Paris 2017, part 3
The next day I woke up slowly and then went across the street in order to have my breakfast at Dule and Jacqueline’s. For my breakfast they got the best croissants from the neighbourhood that are made with butter and the taste was really great. Yes, it was good to be back in Paris! In order not to interfere with the Sunday routine of my friends, I decided to leave them and go for a walk around the Bois de Vincennes, which eventually lasted for some 5 hours. No wonder, as the forest is truly big and it is great that there are such settings in a city as large as Paris (together with the Bois de Boulogne) and not only an odd park here and there. The Bois de Vincennes used to belong to the crown and was used as a hunting ground. Nowadays, it is primarily space for leisure and recreation. Since Dule dropped me close to his bowling club, my wandering first took me beside an old tree that was obviously dead, but instead of cutting it and bringing it down, the Parisians decided to turn it into a sculpture – near the ground there was an owl carved out of the trunk, while the remains of the branches, i.e., their ends were turned into small fairy-tale houses.
Then I came to Lake Daumesnil, constituting a tamer part of the Bois de Vincennes, as well as to two tiny islets in the middle of the lake that can be reached by crossing bridges. My visit to Paris was around the middle of March, which means that it was only the beginning of spring, so the vegetation was rather modest and the trees were mostly bare. Still, one could see that everything was ready to burst into full greenery in a matter of a couple of weeks. The cloudy and chilly weather did not discourage people from coming here, so there were a lot of walkers, joggers and cyclists, as well as a few of those who rented boats and paddled leisurely in them across the lake.
Having made a circle around the lake, I headed towards the north end of the forest choosing dirt paths. The forest is completely crisscrossed with paths, some of them made of asphalt, some of them just pure soil and there are also special paths for horses, i.e., for people who come to the forest to ride them. It somehow feels natural, for within the forest there is a huge hippodrome.
Thus I came to the Castle of Vincennes, but I didn’t plan to stick around, although it is certainly worth a visit. It was the first day of my stay in Paris and I just wanted to enjoy the leisurely walk. And so I went to the nearby Paris Floral Garden, which is in fact a large botanical garden within the Bois de Vincennes. As I’ve said, it was early spring and there was not a lot of flowers, but one could enjoy some beautiful blossoming magnolia, a hyacinth here and there, and an occasional sea of daffodils. For those who are not familiar with them, the daffodil is a spring flower, the yellow version of narcissus (Narcissus pseudonarcissus). Every time I see them in such numbers I remember a Wordsworth’s poem dedicated precisely to them. What a romantic!
Then I started to go back and luckily came across a forest map which clearly suggested the general direction I should follow. I was very proud of myself when I unmistakably and directly found the right way to Dule’s club. As I had a coffee there the day before, that meant that this time I had acquaintances there with whom I greeted cordially. The local municipality leased for its senior and not so senior citizens a house and some space around it, with all of that being within the forest, and now against some relatively symbolic fee, people can join the club, throw their bowls around and hang together.
And then there was time for me to move to a flat which I had rented for the rest of my stay in Paris. A few years ago, a colleague of mine who is utterly, irrevocably and absolutely in love with Paris found on internet a small flat which is rented to tourists and she praised it a great deal. Ever since then I’ve kept it in my mind that it would be a nice thing if I also rented that flat and so when I started thinking more seriously about going to Paris I got in touch with Biljana. She gave me the contact details and thus I made a reservation, but in the period when I needed the accommodation, the flat was not available during all 7 days, only 6 of them, and so I spent the first night at a hotel.
The flat is at a truly great location, 15 minutes away from the Louvre, on the left bank of the Seine, and that really meant a lot during my sightseeing walks. Having left my baggage at the flat, I went out in order to have a walk around the neighbourhood and get a general idea of where I was. I was pleased.
I decided to start my revisiting of Paris locally. I walked around “my area” or rather I crossed over to the nearest neighbours. Thus, the first on my programme was the church of St. Sulpice. It is a church that was built, additionally built and reconstructed several times, mostly in the 16th and the 17th centuries, and finally in the 18th century. And yet, they didn’t finish the right tower. That’s truly sloppy! The inner decorating extended into the following century and the most famous contribution was given by Delacroix with a couple of mural paintings he did around mid-19th century. There is also a stone obelisk, a metal board and a metal band inlaid into the floor, all along the north-south axis. It all comes from 1744 and was used, and is still used, for marking the meridian and the midday. This has, however, all become more famous thanks to a light criminal novel that became insanely popular all over the world at the beginning of this century. I still prefer the 1844 fountain that stands at the square in front of the church and that was built in such a way that the four figures of prominent church officials that adorn it face four cardinal points and its name in French is such that there is an intentional pun: the Fountain of Four Cardinal Points or the Fountain of Four Cardinals Who Never Were.
