Kathleen, Queen of the Desert

I finished my 60th birthday present of spending 60 days in Paris: one day each for 60 years lived. I’ve tabulated below my activities, whereabouts, and visits for those 60 days.

Tuileries Garden: many walk-throughs 

Notre-Dame Cathedral: many walk-bys and visits; walking up the stairs for view from the top: 1 time

Louvre: 4 visits

Musee d’Orsay: 3 visits

Pompidou Center’s museum of modern art: 3 visits

Basilica of Sacre Couer Church in Montmartre: 3 visits

Georges Restaurant on top of Pompidou Center: 2 lunches

Studio of Constantin Brancusi (his “Head of a Woman” is shown below): 3 visits

Shakespeare & Company English-language bookstore: 4 visits

Studios and gardens of sculptor Auguste Rodin Museum: 2 visits

Montmartre: 3 visits

Jardin des sculpteurs de plein aire: 2 stroll-throughs

Pere Lachaise cemetery (pictured below): 3 visits. Chopin’s grave always has the most flowers.

Eiffel Tower: 2 visits. The summit: 1 time; the second level: 2 times

Cafe les Deux Magots: 2 lunches

Cafe de Flore: 2 lunches

Carnavalet Museum (history of Paris): 2 visits (and I still didn’t see everything)

Sainte-Chapelle Cathedral (whose windows are pictured below): 2 visits

Luxembourg Gardens: 2 strolls

Espace (museum) Salvador Dali in Montmartre: 1 visit

Picasso Museum: 1 visit

Suburb of Meudon to see where my dad lived 1928-29: 1 visit

Jacquemart-Andre Museum: 1 visit

Claude Monet’s studios and gardens in Giverny: 1 visit

Auvers-sur-Oise, where Van Gogh spent his final months and shot himself: 1 visit

Church of the Madeleine: 1 visit

Victor Hugo Home and Museum: 1 visit

Vaux le Comte chateau and gardens (pictured below): 1 visit

Napoleon’s Tomb: 1 visit

Montmartre Museum (with Charles Leandre exhibit): 1 visit

Musee Guimet (with art taken from Cambodia, VietNam, and elsewhere): 1 visit

Montparnasse Cemetery: 1 visit. French singer Serge Gainsbourg’s grave had the most interesting collection of love offerings.

Hotel de Crillon: 1 visit for high tea. I think my cousin and I saw a famous American director, but we weren’t sure.

Fouquet’s Restaurant on Champs Elysees (pictured below): 1 dinner

Studio and museum of painter Eugene Delacroix (his painting “The Death of Saranopoulos” is below): 1 visit on a rainy day

Alberto Giocometti sculpture exposition: 1 visit

Chaim Soutine painting exposition (one of his paintings is below): 1 visit

Edward Steichen photography exposition at Jeu de Palme museum: 1 visit. Like Monet, Steichen loved flowers and was deeply involved with the scientific propagation and study of delphiniums.

Francisque Poulbot poster and illustration exposition: 1 visit

Studio and museum of sculptor Ossip Zandine (one of his sculptures is below): 1 visit

Versailles palaces and gardens: 1 visit on a glorious sunny Halloween day.

Jardin des Plantes and Mineralogy Museum: 1 visit

Cluny Museum of the Middle Ages (which houses the six huge yet exquisite tapestries of La Dame a la licorne–Lady and the Unicorn, one of which is pictured below): 1 visit

Basilica St. Denis (where many French kings and queens are buried, including Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette): 1 visit

Marmottan Museum (with Monet paintings): 1 visit

Orangerie museum with Monet waterlily paintings: 1 visit

Museum of Jewish Art and History: 1 visit

Garnier Opera House: 2 visits

Ballets seen at the Garnier Opera House: 3. I saw “Wuthering Heights,” “Songe de le Medee,” and “Genus.”

La Conciergerie (former prison): 1 visit

Memorial of the Jewish Deportation: 1 visit

Yom Kippur services at a temple in Le Marais quarter: 1 service

Top of the Arc de Triomphe: 1 climb

Petit Palais art exhibit: 1 visit

Arab World Institute: 1 visit

Chartres cathedral and town: 1 visit

Reims cathedral: 1 visit

Champagne region: 1 visit

* * * * * * * *

Metro rides: about 8. During the strike, I walked everywhere.

Guidebooks consulted: 6

Visitors: 6

Books read: 4

Blisters on my feet: 3

Scarves bought: 2

Haircuts: 1

Manicures: 1

Clothes, jackets, hats, jewelry, and shoes bought: 0

This won’t be what your count looks like when you visit Paris, but now it’s your turn to create a magnificent memory.

I’ve listed below my top ten reasons to travel to Paris. Maybe you’ll be able only to visit a day or two, or stay for a week, or maybe you’ll be able to move your household to the Left Bank. In my modest 60 days here, these are the reasons I think make sense for making the effort to visit this spectacular (the Eiffel Tower!) and difficult (this is the third day of a transporation strike and I’m not sure how I’ll get to the airport on Sunday) French capital. 

10. Paris is part of your literary culture. You’ve read literature based in Paris or you’ve seen plays and movies based on French books. From Honore Balzac to Victor Hugo to Jules Verne to Marcel Proust, Paris holds much of your impressions of the world of words. I saw Victor Hugo’s home today on La Place des Vosges. I saw Marcel Proust’s bedroom reassembled in the Musee Carnavalet yesterday. And I’ve seen Auguste Rodin’s plaster and bronze images of Honore Balzac at the Rodin Museum. This is the real deal.

