Paris!!! Part 1

[inulro]

Well, that was successful!

I've never liked Paris as a city, despite it being full of wonderful things to see and do, but I thought I'd give it another try, as there was an embarrassing number of things I hadn't seen and done. I've rectified all of the pressing ones, except the catacombs (see last post). And discovered that I really do like it quite a bit after all.

I started off at Le Cimetière du Père-Lachaise, which was simply wonderful. I could, and might, write a whole entry about this. I soon decided that searching for celebrity graves really detracts from the overall experience and gave up. Having said that, I stumbled upon Oscar Wilde, the only one I particularly wanted to see, about 10 minutes in. As my hotel was in the area, I ended up entering the cemetery through an obscure back gate near the Mur des Federes (I can't seem to do accents in Semagic) and Oscar is buried nearby. The Holocaust memorials are positively late medieval in their imagery - lots of realistic gaunt corpses. With the exception of Oscar Wilde, the most elaborate tombs are never of famous people. I spent the morning there & got to thinking about differences between Anglo & French funerary monuments, which can't just be a Catholic/Protestant thing, because French Jewish graves look just like French Catholic ones. Realized I could and should write an article on this, but have no idea where to start getting it published.

The Musee National du Moyen Age was quite stunning as well. I had no idea that tapestry was so interesting.

By day 3 my feet were killing me, and I'm not known for my ability to take it easy when there's stuff I want to do, so I took an open top bus tour. I'm glad I did, because it seems to be the best scale to take in the area comprising the Champs Elysees, Place de la Concorde, Arc de Triomphe & the Eiffel Tower. I've done all these as a pedestrian before, and have never been impressed, but from the open top bus it was all very impressive. Still reminds me of a massive archaeological "ritual" space, even with all the traffic - it's just not built on an everyday useful human scale. I also learned about the existence of the Musee de l'Homme & its collection of shrunken heads (says the person who's too lazy to make it to the Pitt-Rivers to see our own shrunken heads) but didn't have time to go.

The other highlight was La Grande Galerie de l'Evolution, specifically to see the exhibit on mammoths & ice age man. The mammoths exhibit was incredibly well set out and fascinating, and thankfully in English, or else it would have taken me all day to get through. The rest of the museum has pretty much the same materials as other major natural history museums, but it is set up in such a way as to cover pretty much all of high school biology. I think. The main exhibit is not bilingual and my pocket dictionary let me down when it came to biological terminology.

I found Sacre Coeur disappointing & disliked Montmartre as a whole; and I still maintain that the Garnier Opera is the most overrated building in the world ever.

My French still stinks. Even Parisians help you out in English when they think you're stuck (I wasn't stuck, I just process things a bit slowly in French) now. At least they wait till you're stuck and humour you by attempting to speak French, I suppose. Where does one have to go to be forced to sink or swim in French these days? Rural Quebec need not apply; I'd like to perfect more than a 600 word vocabulary. Quebec City maybe? (I'd say Montreal but you can always run away to Westmount).

Despite not learning much French, the trip has done my confidence an enormous boost. I spend so much time being ill & dependent on Jason, it was a relief to know I can still go off and cope on my own in a foreign country.

Unfortunately, going on my own, I had a lot of time alone with my brain. I had a surprising number of thoughts. I may or may not get around to sharing with y'all. There will almost certainly be a sequel on weird & wonderful stuff unearthed in French media though.

Comments

[sheepthief.livejournal.com]

I thought that there was now an international standard used for medical terminology? Perhaps only human biology though. And maybe it's not really in common usage yet.

I assume that you've already found that sushidog is a great fan of shrunken heads and Pitt Rivers? That place is a remarkable jumble of oddities - I rather enjoyed my visit there. =:-)

[everild.livejournal.com]

The Unicorn Tapestries are stunning aren't they? I like the way that they're displayed in their own room too. I was there in July for a conference at the Sorbonne, so was staying only a couple of minutes walk from the museum, which was very handy!