Four Hundred Seventy-Six Photos

Yesterday, I finished (sort of) editing photos from our trip to Paris. It seemed to take forever. Then, after I finished I discovered why. I have 476 photos. That is the curse of the digital age. And that number doesn't include the blurry ones or the ones where my eyes are closed, etc.

And the good/bad thing is that some of those photos were actually bad. But do to the wonders of modern computer programs, you can fix the bad photos. And I had several bad photos--due to 1. a cheap camera and 2. bad lighting--museums, cathedrals, etc., don't allow you to use flash. So when we got home, I downloaded the photo software, Lightbox (the free version of Sagelight).

Here are some results.

Here the lighting was so bad the ceiling looks dull. 

With the photo editor I was able to bring the photo in line with reality.

So what am I going to do with 476 photos? Clearly, I'm not going to print that many photos. I suppose I could put them on a disk and watch them on our television. We could torture our loved ones by making them sit through a presentation. My daughter, though she said it in kind words, basically told me that she'd be bored out of her skull if we made her sit through 476 photos. Hmm, a new parental threat, "Get those dishes done or you'll have to watch all of our Paris pictures, even the blurry ones. And remember how much I like ceiling vaulting--I got tons of ceiling pictures!"

The Queen's Hamlet

I love irony. But it’s rare to find poignant irony outside of books. I think because it’s easy to miss in real life—we tend to lack a certain detachment that you need in order to see irony.

However, sometimes it smacks you in the face. Especially when it’s in someone else’s life. Even more so when it’s in Marie Antoinette’s life.

When we visited Versailles, we took a hike to The Queen’s Hamlet. It’s in the far corner of the estate, but worth the walk. MA had a peasant village built to use both as an escape from the palace and as a party playground for her and her coterie of hangers-on.

She had a romantic view of peasant life. And so that’s what she got. The sheep and goats were perfumed. Marie Antoinette dressed as a milkmaid. Though an actual milkmaid did the real milking. I can’t help but wonder how history might have been different had she visited a real village and milked a real goat.

Here are some photos of the “hameau.”

Here's the famous Mill. You can't go inside, but that small water wheel couldn't generate much grinding power.

I grew up with relatives who had dairy farms. None of them had marble mosaic floors or fountains in the walls. 

The Hamlet was gorgeous. Totally pristine. So not a real working village.

This was the entrance to the "farm" part of the village. Apparently, there was a real farm a ways outside of the Hamlet that did provide food for the residents.

Here's where the perfumed sheep and goats roamed. Can't you just see MA and her ladies-in-waiting dressed as peasants, giving the sheep and goats hugs and kisses?


I wonder if they're hiring re-enactors. I'd love to get paid to be MA pretending to be a peasant.

N.B. In all fairness to MA, she did wise up and try to help the poor. But by then, it was too late.

Versailles Needs Feather Dusters

Years ago I did some research on Marie Antoinette, the French Revolution, the Reign of Terror, etc., for a novel I was working on. I never finished the novel (though I’d love to go back to it), but the history stayed with me.

So we couldn’t visit Paris without visiting Versailles. It was as amazing as you’d guess. I was disappointed in the fountains—none of them were running and the biggest of the fountains was being restored so it was a maze of construction and dirt.

But here is the Hall of Mirrors.

And a photo of the chapel, from the second story balcony.

And here is Marie Antoinette’s bedchamber.

This is the door she escaped through when the mobs came to Versailles. 

Apparently, the guards feared reprisals from the mobs and when they demanded entry to the palace grounds, the guards opened the gates.

Here’s her bed in Le Grand Trianon, a second smaller palace on the grounds of Versailles.

And here’s her bed in Le Petit Trianon. Apparently, Marie didn’t like the grandeur, pomp, and court intrigue of the main palace or even the much smaller Grand Trianon. So she spent most of her time living in Le Petit Trianon.

Yes, the bed is really tiny. You'd have to curl into a ball to sleep there.

If you go back to the photo of the first bed, note the thick layer of dust on the bedspread--so thick you can't even see the pattern on the fabric. This is one of my few complaints about Paris. The museums and cathedrals have serious dust issues. Cal sneezed a lot. (I took allergy medicine.) I know the French have lots of work maintaining their historical artifacts, so I was thinking that I'd get together a group of dusting friends and we’d dust the museums, churches, etc. (My Dutch immigrant friends have all volunteered—they have a cultural aversion to dust, even a speck.) And the French government wouldn’t have to pay us, just buy us a plane ticket. They wouldn’t even have to get us a hotel room. We’d be happy to bunk out at Versailles.

