Paris, The End of Day One, and Day Two

Here I am! Well rested, well Veniced, and ready to finish my reflections on my first day in Paris.

I didn't have the full energy last night to talk about the Louvre, aside from the boobies, and I think that it's worth mentioning the incredible feats that humanity has accomplished. In the Louvre they have art from so many civilizations, Islamic, and Asian and Egyptian and European and you can't help but feel like you are a tiny grain of sand in this ocean of incredible human achievement. The mastery and dedication and just sheer time and effort that has gone into the works of art there, as well as the building itself which is a staggeringly large masterpiece makes you think that if there are aliens out there and they come to earth, maybe to send them here first would be a good first taste of what we are capable of in the arts. I felt the same way about the city itself, it is a true masterpiece that has taken so many years and hours and lives to create. There are little details on every edifice, little angels or frescoes or marblework that you wonder how many eyes have looked upon, how many hands have touched? How many feet have tread these streets and how many drops of sweat were produced to accomplish such beauty? There were a few moments where I was overcome with emotion and had to sit down and weep, just at the incredible capacity of our species for beauty. We are a species that is capable of the most horrible, painful cruelty and people so often write off humans as having a fatal flaw. I admit that since Trump was elected it has been hard for me to feel connected to humanity, I have been disgusted and disappointed and saddened by what we do to each other and how quickly we forget the humanity of others just because they have different skin and we decided a long time ago what the colour of mine or yours means about how much your life matters. And yet, that same humanity has created this place. Thousands and thousands of people every day pour in and out of the Louvre to pay homage to this experience that we can all feel no matter where we come from, this beauty that we see when we come in these doors. People from all around the world come here and we are all drawn like moths to this spark of what is good about people. I needed this reminder, so, so badly, about the good that we can do too. (And yes, I bet there could be a long thesis written about the problems with the Louvre and there are probably some terrible issues with colonization and theft and ownership that could vex me deeply too.)


Where we left off, I had managed to rebuff the affections of a painter from the Louvre (but like, maintenance painter, not tit-popping painter) and had embraced the stereotype I am and made my white lady tourist way to the Tour Eiffel. Looking up at it, what I think makes it so striking is the geometry of it. It is built to look beautiful and different from every angle and added to that it was twilight so the lights came on as I arrived and I got to see it bathed in the purple light of dusk and come alive with the city. Once I had managed to find a toilet, the ache of the impossible lengths I have walked these pa.st days began to kick in and I was reminded why this is something I am doing now and not when I have retired and no longer have bone density or the capacity to climb up a bajillion French stairs.

Making my way back home for the first time I got bad luck with the weather. While I was waiting in line for the Louvre, the skies were ominous and dark, but no rain fell until about the moment I hit the security check, at which point the glass pyramid was suddenly awash with  torrent of rain. As I emerged from the gift shop hours later, the skies had just cleared up enough to leave the sky looking moody and beautiful but no longer the bearers of cold rain to soak my one and only cold weather outfit. Sadly, this did not hold out once I got back to the Anvers area where my spot was. I had to duck into a shop and buy an umbrella, but seeing as the one I had in Toronto popped its clogs the day before I came out here, I was in the market for one anyways.

At this point I was cold and hungry, I haven't had much of an appetite so my meals have been somewhat sparse. Oh! I forget the meal I had before the Louvre which was a proper French meal with a tasty pasty with mushroom cream sauce and a fish and potato dish with Marseilles sauce that was delightful! But that had been about 9 hours before this, and I didn't want to sit down in a restaurant, I wanted garbage food to garf back in bed while I surfed facebook and listened to a podcast. And so, I did what any world traveller would do in this situation at midnight: I found myself a McDonald's! That's right, I'm a disgusting trash pig that ate of the fruits of capitalism because I wanted a McChicken. I will defend myself by saying McD's is an interesting portal into the cultural norms of the place you are eating it in. For example, in Singapore you get "chili" sauce with your McD's which is common there and its like a spicy delicious ketchup. In Milan, you can get poutine, and also a literal block of cheese with your meal. And in France, you get Pommes Frittes Sauce, which is a delicious herbed mayo style thing that I found super tasty. They also put all of your food into a little bag with handles on it and a tray inside with your drink that makes you feel like you're about to go on a swanky little picnic and not just cram a bunch of rubbish into your poor body.

