Andy Carvin's Waste of Bandwidth

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February 26, 2005

Geneva to Paris

Notre Dame on a Sunny Afternoon

I slept in a little late on Saturday morning, given the fact I didn't have to be at the UN Palais des Nations at 8am once again. I couldn't lounge around for too long, though, as my train to Paris departed at 10am. Fortunately, the train station was literally 50 feet from my hotel, so I didn't have to head out the door until just after 9:30am.

As can be expected from a Swiss train, it left the station on time, winding its way northwest through beautiful French farmland and snowy hillsides. I spent the better part of the 3+ hour ride reading my Paris guidebook, refamiliarizing myself with the layout of the city and circling interesting cafes and restaurants. I'm not a huge fan of French food (though I have been trying to be open minded in recent years), but I'm a big fan of the cuisines of many of their former colonies, from Southeast Asia to Mauritius to North Africa. So hopefully I'd get to have my fair share of noodle dishes, creoles and tagines before I'd have to hit the road again and continue to India, where a wonderland of delicacies would surely await me.

Sadly, my first meal on French soil was a soggy pita sandwich slathered in butter, stuffed with egg yolks and bacon -- perhaps the worst idea for a sandwich I could have come up with, but alas, it was the only sandwich available for sale on the train. I should have gotten a yogurt.

So while my stomach wrestled with these unwelcome contents, I absorbed as much as I could from my guidebook. This would be my fifth trip to Paris, so I didn't feel the need to do the usual Louvre-Eiffel-Notre Dame circuit. Okay, I'd probably visit at least Notre Dame at some point, particularly since it was such a short walk from my hotel, but I wanted to be sure I'd visit some new places this time. I've always wanted to go to the Museum of the Arab World, and explore the Jewish quarters of Marais and Belleville; plus, I've never been to the cathedral in St. Denis or seen Sainte-Chapelle. Anyway, I only had a couple of days to play with, particularly if I managed to get over to UNESCO on Monday as I hoped, so I probably had more than enough ideas to keep me culturally and historically enriched for the weekend.

The train pulled into Paris' Gare de Lyon station just after 1:30pm. Exiting the train, I found myself in what was perhaps the busiest train station I've seen -- well, at least the busiest for its size. Sure, Penn Station or Delhi's station are madhouses, but Gare de Lyon was wall to wall people, and for whatever reason, I wasn't expecting such a claustrophobic experience. The big challenge for me was finding an ATM, or point d'argent for all of you French-speakers out there. I had a wallet full of dollars and Swiss francs, but that wasn't going to get me a taxi ride in Euro-licious Paris. I squeezed through the crowds, careful not to step on small children or dogs, and soon found an information booth. The map in front of the booth showed that there was one -- one -- ATM for the entire train station, and it was at the other end of the building. I worked my way with my bags in tow, soon reaching the location of the ATM. Unfortunately, all I found was a hole in the wall that was once occupied by the aforementioned point d'argent. Another information booth directed me to the currency exchange booth, which just happened to be right where I'd started, near the first information booth.

Exchanging 20 bucks and my leftover Swiss francs at a criminally bad rate, I hailed a taxi and headed southwest through the city, crossing the Seine just east of Notre Dame. Before I knew it, I was passing the Musee de Cluny, cruising down the Boul Miche. My mind raced back to my first trip to Paris when I was 14 years old, then to New Year's 2000, the last time I was here; suddenly a three-dimensional map of the Latin Quarter formed in my mind. I knew exactly where I was, and I knew exactly where I needed to go to walk to the hotel once the taxi dropped me off. There's nothing quite like arriving in a city after such a long time but having it feel like you just returned after a weekend elsewhere.

I walked a block down Rue St. Severin until I reached the entrance of my hotel, the Europe St. Severin, a cozy little two-star joint with a cool see-through elevator and rooms decorated with bright Provencal linens and exposed rock walls. (Frankly, I'm amazed I was able to find a place so charming for same price that I'd paid for the austere Hotel Bernina in Geneva.) Not wanting to waste too much time at the hotel, I grabbed my camera and my guidebook, then quickly booted up my laptop to see if there was wireless Internet access. It turns out the hotel did have wi-fi, but you had to pay a staggering $13 an hour for it, or $30 a day if you preferred. I guess I'd just have to access email on my cell phone until I could find a wifi-friendly café in the quarter.

Unburdened by my luggage, I left the hotel and winded through the heart of the Latin Quarter's tourist ghetto, passing rows of Greco-French restaurants all offering the same menu-fixe of onion soup, coq au vin and chocolate mousse. Soon I was able to breath fresh air as I reached the quay, still lined with book stalls the way it's probably been for 100 years. Behind the stalls, Notre Dame dominated the view, the soaring gothic building that's been a Paris landmark for almost eight centuries. The square in front of the cathedral was packed with tourists, none of whom seemed to care that it was dreary or February -- I guess a dreary February day in Paris is better than a nice day in most other places. Flocks of pigeons showed no mercy as they swarmed the unprepared tourists, overwhelming them St. Marks-style, thanks to the North African men selling small bags of pigeon feed.

I joined the queue and entered the cathedral, noting a large "Silence Please" sign as I entered. Passing through the cathedral's great doors, my ears were bombarded with the voice of a woman announcing the schedule for free tours in Russian, Spanish and Italian over the cathedral's public address for them. ("Silence Please" must be either sarcasm or the cathedral itself begging for a moment of tranquility.)

