled with these giant squares (for lack of a better term, which doesn’t necessarily have an equivalent in English), among them Place de la Concorde and Place de la Bastille. Eight of Paris’s grands boulevards run from around the Madeleine to the Place de la République. It is always buzzing with traffic and people. At its center is an immense statue commemorating Paris’s republics. There are two squares on either side of the statue (which serves as a traffic circle) and around the perimeter of the square are shops and cafés. A column I read recently described République as Paris’s most “schizophrenic” place, “because it is so many things at once and takes on bits of the quartiers that converge on it from all sides: the Marais, the grands boulevards, the Bastille, the up-and-coming parts of the 11th [arrondissement], the heavily-accented flavors of the immigrant communities… ”

République is definitely an odd mixture, with Americana (McD, KFC, Holiday Inn), traditional French cafés, crepe and ice cream stands, French chain stores and a belle époque carousel filled with delighted children just yards away from homeless people camping in tents and passed out on the pavement. Shoppers and café goers co-exist with hungry people lined up for boxed lunches. It’s all rather strange to observe and defies any attempt at neat categorization. République is the traditional starting point for demonstrations in Paris. Every weekend I see a rally of some sort in one of the squares. This past spring during the massive demonstrations over the French jobs law, République was the site of major civil unrest.

The Place de la République is a constant presence in my life and I’ve grown quite fond of it. In a strange way, it feels like home already and I can’t imagine living in any other neighborhood. As such, I’ve tried to document it in a photo essay of sorts and in a video. Nothing compares to the real thing, but I hope in some small way I can give you a sense of what it’s like to live here.

[gv data="http://www.youtube.com/v/VLb9s_kfKYM" width="425" height="350"][/gv]

13 November, 2006 | Comments

Four-in-One

Originally uploaded by Anglofille.

From the Jardin des Tuileries, you can see the obelisk in the Place de la Concorde and the Arc de Triomphe up the Champs Elysées; through the Arc you can see La Grande Arche de la Défense. From other vantage points in the garden, you can see the Tour Eiffel. The first time I visited the Tuileries, I wasn’t aware of the delights that awaited me. It’s like hitting the touristic jackpot. And when the horizon is a lovely orange color, even better.

11 November, 2006 | Comments

The French passion for science led to a gnomon, in the form of a bronze meridian line, being constructed inside St. Sulpice. [Forget all that Da Vinci Code nonsense!] At noon on the Winter Solstice, a tiny ray of light shines through a small hole in the south transept window. It strikes the brass meridian line in such a precise way that light illuminates an obelisk inside the church. The obelisk bears the inscription: “Two Scientists with God’s Help.” This magical moment only lasts for a few seconds, apparently. Given that the Winter Solstice is my birthday, I would quite like to see this. It would make me feel special. I like feeling special.

3 November, 2006 | 3 Comments

I was in a reflective mood today. As I rode the métro to school, I suddenly had one of those I live in Paris moments. I looked around and I thought, How on earth did I get here? My life now is so very different than I ever could have imagined it would be just a couple years ago.

After class I walked to the W.H. Smith bookstore near the Louvre, passing through the Jardin des Tuileries on the way. And from there I saw the most beautiful sunset behind the Eiffel Tower. I had a very emotional response to it, given the mood I was in. In person it was just so gorgeous that it didn’t look real. Never in my life have I been surrounded by such beauty. I was reminded that living in this city is a gift. I keep asking myself what I did to deserve this gift, but perhaps I should stop asking that question and just accept the gift and be grateful for it.

As I left the Tuileries I thought to myself, Okay, pull yourself together now! Get a grip! And then the moment I stepped into the Place de la Concorde, all the lights were switched on. Magical.

I took a video of the Eiffel Tower sunset (forgive the commentary — I was drunk on Eiffel Tower love). And while I’m mentioning videos, if you like Ukranian Cabaret (and who doesn’t?) check out the musicians I encountered the other day in the Bastille métro.

So that was my evening. It couldn’t have possibly been better.

Bon week-end!

2 November, 2006 | 1 Comment

As I wandered around my neighborhood over the past few weeks, I became intrigued by rue Beautreillis. It’s only three blocks long, but I explored it and took photos and returned several times. It was only last night that I discovered the street is rather famous for its connection to everyone’s favorite dead American rock star in Paris.

I was interested in rue Beautreillis because there is a façade from an old hotel on the street. Two giant doors are all that is left of the Hotel Jean Louis Raoul:

The doors are striking to see in person — and it’s so odd that they’ve been left there. The whole scene is strange and beautiful and romantic. (You can see a side view here.) The street also attracted me because it’s sort of desolate and creepy, especially on the weekends. There are very few pedestrians or cars around and you can walk in the middle of the street and take pictures:

I decided to do a little internet research into the mysterious hotel doors and a search of “rue Beautreillis” revealed that Jim Morrison had lived at #17. I was quite shocked to discover this. He died in the bathtub in his apartment there on 3rd July, 1971, at the age of 27. (Or did he?)

