Paris in the early days

Yesterday I played tourist  – hard-core, not like I’ve been doing, which is wandering neighborhoods and pretending like I know where I am and sneaking photos when no one is looking at me.  Ethan Danahy, a friend from way back when (Tufts circa 1998), was in town with his mother, and they were doing Paris.  Extensively and exhaustively.  I couldn’t imagine seeing all the things they did over the course of a month, let alone three days.  Ethan’s mom especially went on a whirlwind tour of the city and saw all of the major sights.  While it’s not really in my nature to explore this way  – I prefer long leisurely days within just one neighborhood, getting lost so I’ll know my way the next time – it is nice to see all the highlights.  For example, I had yet to go to the Eiffel Tower, which we went to Saturday night.  Ethan took this lovely pic (more pictures below).

The day started with some necessary preparation for my trip to Rimini next week – namely, a bikini wax.  Now, I’m not going to go into details, but this is a public blog and I need to provide a public service.  In French, a bikini wax is called épilation du maillot.  If you Google “Paris bikini wax”, you get blogs asking where to get a bikini wax in Paris.  So I will provide the answer, or at least a better way to search.  If you’re cheap, like me, you can go to Espace Épilation. It was fine, and definitely a lot less expensive than the States, though you should be warned that they are not real keen on providing any kind of privacy. If you’re not cheap, you can go to Cityvox Paris and click on bien-être et beauté, and find something well-reviewed. Regardless, what you should be searching for is épilation. Google translate will do the rest.

Vélib station outside my apartment; note the gorgeous cherry blossom tree in bloom in the Luxembourg

I got to my appointment via a new mode of transportation that is hands-down the best way to get around Paris: the Vélib. It’s a subsidized bike rental system in place throughout Paris and in some other cities (Barcelona, Lyon – Jon Froehlich did a project about the bike rentals in Barcelona when he was at Telefónica). In Paris, you need a subscription, and with the handy dandy carte bleue I finally got from my bank, I can buy a one day subscription from the bike stand. Cost? 1 euro. Cost for a yearly subscription? 26 euros. The first half hour of rental is free, the next half hour is 1 euro, the half hour after that is 2 euros, and then it goes up to 4 euros per half hour. Essentially, it is not designed for long day trips, but as a public transportation substitute for the bus or metro. There are Vélib stations all over Paris, and you basically pick up your bike from one, bike to your destination, and leave it at that station. It is a wonderful system.

Vélib

The only downside is, biking in Paris is slightly terrifying. They do have big bus lanes on major roads that only bikes, buses, and taxis are allowed on, but taxi drivers are crazy. Just like all Parisian drivers. You sort of have to be – often roads have no lane markers, and it’s a free-for-all with the bikes, buses, taxis, scooters, motorcycles, and jaw-walking pedestrians. (By the way, Seattlites, it turns out that when you leave Seattle, you immediately start jaw-walking again.) Oh, and no one bikes with a helmet, and women often bike in skirts and heels. I wore heels all weekend. The bikes themselves are enormously heavy and have only 3 gears, and sometimes it’s just stuck in one of those gears. But any hills are very minor, at least in the central area that I bike in, so the heaviness and lack of gears is no big deal. There’s also this nice big basket on the front for groceries and whatnot. Biking through Paris yesterday and today, across the Seine, down these lovely boulevards, was an amazing feeling – like this city was my home.

Voltaire

My appointment was in St Germain, on Rue de Seine. Some pictures below. There are lovely art galleries along these winding streets, and for some reason, a PacMan ghost on the wall. Today, in Le Marais, I saw an Oscar the Grouch version. It’s weird too, because they’re all pixelated. Graffiti? Public art? Who knows. I sat in a café and wrote, thus crossing one item off my to-do list, then wandered toward the river past a lovely garden with a statue of Voltaire.

Louvre square (top of horseshoe)

Louvre pyramid, museum extends on both sides

I noted as I crossed the Seine to the Louvre that it was enormous. I mean, I remember from going there with my mom 12 years ago that it was exhausting trying to walk through it, but from the outside it’s obvious why. First of all, coming from the Seine, you enter into this big square, maybe 100 yards on each side. I walked in and thought, “hmm, oh yeah, the Louvre is really big, I remember.” Ha. You exit the square and you’re in the central plaza, with the famous pyramids, and the museum extends out both sides for another quarter mile, at least. It’s ridiculous. I must say that I have close to zero desire to go into the Louvre, despite my fascination with history (it was first built in the 12th century). The museum is just chock full of tourists and it is very tiring to try and see everything, or even just the “important” pieces. What I would like to do is to explore it bit by bit, in hour long chunks, over the course of the next year – but that will get expensive.

Northeast corner of Jardin du Luxembourg

I wandered about the Palais Royal (pretty) and the Jardin des Tuileries (less pretty) and now I have to put in a plug for my favorite place in Paris, the Jardin du Luxembourg, which has all these other places beat by an order of magnitude. Maybe it’s because it’s less formal, and more in bloom, who knows, but it seems to me that most Parisians agree. At any rate, you find them at Jardin du Luxembourg but certainly not at Jardin des Tuileries.

We went to the Eiffel Tower, where we took a zillion pictures, and had a fantastic dinner at Café Constant. Our waiter was from New York and super nice; the place was totally packed as we were leaving (we had an early dinner), always a good sign. At the next table over, the couple was feeding their dog foie gras under the table. We were inside and upstairs, by the way. Then Ethan and his mom headed to the Arc and I headed home to change. The plan was to go to la Fleche d’Or, but it was pretty late and my feet hurt a lot, so instead Ethan met me at my place and we were out in the St Germain. And despite it being a little after midnight, the bar was packed. We got kicked out at 2 am and went to the club next door, which had a line; it took us about 20 minutes to get in. Once in, we descended stairs to this cave-like club playing your standard French stuff, which is electronic remixes of new American pop mixed in with older American pop (plenty of Michael Jackson, some “Pump Up the Jam”, “Groovers in Hall”, some Madonna). I find the focus on American pop a bit disconcerting – aren’t there some good French rappers and pop singers? – but I can’t really complain, since I know all the words.

So, the club was packed, and we danced and danced, and it was super fun, and around 4 am I hit a wall (we can blame “Soul Man”, which I didn’t feel like dancing to) and took a cab home. The party was still going strong, I can only assume these things go till dawn. Check another item off the to-do list. I still need to go to Fleche d’Or and see some live rock music, but I am very pleased by my first foray into the Parisian nightclub scene.

This of course sort of killed my Sunday, which I meant to spend going to museums, as it is the first Sunday of the month and they are all free. I really want to see the Calder exhibit at the Centre Georges Pompidou and tried to today, but this turned into a minor disaster that basically involved me waiting in different lines for about an hour before being told that I didn’t have the proper ticket. I won’t go into it but it was a horrible experience and made me hate everything about being a tourist, most especially other tourists. I think the bottom line is, I need to suck it up and pay money and go to these things early Tuesday mornings, or something. After all, what’s the point of living here if I can’t experience the place like a local?

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