true life planet

This is part of a series,  from when I recently spent several weeks in Paris, on a shoestring budget.

Things done/cost:

Buy a loaf of bead from my favorite bakery: 1.00 usd

Take a long early morning walk to the Latin Quarter: free

Eat an enormous breakfast at ” Breakfast In America”: 7.00 usd

Metro to the American  Church In Paris: 1.40 usd

Walk along the Siene and look at barges: free

Have lunch on a barge: free

Walk around the Hotel de Invalides: free

Visit Napoleon no 1’s tomb: free

Visit St. Sulpice Church (popular due to Dan Brown’s Da Vinci code): free

Time with Delacroix, in the Delacroix museum: (with discount) 4.00 usd

A walk-and nap-in Luxemberg Gardens: free

Metro to Shakespeare and Company Bookstore: 1.40 usd

A very enjoyable hour browsing: free

Attend an impromtu book reading along the Seine: free

End up going to a book reading at Shakespeare and Co.: free

Walk home: free

Total spent: 14.80 usd …oh, I’m so over budget, today! Thats  almost 3 usd over what I am supposed to stick to! But..it’s still pretty good. It was eating that big breakfast that did it. I don’t regret it, though.

Today, I’m an American in Paris. I really am an American in Paris, of course-but today I want to do things that are particularly of interest to Americans. It just sounds interesting to me-and besides, I need a slightly more touristy day.

I start off by heading to a famous restaurant called “Breakfast In America”, which is in the Latin Quarter. It serves huge breakfasts, and best of all, it’s quintessentially American. It’s a huge diner, complete with formica countertops and waitresses sloshing around coffeepots and everyone ordering bacon and eggs. I love it. It makes me want to go on a road trip across the States. It’s like Route 66 in Paris.

I eat more than I should, and drink too much coffee(free refills!) before taking the metro to a famous center of activity for American expats in Paris-the American Church of Paris.

It’s a very pretty church, of course, but that’s not why I am going there, exactly. I’m going there because the American Church serves as the community center for Americans in the city. Actually, not just Americans, but expats from all different countries around the world.

It was the first American church built outside the USA, and it was built in 1857. It’s not one single denomination either, but a mix of over thirty different ones. This kind of gives it an international flair-and that’s why it calls itself “the UN church of Paris”.

This place is the place to go if you’re looking for connections in Paris, a place to live, a job..whatever. But it’s also a great place to meet other people, which is why I’m there.

(note: you can volunteer there as well, at their soup kitchen, which serves meals on Friday afternoons and needs help setting up and cleaning up. I suppose if you were really broke you could eat the food, too. It’s supposed to be delicious…)

I do end up meeting a few interesting characters there in the first few minutes I am walking around the place-two guys who are Americans living in Paris, and are looking for an American au pair.

Too bad I can’t try out being an au pair, I don’t have much time in Paris! But the conversation turns to barges and barge living, and we end up talking about famous people who lived on barges.

Anais Nin, one of my favorite French authors, lived on a barge for awhile. She wrote about it like it was this very romantic life but later admitted it was difficult and not always a bed of roses.

My two new friends knew some people who had decided to live on a barge. We walked along the Seine until we found them.

Americans, they had given up on the American dream, sold everything off, and taken to barge living-which was turning out not to be so romantic as it sounded. The barge needed constant work, the weather conditions made things uncomfortable, and safety/security was an issue-which is why they had a dog.

They offered lunch, and in spite of being incredibly full from my ample American breakfast earlier, I did not turn them down. Their barge was so pretty,painted blue and green and white, with pots of geraniums and so on, the dog running around happily..lunch was very simple, but set out on the deck with a tablecloth and everything!

The general consensus among the Americans was that Paris was a magical place, a hot bed of intellectualism and art, and a place where..anything goes.

They’re not the first Americans to think so. Americans began to be very attracted to Paris after the Civil War. They were attracted to it’s organization, it’s model of politics and urban planning…but they were also attracted to it’s artistic leanings, it’s intellectual atmosphere, and it’s somewhat loose morality(compared to the Puritan ethic in the States at the time-and this still rings true for some people ).

Some Americans that came to Paris and thrived there are Josephine Baker, who made loads of money dancing naked except a banana skirt; Edith Wharton, who wrote copious amounts and had a famous salon; and Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas, who also wrote, had a salon, and supported many French artists.

After the lunch, I feel like I’ve made a few new friends. They are impressed that I’m managing on my tiny budget, and impressed at my worldly travels. I feel like Paris just got a whole lot bigger-and friendlier.

I decided to walk to the Hotel de Invalides, which is close by and in view. I’m not alone-the place is full of tourists from all over the world. If I wanted a touristy experience, this is the right place to be. The Hotel was built as a hospital for disabled war vets, in the 17th century. Apparently 4,000 of them lived here, which must of been complete chaos.

