Paris The Re-Up: The Rest of the Story

In an attempt to finally wrap up this whole saga, I’m just going to sum up my last 2 and a half days in Paris in one post. It’s been 3 months since I returned to the states so it’s time to finally get this out of the way.

The night I returned from the opera, I got online and purchased tickets for the Musee d’Orsay, the Orangerie, and the Louvre. I had already seen the Louvre and the Orsay but 1. I really love the Orsay. 2. A ticket to the Orangerie was included in the price of the Orsay. 3. the Louvre was open late. After the long day I had with Versailles and the opera, I wanted a full day of relaxing museum visiting. Which I did not quite get.

Originally, on that day, I had a tattoo appointment scheduled. I was going to get the banana from the Velvet Underground album, partially peeled back to reveal a skin colored banana. But a single day into my trip and I freaked out, began questioning if I wanted a rather large banana on my forearm and stressing out because my appointment was for 3pm and HOW WAS I SUPPOSED TO PLAN AROUND THAT. Classic stuff. So I emailed the artist, apologized and told her I had a family emergency that required me to leave Paris early so I would have to cancel. I honestly don’t regret it. I could’ve not lied and just said I changed my mind but it is what it is now.

I allowed myself to sleep in a little that day, had my breakfast of demi baguettes and croissants, and headed off to the Orsay. The Orsay is the perfect museum for me. It’s focus is mostly French art from the mid 1800’s to the early 1900’s. So in other words, a shit ton of Impressionism and Post-Impressionism. During my first visit, I spent hours wandering around. This time however, I wasn’t there more than an hour and a half. It was so packed I could hardly enjoy anything. The upper floor, which is where the Impressionism galleries are was so packed full of people that one could barely move through the crowd let alone look at any of the works. My favorite painting, Olympia by Manet, was originally in a room by itself. I spent a good half hour just staring at it. This time around it had been moved into a special exhibit that focused on black people in art. It was a fascinating exhibit but I seemed to be the only one interested in what I was looking at. Most people seemed to only be in there to view Olympia, which was a bummer because I could barely get close to it. Because of the crowds, I ended up getting incredibly stressed out and overwhelmed in the museum so I abruptly left. I headed out to the Orangerie, which is on the grounds of the Louvre, and stopped at a riverside cafe along the way to grab a flatbread pizza and some Pellegrino. It was actually one of my favorite moments of the trip. There was nobody else at the cafe, a welcome change after the museum. I just sat by the river people watching and enjoying my pizza in peace.

The peacefulness ended when I walked into the Orangerie, which is much smaller than I was expecting. Already having a ticket, I maneuvered my way through the packed crowd and headed from the ticket taker, only to be chased down by security because I had a backpack. A policy which was clearly not public knowledge because the guard was constantly chasing people down and telling them to check their bag. So right away I got frustrated. I headed down to the basement level where 98% of the collection was located only to find that most of it was closed off, leaving only an entire hallway worth of Renoir’s and an exhibit on a movement I had never heard of and whose founders died in WWI shortly after founding the movement. I know there three of you that come here are only here for my opinions on art so I’ll let you know that Renoir is one of my least favorites. Bunch of glorified hotel art. Yes, he’s talented and he made some nice paintings but I personally couldn’t be more bored. He’s right up there with Monet as one of my least favorites. Speaking of, the Orangerie is actually most well known for being home to eight gigantic water lily murals by Monet. They’re housed on the main floor of the museum in 2 oval shaped rooms and I will be honest, I didn’t completely hate them. I was able to sit down for a few to take them in and watch people interact with the paintings. However it was still very crowded, it’s not exactly a large museum, and there seemed to be a growing number of overly loud children. Getting annoyed and frustrated again, I left. Not spending a full hour in the museum.

As I walked outside, it began raining and my frustrations hit a high. I was on the verge of tears. Nothing was going how I wanted it to go. I messaged Sarah and she was fortunately able to talk me down. She asked what was different between my last time in Paris and this one and honestly all I could come up with (other than Versailles and the opera) was that I had money this time around to eat. She then reminded me that Paris wasn’t going anywhere and this wasn’t going to be my last time there. I think that, subconsciously, I was trying to recreate that last trip to an extent because I remember how happy I was during that time. I was trying to cram 9 days of memories into 5 so I wasn’t giving myself any time to rest, I was going nonstop. I had to be constantly moving and doing something instead of just wandering around and exploring at my own leisure. This was me finally hitting a wall.

