Paris

Paris seemed routine this trip as I had been there so many previous times.  I did enjoy several of the meals I had at nice restaurants.  I came to like Confit and several other traditional dishes.  I also like to drink Armanac.  It is quite expensive - about $13. a shot - but when on vacation...  One day, I sat at a sidewalk cafe (Lutece actually) and consumed an unforgettable Lemon tarte  with Armanac instead of coffee.  They went so well together I would like to have done it daily.  Some little places on the sidewalks make great crepes.  One made the finest lemon crepe you could imagine.
I am sure you read that smoking is no longer allowed in French restaurants and cafes, and that many French swore they would not obey that wretched interference in their lives. I only saw one quite arrogant jerk smoking indoors.  Now smokers occupy the sidewalk tables..  Most cafes have the overhead heaters, so non-smokers seem to go inside and the balance go outside in every kind of weather.
The City is massively crowded compared with the many times I was there from 1964 forward.  I had never seen a line up for the Notre Dame - which is still free entrance - but the line was huge.  Even the man who went in and shot himself dead at the altar had to wait in line to get in.

I always stay on the Left Bank, and this time I was close to the Luxembourg gardens. I had to change hotels several times because bookings were so heavy.  There was a cardiologists convention starting the day before I left, and there seemed to be not a room available in the city.  Well, I noticed the newly renovated Intercontinental had rooms at $1,000 per night with a three night minimum.  The Raffles did have very large standard rooms at $1,500 a night.  I asked Raffles in Singapore who stays in those rooms, as I have asked at other high-end hotels occasionally.  They always say that it is almost always government employees.  Trip advisor lists 1,800 hotels in Paris and many are still  not on the internet, so I think there are many more.  Most are small, but it takes a lot of people to fill all of them.
I had not been to the Louvre, Pompidou, d'Orsay, and Jeu de Paume for a long time.  Despite the huge crowds and long line to get in, I really was thrilled to see so many great paintings again.  I had a short list of several works I especially wanted to see, and some questions.
While I was detaining a v. helpful couple of people at the information desk, I asked them how many people they admit to the Louvre.  They average 26,000 a day, 10 million a year, and one-third of all people who visit Paris, also visit the Louvre.

Note face of dog behind glass of red wine.

My other enquiry was about the looting habits of Napoleon Bonaparte.  I had read that he told his men to take every possible thing back to Paris including all art and sculptures from Italy.  I wondered if any had been returned.  A curator said that the French government returned everything possible at the beginning of the 19th C.  Well, except for one painting; they Veronese, Wedding at Cana (water into wine routine) stayed in Paris.  It is massive 24 x 32'  and weighs 1.5 tons.

 We are driven to wonder how it was transported with horse wagons when it was looted.  In fact, the French cut it in half and stitched back together in Paris.  Then the Louvre went through a massive renovation in the 80s and when Cana was being re-hung in the early 90s, a support came loose and the immense painting crashed to the floor ripping holes in four places.

Reducing such a massive image down to this size makes it quite insensible, but you get the idea - that there is a lot of painting on this sheet of canvas.  I was surprised to see puppy dogs (alive) on the table in addition to the many dogs on the floor.  Did JC turn water into wine and guests into puppies?  Has this aspect been forgotten in our religious teachings?

When I first went to Paris Les Halles was the grand market in the city centre.  It was a massive jumble of butchers hanging dead creatures from hooks, tons of fruit and vegetables, baked goods, spices and almost anything related to food consumption, plus the famous whores, all next to one of the grandest churches in Paris; the 16th C. St. Eustache.

In 1971, Les Halles was abolished & the huge Chatelet Metro station built underground.  Then it was a park of sorts for many years while a long term destiny was argued about.  Now there is a colossal project by Kool Haus underway to create some new public buildings.

One end of the park was dominated by the Beaubourg or  Pompidou modern art museum, which appears to be a building turned inside out.  The escalators and ventilation  systems and many pipes are all on the exterior of the structure.  In 1977 when it opened, and for some years after, it looked interesting and had some great art shows.  Now, despite the huge crowds it still attracts, it looks drab, worn, and kind of like what Joan Rivers probably looks like upon arising each morning.  Worse, the art collection and shows are hideous.  I am a strong advocate of so-called modern art, but that does not include trash.  I suspect the Beaubourg is flat out of money.  And, in France and Quebec, public operations seem to seldom, or never, hire people for their abilities, but who they know and as a result do many things badly.

In my early days, what is now the Musee d'Orsay, was a boarded up train station along the Seine.  It looked  really kind of frightening as it was so huge and in such terrible condition.  So I was thrilled as others to see it open in '86 as a gallery largely devoted to the impressionists.   It is beautiful inside.  But it is now way too small for the crowds it attracts.  Upstairs, where the galleries are too small and happen to contain some of the most famous artworks in the world, like Monet's Waterlillies, there really is human gridlock.  There was a  lovely cafeteria on the top floor where we could take food on to the roof and sit at a table and look at the River and all of Paris.  But the roof seems to be closed and it is a packed and small table service restaurant with no view at all.  Just to give you an idea of the crowds, I counted 30 women in line for the bathroom on the main floor.

I am not sure I will return to Europe, not so much due to my age or health, but the demands of travel among such crowds. It is impossible to feel the art or history of a place with so much traffic around the viewer, not even to mention the current fad of jumping in front of every object to have your photo taken and then rushing on to the next famous thing to do the same over and over and over again.  This time, it was raining hard much of the time I was there - and all of the time I was in Paris.  It got even worse after I left and there were floods all across central Europe.