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Sunday, July 8, 2007
Stockholm
Hello People,
Okay - so this "Swedish Report" will actually hardly
mention Sweden, because this last weekend we spent four
days in Paris and those days will dominate this report.
While we were in Paris we did a great number of things,
and in order to keep track of them I jotted a list everynight
in my little blue day notebook. It looks like
Thursday: fly to Paris/train/Luxembourg garden/hotel/protesters/
June 28 Robin's cafe/Robin-food-czar/Notre Dame/by Louvre/
flute/concorde/walk to Eiffel tower/climb/
subway to St. Michel/crepes/home
Friday: breakfast/get food/bread n' roses/museum passes/
June 29 St. Michel station to Versailles/skip lines/chapel/
gallery/chambers/hall of mirrors/garden lunch/rain/
little Versailles/gazebo/grotto/fica/home/dinner
Saturday: breakfast/K+T to Cluny/get food/Pantheon/
June 30 Sainte Chapelle/Louvre/Winged Victory/Mona Lisa/
Venus de Milo/ice cream/bungy-trampoline/
ferries wheel/Mont Martre/Sacre Coeur/dinner/
subway home/no cafe/cookies & bed
Sunday: Observatory/breakfast/checked out/walked to river/
July 1 boat tour/scouts/lunch cafe/walked by Seine/
2 level bridge/L'Orangerie/Monet/other art/ice cream/
hotel for bags/Luxembourg & toy sailboats/train/
airport/food?/flight to Stockholm/home @ 1am/eat/bed
So now that you know all the fact - what else is there to
say? I'm not going to just describe all the things we saw.
As you can see it would take nearly as long as the four
days we were there. Also some of you have seen these places,
or photos of them, and a lot of people have written scholar
and popular piece about them. So all I'll write about is the
impression some of them made on me.
One of our first places to visit was Notre Dame, and I
think that is a very good place to start. In some sense
Notre Dame is like the whole city of Paris crammed under
(and on top of) one roof. It is ancient. Versailles is only
a third the age of parts of Notre Dame. It has art, most of
it serious, but some quirky things too, like the gargoyles
and rain spouts. Did you know that the top of the flying
buttresses are rain gutters? Did you notice the figures
climbing the roof to the steeple?
Notre Dame is also full of people, as is all of Paris.
Mass was going on when we arrived complete with priest with
gold trim and clouds of incents. The faithful were quite in
the pews, and the tourist milling about the back and side of the main
sanctuary. And residing over all this confusion, the conflict
between the tall stately windows and the gaudy rose window,
Notre Dame her self is a gracious lady, unruffled by the commotion
of everything happening below her skirt, smiling upon us all as
if we were her children.
The Tour Eiffel (Eiffel Tower) was erected upon a whim,
which is the way whimsical things should be. Build to stand
for the Worlds Fair but then someone forgot to take it down.
It may be graceful - from a distance - but up close it is a
cobweb of girders with elevators and catwalks, staircases
and people. Restaurants and souvenir shops all over the place.
It is a disney land like "magic mountain" only for a different
time and different people. But it is all about fun and whimsy.
If one were to pick one symbol of "Gay Paris" from all the
monuments of the capital of France, Tour Eiffel has little
competition.
I remember being told in a high school history class that
Versailles was build by Louis XIV to bring all those barons
and dukes together so the king could keep and eye on them,
because if left to their own in their country seats
they might venture upon some more independent paths. I also
remember thinking, while seeing the Winter Palace in Vienna,
that a palace is all about showing wealth, because that also
meant showing power. What lowly Count could be received by
Louis XIV in Versailles and still believe that he could
oppose the king's will? Any ambassador whose country was
contemplating going to war with France would would write
home counseling peace or even submission after seeing
this palace. Versailles was build to impress, which is
something it is very good at.
But Versailles has two sides. There is the expansive
cobbled courtyard which we hiked over as we, and any
seventeenth century ambassador would cross, (now used by
rows and rows of tour buses). I expect in the days of the
Louises there was always a well orchestrated regiment with
shinning buttons and gilded swords on maneuvers when any
doubtful ambassador approached. There are endless waiting
rooms were the emissaries would sit - looking at vast mural
show how France has vanquished its foes, and then the causal
gild and wealth of the hall of mirrors and the throne room itself.
But in the back yard of Versailles are acres, miles
and kilometers of gardens and park lands. At first this
looks like the livable side of the palace. One could imagine the
king or queen strolling through the formal gardens, or
the hedge mazes. There is also the truly whimsical
area which I called the "Little Versailles" - Marie-
Antoinette's estate with its own palaces the Grand Trianon
and the Petit Trianon. Or is this also just part of the
show of wealth and power?
I will say that my favorite parts were the formal flower
gardens - especially at the Trianons. Gold and marble have
been there for centuries, but flowers show that somebody
right now in 2007 thinks their important, and that serenity
and life in the garden is important to.
