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Paris, baby!

My recent trip to Paris was my 10th visit to that remarkable city. I am marking this statistic here, owing to an old comment I'll always remember overhearing between two travelers on a train that was taking me to Paris for my first visit there...42 years ago. A young Scandinavian man was talking with an English woman, who asked him how well he "knew Paris". His intimidating answer was something like: "Not so much...I've only been there about ten times." My colleague and I sunk a bit upon hearing this. Well, now I have been there 10 times too, and I feel lucky to "know Paris" at the level that I do. Its also true that I have now been to Paris separately with each member of my family...with Christine in 1999 (with Jackson actually in utero!)...with Ava in 2019...and now with Jax in 2021. I whispered this time to my love, Notredame that I'd be back again when she's ready for her closeup. Perhaps we can all finally visit Paris together at that time! Note there are not so many photos from this most recent trip, so I have peppered in a few from the 2019 trip also. Cheers,

t.


This is Rue de la Huchette in the 'Rive Gauche' heart of the Paris Latin Quarter. The young Ensign Napoleon Bonaparte lived here in his first Paris flat at #10. (Forward on the right...near the 'Souvlaki' sign.) Visit Rue de la Huchette on your trip to Paris or France • Inspirock

We stayed in a VRBO about 100 feet after the next left you'd take from here. Note that walking in the Paris rain, surrounded by Parisians who just DON'T CARE about getting wet, was a great, liberating experience! I walked all the way from the Arc de Triomphe...gotta be 5 miles...and I was quite happily drenched!


Here is a rainy panorama, taken right at the street that separates the open end of the Louvre' from the Tuileries. I LOVED this walk!

As a tribute to the recently departed, great artist, 'Christo' the Arc de Triomphe was wrapped like a 'present' during our stay. We set out to find lunch and a covid test for Niall, who needed one before flying to Rome...and ended up walking the entire length of the Louvre', Tuileries and Champs Elysees. (BTW, as Christine will remember, during our 1999 visit, Christo had a fantastic installation of his sculpted works showing on the Pont des Artes.) Wrapped Arc de Triomphe Delights, Divides Paris - Bloomberg


The only great tragedy of Niall's one-day Paris appearance was that it was a Tuesday and the Louvre' is @#$% closed on Tuesdays. Here, we are taking a moment to absorb the shock of this reality! Oh well they're going to have to return on a non-Tuesday to right this Louvre' wrong. Jack has pledged to make this happen.


So...walking was the order of the day. I think we must have done close to 10 miles. Here we are on the quay, approaching the Pont des Artes.



Here we are at a sidewalk cafe' at the end of Rue St. Michele. This was the day Niall was to join us, but only after a complicated transit from Orly Aeroport. We were worried he'd get lost, as this was his first time in Paris. We gave him complex instructions to the flat we were letting, but its still pretty tough to find one's way through the oddly angled Paris streets. So we decided to surprise him as he emerged from the Metro stop right by this cafe' and we positioned our chairs so he could not miss us as he came up to the surface. But it was Niall who surprised US....while we were focused on the Metro steps in front of us we heard, "hi guys!" from behind us! I'll always remember the joyful feeling of our first sight of our old friend in Paris!


Here is a closeup photo of one of Claude Monet's mesmerizing works at l'Orangerie, the Tuileries museum set up by the state to display all of the artist's great Giverney works.

Here is one of the big, full panels. Monet not only built a huge facility for painting these panels in daylight...He also actually built, planted and maintained the gardens at his land at Giverney. Must have been a magnificent man. I confess to never really having been a Monet, Lili pads guy, all my life. But I am NOW!


Here is another herky-jerkey .gif, showing one of the 2 great rooms at the Orangerie that display Monet's astounding life work.


I think this is my favorite painting in the Musee d'Orsay. Its Degas' Orchestra Pit. (Or part of it, anyway.)

Here is Jackson waiting for Shakespere & Company, Paris' famous English literature bookshop to open.

Shakespere & Co is in its second Paris life. The original store stood several blocks from the current...and both were founded by Americans. The original shop was founded in the 1920s by Sylvia Beach and the shelves were actually made by her friend and the great American poet, Ezra Pound. Ms. Beach stepped forward when James Joyce's, "Ulysses" was roundly rejected as 'obscene' and actually published it herself. Ms. Beach operated her shop and lending library until Nazis arrived during WWII. The 'new' store was opened in 1951 by George Whitman and has offered any/all writers an open place to sleep (among the books) in return for a couple hours of work in the shop. Notables who have accepted the offer over the years include: Allen Ginzburg, Henry Miller, Langston Hughes, Anais Nin, Ray Bradbury, James Baldwin, William S. Burroughs...more recently; Dave Eggers, Johnathan Leatham (a favorite of mine!), Nathan Englander, Sylvester Stallone and Ethan Hawke. Cool place. When you purchase a book there, its immediately stamped with an S&Co chop identifying the shop as Europe's "ground zero". Great place!

Steps to the second floor of Shakespere & Company's 17th century building.



Just around the corner from Shakespere&Co are some of the most beautiful Medieval structures remaining in the city.

Here is a street marker identifying this place (on St. Michele, near the Pantheon) as the site of a brave stand by French resistance during WWII. A young man, and resistance fighter, Jean Montvallier Boulogne, "Died for France" here during the Nazi occupation in 1944. The massive bullet-pocking in the wall tells as horrific a story as does the placard. A quick google search identifies young Jean as a student at the Sorbonne, who died heroically in a "battle for liberation".



Here is one of my favorite public statues in Paris. This is Marechal Ney, who stands just outside the Closerie des Lilas Cafe, just past the Jardin de Luxemborg on St. Michele Blvd. Ney was immortalized by Hemingway who described his 'conversations' with the General in his 'Moveable Feast' as he sat most days in the Closerie in sight of the statue, while writing "the Sun also Rises". But Ney was fascinating of his own right, as well. He was Napoleon's clearly most trusted General for years and many campaigns...and was asked by the restored monarchy in 1815 to travel to convince Bonaparte to step down from his plan to march his army against Paris. But when the two men met...Ney joined Bonaparte and they took Paris together. After Napoleons final defeat, Ney was sentenced to death by firing squad. But it appears as though the army firing squad perhaps DIDN'T execute Ney at all. The executioners apparently conspired to help him escape to America, where he lived and worked as a teacher in South Carolina...only exposing his truthful identity after hearing of the death of Napoleon.


This is Gertrude Stein's apartment at 27 rue de Fleurs. Here, she and her brother began a weekly/Saturday 'salon' for promotion of the leading artists and writers in Paris during the years between world wars I and II. Every Saturday night for nearly 30 years, every great Parisian artist from Picasso to Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Pound, Matisse, Sinclair Lewis, Cezanne...EVERYBODY came to her salon to see and display the great art of the era. Nothing like Stein's salon had existed before or has since. I love the visual of all the great guests arriving here faithfully by foot, every Saturday night.


This beautiful apartment building a few blocks from Gertrude Stein's salon was once the home of F. Scott, Zelda Fitzgerald and their baby girl, Francis. A walking tour guy I met here very late one night told me that the statue you can see above the door marks the apartment that was theirs. This is and was a beautiful apartment, which the Fitzgeralds rented after the extremely lucrative publishing of, F. Scott's"Gatsby".


Ever see the movie, "Midnight in Paris"? (c'est moi!)

Such a gorgeous city!






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