Tourists explore Notre Dame

For whatever reason, as I explored the cathedral's grand interior, I found myself more interested in the tourists than the cathedral itself. Perhaps it's because I've been there about a dozen times -- since it seems I go more than once every time I'm in Paris -- or perhaps I was still so wound up from my meetings in Geneva that I wasn't ready to be a tourist yet -- but I just couldn't get my mind around the magnificent vaults, the ornate carvings or the glorious rose windows. The tourists just fascinated me. There were hundreds upon hundreds of them in the cathedral, though compared to other claustrophobic tourism experiences past, during this visit they were all very patient, focused. No shoving or loud talking (unless you count that woman who kept announcing the next tour -- German, Portuguese, Xhosa, Klingon....) So I slowly made the counter-clockwise loop around the cathedral with my fellow visitors, watching them peer up to the rose windows, contemplate the bas reliefs, sit for a moment of prayer or reflection.

Perhaps the reason I wasn't getting into Notre Dame was that it all seemed so -- familiar. I knew this cathedral better than any in the world. I knew where to find the cool looking statues, the best spot to photograph light coming through the stained glass.... I needed to see something that I'd never seen before. So I joined the queue to exit the cathedral and headed a few blocks west to Sainte-Chapelle.

Despite all my visits to Paris, I'd never seen Sainte-Chapelle. Honestly, I didn't know much about it except that it was famous for its stained glass -- and having just left Notre Dame, one of the most famous places in the universe to experience magnificent stained glass, I wondered if I'd always skipped Sainte-Chapelle because I assumed it wouldn't be as grand. But Susanne and her mom had visited the chapel last year, and she made a point of mentioning it before I left on this trip, so I figured I should make it a priority. Fortunately, it wasn't more than a five-minute walk from Notre Dame.

Actually, it turns out the wait to get inside Sainte-Chapelle was longer than the walk itself. First, you had to queue through a metal detector and x-ray your bags. Then, you joined a second line to buy your ticket. Finally, you waited in another line for someone to take your ticket and let you inside. At first it seemed like totally unnecessary bureaucracy, but then again, the chapel was fairly small, so they needed to stagger people's entrance into it, or you might end up like a gothic sardine tin.

Entering the chapel, I found myself in a small, gorgeous room with vaulted ceilings and dark blue walls. It felt more like a royal wine cellar than a chapel. A large group of Italian tourists crowded the second half of the room, so I had to wait for them to clear out before I could explore the space more comfortably. I was in the lower chapel of Sainte-Chapelle, which French king Louis IX built in the mid-13th century as his personal chapel. The room was indeed beautiful, but the cynic in me wondered what all the fuss was all about. Perhaps I'd find my answer upstairs in the Upper Chapel.

Sainte-Chapelle's Upper Chapel

I walked up the winding staircase and found myself in one of the most sublimely beautiful rooms I've ever seen. The Upper Chapel was much taller than the lower one, its walls seemingly made entirely out of stained glass. My eyes must have been playing tricks on me: it truly looked like all the walls were made of stained glass. It took me a moment to adjust to the optical illusion and understand the brilliant architecture that was unfolding around me. At strategic points along the walls stood nine pillars that supported the weight of the roof. Apart from these pillars, the walls were almost entirely made of stained glass. The style of the glass, combined with the patterns of arches, added to the illusion that the glass was supporting the roof; glass dominated the foreground while the pillars sunk into the foreground, almost an afterthought.

The Italian tourists that had mobbed the Lower Chapel were occupying much of the Upper Chapel, but I wasn't going to lose my patience. I'd wait them out so I could experience this place as best as possible. This was truly the pinnacle of gothic architecture, the holy grail of an engineering quest to make walls disappear and let heavenly light reign supreme. Photos would not do it justice, but I did my best to capture what I could.

After leaving Sainte-Chapelle, I returned to the Left Bank and followed the quay past Notre Dame to the Museum of the Arab World. It seemed like a good place to enjoy the rest of the afternoon, and perhaps they'd have an interesting touring exhibit. When I arrived, though, I discovered a queue of several hundred people winding down the block, and an enormous sign showing a golden pharaoh mask. Aha -- the Egyptian Museum world tour must be in town. An even better reason to visit the museum, I thought, but I didn't want to spend the next hour in the cold, waiting to get inside, only to have another hour or so before the museum closed. So I made a command decision to visit the museum first thing tomorrow morning.

Before I went any further, though, I needed to get some cash. The horrible exchange rate at the train station prevented me from changing over more than $30, and it had quickly dwindled down to almost nothing thanks to the pathetic value of the dollar. So I started walking south into the heart of the 5th arrondisement, hoping to find an ATM. Amazingly, I walked for nearly 45 minutes before I found one, which was quite agonizing as I passed all of these lovely little cafes that I wanted to visit - cafes that didn't accept credit cards. By the time I found the ATM, it was nearly 5pm, and I was now just a stone's throw from the Pantheon and the Sorbonne. Rather than backtracking to one of the cafes I'd seen during my walk, I stopped at a Belgian beer café, where I had a yummy glass of kriek beer and a bowl of peanuts while reading my guide book.

Just after six o'clock I returned to my hotel for a quick shower -- my feet were really cold from the walk so the hot water did them a world of good. I then went and explored the Latin Quarter in search of dinner. My initial plan was to go to a Lebanese restaurant, but when I got to the one recommended in my book, it looked deserted, which I took as a bad sign. I then found a Moroccan restaurant that looked more promising; I sat down and waited for nearly 45 minutes, trying to get the attention of one of the four waiters who was spending their time trying to repair the restaurant's stereo system rather than serve customers. Eventually I left, along with a couple other people frustrated with being ignored. In the end, I found myself at an Indian restaurant around the corner of my hotel. I come all the way to Paris -- on my way to India, no less -- and end up eating samosas and chicken masala. I must try harder tomorrow night.

Posted by acarvin at February 26, 2005 10:04 PM

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