I found a chair in the Tuilleries under some trees, put on the score to the movie “The Hours” (I know, random and gay as shit but trust me on this one, its fantastic) and finally chilled the fuck out. I sat there for half an hour, watching people rush by to get out of the rain that repeatedly stopped and started. It was the zen moment I desperately needed. I felt like a new person afterwards. I turned on the soundtrack to “Midnight in Paris” left my spot under the trees and wandered along the river, killing time before I needed to be at the Louvre. I took the time to take in my surroundings a little more fully. I didn’t hesitate when I saw photos I wanted to take. I walked at a decent human speed instead of rushing around. I stayed hydrated.

I wandered briefly around the Ile de la Cite to see how close I could get to Notre Dame, turns out not very. Most of the island the church is on is closed off so I crossed a bridge and got a view of the church from the rear. Wanting to browse the little stalls along the left bank of the river, I crossed yet another bridge and attempted to achieve this but much to my displeasure, the sidewalk was so packed with people trying to get a photo of Notre Dame that I had to walk in the street. I quickly left the left bank and strolled back along the right bank to the Louvre. Fun tips about the Louvre 1. It’s open late on Fridays. 2. Buy a ticket online with a timed entry so you can pretty much just walk right in. 3. Never wait in line at the glass pyramid. There’s actually another entrance not too far away. If you look around the gardens you’ll see a large arch and on either side of it are a set of stairs that you lead you to the mall underground and in there, you’ll find the other entrance. You’ll have a brief wait to get through security but after that (if you’ve got a timed entry) you can just walk right in. Apparently there’s a third entrance but I haven’t discovered that one yet. Anyways, before entering I stopped at McDonald’s for a quick bite and I’ll have you know that French food court McDonald’s is just as terrible as any other McDonald’s in America. So after regretting that decision, I headed into the Louvre.

I’m not exactly sure why I thought ending my day with a walk through of one of the largest museums in the world was a good idea but I did. By the end of it my legs were ready to fall off. One nice thing about the Louvre is that 80% of it is relatively empty. Most people going to the Louvre are really only there for the Mona Lisa and the handful of other popular masterpieces it holds (the Venus de Milo, Winged Victory and.. um… some others I guess.) So you know you’re getting close to those when you start seeing more and more people. I still have yet to understand the hype around the Mona Lisa. I personally don’t feel that it’s that great of a painting. It’s one of those works that we’re told that we should care about and are told it’s important because of who painted it and because it was stolen 100 years ago. Also, the absolutely massive crowd around it makes it hard to try and appreciate it in person. You can’t get a decent view of it and aren’t allowed to get closer than 10 feet to it, not to mention it’s also behind a large piece of bullet proof glass. The Winged Victory will always be my favorite piece in the entire museum. I’ve loved that statute since I was kid and cried the first (and second) time I saw it. I was able to do the museum in just under 2 hours, while listening to George Michael’s album “Faith” for most of it, and only got lost 2 or 3 times. Once done, I grabbed a Frappucino from the Starbucks in the mall under the Louvre (what a terrible sentence) and wandered back through the Tuilleries for a bit before heading back to the hotel to get ready for dinner.

For dinner that night, I had picked a little hole in the hole restaurant close to Sacre Coeur named La Polbot. I had a seat in the far back across from a Swedish family who’s kids fell asleep while eating the creme brulee. Reviews of the joint all recommended the French onion soup and holy hell were they right. Eating it was like that scene at the end of Ratatouille where the critic eats the ratatouille and has a really intense flash back to his mother making ratatouille when he was a child and it’s the best thing he’s ever had. Only I never ate French onion soup growing up (I was very anti-soup until a few years ago) so I just smiled while I ate with tears in my eyes. I cleaned the bowl with slices of bread, leaving no trace of soup behind. The main course was ceviche or something but I really wish I had just ordered more soup. Dessert was a lovely little vanilla lavender creme brulee that made the greatest cracking sound when I broke into it. I walked back to the hotel drunk on good food (and 4 glasses of red wine.)

