Page 5 of 5
Paris, France
Still you're the chocolate at the end of my Cornetto
My first trip to Europe (if you don't count London in 1995) was in September 1997, when I landed in Orly Airport in Paris with a railpass and no idea where I was going to stay that night, only that I had two and a half weeks to get myself to Rome. I have many fond memories of that first trip and those first few days in Paris (if you don't count having to stay at a hostel all the way out in Clichy) and many of the places I had seen. One of them was when I wandered into the small Orangerie Museum (in the Tuileries near Concorde) and first saw Nymphaes by Claude Monet. Two rooms of curved wrap around paintings that made Water Lilies at MoMA (then displayed in that little tiny room) seem somehow flat and far less immersive. When I returned to Paris in 1999 I made an effort to re-visit the Orangerie only to find it being renovated. Same for 2000, 2002 and 2003. Now, six years since I've been to France (which surprises me) and twelve years since I first visited Nymphaes, everything feels like 1997 again, although admittedly the museum looks a hell of a lot better than I ever remembered. I guess all those years of construction and renovation amounted to something nice after all.
The great stained glass church of Paris is not Notre Dame (take that Victor Hugo) but rather a five minute walk west. Sainte Chapelle (near the Palace of Justice on Ile de la Cite) was built to house the true Crown of Thorns or, more accurately, what people thought was the true Crown of Thorns. True crown or not, it at least had one hell of a home- a great royal chapel fit for Kings and relics (and tourist) for over 750 years now.
In all honesty, what brought me to Paris was a tightly restricted plane ticket on Delta/Northwest, one that would only work if I flew to Heathrow through Detroit and came back to JFK from Paris CDG. What made me go to Paris an extra day early however was Jean Nouvel's new (and generally badly reviewed) Quai Branly Museum. Knowing that it would be closed on Monday, I took a Eurostar train a day earlier specifically to see it. What I saw was, well, pretty much what I expected- a jumbled museum with some questionable design decisions and a collection of "Native" art that somehow feels condescending in an age so far removed from empires past. What I didn't expect to see was so many interesting parts that often worked. One (pictured below) was the Seine side elevation of a clear glass wall that terminated in a building just absolutely covered with vegetation. The low sun on a late Sunday afternoon created great reflections and shadows, and the glass wall did a great job separating the busy street from the relative quiet of the museum's overgrown garden. Lots more pictures on my flickr account of this one, if you're interested (see link below).
Finishing the Jean Nouvel portion of the slideshow is his much older (opened 1987, designed in 1981) and far more successful Arab World Institute. Consisting of a south facade wall with mechanical sun screens (that weren't working that Sunday), it remains as remarkable as it did in its last slideshow appearance.
Forget the Eiffel Tower, everyone knows that all of the good views are at the rooftop deck of the Arc de Triomphe. Everything from the Pompidou Center to Montmartre to Montparnasse to La Defense feels almost close enough to touch. And for sport (and a good time killer as you cool down from yet again foolishly sprinting up all those stairs) there's always all those French drivers circling and swearing and swerving and honking below. I can't imagine what it's like to navigate the 12 or 13 lane unstriped traffic circle below, but I have to imagine it's an experience that would be hard to forget.
The slideshow ends where my trip ended, at Roissy, or, more specifically, Terminal 2E at Charles de Gaulle Airport in Roissy. Famous for two things, one slightly worse than the other. The good one is the U2 "All That You Can't Leave Behind" album cover photo was taken at the airport. The bad one was the partial collapse of the original Paul Andreu designed Terminal 2E that killed four people five years ago. Ok, maybe "slightly worse" than an album cover shoot isn't quite the appropriate phrase.
Anyway the reopened Terminal 2E is quite nice, one of the nicer airline terminals I have been in (and let's face it, I've been in a lot of airline terminals this year). Air France was pretty nice as well, the food in business class and in the airport club were a considerable step above what I have otherwise seen, even if the Air France flat bed seats were not nearly as nice as the Delta flat bed seats. And (in case you noticed) the photo was not taken with my trusted and much loved Canon 20D DSLR but rather a borrowed Canon SD960 point and shoot. A nice little camera and a temporary fix as I patiently wait for Canon to release their new S90 point and shoot pocket camera.