I talked to my lovely Kirstyn once I got home via Facebook calling and it was cool to catch up and hear the doggies in the dog park having fun in the background in the USA while I was curled up ina loft at the top of Paris and it made the world feel so small and lovely. Then Ben called me from his car where he was driving back from the Southern States to talk about how he had just passed Windsor and to catch up a bit and it again felt so lovely to know that all these people that I love are so close by. That morning, which had felt like a million years ago while I had woken in the pre-dawn of Milan, Kirstyn and my Dad had been texting with me and making sure I got my cab and didn't sleep in. I feel so well loved and while I am alone here, I carry the spirit and love of my framly every where I go, no matter how far.

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After the best sleep I have had so far this trip, I woke up and found my way to the train station, Gare Du Nord near my Airbnb which I was happy was so close because it also was the way to the Orly airport the next day that would take me to Venice. I liked that train station because there were a lot of dogs (I would like to shout out the dogs of Europe, because they are adorable and everywhere and a lot of them are teeny tiny and dogs are always little bolts of happiness walking around that make me smile every time) and there was also a station where you could ride a stationary bike to charge your phone which to me was brilliant and maybe why the European people are a lot less porky than us North Americans. I made my way to the place where the Caatacombs entrance is, and the legend about the long line was not long. I queued up and quickly started chatting with the people both in front and behind me because they were all English speakers and we ended up getting to know each other very, very well because all told we spent 5 hours in that line up. Yes, 5 hours.

The people behind me were a family from rural Utah, a mom and a dad and their 20 year old son who was a missionary for their religion and had been doing a mission in some godforsaken corner of England. The people in front of me were a couple from Cornwall, Leanne and Ian, and all of us chatted and shared about our lives and where we were from. Sadly, the Utah people gave up eventually because the father was an areonautical engineer and he did some fancy calculations about the rate of the line moving and how long we still had to go and determined that we would not get in until 3:10pm, which would be too late for them to see the Catacombs and also catch their train. That ended up being a good call, because he was actually off by an hour and we didn't get in until about 4 (we lined up at 11am) and in the meaintime it had pissed down freezing rain on us. I shared my umbrella with Leanne and after surviving that kind of ordeal, you bond. After the Utah people left we made friends with a new American family that were in front of us who were from Boston and the teen sons and I tried to explain the sheer insanity of the American education system and the debt racket to our UK friends who were shocked to hear about the prison food you pay $5,000 a year to eat at college.

Once we finally made it down into the catacombs, we had become a merry band of irreverant jokers and the trend continued down in the depths of Paris. There were a lot of jokes and laughing and carrying on and that's probably not the most sombre, respectful tone to take in a giant crypt, but I'm glad I'd made funny friends and I think the experience was very different for me with them than it would have been solo. And our jokes were still better than the asshole that graffiti'ed his name onto a skull, or the people who reportedly steal bones EVERY SINGLE DAY from the Catacombs. One thing I will say about the catacombs is that their line system seems incredibly stupid to me. All of the places had different lines for tour groups and people who pay extra for skip the line stuff, and as I said to my friends in line, this is how the French Revolution started in the first place. It's like we were on the bottom cabin of the Titanic and we were trapped in this wet horror show while the bourgeoisie trotted merrily up to the gates and were admitted quickly. Once we were down there, there were almost no other people, so it seemed like they could have been admitting way more people rather than making us wait that long. However, you can't get to twisted up about stuff that you can't change, and I was glad to make it down there and make some cool new friends.

Leanne and I probably hastened our trip a bit more than you would want after having spent 5 hours in line because by that time the coffee and baguette that we had run to get whilst Ian held our place in line meant we both had to pee pretty badly and there are no toilets in the Catacombs. I suggested we pop a squat, but that's also not very respectful and there were those impressionable Bostonian teens about to think of. Once we had gloriously relieved ourselves and I had bought a whole bunch of cool shit for my friends back home from the gift shop, there was a sadness that set in as we realized that the end of our time together had come. "Are you going to the Metro, Bea?" Ian asked me. "Yes!" I said, "Why don't we go together?" and as we walked Leanne asked if I wanted to join them on the boat cruise they had booked for that night on the Sienne. Looking at the time, I knew that there was no way I was going to make it to the Musee D'Orsay before it closed, and frankly my feet were killing me, so the thought of sitting on a boat while someone else does the moving around was amazing.

It turned out that we were staying really close to each other and so we all went home for a bit to dry off and drop off some of our stuff and then we met back up and headed back to the Eiffel Tower and the boat cruise. It was cold and raining, but I had a blast with them and we found some food after at the market and had a beer. By this point we were close friends and were talking about our relationship histories and all the sordid details of breakups and heartache and the things you share over a good beer and paella. They walked me partially home after because it was dark and there were some meth heads about, and we realized their hotel was 3 minutes from my Airbnb. It was so nice meeting them and we have messaged back and forth since. So now I have a place to stay if I ever come to Cornwall!