For my last full day in Paris, with the exception of lunch and dinner reservations, I had zero plans. Originally, I wanted to go to the town where Van Gogh is buried but there was construction on the train happening so a series of transfers were required that I couldn’t make sense of so I figured it was best to not risk it. The day was open for casual wandering. My first stop was the flea markets on the far north side. When I say flea market, I don’t mean a large gravel parking lot where people just park their vans and set up a card table full of old door knobs and plates. This was a large cluster of little store fronts full of everything from pinball machines to postcards. One store had nothing but tiny dolls and buttons. It was fantastic. It’s probably for the best that I only had a single piece of small luggage with me that was already pretty full otherwise I would’ve left with a lot of fantastic crap. There was also a lot of fantastic records shops among the stores that I considered but I ended up settling on a print of a pair of lovers sitting along the river in a dense fog. Nothing fancy but unique enough for me. From there, I hopped on the subway and headed back towards the city center for lunch at Ellsworth, a restaurant I only picked because the reviews said it was the best fried chicken in the city and you don’t need to threaten me with a good time. The chicken was actually fine, I wasn’t blown away by it. It did come with a side of ranch though but much like Ireland, the French don’t really know how to do ranch. It was really thin, which normally I’m cool with it, but then it tasted like the only thing they had on hand was dill. Which, again, I love dill. But this ended up being basically creamy dill water. it’s very likely that my opinions as a ranch connoisseur effected my opinions on the chicken. The dessert, a caramelized rhubarb cake, was hella great though. So there’s that.

Before arriving in Paris, I did a little research and saved a variety of highlights on Google Maps for me to check out. Fortunately, most of them were all relatively close to each other. So after lunch, I started on my trek to check things off the list. The list was mostly things like small parks and public squares. One of them was the oldest alleyways in Paris which was on all the lists of things to check out in Paris and ended up being pretty unremarkable. That’s really all I can say about it. I stopped at Starbucks and in my best French ordered what I thought was a flat white but actually turned out to be a white chocolate mocha, which was much better than I ever remember them being or than it had any right to be honestly. I stopped at the Place des Vosages, the oldest planned square in Paris, to rest for a bit. From there I walked down to the Coulee verte Rene-Dumont, which is an elevated park built along an obsolete railway. Think New York City’s High Line but older and French. It gives you a new and interesting perspective of Paris and I was finally able to get a decent shot of some Paris rooftops. Unfortunately I ended up suffering a heavy allergic reaction to something along the way and had to rush out to find a pharmacy. Fun fact: exits along this park are few and far between. After picking up some French Claritin on clearance, I headed over to the Rue Cremieux, a single block of a street that’s lined with brightly colored homes. It’s absolute heaven for the social media obsessives. I actually couldn’t get a single shot of the street without someone taking a selfie in the middle of it. I was able to sneak a shot of an old woman hanging out the window who had just got done yelling at a group of men who took her picture. Dick move? You betcha but whatevs. From there I got on the metro and started to head back to hotel to rest before dinner, only to find out that like 10 stops in row, including the one I needed to transfer over to another train, were closed. So once it finally stopped, I got off and then back on one in the other direction, went back those 10 stops then walked quite a ways to find a station for the train I needed to get to the hotel. All in all, I probably would have been better off just walking back from that Instagram hell hole. Dinner that night was at a restaurant called Canard et Champagne and it was probably the one place I was most excited to eat at. Why you ask? Well, with the exception of dessert, it served nothing but duck (canard) and champagne. How could you go wrong? I got the prix fix menu of 3 courses with a champagne pairing for each one for 75 euro. I started with some pate served with toast and an onion jam. My entree was duck confit with 3 sides; fries, roasted seasonal veggies, and mashed sweet potatoes. Dessert was a deconstructed lemon tart and if you think your mouth wont break out in chemical burns after you have 3 glasses of champagne and end with a tart made with so much fresh lemon juice that you cry well you are sadly mistaken my friend. Despite the chemical mouth burns, it was the best meal as a whole that I had in Paris. I’ve even googled where to buy the champagne I had with dessert because it was the best champagne I’ve ever had and I want all of it.

