In the winter when it drizzles

I hate Paris in the springtime

I hate Paris in the fall 

I hate Paris in the summer when it sizzles

I hate Paris in the winter when it drizzles 

I hate Paris 

Oh why, oh why do I hate Paris?
Because my love is there... 

With his slut girlfriend!

This delightful little ditty is the take-off mantra of our heroine, Kate, in the movie French Kiss, a film about a woman who travels to Paris and eventually to the Côte d'Azur to chase after her fiancé who has left her for another (French) woman. She is accompanied by Kevin Kline's character, a Frenchman named Luc who, though slightly shady, wants nothing more than to own his own vineyard and produce his own wine. They, of course, fall in love and live happily ever after in the south of France, kissing out in the vineyards and cultivating wine.

And this is the song that I think of every time I think of Paris.

It's ironic, though, because I really do like Paris. I remembering being simultaneously over- and underwhelmed by Paris when I was there last August, but my Christmas vacation changed my opinion of the city. It is still sprawling and touristy and full of its fair share of snobs, but there is something downright magical about Paris when it snows.

As well as something sorta whimsical

I arrived mid-morning on the 23rd of December, and with its cold temperature and grey skies, Paris was a little less than welcoming. I had grown accustomed to traveling under mediocre conditions, however, so I dragged my duffel bag to my hostel (just a few short minutes from the Place de la République), checked in (only to be told that rooms were closed until 4pm for cleaning), and then embarked on my whirlwind Christmas vacation.

I was planning on seeing a French musical that evening, so I had a fair amount of time to kill before I needed to find the Palais des Sports, where the spectacle was taking place. I decided to start with a walk along the Champs Elysées. Friends had told me that it was well worth the trip for the lights and decorations alone, not to mention the Christmas market, which was sure to put Aix's market to shame. A short metro ride later, I emerged at the Place de la Concorde, which is at the far southeastern end of the Champs. The sky was an even darker color than when I had arrived only a couple hours before and seemed to threaten a terrible snowstorm. As it was, it was only lightly snowing, enough to coat my jacket in a fine layer of snowflakes, but not enough for it to really stick on the ground, and that was enough for me to appreciate.

The path down the street was fascinating. I happened to walk behind a group of about three American families who were traveling together, and amused myself by eavesdropping on their conversation only to finally speak up when I heard that they were from just outside of Boston. They were very pleasant and wished me a Merry Christmas before we parted ways and continued our separate Christmas excursions. It rather shocked me to see how many tourists were in Paris for Christmas. For me, the remainder of my Parisian romanticism was what had drawn me to this location for the holidays, but I couldn't believe that that same notion had enticed everyone around me to flock to the city of lights at the same time.

For one thing, winter is hardly the best time to see Paris. The trees are dead, the skies are dreary, and the streets are treacherously icy. I first noticed this as I was walking along the Christmas market and happened to stray a little off the concrete and onto the sandy portion of the sidewalk, where the snow had turned the sand almost muddy and the cold had solidified the slush (half-melted from the shoes of so many passers-by) into an icy block that caused me to nearly lose my footing. Luckily, that was also starting to melt thanks to the heavy foot traffic, but I knew that this could not bode well for the rest of the journey.

Eventually, I made it past the Christmas market and to the boutiques and "magasins" that were richly decorated for the holidays.

Sephora was perhaps not the most impressive, but its colorful display was certainly among the more festive 

I ducked inside a few stores to escape the snow and do a little window shopping, but soon my body grew tired of the constant freezing and thawing of limbs as I went from heated store to chilly exterior and back again, so I knew it was probably a good time to find a nice restaurant and relax a little for lunch. I chose a moderately priced Italian place on the Champs and ordered some wine and some hearty pasta to warm me up. I sat in a corner on the second floor of the restaurant, which was extraordinarily busy, while sipping my wine and watching the shoppers come and go down below. It was a very calming meal and the perfect thing to energize me for the rest of the day.

After lunch and a brief consultation of the list I had created of things to see and do, I decided it was time to go Christmas shopping. I had previously picked up some gifts for my family in various other locations in France, but I had not yet managed to find something for my dad, who I feel is always the hardest person to shop for because he usually buys all his own gifts and I am never sure if he already has something or not. This time, however, I was well-prepared: I had consulted my father on possible gift ideas and he had given me one specific guideline. I was to go to the Shakespeare and Company bookstore and purchase a book for him.

