Of swans and sylphs, nymphees and nymphs, trains, planes, and vaporetti

Yesterday (or was it last night? isn’t it now morning?) I returned from a 10ish-day journey in France and Italy: Paris, Giverny, stopover in Lyon, Milan, Venice.

For a transportation planner, it was an exercise in logistics that worked out well on paper and worked in a geekily thrilling variety of public transit experiences.

For a human with an aging body in need of more than fleeting moments of restorative stillness, it was an ordeal.

For a dreamer in love with beautiful old buildings, cobblestones, flowering gardens, winding passageways, lyrical languages, and 19th century ballets featuring enchanted ladies in white, the journey was overflowing with delight.

The Paris part of the trip

Sunday, July 2: Boarded a plane in Seattle. Sleep did not happen during the 10.5 hour flight.

Monday, July 3: Disembarked at Charles de Gaulle airport. Waited two hours in the border police immigration control queue, served by a single station (surrounded by closed stations) that was itself closed for 20 minutes. What was this, border patrol strike day?  (Note to self: accept that parting bottle of water offered on the plane because there will be no fountain nor cafe nor vending machine to procure a beverage until after passport stampation.)

RoissyBus to the Opera Garnier. Slow hot walk to the Hotel 3 Poussins (near the Saint Georges Metro). Lunch at a small Himalayan restaurant nearby (momos!) until check-in time. I had booked this particular room for the view from the terrace and was not disappointed.

Can you spot the opera house?

First outing: a quick visit to the Musée de l’Orangerie to revisit Monet’s nymphées.

First ice cream: a gelato from a cart near the Pont des Arts, staffed by a friendly young woman who took great pride in sculpting the gelato she served. I should have photographed the lovely flower of ice cream she created. This sustained me for the walk to dinner.

Determined this time not to subsist entirely on food in boxes from the Monoprix, I had reserved a table at a fancy Italian vegetarian restaurant called Sense Eat, near the Mabillon Metro station. The food was exquisitely prepared and served, though not aligned with my flavor preferences, except for dessert.

second gelato of the trip

So I put down two gelati on the very first day, and successfully stayed awake until sunset. This felt like an achievement.

bonne nuit, Paris

Tuesday, July 4: I explored the Gare Saint-Lazarre to get my bearings for upcoming train travel, the kindness of a Parisian lady on the street directing me to the Jardin du Luxembourg, the Musée du Luxembourg (Pissarro exhibit), Monoprix (mais oui, as there would be no time for a real dinner tonight), and the ballet La Sylphide at the Palais Garnier. Seeing this ballet in this theater was a dream. I sat very close to the stage, in a box on the extreme side, so didn’t get to see all the specially flying effects, but still.

 

View of the house

From this view I saw the trap doors used in La Sylphide

 

Hugo Marchand and the sylphs bask in the applause

Back at the Trois Poussins, I enjoyed some wine with the Eiffel Tower before a good night’s sleep.

That’s the moon in the upper left corner.

To be continued…

About last Paris

So seeing the Paris Opera Ballet and orchestra perform Swan Lake (three times!) was a dream come true.  (The mini-subscription I sprung for early last year was well worth the ability to get tickets to additional performances before they went on sale to the public.)  The swans were magical, and the entire production was magnificent.  I won’t nerd out about the dancing here, other than to mention that the male leads were particularly extraordinary on the first and third nights.

And the rest of the trip, other than the not sleeping and sad eating parts, was highly enjoyable, with early December having certain advantages.   It was lovely to visit L’Orangerie, the Musee Cluny, the Louvre, Sainte-Chapelle, and the Musee des Arts et Metiers with few tourists, virtually no lines for the museums, and room to breathe (except the air quality was very poor the first four days I was there, but as a result the transit was free).  I liked riding the bus more than the Metro.  I got to practice my rudimentary French.  (It is getting better.)  The Medici Fountain in the Luxembourg Gardens was my favorite place of beauty, other than the stage of the Opera Bastille and Monet’s water lilies in L’Orangerie.  The apartment was in a lovely neighborhood and had a nice view.