Quite close to the church of St. Sulpice there is one of the beautiful parks of Paris, the Luxembourg Gardens, with a palace of the same name. Nowadays, it is the seat of the Senate, the Upper House of the French Parliament, but it all started quite differently. The widow of King Henri IV, Marie dei Medici, wanted to have a palace built for her that would remind her of her native Tuscany. Thus she bought the estate from the Duke of Luxembourg and the works began. Even the famous painter Rubens was engaged to do two series of paintings that concerned the life of the queen and the late king. One of them, the Marie dei Medici cycle, consists of 24 paintings that are at the Louvre today. Three are portraits and the other 21 depict the life of the queen from her birth on. Well, I know this is Rubens I’m talking about, the one who adored massive women full of cellulite, and I know that these are all allegories, but I still find it fascinating that only in three or four of them there is nobody naked!
When the palace was completed, the queen moved nicely into it, but this was all short lived. She had a serious grudge with Cardinal Richelieu and then she persuaded her son, Louis XIII, to dismiss the Cardinal, but the son changed up his mind within a single day, kicked his mother out of the palace and then she wandered around Europe during the following 12 years only to finally die in Cologne, Germany. I guess she must have been a bad mother, but the son was far from perfect.
When I finished my walk around the Luxembourg gardens, I got on the metro and went to the hill of Montmartre, i.e., to the Boulevard de Clichy where there is the unavoidable Moulin Rouge or the Red Mill, the centre of entertainment during the Belle Époque period, with famous can-can dancers immortalized by Toulouse-Lautrec. The cabaret continues to be active, but not as a meeting point of first class artists, but rather as a tourist attraction.
Paris is famous not only for its cabarets, but also for its cemeteries. Somehow, I hadn’t been concerned with them thus far, but this time I decided to visit some of them. Namely, since Paris has always been a meeting point of famous artists of all kinds and unlike some of the works, the authors are mortal, they had to be buried somewhere eventually. Other than artists there are, of course, famous figures from different other walks of life, as well as many more completely unknown people. I didn’t have an intention to visit in detail the entire Montmartre cemetery, but went to the place where Alphonsine Plessis was buried. This name doesn’t ring a bell? And if I say *The Lady of the Camellias” (written by Alexandre Dumas, fils (the son), also buried at the Montmartre cemetery) or La Traviata (composed by Giuseppe Verdi)? Yes, that young unfortunate woman immortalized in these literary and music masterpieces was buried precisely here. After a brief visit, I decided to leave the cemetery and headed towards one of the exits, but as it turned out it was closed after all and I had to go all the way back and around in order to return among the living. However, that visit to the “dead end” was not, if I can put it that way, in vain. Namely, I found, without looking, the grave of Dalida. This name is probably also not known to a large number of people, but here again I’m talking about an unfortunate woman who at 54 committed a suicide. This was a famous signer and one of her songs, the version performed with Alain Delon, is very dear to me and close to my heart because of some funny situations in my past in which reference was made to the lyrics of that song.
At this point I have decided to initiate a completely new thing and to give my contribution to the civilization, if I can call it that. After all, like civilization, like contribution. Namely, I’m introducing – the MLOG! After the blog and the vlog, the time has come for the mlog and I am its creator and initiator. What it is about? Well, very simply, it is a music blog that makes sense. Namely, music is very important in my life. I’ve heard somebody claim that apparently Nietzsche once said that life without books would be a waste. I agree, but I also add: “And without music, too!” I often have different tunes in my head, as if I have a built-in free jukebox. Sometimes it happens that I wake up in the morning with some song which I haven’t heard since who knows when and then I have no idea how it ended up in my head. This thing with the introduction of the mlog as a notion and a movement (!) also makes my life simpler, for it if happens that I walk in the street while singing or humming and somebody thinks I’m crazy and wants to move me off the street in order not to disturb serious citizens who go to work or shopping, I just say in my defence that I’m actually working on my MLOG!
So, as my first mlog, I’m posting a photo I took of Dalida’s grave along with my light singing of that famous song of hers, as my homage to this great artist. So, turn on your speakers and click on the embedded video: