The Catacombs

Remember last time we tried to go to the Catacombs and it was a massive fail? Lena and I tried again today and got in after almost no wait in line. Voici les resultats.

Stop! This is the empire of death.

A brief history of the Catacombs:

Long long ago, sometime in the 1780s, the neighborhood of Les Halles in Paris realized it had a problem. The problem was that people kept dying, but the local Cemetery of the Innocents was staying the same size. It turns out that after approximately six centuries spent trying to stuff innumerable bodies into the same limited graveyard, the laws of physics take over. The burial ground literally exploded, right into the basements of neighboring houses. And permissive though most Parisians are of unseemly aromas, an avalanche of rotting corpses in the cellars were not pleasing to them. For sanitary reasons, it was therefore decided that all the cemeteries in Paris should be dug up and the remains of their human inhabitants transferred outside of the city limits. The natural choice for the new storage locale was an old mine in what is now the 14th arrondissement. Bones upon bones were exhumed, transported, and rearranged at the new location in aesthetically pleasing configurations, and now you can pay five euros to walk through the chilly, wet caverns and peer uneasily into the empty eye sockets of the men and women of yesteryear. Thus, the catacombs were born.

There are signs in the Catacombs that tell you which bones came from which cemetery. The bones that Lena and I are casting our shadows on in this picture are from the now defunct Cemitiere des Innocents, the oldest cemetery in Paris.

Look honey, I made you a heart. Of skulls.

Do I blend in?

When no one was looking I picked up a pelvis.

And then I dared Lena to do the same.

From some areas that had been damaged it was evident that the bones are not merely stacked together, but held in place by some kind of mortar.

On top of some of the piles, though, there are loose bones that (as evidenced) one could conceivably pick up and carry off. For this reason, there are guards posted at the exit door to make sure you don't have any stowaway tibias in your purse. It dawned on us later that the skull and two leg bones that we saw on a folding table on the way out were probably attempted thefts that had been caught by the guards!

My first piece of real art: Priceless

A few posts ago I made a list. Let us see how I have been doing on that front.

Things I Must See, Eat, Do, and Otherwise Experience Before My Departure

1) Berthillion ice cream on Ile St. Louis, rumored to be the best in Paris = DONE. Lena, Leetal and I went there a few days ago and bought the single-scoop (and they do mean single scoop. One tiny, perfectly rounded scoop in your delicate sugar cone) because at 2 euro 10, that was all we were willing to pay. I tried the caramel, which had pieces of crunchy toffee or similar mixed in, and it was quite good. I must be a true uncultured American at heart though because one of the things I've been craving these past few weeks has been a sprinkle-coated vanilla soft serve cone from good ole Dairy Queen. Classy.

2) the Rodin museum, rumored to have some stuff Rodin made = fail. I've trekked over there twice now, but one time the entry line was around the block and the next time the museum was closed. Don't worry though, third time will be a charm.

3) the Catacombs, stacked to the brim with dead people = epic fail. Me, Erin, Lena, Ornella, Molly, Paul, Elizabeth, and Elizabeth's assorted family members all went down to the 14th yesterday and stood in the impossibly long line for the Catacombs, only to be shat on, both literally and figuratively-- first when a pair of pigeons dropped some bombs on Elizabeth's backpack and her father's white shirt, and then when we were the literal NEXT GROUP IN LINE and the punctual guard announced that it was 4pm and no more visitors were being admitted. "Come back Tuesday!" he cheerfully suggested. We spied a nearby cafe and Paul bought us booze instead.

4) Angelina's, even though I should've sampled the famed hot chocolate when the weather was crappy = fail. Have not yet attempted.

5) the Musee Fragonard, also full of dead people = fail. Apparently not in Paris.

6) the Middle Ages museum, for nerdular enjoyment = DONE. Lena and I checked it out this Saturday, and it turned out to be full of really cool medieval stuff. We saw a bunch of church-related art, including the enormous heads from the statues of Biblical kings that were toppled at Notre Dame during the French Revolution and only recently unearthed in a ditch somewhere. But the best part may have been the series of tapestries of the Lady and the Unicorn, a part of which my mother bought in reproduction form several years ago and incorporated into a sewing project. I've seen the real thing now, Mom, and I've gotta say it's a little bit more impressive than your throw pillow in the foyer.