There are photos here that I will probably never get around to organizing.

The one disappointment was that I did manage not sit in a cafe and sketch.  Surprisingly, I also drank no wine (wanted to keep my wits about me being a solo traveler, until that very last night and then cider was what beckoned).

And of course I want to go back.

If the stars align, I’m going to do so for just a few days, before heading to …

Because, after all, I still have that last ticket in my mini-subscription to see La Sylphide at the Palais Garnier in July, the one I was planning to resell or just consider a sunk cost, since I really didn’t expect to return to Paris in 2017.  But Swan Lake at La Scala also happens in July, and the real water lilies in Monet’s garden begin blooming in July.  And it’s not going to get easier to travel and I’m not going to get any younger.

Swanning around

So weekend after next I’m flying south to be with the swans.  That is, to see the San Francisco Ballet perform Swan Lake.  Four times, in three days.  (You know that about me, right?)

But the moment I may have truly crossed over into Crazy Swan Lady territory was when I booked the smallest possible season subscription with, um, the Paris Opera Ballet so that I could get an optimal ticket to see their Swan Lake in December.  In Paris.

Paris, day 7 (Notre Dame and Montmartre)

That Wednesday morning, we climbed Notre Dame.

And climbed.

And climbed.

And then we were up there with the gargoyles.

And the bells.

Then we went back down, and inside.

I ran out of steam on this weeks ago… you can find all the photos to accompany the rest of the narrative here.

Then we went back to Le Marais, had crepes and cider, then went to Montmartre where I wasted 20 minutes in the Amelie post office, we wandered a bit looking for the hotel Michael once stayed, spent a little time in the Montmartre cemetery, wandered by the Moulin Rouge, hiked up to Sacre Coeur, had possibly the most disgusting mealsnack of the entire week, hiked back down (avoiding the bracelet guys), and then went back to Le Marais to pack and sleep.

On the eighth day, we flew home.

Paris, day 6 (Musée d’Orsay and a full moon)

The focus of Tuesday was visiting the Musée d’Orsay.  The d’Orsay is home to many wonderful Impressionist paintings, and it is set inside a former train station.  The big station clock room was one of the few areas in the museum where photo-taking is allowed.

The cafe on the 5th floor was another.

We wandered back east through Saint Germain.

Shakespeare and Company was our last stop on the Left Bank.

I popped in for a little sketching.

And then we caught the full (or nearly full) moon over Notre Dame.

I felt like we had stepped into a Simon Marsden book.

There was a bit more street art to be seen on the way back to the apartment.

And more of that moon.

Paris, day 5 (a visit to the city of the dead)

That Monday, we headed out for Cimetière du Père-Lachaise in eastern Paris.  We walked, so of course there was street interest along the way.

Finally we reached the cemetery.  It was as beautiful and serene and patinaed and mossy as I’d hoped.  And full of the famous as well as the apparently forgotten.

And then we went record-shopping.

Paris, day 4 (in which some actual sight-seeing occurred, as well as bus-spotting)

On the fourth day, we finally made it out of the apartment before lunchtime, and headed back over to the Left Bank, first taking in some window displays and street art on the Right Bank en route through the Marais.

I was into taking pictures of buses and bus stops that day.

And padlocks and other random things.

We were in Paris on the first Sunday of the month, a day on which many of the museums are free (and probably even more crowded than usual).  The line to enter the d’Orsay was dishearteningly long, so we crossed the river and headed for l’Orangerie (these being the two museums I most cared about visiting).  But first we had lunch within the gardens of the Tuileries.

And then we waited in line for quite a while, but made it inside l’Orangerie about an hour before closing.  Seeing Monet’s gigantic Les Nymphéas in the round, filling my field of vision, was a very special experience for me.  (Photos aren’t permitted in the museum, but you can get a sense of the scale and layout through an image search.)  Most of the crowd drifted out of the innermost room about 15 minutes before closing, and I got to sit with the paintings in silence, along with a few other lingerers who seemed equally in awe.  This was about the closest I’ve ever come to having a religious experience.

