Day 17: Paris

Date: 2012.06.04 | Category: Travel | Tags:

I am très triste to be leaving Paris. On the other hand, maybe when I get to Stockholm, I’ll eat a salad or two. I feel like all I’ve consumed since arriving here a week ago is cheese, wine, bread and pastries. Were it not for my insistence on walking several miles a day between meals, I don’t think any of my pants would still fit.

Yesterday, I had the good fortune of meeting up with my friend Cara Black at a cafe near the Seine. My first “exposure” to Paris was from Cara’s novels, each of which takes place in a different arrondissement (district) of Paris. The first book in her series is Murder in the Marais, which I read several years ago; we’re staying in the Marais, and funnily enough, the apartment we’re renting contains several guidebooks in English — along with a paperback copy of Murder in the Marais. Fortunately, the Marais seems pretty safe, though Joe and I did witness a bunch of wet suit-clad divers and a police boat in the Seine a couple of days ago. Were they searching for a body? We watched for a while, but didn’t see them surface with anything suspicious.

The French Open is in progress, and there’s a big plaza near the Hôtel de Ville (Paris’ City Hall) where people can watch the match on a giant screen, and even test the speed of their serve. The plaza has been covered with temporary orange flooring to resemble the Open’s famous clay court. The day was pretty cloudy and gray so there weren’t a lot of spectators.

The first Sunday of the month is “free admission” day at many Paris museums, so we thought we’d check out the Pompidou Centre. I find the building sort of off-putting, so I’m not sure I would have paid to enter it, but inside, there is a fabulous view once you get to the top floor — and its modern art collection is truly massive. Not quite as impressive as the Tate Modern, but if you enjoy conceptual art, as I do, you will find it worthwhile. I was fascinated by Christian Boltanski’s Les archives de C.B., made up of 646 rusty biscuit tins, allegedly containing “more than 1,200 photos and 800 documents that Boltanski gathered when he cleared his atelier. These tins, in other words, contain records from his entire life as an artist, shielded from view. They are only present in his memory and privacy.” What’s actually in those tins? A bunch of amazing stuff, or are they empty, and the joke’s on us? Who knows? I was also taken by Joseph Beuys’ “Plight,” an installation made up of 43 rolls of felt, a piano, a blackboard and a thermometer. You have to duck under a couple rolls of felt to enter the installation. It’s kind of quiet and cozy in there, a rarity in crowded Paris.

The only thing I would complain about here is the hybrid washer-dryer — yes, you put your dirty clothes in, and several hours later, they allegedly come out clean and dry. Our experience has been that everything comes out super wrinkled. I asked my sister-in-law, whose apartment also contains one of these devices, for guidance and she suggested washing very small loads and removing some items to drip-dry after the end of the wash cycle. Hopefully, the building in Stockholm where we’ll be staying will have a conventional tvättstuga (laundry room) in the basement, with separate washers and dryers, as God intended.