There’s an army museum in the square, too-and loads of tourists are in line to look at all the tools and ways people killed people over the years. This is not attractive to me so I don’t visit it.

Instead, I head to the very pretty Eglise du Dome, a beautiful church which besides being very pretty also is the home to Napoleon the first’s body. Not that you would know it, as it’s hard to see the thing, as it’s surrounded by tourists taking elicit photographs, and it’s in the center of 5 or more coffins.

In spite of all the historical places they could visit, it seems most people are interested in visiting a totally different church-the Church of St. Sulpice, famous from the book by Dan Brown, the Da Vinci Code. It’s in walking distance so I decide to visit it.

The church used to be just another church, but with great architecture-a pretty, tranquil place in the big city-but now it is full of tourists, and I mean packed. The fact that Dan Brown got all the facts wrong for his book seems to make little difference-what seems to be of greater importance is that everyone read the book, and so they can shout out ” Here’s where the murder was! Here’s where the this/that was!”

The church was built by 1780 or so, and I wouldn’t say it was my favorite church in France…but it does have something no other church has, and that’s several large murals by Eugene Delacroix.

Delacroix actually lived near the church, and he compromised his health a great deal by standing on scaffolding to paint the murals in very dangerous and drafty conditions.

The tourists visiting there irritated me to no end, snapping photos of everything they could (I had given up carrying my camera everyday, as not having one forced me to actually look at stuff!). However, to counterbalance this, they were eagerly buying up loads of Da Vinci Code themed items, thereby supporting the Parisian economy.

Delacroix’s studio was nearby, so I decided to visit it. If you are a teacher, they give you a discount, so  I got in for 2/3  price.  The museum was actually in the apartment he lived in until he died, although he didn’t live there long-he had moved there to be closer to his work on the St. Sulpice church.

Some time after he died, some idiot had the bright idea of turning the area he had lived into into a parking lot, and knocking the whole building down. A group of Delacroix art lovers came to the rescue, and that’s how the museum was created.

Alot of his stuff had been given away at that part or sold off to who knows whom, so when they set about creating  a museum for him, they weren’t able to exactly recreate it exactly as it hd been when he lived there. But it does have an amazing collection of his drawings, sketches, and paintings, including one of my favorites, ” Mary Magdalen In The Wilderness”.

Delacroix was insanely prolific and very talented, although he strangely thought that Rubens was the best artist of all time and modeled his work on Rubens’. I saw lots of Delacroix and Rubens work at the Prado in Madrid, and I think Delacroix was so much better-he is more profound, and his work looks more real and emotive to me than Rubens’ pink swirls and cherubs and plump ladies.

I am tired after looking at all of his art. It is phenomenal, the amount he produced and the way he lived his life- he literally worked himself to the bone, I mean this guy was driven. He subjected himself to terrible conditions to work on huge projects- for example, the murals in the Louvre and Versaille. I feel silly being tired, but I guess I am lazy compared to Delacroix.

I decide to walk over to Luxemburg Gardens-it’s close by and the weather is nice.

Luxemburg Gardens are very pretty, very formal, full of trees..and lots of tourists. But it’s a relaxing place to sit, and space out. Lots of people are doing the same thing.

I decide to take the metro over to Shakespeare and Co, the bookstore to visit in Paris. It’s been around forever, and it’s books are in English. No settling for Jackie Collin’s steamy paperbacks here-this is the real thing, with books by everyone from Beat authors to Cocteau to Hugo to ee cummings.

It’s a bookstore for people who love books, and it shows. People are just standing around reading books when I enter the shop, which makes me love the place already. There are couches and nooks and piles of books everywhere. Apparently the couches are used in the evenings by poor trying-to make-it  authors who are visiting the city, and trading for tidying up. (Another thing to look into, if you are a writer and broke in Paris).

I spend a good hour browsing. They’ve got everything, everything. I don’t buy anything, because who wants to carry all that to India and so forth, but it’s really cheap-used paperbacks abound, and you can buy quite a few books at once for under ten dollars. Good to know.

I end up talking to some young kids outside, who are all writers and are from around the world. One offers to read me some of the story he’s writing, and I get an impromtu reading right then and there. It’s good. I feel lucky and somewhat amazed that it is easy for me to make friends so quickly, when I’ll I’ve done is smile.

It turns out that there is a reading that night-there’s one almost every Monday night at the bookshop-and I go.

It’s a whole bunch of authors reading, all from an anthology of Oxford poets. I decide to become a poet, in spite of the fact that I don’t know how I will fit it into my busy life when I return to the States. All the poets seem so interesting..and I am just completely taken in by them when they read their poems.

I walk home, full of the words of the poets, the paintings of Delacroix, the feeling..of being an American in Paris. It’s been a wonderful day.

Gigi

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