After the museum closed, we lingered briefly in the gardens.

And then walked up to the Place de la Concorde in time for a rather splendid sunset.

Our walk continued north, back up toward l’Opera Garnier.

Finally, we returned to Le Marais via Metro, bought a baguette and some fine macarons from a boulangerie/patisserie near the Saint Paul station that was amazingly open on a Sunday evening, and settled in for the night with the stinky camembert.

Paris, day 3 (laundry day)

The third day was probably the low point of the week, because I decided I could wait no longer to make use of the washer and dryer in the apartment.   I chose this apartment in part due to the ability to due laundry (because that’s what I do), and by golly I wanted to take advantage of the amenity.

So that was the morning.

We finally ventured out sometime in the early afternoon, cruised some of the used streetside booksellers along the Right Bank, and then crossed the Pont Louis-Philippe to the Île Saint-Louis, paused for ice cream, crossed another little bridge over to the Île de la Cité, wandered past Notre Dame, and crossed one more little bridge over to the Left Bank.

We had to wait in line briefly to enter Shakespeare and Company, which was brimming with tourists.

After being there long enough to at least poke my head in each room, deciding to return at a less busy hour, and buying a couple of books and a very lovely tote bag, we started wandering toward the Latin Quarter.

But didn’t get very far before I demanded that we stop and have a late lunch in a cafe that turned out to be adequate and kinda expensive but at least had a bathroom and staved off a blood sugar crash.  And at last I got to drink wine out on the sidewalk in the middle of the afternoon.

We then wandered a bit west and did a bit of pop culture shopping.

We made it to the garden of the Musee Cluny just in time to sit on a bench, start sketching, get rained upon, and get shooed out because they were closing for the night.

And then we went home for another night of not getting enough sleep…but at least we had clean clothes.

Paris, day 2 (to the Opera Garnier and back again)

After a tiny, tiny bit of sleep, it was thrilling to wake up in Paris to beautiful morning light over the rooftops.

I was smitten with the terra cotta chimney pots, and the light.

We enjoyed breakfast, including scrumptious Twinkie-esque madeleines and delicious from-a-pod espresso that were stocked in the kitchenette, with other things we had picked up from a nearby grocery the previous evening.

And then lunch from Mi-Va-Mi:

And then we ventured out, walking to the Palais Garnier, because I would be seeing the ballet there that night and wanted to know how long it would take to walk there.

So we walked there twice that day (and walked back the first time, Metroed back the second), with a visit to the gift shop the first time, and picking up some more comestibles on the walk back.  Dinner was baguette and the stinkiest of camembert wolfed down in the apartment.

The only photos I took that evening were of the interior of the magnificent Garnier.  I had a side seat in the third level of loges.

The program included Harald Lander’s Etudes (which is a delightful display of the amazing classical technical proficiency of the Paris Opera Ballet dancers) and two works by William Forsythe, whose choreography is very interesting, but whose choices of music don’t appeal to me, so I didn’t enjoy those as much as Etudes.  Of course no photography was permitted during the performance, but I did manage to get a screen capture from Etudes from a web broadcast of the same program the very next night:

Alas there wasn’t time to linger and draw the theater that evening.  (Too bad I felt it necessary to make that walk twice.)  Next trip.

Good night, moon.  Good night Eiffel Tower way off in the distance. Good night, Paris.

Paris, day 1 (and getting there)

Here we go:

Flying:

not sleeping:

and flying:

and flying:

I managed to find Michael at Charles de Gaulle, despite my misguided idea for a meet-up location.

We took a taxi into town, and loitered around the Place des Vosges until we could check in to the apartment.  I used the Victor Hugo toilet.

After checking in to what turned out to be a fabulous little garret with skylights:

and a view:

we procured our first meal in Paris:

I was too excitied to be in Paris to sleep much that first night.