Shakespeare and Co has a special place in the hearts of the Oliver family. When my dad was younger, it was one of the places he visited during his travels in Europe. He purchased a copy of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance and even met the owner of the establishment, George Whitman, who habitually offered weary travelers he deemed worthy a place to rest for the night up above the bookstore. Whitman's daughter Sylvia now runs the store, and was unfortunately nowhere to be found when I visited, but the literary ambiance, I imagine, has stayed the same ever since my dad first visited in the early 1970s. My first visit to the store came during my initial three weeks in Paris, and came as a bit of a surprise. I had known that it was an English-language bookstore, but I had not imagined it as a sort of haven for Anglophones from around the world. I was actually shocked by the lack of French I heard on the premises. After wandering through the store for about 40 minutes, wondering at the sheer number of books squeezed into the tiny shop, I finally stumbled upon the travel section as well as the Lost Generation section. Feeling rather touristy, I did what I had been dying to do since I had applied for admission to the Wellesley-in-Aix program and purchased an inexpensive copy of A Moveable Feast, my favorite work by Ernest Hemingway.

It was this memoir that made the Shakespeare and Company bookstore famous to the literary world. Originally run by Sylvia Beach and located on rue de l'Odéon, the store became a center for literary culture and a frequent haunt of the writers of the Lost Generation, notably Hemingway, James Joyce, and Ezra Pound. The store closed in 1941 due to the German occupation of Paris and never reopened. After Beach's death in 1962, the bookstore owned by George Whitman on the Left Bank of the Seine changed its name from Le Mistral (likely referring to the strong wind that blows through Provence or the poet Frédéric Mistral) to Shakespeare and Co to honor the original store and its owner. Today, it even looks vaguely as the original store once did and is full of delightful nooks and crannies for its visitors to discover. And it has always remained a sort of mythical place to my family, despite the fact that it is not the original establishment.

My second visit to this store came during this vacation, and as mentioned before, I was a lady with a mission. I had to find something that my dad would appreciate that didn't cost too much and that would be unique enough that it would be clear that I had spent some time ruminating over my many options. At first, I considered a work of fiction, feeling that that would provide the most interesting search, but after nearly 45 minutes of staring at shelf after shelf, I felt even more clueless than I had before and decided that I should look amongst the new arrivals for something more unique. Finally, I found it! The perfect book: The Grand Design by Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow. Eight years previously, my dad had, through a roundabout sort of way, ensured that I received a copy of A Brief History of Time, and that I actually read it as well. Keep in mind that I was 12 at the time, and that quantum mechanics was really only something I had heard about in the movies. Thus, the purchase of Hawking's latest work seemed to me to come full circle, as it were, in multiple situations. My dad loved the book.

Not long after that adventure, it was finally approaching "l'heure" to head out to the Palais des Sports to see Mozart l'Opéra Rock. My former roommate Nicole and I had discovered this musical last spring via 24-Hour Drop, a file drop on the Wellesley server, and had been obsessed ever since. I had been dying to go see it ever since I had heard that it would be returning to Paris and had even bought my ticket before I even knew that I wanted to spend Christmas in Paris. The musical did not fail my expectations. It even cleared up some of the questions I had about some of the song lyrics by, obviously, giving context to the songs, and then went on to further boost my confidence in the French language once I realized that I was having hardly any difficulties understanding what was being said... or sung for that matter. All in all, it was well worth the 80 or 90 euros I spent on sixth row seats, especially since photography sans flash was allowed.

Results?

Awwww yeeaaahhhhh

Salieri, y u so sexy?

It was a thoroughly enjoyable play. It wasn't Art in the grand sense of the word and may or may not stand the test of time, but it was glitzy and glamorous and loud and fun. And that was all that I could really ask for. Surprisingly, it is also considered to be children-friendly. There were many, many people under the age of 16 in the crowd, and they were clearly enjoying the show. A fair number even knew the words to the songs.

My next day in Paris was spent mostly in the Louvre. But before I managed to spend seven hours staring at Renaissance paintings, I spent the early part of the morning walking past Notre Dame and along the Right Bank of the Seine, past l'Hôtel de Ville and a few blocks further to the broad side of the Louvre, which stretches on for quite a while, but doesn't seem to be nearly as long when one is inside.