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It was supposed to be foggy and cloudy, but it was sunny. We were supposed to be tired, but we were energized. There was a transportation strike, but we were walking. These factors all made a perfect combination for a trek up la butte of Montmartre. I hadn’t realized we were walking up to the Montmartre’s old gypsum mines.

Walking straight north from the apartment, my friend and made our way to the old village of Montmartre, originally a Roman temple, then a Benedictine monastery. Montmartre is still the highest point (at 420 feet) in Paris and is topped by the Basilica of Sacre Couer (pictured below). Montmartre was its own village, separated from Paris by a wall, until 1860 when it was incorporated into the city.

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Sometimes you fool yourself into thinking you’ve pretty much seen all the gorgeous art there is to see. You’ve seen towering sculptures by Michelangelo. You’ve seen the sketch-like brushwork of Fragonard. You’ve marveled at the pastels of Cassatt, and you’ve looked goggle-eyed at works by Van Gogh, Soutine, Lautrec, and Monet. I just hadn’t realized some works of medieval needlepoint would take my breath away.

The Musee National du Moyen Age–the National Museum of the Middle Ages–better known as the Cluny Museum, is a Left Bank treasure of stone heads, Byzantine ivories and altarpieces, stained glass, fabrics, and tapestries. This museum is in a medieval house built on top of Roman baths (one of three sets on the Left Bank) on busy Boulevards St. Germain-des-Pres and St. Michel. ”The Cluny” may be built of stone, but at its heart are works of sublime beauty: the six tapestries of the Lady and the Unicorn. 

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Marie Antoinette (pictured in marble above) was Queen of France from 1770 to 1793. She was beheaded on October 16 by guillotine in the present Place de la Concorde. And she apparently never did say, “Let them eat cake.”

Her husband, Louis XVI (pictured below), had been beheaded in January, nine months before her, during the height of the Revolutionary excesses of the revolution. A golden plaque at Place de la Concorde records the deed and the place.

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There was a memorable party given at the gorgeous chateaux and gardens at Vaux le Vicomte by Nicolas Fouquet in the summer of 1661. And I’m not talking about the wedding of Gina Logobria and Tony Parker. Mr. Fouquet put on his celebration in the 17th century in response to a request from Louis XIV, king of France (1738-1715). The story goes that the 23-year-old king (shown below) was so jealous of the estate’s splendor–as well as suspicious of where Fouquet had gotten his hands on such money–that Fouquet was invited to Louis’s hunting lodge for a party, then arrested, then put in jail. (Where Fouquet eventually died.)

It seems however, that in fact Nicolas Fouquet was the fall guy for a large amount of embezzling that was done by the Cardinal Mazarin (coincidentally the king’s godfather) who had died that same year. Fouquet himself didn’t help matters by refusing to tone down his parties and other excesses. 

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I visited Paris this time on my own. Not on a tour and not with a group, I was usually a lone traveler. Thus, these rules are more for the traveler taking care of everything herself. However, even if you are on a tour or with a group, these rules apply.

Take care of your feet. You will never walk as much as when you tour the wonders of a big city. Even though I’m a disciplined walker, I often get blisters when my main transportation on a trip is walking. Good shoes and socks are critical. I also wear inserts for better support. You know what works best for you. Bring bandaids, and pay great attention to blisters. Rest your feet in parks and on museum benches. Even using the metro will have you hiking a lot between the train and the sortie (exit) plus you’ll be going up and down lots of stairs. If your feet fail, you’ll see a lot less of Paris.

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One of my most memorable art exhibitions on this trip wasn’t at a museum. It was at a library. I braved a cool, breezy afternoon to go see the Francisque Poulbot exhibition at the Bibliotheque de Fornay just north of the Seine across from Ile Saint-Louis.

Poulbot (1879-1946) was famous for his illustrations of the effect La Grande Guerre (the Great War–WWI) had on the street children of Montmartre.

In fact, street urchins became a main theme in all of his artwork. Poulbot supported Le Clos de Montmartre, a charity that raised money for Les Petits Poulbot–street urchins– affectionately nicknamed after him.

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I live in the 2nd arrondissement (district), the Montorgueil-St. Denis quartier pieton (pedestrian neighborhood), and the St. Eustace Church parish. Serving the arrondissement, the quartier, and the parish is the market street Rue Montorgueil, just west of my apartment. Montorgueil is pronounced “mont-or-goo-ee,” and it translates to English as Mont Orgueil or “Mount Pride,” referring to the hilly area where it was developed.

The street was made famous in Claude Monet’s 1878 oil painting, “Rue Montorgueil in Paris, Festival of 30 June 1878″ (shown above). The original is in the Musee d’Orsay. You can almost hear the French flags flapping for the international exhibition Parisians were celebrating that summer.

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St. Eustache Church serves the parish where I live in Paris. The church has an impressive organ, and there are free concerts every Sunday. But who was St. Eustace?

Eustace (in French it’s pronounced “oo-stash”) was originally a Roman general and captain of the guards named Placidus. He served the emperor Trajan. While hunting a white stag near Rome, Placidus saw a vision of Jesus on the cross between the stag’s antlers, and the stag was calling his name. 

Placidus converted to Christianity, got baptized, had his family baptized, and changed his name to Eustace. Then all the trouble began.

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