The only downer I had that night was during dinner when I looked around and realized I was the only person sitting alone. Now, this wasn’t the first time I’ve dined alone and I certainly was the only one dining alone in most of the places I ate at. But for some reason, this was the first time I took note of it. As much as I love travelling alone and being able to do things at my pace, there are times when I wish I was sharing a moment with someone else. Too many times has something happened and I look around to see if anyone else saw it only to realize that I was the only one. At first, it was like a fun little secret that only I knew of but after awhile it wears on you. I certainly don’t regret doing any of this alone but again, it’s just little moments I wish I could share.

After I filled up on duck and champagne, I headed back to my hotel but I didn’t stay in very long. I realized I hadn’t yet seen the Eiffel Tower light up and “sparkle” during this trip. So, knowing it would happen one last time for that night at midnight, I headed back out to my favorite spot to watch it happen. I was surprised how deserted the streets were. It was Saturday night and everything was closing or already closed. There was one small restaurant in the square that was still open. There was a man playing guitar inside for the few tables that were occupied. The steps of Sacre Coeur were empty, only a few youths chain smoking and drinking Heinekin remained. It was fascinating to see such a quiet side of the city.I hung out at my little spot for over half an hour waiting for the Eiffel Tower to begin sparkling, occasionally grabbing a shot of couples crossing under the light of street lamps. Finally, at midnight on the dot, the tower’s lights began their sparkle. And again, a part of me was saddened that, although I was surrounded by a small crowd that had formed, I was witnessing this alone.

The next morning, I enjoyed one last carb feast breakfast, and with hours left before I had to leave for the airport I put my luggage in the hotels storage and headed back to the square to finally get my portrait drawn. When I first wandered the square a few days ago, I saw an artist that was doing portraits with pencil whereas every one else seemed to be using pastels. I was instantly drawn to him because one could see the work and the process that went into the portrait. Plus all the pastel artists gave people creepy eyes and I couldn’t stand it. Much to my dismay, I couldn’t find him this time around. I made multiple loops around the square, seeing if there were any other artists that I liked. There was one other man who used pencil but nobody was sitting for him and he was just sitting there sketching in a book so I never approached him. I gave up and wandered around Sacre Coeur a bit, photographing people on the street. As I headed back towards the hotel, I found him. He was on a side street off the square and I had definitely walked right by him on my way to the square. He was in the middle of a portrait when I approached so I waited and the second the sitter got up I approached him and asked. Having your portrait drawn on a busy public street is a rather bizarre experience. People would stop and watch it happen. They’d look at the paper, look up at me, back down at the paper and then nod their approval before walking away. Or they would just stare at you for an uncomfortable amount of time. I hate making eye contact with someone for long periods of time so I never knew where exactly to stare. It all lasted 15, maybe 20 minutes. Usually, when one has wanted something for so long, the results when you do finally get it can usually be a little disappointing but I’m absolutely in love with my portrait. I rolled up my portrait, grabbed a box of macarons and my luggage and headed off to the airport.

Little tip about de Gaulle airport: get any eating and souvenir shopping done before you head to your gate because security is right outside your gate and once you get through, there’s nothing there. This was something I was completely unaware of. When I got through customs I was confused because all these stores were right there. Coach. Hermes. Lauderee. In any other airport I’ve been in, those are all after you go through security. I thought I somehow managed to miss a step. I decided to go find my gate and would venture back later. That’s when I discovered that security is right at the entrance to the terminals. But in my mind I was like “oh well there’s gotta be stuff on the other side.” I wasn’t completely wrong but was pretty close. There was one small cafe selling cold sandwiches and pastries and then a duty free shop. Which would’ve been fine if I wanted to bring home a cold ham sandwich or some designer cologne or a box of pate. But I was hoping for a magnet or something else dumb and little. I resigned to the fact that I’d just buy something off Etsy later and grabbed a cold ham sandwich. Another fun fact: Sunday afternoons are when Irish families return to Ireland from Euro Disney. You can imagine that it wasn’t exactly a quiet flight.

Upon returning to Ireland, Veronica and I (both starving) stopped at T.G.I.Friday’s and got an ungodly large burger which had British style mustard on which if you don’t know is basically white people wasabi. It was the perfect return meal.