7) a macaroon from Laduree, even though paying five euro for it will make me cry = DONE, reference previous post and picture.

8) escargot at a restaurant with no English menu translations = almost! I've picked out a restaurant and now just need to find a time to go and some friends to accompany me. Anybody? Anybody?

9) buy a piece of street art = DONE! Well ok, it's not street art, but it is a piece of original art. There was an antiques fair in front of St. Sulpice today, and a few of the other girls and I found this booth that was selling tons of great vintage clothes and accessories. Everything was out of our price range, including one thing we each ended up buying: an original fashion plate sketch from a 1940s designer. They were way too cool to pass up though, with the original fabric swatches and little sketches and notes drawn on the sides and back. We each bought one, except for Kristen who decided to be a high roller and purchase another as a gift. I'll put a picture of mine at the end of the post.

10) buy an egg cup to remind me of my fateful soft-boiled oeuf dilemmas = fail. But it's easy to do so I'll get it done soon.

In other news, my 6-yr-old host nephew Romain was here the other night and hilaritized me by instigating a surprisingly philosophical conversation at dinner. I was zoning out a little until I heard him ask my host dad whether the Big Bang "was infinity." My host dad looked confused and tried to explain that a single occurrence cannot "be" infinite, but Romain was not taking no for an answer. Finally my host dad instructed him to "demande a Sara."

"Sara," he asked, wide-eyed, "is the Big Bang (in French, "le Beeg Bong") infinity?"

"No," I said. "It was an event."

That didn't seem to satisfy him, so he switched to a different topic.

"Who made the Beeg Bong?"

"Umm... God."

"But who made God?"

"No one made God," said my host dad. "He was always there."

"But when was he born?" Romain demanded.

This went on for about an hour, until my host dad got so frustrated with the unanswerable questions that he finally threatened Romain to "eat the rest of your salad or Sara is going to give you an English lesson after dinner!"

"NOooOOooOOOo," Romain shrieked. "L'anglais est trop difficile!"

"Nah," I comforted him. "It's not hard."

Reluctantly, Romain speared a lettuce leaf.

Before you get too excited about his genius, though, you should know that he returned to age-appropriate behavior after dinner, when my host dad and I were doing the dishes. "Cookie! Cookie!" he said in English, bouncing around the room. "That is to say what, 'cookie'?"

"Un biscuit," I said.

"That's to say what, a cookie?"

"Un biscuit."

"Un cookie! Un biscuit! Un cookie! Un biscuit!"

Cute as he was, it was a relief to all involved when he bounded off down the hall and fixed his attention on attacking Tilo with a bubble-blowing gun.

In other dinner news, my host mom just returned from a week-long vacation in New York, and has apparently applied her knowledge of our national cuisine to her dinnertime offerings. When I walked into the kitchen tonight I was simultaneously bemused and delighted to find an assortment of fish sticks and baked yukon gold potatoes on my plate. The Americana theme continued with a bottle of ketchup and another of ranch dressing, plunked proudly down to the right of my water goblet. "Regarde!" she said, brandishing the dressing in front of me. "Heeden Valley Ronch! I bought it in New York!"

"Ah yes," I congratulated. "It is very famous."

I might have been laughing in my head, but the look of ill-disguised joy on my face at the sight of those baked potatoes must've revealed my true feelings. How I miss you, my beloved staple starch. We will soon have a wonderful culinary reunion.

Here's the fashion drawing I bought!

Note how the silver sequins have been sewn into the drawing:

Le Moulin Rouge

I had hoped that today's visit to the Moulin Rouge in Montmartre would give us an occasion to link arms onstage and perform an improvisational rendition of the can-can, with Paul in the middle, but sadly this did not come to pass. Instead we spent our time listening to a nice French man tell us all about the history of the dance hall.

