LiveJournal 11/22/2003 –

Paris Day 1

Nov 13 – 5:20 Central Time

We have boarded the 767-300 bound for Paris, France. The aircraft is relatively full of passengers. The leading thing I’ve come to see so far is how very fast the spoken french is that surrounds me, from the other passengers to the french-speaking public address system.

Nov 14 – 11:11 French Standard Time (GMT+1)

Nous Arrivons! 🙂 We discovered that the nearest metro stop is closed but that only means a short jaunt down to the next station. Our room at the St. Jacques is very small but wonderfully cozy.

We discovered to our chagrin that at certain times the RER train that shuttles people from Roissy Airport (CDG) progresses along it’s route to Gare Du Nord in a non-stop fashion. We were on that particular non-stop train. After getting off at Chatelet we discovered to our irritation that Paris Metro has seen fit to close the Maubert-Mutualite metro stop, which would have put us within a 100-meter stones throw from our Hotel. As it was, we had to walk a little to get to our hotel and once we dropped off our bags and washed up a little from the cramped airplane flight to Roissy, we headed down to Le Musee Louvre. Along the way we caught some great sights of Paris, some architecture, some of the Ponts, and lots and lots of artwork at Le Louvre.

This was how we planned Paris. We found a big folding map of the city and bought some posterboard and some thumbtacks, then we mounted the map on the board and tacked down each location we wanted to visit, allowing us to visually see how all the attractions we were interested in related to each other. Instead of wrapping around Paris by Arrondisement we discovered that we were primarily Seine-bound with side trips to Marais, Montmartre, and Denfert-Rocherau.

This was our hotel room, we pretty much arrived, exploded our belongings in the room like mad fiends and tried our best to rescue the first day for Le Louvre. As Hotels go, St. Jacques is very tiny, but instead of taking the standard American pig-headedness about things, Europe IS TINY ANYHOW. Not only is space at a higher premium than it is in Tokyo but many Europeans are on the whole, not exceptionally vast in size, unlike Americans. Also I would hazard that Americans grew up with further limits on personal space, we need much more of it than the Europeans do – Americans need 2 meters around them being empty to feel comfortable, Europeans need about 10 cm. 🙂 Anyhow, while in Rome, do as the Romans… so we put up and enjoyed what we had.

The view from our 1st floor (1 floor above street level) room wasn’t the most moving of vistas. We were staying on the left bank in the Rue des Ecoles neighborhood and this was pretty much all that was to be seen, little shops, little awnings… even if the view didn’t inspire poetry – it was Paris. This salient fact took about 2 days to sink in, that I was actually IN Paris…

Scott spotted this fellow. My camera doesn’t have any zoom function on it, but if you look dead center there is a little figure above the shop-windows in the middle of the frame. This was a makeshift sculpted man-figure which looked like he was “growing” out of the surrounding building. I named him the Verdant Figure. Next time we visit and I take digital pictures it will be done with a vastly superior camera.

To get to Le Louvre from the Left Bank you’ve gotta cross bridges! We crossed on Pont Chance but we got a chance to get these pictures of Pont Neuf, right before we found our way to Le Louvre.

Walking up and through the exterior of Le Louvre dropped us off in the courtyard inside the huge palace that is the Louvre itself. It’s very important to note the style of architecture here because it becomes important soon.

This is why noticing the architecture is important. Off in the distance you see the sudden shift from classical shapes to what I.M. Pei created in the dead center of the courtyard of Le Louvre. This immense glass pyramid looms like a huge figure and it almost succeeds in stealing the thunder away from the surrounding palace facade.

Wandering through Le Musee Louvre we saw an endless parade of famous and decidedly not-french pieces of artwork. I felt betwixt about this, all these priceless pieces of human history from all over the world and only a few of the pieces are honestly French, but most of them are in France. On one hand, yay for the fact that there are people to care for these precious objects, and on the other hand, boo for essentially grave-robbing and carting off huge chunks of priceless artwork like some selfish impudent child.