Notre Dame got in the spirit of things with a pretty, giant tree to decorate the square

This statue, off to the right of the cathedral, was covered in the freshly fallen snow and looked even more  majestic than usual.

The Hôtel de Ville looked particularly impressive with the snow-dusted roofs and the  ice skating  rink out in front. This was also the first time I had ever seen Paris's city hall, and was not disappointed by a lack of grandeur - quite the opposite.

Eventually, though, I made it to the Louvre, about an hour after its opening, and navigated through the halls with richly decorated ceilings, briefly stopping to say hello to Nike of Samothrace, so that I could immerse myself in Renaissance art and thus study for my impending art history exam back in Aix. I wandered the halls of the great museum, staring at masterpieces of the 15th and 16th centuries, analyzing the religious symbols and searching for some hidden meaning in the carefully applied oil and gold leaf. It was tiring, to say the least. Not to mention that I started to feel as though the paintings were trying to convert me. So much religious iconography, so little time.

Eventually, I took a break from the never-ending rooms of Italian painting and went to grab a bite to eat in the food court down below the Louvre. The food was some sort of pseudo-Middle Eastern cuisine that can be found at any food court in America these days, really, and was only slightly better than average for fast, cheap French food, but that said, I devoured my dish and gulped down the accompanying soda as though they constituted my first meal in a week. I also partook of the free Wi-Fi I found while messing around with my iPod. The McDonald's was too far away to get a good signal, but the Apple store, which by my estimations should have been further away than the McDonald's, was broadcasting a lovely signal that allowed me to check my email and inform my friends of my current location in a subterranean multicultural food court underneath one of the world's greatest museums.

Lunch devoured and stomach satisfied, I returned to my painting perusal and came to the sudden and profound conclusion that late Medieval and early Renaissance artists were incapable of painting anything other than an ugly version of baby Jesus.

Baby Jesus should not look like a 35-year-old midget with a receding hairline who is creeping on Virgin Mary, who, it should be noted, appears to have no chin and an impossibly round cranium.

Nor should baby Jesus look like a Japanese representation of a European man with far too many jelly rolls. For someone as pretty and trim as Mary is in this picture, she ought to know how keep her child from obesity.

I fully understand the concept of spiritual beauty in lieu of physical beauty. In fact, I think it can be very powerful when used properly in art. Case in point: Donatello's statue of Mary Magdalene.

She is emaciated, her clothing is in tatters... there is nothing remarkable or beautiful about her physical appearance. And yet, the fact that she seems to be about to pray and is thus demonstrating her devout faith reveals a sort of inner spiritual beauty that makes the statue more powerful than if she were the Greek ideal of beauty. That is something that I can get behind. I don't really understand where all the ugly baby Jesuses are coming from... most people think that babies are adorable (it depends on the day of the week, for me). Perhaps this was the ideal for the period, though, and perhaps I shouldn't be quick to judge.


The Louvre essentially went on to consume the majority of my day. The one other major destination of my day consisted of a trip to Café Divan near the Place de la Bastille. This particular destination came at the recommendation of a friend, who insisted that I just HAD to try to their hot chocolate. Never one to say no to warm, sugary treats, I decided that hot chocolate was the very thing I needed as I relaxed from a long day of being on my feet. I lost my way at first, which I fully blame on the fact that there are far too many streets leading away from the Place de la Bastille, and finally resorted to using my handy dandy map of Parisian arrondissements to navigate the streets of the city. Eventually, I stumbled into the place looking like the lost tourist that I vaguely was and ordered a hot chocolate.


I did not expect what I received. I received a jar of hot milk and warm chocolate syrup that I was to mix on my own to achieve the desired proportions of each. Needless to say, my hot beverage was rich and thoroughly warming and made the perfect companion as I perused through a couple chapters of A Year in Provence by Peter Mayle, the book I had chosen to read during travel down time which is a necessary read for any Anglophone who has lived in Provence for any significant amount of time.


And so, that was the first half of my vacation in Paris. Unfortunately, my final and last exam of my entire year abroad is waiting to be studied for, so I must away. Merde!


More Parisian tales shall come soon, but for now...


Peace, love, and Saturday morning exams,
Rachel