Any other volunteers want to join us? 

Bathed in Music

One of the last things we did in Paris was one of the things that will remain for the longest in my memory.

We went to hear an organ concert at the Church of St. Eustache. (Interesting note: The church was named after a Roman general. He and his family were burned after converting to Christianity. I’d love to find out more about that story—can you imagine that happening to a Roman general?!)

The organ at St. Eustache is the largest in France—8,000 pipes. And the church is enormous, not quite the size of Notre Dame, but big and very tall. I must admit that I’m a little partial to organ music because my grandfather was an organist, a very good one who played the organ in a huge stone church in the Netherlands.

In any case, the massive stone church is an important part of the beauty. Organs were meant to be heard in that context. Everything else is a shadow as similar as a lamp is to the sun. Imagine it’s dark outside, the rain is falling, and the church is lit by hundreds of candles. Then the music begins. In a huge stone church, the sound is captured. It bounces off the walls, echoing back and forth as more music comes from the pipes. And the listener is bathed in music—it’s around you and under you and in you. It almost seems to have no source, it just exists.

When the bass pipes grumble, it's like giant redwoods are humming. And when the pipes in the upper registers sing, it’s as if butterflies have been given a voice. Somehow in the transcendence that is organ music, the mute speak.

Here are some of the 8000 pipes.

Sadly, this is foreshortened, so you don't get a sense of the size. But you can see what the candles were like.

Cal during the concert. I have no idea why the windows look so bright--it was dark outside.

Me after the concert.

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Writer's Imagination Gone Crazy

When we were in Paris, we visited lots of cathedrals. My husband Cal knew about the architecture and explained it all to me. “This is Gothic—see the vaulting. This is late Gothic… This is Renaissance.” Interestingly, every church we visited had signs up warning us not to leave any bags unattended and telling us to notify someone immediately if we see an unattended bag. (It was just like the airport warnings.) So there must be some concern about terrorism in the old churches.

Neither Cal nor I gave the warnings a second thought. Until Sacre Coeur. We’d climbed all the stairs, toured the church, and were beginning to go down Montmarte, when a man nearly ran over us and another couple from behind. He jumped the fence, rustled around in the bushes, came back over the fence (without his huge bag!), and ran away.

Cal and I looked at each other. I said to the other couple, “Did he just hide his bag in the bushes and run away?” They nodded vigorously and said, “Yes.”

At that point, I wondered how long we had until the explosion. Clearly, it was a big bomb. Was there time to notify anyone? What would the blast radius be? Could we run fast enough?

Then, the other couple said, “That guy was an illegal souvenir vendor. The cops are cracking down and he doesn’t have a license. So he ditched his stuff and will come back to get it later when the cops are gone.”

Right. What can I say? Writer’s imagination gone crazy.

Here we are in front of Sacre Coeur.

Here are the stairs where the guy jumped the fence and hid his bag of souvenirs.

Sharing a kiss at Sacre Coeur. When Ariel saw this, she said, "After 25 years of marriage you guys can't kiss without smashing your noses?" In our defense--we were too busy trying to get the photo to worry about our noses.

Gargoyles and Me

I loved Notre Dame. It was stunning. I could include dozens of photos (don't worry I won't). But one of my favorite parts was climbing the stairs to the roof. The ancient stairs with grooves worn in the stone by thousands of feet over the nearly 1000 years the cathedral has existed. (I love heights, and we climbed up to the top of every monument we could. Cal deserves a medal because heights make him uncomfortable, but he went up every staircase with me--even the Eiffel Tower).

After the spiral stairs, I was with the gargoyles.

Yes, there is much Parisian gnashing of teeth about the tall black building ruining the skyline. I think the gargoyle and his ilk are patiently contemplating its destruction--they figure they've lasted nearly a millennium and they don't think the black tower will.

I brought home a small gargoyle who now watches over my desk and sticks out his tongue at me. I love it.

Really, I'm Not French

We are back from Paris (we had a marvelous time--even better than I'd hoped), and I thought I’d share some of the things that happened while we were there.

If you’ve been reading my blog, you know that the last six months I’ve been working on French to try and revive my 25+ year old language capability. So, I was nervous, but good to go.

