Many Parisian museums are free on the first Sunday of each month, so today I walked right into the Louvre, big as you please. No ticket and not even a glance at the keepers of the gate. I also didn’t bring my pack, so I didn’t have to unzip the pockets, show my umbrella and water bottle, and check it at la vestiaire (the cloakroom). Except for the other tens of thousands of people there at 9 AM waiting to get in, I strolled through the largest museum in the world unimpeded.
Having done the Sully and Denon wings on previous visits, today I explored the ground floor of the Richelieu wing. I was there for 2-1/2 hours . . . and I certainly didn’t see everything. But I was only really there to take another look at a new Louvre favorite: the Code of Hammurabi. This “code” is a set of laws that was carved in stone around 1760 BC for King Hammurabi, first king of the city-state of Babylonia. That’s him on the left below, with his hand to his mouth, receiving the laws from the sun god Shamash.Â
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Saturday, November 3, 2007
It’s about stopping, reading the paper or your guidebook, getting off your feet. Or off life’s merry-go-round. Order and sip. Maybe you don’t do anything else. I haven’t bought a single Herald Tribune (the English-language newspaper sold here) because I usually want to shut out the world’s goings-on. I’ll admit it’s been quite blissful ignoring the U.S. presidential race. I watch people go by and warm my hands on the cup. It’s a calming exercise. A brain reboot. Americans come close to this by going into a Starbucks and sitting down. If you rush things and sit in your SUV at the drive-through, you’re missing the contemplative point.Â
In Paris IÂ always order a cafe creme, and I get it in a ceramic cup on a saucer with white sugar in lumps wrapped in paper or loose in a paper tube (such as seen below with a cafe creme). I’ve never been offered a paper cup. Perhaps it’s obvious by my tennis shoes and backpack that I’m not on my way to an office job.
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I had heard stories about my father Glenn’s year in Meudon, France, since I was a kid. He’d gone with his parents–my grandparents Helen and Karl Grossman–to this southwestern Parisian suburb in October 1928. My grandfather had come to study music for a year with Nadia Boulanger (her picture is below) at the Paris Conservatory, and my grandparents had lived in a hotel right next to the Meudon train station.
My father was circumspect about his year abroad. He said he was often left in the hotel lobby when his parents would go out (presumably to a restaurant in Meudon or to a play or concert in Paris). When my brothers and I would tease him about being fluent in French, he’d say, “I can only remember La plume de ma main (the quill-pen of my hand).” I have one photograph of him with some Meudon friends (whom Dad called “little French toughs”), so he obviously met and communicated with some of the locals.
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Thursday, November 1, 2007
Parisians had a few pumpkins, skeletons, and witches in shop windows the last few weeks, but I wouldn’t say they celebrate Halloween. But November 1, All Souls’ Day or Day of the Dead, is a major holiday. Today’s November 1 and it wasn’t raining, so it was a good day to visit Cimetiere du Pere Lachaise, Father Lachaise’s Cemetery, in eastern Paris.
Pere Lachaise isn’t an American-type cemetery with tombstones sticking up out of large expanses of clipped lawns. It’s more like a granite city built on a hill And, at 118 acres, it’s the biggest cemetery–and green space–in Paris. The cemetery is named after Jesuit priest Pere Francois de la Chaise, the confessor to Louis XIV. Today the cemetery was crowded with families and tourists. And lots and lots of chrysanthemums.
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Wednesday, October 31, 2007
A place in Paris is a pedestrian walking area, like a square or large patio. Sometimes a place is hard to get to, such as the Place Charles de Gaulle at the Arc de Triomphe, which you enter and exit through an underground passage. France’s Tombe du soldat inconnu (Tomb of the Unknown Soldier) contains the remains of a soldier from the First World War. This memorial with an eternal flame is right under the arch. Faded floral arrangements are taken away and new floral arrangements are placed here every day.
     
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A place can have benches, or not. A fountain and sculpture, or not. What all the places have in common is a respite from the motorcycles, buses, cars, and bicycles. Or not. Some places become congested with parked vehicles.
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Tuesday, October 30, 2007
My list of adult fiction set in Paris continues here. Where possible, I’ve listed the publication date of the book.Â
JAMES, Henry. The Ambassadors.
JOHNSON, Diane. Le Divorce (1997), L’Affaire, and Le Mariage (2000).
KOEN, Karleen. Through a Glass Darkly (1987). Caution: there is another book by the same title by Gaardner and the film by Ingmar Bergman.
KRANTZ, Judith. Spring Collection.Â
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I’ve compiled a list of adult fiction books set in Paris from information from book clubs, publishers’ lists, book blogs, and my own reading. These are alphabetized by the author’s last name. I haven’t separated them into genres, nor do I sort the books as great or ho-hum or truly awful. When possible, I’ve indicated the original publication date in parentheses after the title.
You may be aware of a glut of recent books set in Paris. many in the chick lit category. I’ve read a lot of grousing about these books, but I suspect many are well researched and it’s the writing that’s bad, so choose what interests you.
ADLER, Elizabeth. Leonie.
AIKEN, Joan. The Girl from Paris.Â
APPIGNANESI, Lisa. Paris Requiem.
BAGESHAWE, Louise. Sparkles.
BAKER, Sam. Fashion Victim.Â
BALDWIN, James. Giovanni’s Room.Â
BALZAC, Honore de. Cousin Bette and Le Pere Goriot (1853).
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Ernest Hemingway wrote that you carry memories of Paris with you as a moveable feast. But a moveable feast can bring on ants, thunderstorms, food poisoning, and other realities. Living in the French capital is sometimes that kind of difficult picnic.
All this walking kills your feet. Tourists walk for hours a day. Even if you take the metro, you have to walk up stairs, down stairs, and through metro passageways: the metro doesn’t cut out the walking. Even if you take regular walks at home, there’s nothing like walking all day. If you’ve brought stylish heels, your feet will die. Bring flat heeled, rubber-soled shoes with a good tread. Rest throughout the day on bus rides, benches, or in cafes.
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Saturday, October 27, 2007
I recently took Les Cars Rouges (a get-on-and-off red tourist bus with open seating on top) to the Eiffel Tower. My first move was to consume the best ham-and-cheese crepe in Paris at a street stand (see crepe preparation below). The crepe master pours the batter onto a circular black griddle and evens it out dragging a special T-shaped tool in elegant wrist movements. The filling is added, the crepe is folded and slipped into a paper wrapper, and voila.
My second move was to cross the busy street and walk around the tower’s piliers (pillars or feet) to check out the crowd. This is the kind of place you might meet someone you know. But, it’s also quiye busy, you could also miss seeing someone you know.
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Cafe de Flore and Les Deux Magots are famous because of who used to consume food and drink there. Long-gone waiters at these cafes served up libations to Breton, Hemingway, Picasso, Camus, Sartre, and de Beauvoir. The cafes now attract lots of tourists and many philosophy and English majors. I even saw an editor soliciting work outside Deux Magots with manuscripts spread out on a blanket.
Recently I had a perfect meal at Cafe de Flore (“caw-fay duh florr”). (“La flore” refers to the profuse flora–ebullient flowers and plants–sprouting from the windows over the cafe.) The waiter was efficient and kind, and he spoke lovely French even when he heard my American bumbling. He was patient with the difficult man next to me, baby-talked a dog in the arms of a passerby, and served a British family with two squirmy little boys their sandwiches and hot chocolates like they were royalty. This was a man who loved his job.
    
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