Looking Up

 

I spend a lot of time with my head tilted back, looking silly no doubt, as I try to see higher than my own lowly height. It's a bit of a dangerous habit in Paris, where looking down to avoid doggie gifts on the sidewalk is second nature, but it's rewarding nonetheless.  

It's not only the tops of buildings, many of which are stunningly elaborate, but things like the top third of this entry door, which for some reason has had a mirror installed in it, reflecting the street tree, the building across the street, and the occasional peek of blue sky.

And lifting my eyes a bit higher shows me this sweet pudgy little face, the incipient double chin making me empathize.

I'm always drawn to the plaques installed on walls of buildings where famous and less famous people once lived or worked or were born or died.  This one, on a narrow street in St-Germain, states that Victor Hugo lived there.  A peek through the window indicates that whoever is living there now has a pretty nice place.

 

Views other than the usual ones are interesting as well.  That's not a looming fortress but rather the familiar church of St-Germain des Prés from a side street and one of the earliest uses of the flying buttress, apparently.  Moments before, the stone was warm and golden in the fleeting sunlight, but with the returning cloudcover it appears rather forbidding.  Of course the sharp points at the top of the railing aren't exactly welcoming either.

Turning around, you see what looks like a cliff of buildings but it's only an angle that takes in the tops of buildings on three streets, one behind the other and coincidently arranged in order of height.  It does look like you could rappel up there, doesn't it?  And how charming is that pink?

 

The spire of Notre Dame cathedral offers climbing opportunites for these statues, but most of them appear to have paused on the way up to pose for admirers.  The one farthest up seems determined to make it to the nearest secure surface before the wind picks up though.

  

One of my favorite glimpses of higher things is this young horseman over a gateway to the Louvre seated precariously on a flying horse under an incription identifying Emperor Napoleon III.  Is it meant to be him and are those the royal family jewels?

'Tis the Season

OK, I give up, it's the holiday season in Paris; there's no mistaking it.  The little red Merci car is bringing the Christmas tree home, and there are trees to be had on virtually every corner.  They're sold here in florists' shops, wrapped in plastic netting to make it easier to carry them up the six flights of narrow stairs to that elevatorless, though picturesque, garret. 

The merchants' associations for the various shopping streets provide more or less elaborate lighting displays, and the Champs Elysées is one big wonderland of lights.  The Grande Roue, a huge ferris wheel set up at Christmas and in the summer, marks the Place de la Concorde and the Arc de Triomphe the Etoile, with a Christmas market set up between them in what seems to be hundreds of little temporary chalets along both sides of the broad avenue.

There are other festive decorations around as well of course, like the window of this flower shop on rue Vieille du Temple in the Marais,

 

 and the strings of lights and stars hanging from the ceiling in Merci.

The pig keeping watch over l'Avant Comptoir has been decked out in his Christmas trimming

and this gallery in St-Germain des Prés is spelling out its wishes for a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year 2010.

Another gallery has taken the opportunity to commemorate the fall of the Berlin Wall with an exhibit of photos from Christmas 1961.

Not everyone is with the program however.  The inevitable discontented worker makes his presence known, even here.  Wait until Santa hears about this.

 

Hearth and Home

I notice I haven't told you much yet about our new home.  I think it's because I'm still sorting out how I feel about the change. We've moved from the Marais to Saint-Germain-des-Prés, the Right Bank to the Left, the hip neighborhood to the bobo quartier.  That last one isn't really true.  Bobo stands for bourgeois Bohemien; it refers to rich folks who still like to think of themselves as hip.  Nowadays the Marais is full of them, but they tend to be a bit younger than the bobos of the St-Germain area, who, if truth be told, don't really have any more claim to the title.  Over here it's rich folks, period.  And the tourists of course.

When we as tourists first started coming to Paris we stayed in Saint-Germain-des-Prés.  We loved it; after the first visit it felt like 'our' neighborhood, familiar and comforting.  They were used to tourists over here, without being obvious about it: no cheesy souvenir shops like on the rue de Rivoli.  Most service people spoke decent, not to say impeccable, English, the shops were appealing, the restaurants generally good, and there were lots of other English speakers.  It was easy Paris.

Back then the Marais was beginning to be discovered.  A once aristocratic area that had so deteriorated that there was real discussion of razing the old mansions-turned-tenements, it took André Malraux, Minister of Culture in 1969, to make it the first secteur sauvegardé, or protected architectural area, of Paris.  With that push, buildings began to be restored, artists moved in, the old Jewish section began to be less important and the gay presence more important.  It was the happening place, until it had already happened.  That's when we got there.

Last year we stayed near rue de Bretagne in the late-to-gentrify northern Marais and liked the area a lot, so when the opportunity to split our long stay between the two quartiers came up we jumped at it. 

Now that the background is out of the way, you may be asking how we're liking it over here.  Or you may have gone away long since; it's pretty boring, isn't it?

The short answer is that we like it a lot.  The longer answer is that Gene is happier to be here than I am, and I don't know if it's my usual resistance to change or something deeper.  We'll have to see.  At the moment I sort of miss the slight scruffiness of the Marais and don't yet feel entirely comfortable in the more haute environs over here.  It sort of feels like my scarf needs to be tied a bit more chicly (is that a word?) than on the other bank.

The apartments are quite different as well.  They both look like movie sets; we've been very lucky finding lovely places.  The Marais apartment had beams, low ceilings everywhere except for the enormous chandeliered kitchen, and a fireplace.  Someone said it was where Audrey Hepburn would have lived in the movie. The new one is Cary Grant's digs.  It has a double-height salon with silk draperies and oriental rugs, a grand piano, a spiral stair to the bedroom upstairs, and a really tiny kitchen.  I had planned to make Thanksgiving dinner here but just accepted an invitation from a friend. No way was that going to work.

But we're half a block from the Seine, we can cross the Pont Neuf in two minutes, we can walk nearly anywhere with ease, there are dozens of restaurants and cafés within a five minute stroll and three multiplex movie theaters up on the boulevard.  I think I'll get used to it again, really quickly.