After we arrived in Paris at 6am, we left our luggage at our apartment (our official check-in was at 10am) and wandered the streets and markets. We found a patisserie and decided to buy a baguette, etc. In any case, the proprietress was obviously not in a mood to deal with tourists and I took too long explaining to Cal what the various pastry-like creations were.  She was impatient and rude. I was flustered.

So I made the decision that from then on, Cal could speak in English to everyone since they spoke English anyway. Then, we discovered unintended consequences.

We’d go to Metro information. Cal would ask for directions to the Metro headed toward Sevres-Babylone, Les Halles, St. Michel, etc. The person at the information booth would raise an eyebrow, literally turn a cold shoulder to Cal, and speak to me in rapid fire French. I would say, “Merci” or ask for clarification. As this happened over and over, I asked Calvin, “Why are they doing this?” Cal blinked and said, “Because you look just like them, so they assume you are Parisian.” I thought about it. Yeah, a lot of them did look like me. They had the same narrow build, same dark, straight hair, the same shadows under their eyes (which stubbornly resist makeup), and as Cal pointed out they dressed just like I did—in black with a scarf.

Then, Cal said, “You are now the official talker. I’m kind of tired of getting the you-loathsome-American,-why-are-you-foisting-yourself-on-us-and-not-allowing-your-wife-to-speak-to-us look.” I had to admit that was the look he was getting.

So I began talking. People were very nice and helpful. Though occasionally when I spoke I got the you-are-the-confirmation-of-my-beliefs-that-emigration-is-evil-as-it-turns-French-speakers-into-language-barbarians. I wanted to tell them it wasn’t my fault as my French ancestors left 400 years ago for the Netherlands.

Sometimes, people gave me an incredulous look and said, “You speek Ing-gleese?” Even when we were leaving France yesterday, an inspector looked at my American passport and spoke to me in machine gun French. I wasn’t sure whether she said, “So you have decided to leave your mother country? Or, has any terrorist given you a package to take on board the aircraft?” Since the answer and its implication were clearly important, I said, “Uh…” Finally, she switched to English and I was allowed to leave the country.

Yesterday, I streamed an episode of Grimm and a character was speaking French. I whispered to Cal, “His accent isn’t very good.” Yep, Paris rubbed off on me.

This was our first day when we went shopping.

The RER train on the way to Versailles.

Eating With Victor Hugo

Cal and I went to a restaurant called Le Grand Vefour to celebrate our anniversary. The food was fantastic and the ambiance amazing. Le Grand Vefour has been a restaurant since 1784. It was a hot spot for writers, politicians, and those spreading sedition (obviously not mutually exclusive categories). Napoleon, Sartre, et al. had their own tables. We ate at Victor Hugo's table. Napoleon had a different table.

Some Pictures of Paris

As you know, we're in Paris. We're having a wonderful time!

Hopefully, I'll be posting again the middle of next week, but here are some photos in the meantime.

Cal and I in the gardens at Versailles.

One of the rooms in Versailles.

Notre Dame with my friend the gargoyle.

Shakespeare and Company bookstore, right around the corner from our apartment.

Paris, Day One

We are on our way to Paris…I can’t believe I’ve written that and that the words are true. 

Cal’s been planning it for over a year—you can check out his hard work in the photo below. He’s read every guidebook there is—note the three guidebooks. And see those notecards? Each day’s plans are written on individual notecards, that way the days can be shuffled if there’s inclement weather. Beside the itinerary, each notecard includes directions via walking or the Metro. (Or train stops if we decide against the Metro.) And alternate routes—you know, in case there’s a traffic jam or a strike or a zombie apocalypse and the road to the Louvre is blocked with dead bodies.

Notice the maps. One is covered in a plastic sheath—in case it rains. The other has each day’s route mapped out in red pencil. Possible lunch and dinner restaurants, which have been thoroughly vetted  are marked as well. (The red folder contains prices, menus and reviews of each restaurant, café, and market.) Can you say obsessive?

Not included in the photo is Cal’s MP3 player, which has MP3 audio files that narrate each of the Paris sightseeing walks we go on. We’re bringing along an audio splitter and two sets of earbuds. So we’ll be walking the streets of Paris holding hands, listening to an audio. And, you know, if one of us comes home with a leg in a cast, it’ll be because we didn’t hear the honking taxi. But hey, it’ll be romantic.