That particular argument left aside, we did get several photo-op chances with some of the worlds most lovely pieces of artwork. Scott is standing in front of Venus de Milo. The way they framed this sculpture made it alternately difficult and rewarding to photograph properly. To Scott’s left are 2 casements of floor-to-ceiling french windows and in this picture, right behind Venus’s head is a very bright spotlight mounted from the ceiling. I had to get just the right angle and in this picture I found it. The lights and the weather outside helped create a inner glow to Venus that if I was able to use flash I probably wouldn’t have seen as my flash tends to wash away a lot of the warmer oranges and reds in photos.

One thing, about this photo-op that struck us both as very odd was the sheer number of Asians that plagued this statue. The ability for me to get an unobstructed shot of Scott in front of Venus de Milo could only happen when this huge mass of Asian people were forcibly removed by their tour manager from the scene. Off to my right there were three Asian men battling with a tripod and fumbling with their own cameras. Nowhere else in the entire Louvre did we see any exhibit draw on a particular group of people – for some inexplicable reason Asians apparently like to cluster around this one statue.

The Egypt exhibit at the Louvre was so full of wonders and sights that we quickly became quite numb to the display of all the tablets and figures and sculptures. This was one of the first tablets we photographed. Out of deference to the French and to these priceless pieces of artwork I didn’t use my flash on my camera and many of my pictures did suffer from it, as my camera lengthened exposure time to capture enough light to get a good image. Many of my photos after that were all rendered a slightly bit blurry, as there was a catch-22 in place, no flash, no tripods – not that I had my tripod on me, I didn’t. Not using the flash did give me peace of mind knowing that I wouldn’t have this garish flash-glare ever present in my photographed works. I like these series of photos because they help show off objects that were set up to glow under their lighting, you can sort of see that glow in the photo.

This is where it all began. I was stunned to learn that the actual Codex Hammurabi was on temporary display at Le Louvre. This basalt pillar contains the text of Hammurabi’s codified laws. To the left and right of this wonderful piece of human history is a helpful guide to what the codex actually says in both English and French. I was lucky to get this shot because this particular piece was being mobbed by curious french people who didn’t know enough to get out of a camera frame. The lady to my right was particularly tricky because she enjoyed the wobbling from left to right to make out the text on the codex itself. It felt awesome to be next to an object so profoundly old as this one.

This is Amor and Psyche. I consider this to be the best photo I have ever taken with my digital camera. Not only do I enjoy the myth behind Amor and Psyche, and all the psychological underpinnings to the story (which served as a good portion of my most memorable readings back in SUNY Buffalo when I was in school). This was one of the few pieces that I knew I had to see to make my Paris visit complete.

You can’t possibly miss this figure when visiting Le Louvre. At the top of the primary staircase is Nike, Winged Victory. The only thing that could have helped would have been more ambient light for photographs. Off to my right of this picture is a huge display including an artists reconstruction of Winged Victory’s form before she lost her arms and head to time. Evidently someone discovered a coin with Winged Victory’s complete visage pressed into the metal of the coin, then the French government paid an artist to draw a likeness-representation of what Winged Victory might have looked like when the artist who completed her was just finished. What you never expect is that she had a sword. Unlike the previous picture this one is so massive it almost can’t be done justice in photographs.

This is the lady everyone comes to Le Louvre to see. La Jaconde, The Mona Lisa. Le Louvre does a good job at psyching you up for seeing this worldwide treasure, a long hallway of wonderful paintings and sculptures warming you up for entry into Leonardo DaVinci’s style of artwork line the entry gallery and you have to walk about 500 yards to get down to where they keep this particular painting. When I turned the corner the first thing that came into my head was “Wow, there it is!” and the second thing “Wow, it’s tiny!”. I was raised on popular images of this painting, closeups and representations in movies that this painting was some vast 5×8 monstrosity requiring two men to carry. The truth is, The Mona Lisa is not as big as popular culture leads her on to be. However, what this painting does have is gravitas – the mysterious smile, the knowledge that it’s a truly unique item, and the adoration it receives from the public is palpable. This picture gets about as much eye-time as any of the Christian iconography in Le Louvre, a fact that tickles me pink.