I’ve walked by this building several times without realizing its infamy. I’ve never seen anyone else around there taking photos. I guess all the Morrison fans are at Père Lachaise (which, incidentally, is not that far from here). I have to admit I was skeptical that this was where he died until I saw it on the death certificate.

Across the street from 17 rue Beautreillis, at #18, is a restaurant that was frequented by Morrison and his girlfriend, where he ate one of his last meals. (It used to be called Restaurant Le Beautreillis):

It’s hard to imagine Jim Morrison lived in this neighborhood, particularly on this street. It’s very low-key and quiet, but I guess that’s what he wanted. Apparently, he spent a lot of time walking around and exploring the Marais — it’s an addictive habit. Funnily enough, I’ve developed a wee obsession with doors recently and rue Beautreillis and an adjoining street, rue Charles V, have some amazing doors, like these and these. Jim Morrison must have walked by the aforementioned hotel doors all the time — my favorite doors in all of Paris.

1 November, 2006 | 4 Comments

I was supposed to stay home and study on this holiday, but of course that didn’t happen. I spent a few hours wandering around the Marais, the quartier in Paris where I live. I love walking around the Marais because there are alleys and passageways and narrow streets that twist and turn. It’s fun to explore and get lost.

I am particularly fond of rue Eginhard (though it’s called a “rue,” it’s more like a little passageway). It’s peaceful and picturesque.

There’s a small gated garden along the rue and today for the first time I noticed a memorial plaque, with the heading “Ici Ont Veçu.”

It says:

“Here Have Lived

Monsieur Elias Zajdner, who died for France at the age of 41. The former Resistance fighter was deported to Auschwitz by the Nazis in May, 1944 with his three sons, Albert, aged 21, and Solomon and Bernard, aged 15. [The next sentence I cannot translate literally, but it states that all three sons died.]

We will never forget.” [Nous N'Oublierons Jamais]

The Zajdners were immigrants to France from Poland. The daughter, Sarah, survived the camps. Fifty years after her family died, she erected this memorial in their honor. I was very moved after reading about this family and kept thinking about them as I walked around.

As I headed for home, I strolled along the rue des Rosiers, the heart of the Jewish quarter of Paris. It was packed with people. I guess on a Christian holiday, this is where people go! Every falafel shop had queues of people out into the street. I took a short video. Click below to see a few photos (all food related, of course).

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31 October, 2006 | 2 Comments

I took this photo on Saturday night at the Canal St. Martin. Now you know what I do on Saturday nights — I hang out at the local canal with all the drunks and stoners. (Incidentally, I took this photo in the same spot where I took my other photo that I thought kinda looked like an Impressionist painting.)

In person, the canal was very dark — so dark that I could barely see what I was shooting. The lamps you see gave off very little light and the trees’ reflections in the water were nothing but dark shadows. I decided to take a photo just for fun and when I looked at the image in my camera, I couldn’t believe my eyes. It was like a whole secret world had suddenly been revealed. With the naked eye, this landscape looked nothing like what you see in the photo. I have no idea how the flash on my little camera illuminated this scene in such a way. It was so very dark that it was almost impossible to get a photo that was not blurry. This photo is a bit blurry if you look at it closely (and at a larger size). But at least I got one semi-decent shot of this hidden Parisian scene. Like so many other places in this city, if you take the time to stop and look beyond what is immediately visible, you are rewarded with something special and secret, a gift to you from Paris.

30 October, 2006 | Comments

I was back in class today. We had an exam! I didn’t know about it since I was out sick for part of last week, but two classmates helped me cram before class started and I think I did okay. It was on the imparfait — one of the easier verb tenses. I walked home after class. Here are a few photos I took along the way:

A lovely flower shop on the rue Rambuteau:

Marshmallows (les guimauves) in the window of Pain de Sucre on the rue Rambuteau:

The treat I bought for myself at Pain de Sucre! Two “petits macarons” and a strawberry and rose-flavored marshmallow:

25 October, 2006 | 3 Comments

This past weekend I visited the caged bird market, which is held every Sunday in the flower market near Notre Dame (called the Marché aux Fleurs et Oiseaux in French). In addition to birds and flowers, they sell all sorts of pets, like rabbits and hamsters and even puppies. It’s a lovely place to spend an hour on Sunday afternoon — if you don’t mind the sight of birds being stuffed into tiny cardboard boxes. If you want to make a sick woman feel happy and appreciated, you can look at my photos here. Otherwise, you can bite me. The choice is yours.