What would Paris be without food? It is good, it comes
in a great variety and it is cheaper then we thought it
would be. Kristina say that it seems inexpensive because
we have got use to Stockholm prices which are - well,
not cheap. I think the food is very good, and I had some
great duck, crepes and quiche. But I am suspicious that
it is not as special as Paris food use to be. Not because
the quality has dropped, but rather because the rest of the
world has learned to cook. The bread at the bakery near
our hotel, "Bread 'n Roses" was awesome. But there is some
bread equal to it in Norwich, Vermont too.
At the beginning of the French Revolution there was a
great turning against the Church. The Church was viewed as
being hand-in-hand with the oppressive overlord, and so a
great deal of Church property was seized. This include
the church of St. Genevieve (patron saint of Paris) which was
transformed into the Pantheon, a monument to the great
"Heroes of France". The two things of note are the
crypt and the pendulum. Foucault's pendulum is a 28 kg
sphere hanging from a wire 67 meters long. That length means
it oscillate with a period of 1.6 seconds, which is very
stately to watch. It hangs in the middle of the Pantheon
and is there to reminded that as solid at the marble floor
and the earth below it may seem, we and the earth are in
motion, hurling east at over a thousand kilometers per hour.
When we climbed up the spiral staircase into the
Sainte Chapelle, Kristina and I both reminisced our first
time up these stairs, mine 34 years ago, Kristina's
20 years ago. What is at the end of that round and round
spiral? We wanted to see the boys reaction. And then you
are there. This is a chapel which is only about light and
color. The reds, the blue and even the parchment white!
Hundreds of thousands of shards of glass and all to a single
purpose which is to instill wonder and inspiration in
the viewer.
We finally arrived at the treasury house of Paris,
Musee du Louvre. There is far too much here! I remember
twenty years ago meeting my bothers and parents in Washington
DC. They had gone to the National Gallery the day before
and were exhausted. That day we went to the Corcoran and
commented on how restful its small size was. Well, our
approach was to not look at everything in the Louvre.
Rather we picked three famous "must see pieces", and
incidentally saw other things between.
I think "Winged Victory" has the best setting of
anything in the Louvre. It stands upon a pedestal of
a ships prow on the landing of a magnificent stair case
at the end of a classical and powerful hall. The
"Venus de Milo" is modest in its scale and in the
presentation compared to it. But of course the most
famous piece in the Louvre is the "Mona Lisa". The
Mona Lisa is on the wall opposite the
"The Wedding Fest at Cana", which has a lot of action
and is huge - and is the opposite in many respects of
the Mona Lisa. I stood by the door and listened to
person after person come into that gallery, catch
sight of the Mona Lisa and exclaim, "It's so small".
But Lisa has a smile! That is unique. It is
not just that da Vinci has done a good job of painting
her, but it is one of the very few truly happy faces
in art!
One last thing about the Louvre is that I like
how the museum people have taken this old palace and
transformed it into an art gallery. I imagine that at
one time it was filled, like Versailles, with too much
complicated wallpaper and gold gild. Now most of it has
been striped back to a basic stone, which is a very
clean surface for displaying the art against. Occasionally
a ceiling mural or an ornamental door way was left, but
I think even those little detail are a tasteful balance
between art and architecture.
We took a boat tour on the Seine. Perhaps we
should have started our four days with this instead of
saving it to the last day. But it was restful to sit on
deck and watch the city go by. I expect that we have
only scratched the surface of this metropolitan, and
some days I would like to explore up those side canals.
Our last museum was L'Orangerie, which is part of
the Louvre, but a separate build at the far end of the
Jardin des Tuileries. Our two day museum passes have
expired, but it is July 1, and this museum is open
free the first of every month. This also meant that
there was a line and we had to wait half an hour to get
in. The center piece of L'Orangerie are two oval rooms
with the panoramic paintings of Claude Monet called
"Les Nymphéas". Nymphéas is a type of water lily, and
these eight painting are in a real sense the culmination
of his water lilies, and maybe even of the whole school
of impressionist.
On the lower level of L'Orangerie is a large collection
of modern art. I asked Robin what his favorite painting
in those galleries was and he told me "the clowns, but
you know, they really don't look like they are having
any fun." They were painful clowns. And now I think I
know why Les Nymphéas and the Mona Lisa are great. Anybody
can paint a serious painting which is cluttered with
human pain and anxieties, but it is the few paints which
do something else which we remember. What I think I want
out of art is not a view of life "through the glass darkly",
but a picture of life with a bit of sunshine, because I
am of the opion that life does have some sunshine. Which
brings us nicely to our last scene from Paris.
Our last stop before headed home was again
Jardin du Luxembourg, where we ate strawberries and sat in
the sun. I like gardens. There are so alive and busy.
But it is not the business of a street with people trying
to get some place. It is the business of play and joy.
Here there are children everywhere. There are pony rides
and best of all, in the pool at the center of the gardens
there are sail boats. This are simple boat which children
rent. Then set the sails at one side of the pool and let the
boats sail across, while the captain races around the pool.
With a long stick, they redirect their boat, and then are
off again to the other side, complete with squeals of
joy and delight! It is what a garden really should be.
I think I learned a lot about art and architecture and
food and people and what I like and don't like. Maybe
that is what Paris is good at. A lot of many things,
all wrapped up in a four day holiday.
Tim
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