On Foot Dragging

We took the train from London to Paris, via the Chunnel. Although the Chunnel has now been around for about half my lifetime it still blows me away that we can get from Kingscross to Gare Nord without leaving our seats.

Paris has many similarities to Montreal, I suspect Montreal's copied Paris, right down to the use of inflated rubber tyres on the Metro. Why do the French speaking set do that? Surely rubber inflated tyres cost more to maintain and operate as well they seem noisier and probably require more energy than conventional train wheels. Anyway the newer trains seem to use conventional technology, but even so the system in Paris does not seem geared towards truly mass transit. Only four or five cars comprise a typical train, compared with six or so in London and eight to ten in Toronto. Stops are frequent and close, whereas the gap between say King and Queen in Toronto is unusual in that it is so small, this would be an unusually long gap between stations in Paris. And just like Montreal, there is graffiti all over the place, I have to wonder don't Parisians take any pride in their public spaces?

I believe the French pride themselves on their open and tolerant culture, which would be great, if only Jean-Marie Le Pen were a figment of my imagination. But the tolerance to let things slide, well unlike my experience at UK customs which really weren't that bad, just a petty nuance, the issue I have with French attitude is a real problem.

Paris is a filthy city, there is garage everywhere and nobody seems at all bothered by it. Buildings often look slipshod and haphazard. Today there is a pretty baroque thing beside a parking lot, next thing you know some gwad awful steel and glass hulk is throwing its shadow across the facade of our old building. In short there is no effort to achieve architectural conformity. Actually, it turns out that is note entirely true, out hotel was across the street from the "only" sky scraper in the city. (If you somehow discount our 30 storey hotel from the realm of sky scrapers I guess?) But at some point the French did come to their senses and put a stop to the shoe box construction before it got way out of hand.

It took Paris for me to learn architecture is important, if for no other reason than to protect the charm of a place.

Our first evening in Paris we took a bike tour, it rained. Riding in the rain sucks. Riding in the rain in Jeans, instead of athletic clothing is positively dreadful. Enough said. Sadly that first evening seemed to set the standard for most of our stay. When we went for traditional French food we were, to put things mildly, disappointed. The fact is the French restaurants in Toronto are far superior to the overpriced stuff that the waiters bring to the table at meal time. Ultimately we did have a very nice Indian dinner one evening, - yes we had Indian in London too - it seems if you can stomach Indian and are looking for a decent meal that won't leave you in the poor house one could do worse than Indian. Using the logic that former colonists will know how to make the food of those whom they have colonized (hey it works in England) we had Vietnamese, it was alright, but I can do better in Toronto at a fraction the price.

Obviously we went to The Louvre, there are about a half million works in those buildings. I did not know that at the time, I also did not know that if I went to the Louvre and examined every work for one minute and took no breaks, for sleep, eating, washroom and whatever else, it would still take almost a year to review all the art in the Louvre. Put simply the Louvre is not reasonable, it is too big. Which is sort of cool I suppose, but upsetting. An art tourist who came to Paris with the intention of spending say, 10 days, in just the Louvre still would only since a small fraction of a percentage of what is there. Someone pointed out all the other paintings in the room with the Mona Lisa are almost never even looked at, well that's probably the case for most art in the building it just cannot be seen. I tried to take in as much as I could but noticed by and by that like everyone else, I was shuffling my feet (hence the title of this blog post), I had museum fatigue! That said I did see the Mona Lisa and the Venus de Milo, although neither was really a goal I set for myself. I was more interested in finding all the paintings that glamorized Napoleon. Fact, old Boney was a short fellow, and when he rode across the Alps he did it on the back side of a donkey, not a horse. Now go to the Louvre but remember not to laugh too hard at the paintings, that Napoleon was never made a saint is beyond me "is the great love the general gender bear him", hey Joan D'Arc was sainted. When we went to the Tomb of Napoleon all I could think was: 'Yes Napoleon brought many of the ideas of democratic government, invented by the English to Central and Eastern Europe a full century before Nazism, but the English brought those ideas to India and America, someone remind me how those experiments in democracy turned out?')

We went to the Rodin Museum, it was a beautiful place, the garden in the fall as the leaves change colours is quite nice. But in some respects the museum is very melancholy, the work Rodin did is very upsetting and the grey skies coupled with usual decline in the weather that is fall's staple can bring down even the sunniest disposition.

The Museum D'Orsey is a fine place with many great works, this time I had the good sense to pace myself. I absorbed about two hours of art than took a break and read about Ugolino, on the blackberry, starving to death sounds like a positively dreadful way to go. Yet for some reason Ugolino frequently appears in statue around Paris.

Lesley and I toured Montmartre, it was a very nice area but the experience was spoiled to some extent by the rain. We also went to the Cathedral Norte Dame de Paris while beautiful seemed, frankly uninteresting next to Westminster Abby. One has the oldest door in England and the very chair that William the conqueror was crowned king on. The other, well it has the crown of thorns that Jesus wore at his crucification, but given the period between Jesus' execution and the deathbed conversion of Constantine Christianity was almost unpracticed, who saved the thorns for the first 300 years?

Leaving London was a melancholy moment for me, but I was elated to be leaving Paris.