The windmill that sits atop the Moulin Rouge today is old, but not original to the building-- the first one burned down sometime after the turn of the century. Neither of them were ever functional, but windmills had become a symbol of Montmartre back in the area's village days, when several of them dotted the landscape.

We went inside and met up with our guide, who debriefed us on the history of the Moulin Rouge. It was in French so I didn't catch all of what he said, but he told us that the Nicole Kidman film is actually pretty historically accurate. The giant elephant was real, for example. He also pointed out a bunch of the original advertising posters for the dance hall, most of which were created by Henri Toulouse-Lautrec.

Erin in front of the ballroom.

We weren't allowed to take pictures of the stage, but here are some seats in the audience. Our guide told us that the Moulin Rouge basically invented the concept of a dinner theater, and the hall has something like 860 chairs and a bunch of tables for those who elect the super pricey dinner-and-a-show. Without the frills you can see a show for under a hundred euro, but it's closer to two hundred if you want food and champagne. Some girls were onstage practicing while we were there, which was pretty interesting. The guide told us that the Moulin Rouge employs dancers of many nationalities, including Americans, but that the best-represented group were actually Australians.

We went into the dressing room too, which had a bunch of crazy feathered costumes and headdresses, but I figured I probably wasn't allowed to take pictures.

After the field trip I walked home and on the way I ducked into Laduree for a macaroon. Finally, one goal accomplished! The others have been surprisingly difficult to achieve (the Musee Fragonard, for instance, turned out not even to be in Paris. Liars, the Parisian museum website staff). But it sounds like we're going to the Catacombs this weekend, so that'll be one more item down.

My macaroon matches my scarf! It was unintentional.

After the long line of elegant French dames ahead of me had made their selections, I ordered a lone raspberry macaroon. Let me just say I'm glad it took me this long to finally try one, because if I had discovered them earlier I would be dead broke and weigh nine hundred pounds.

We will end with this picture of a store that had Star Wars mannequins in the window, which I took for Diane's viewing pleasure:

This is almost as great as the Harry Potter store in the 6th, where you can buy $50 reproductions of things like the Marauder's Map and every major character's wand.

Goal: accomplish three more of my goals before updating again.

Montmartre is so cute it hurts

Recently we went to Montmartre for Paris By Site, in quest of bohemians. Sadly they all moved out about a hundred years ago and the only people who live there now are bobos, aka the bohemian bourgeoise, aka rich folks trying to prove they're still hip. But they've got great landscaping!

Consider these private gardens. The properties on this street belong to famous rich French persons who don't want the public to know where they live, so their intercom buttons on the outside of the gate are coded with the names of historical French artists.

There was a collective gasp when Paul led us around a corner to this, the Cutest Street in Paris. Unfortunately these houses never come up for sale since they pretty much get passed through families, so when we all professed a desire to live there we had to do some brainstorming. Elizabeth proposed that she would marry into one of the homeowning families, and Suzy volunteered that she would then kill Elizabeth and claim her husband.

I <3 winding hillside roads.

The Lapin Agile was a late 19th century bar frequented by bohemians. Now it's just supercute.

We also paid a visit to the Musee de Montmartre, which houses some interesting Montmartre-related stuff including these fin-de-siecle posters advertising everything from dance halls to absinthe to concerts and bars.

Now, for some things I have been up to this weekend.

On Friday Erin and I went to The Orangerie to see some impressionist painting:

After that we went downstairs to see some Renoir, Cezanne, Picasso, Sutine and others, and after wandering too far ahead I lost Erin and got majorly hit on by a curator of the museum. He was at least 50 and he chatted me up in French for about 20 minutes before giving me his card and urging me to call him (for a date? to talk about art? I wasn't clear on the particulars). Hilariously, his name was Branko (pronounced "bronco"). And even more hilariously, he used the nerdiest art-history-related pickup line on me. He had led me into a photo gallery and was pointing out the work of some artist, I forget which, who had done a dozen portraits all of the same woman. "You know," said Branko, with a sly smile, "If you had lived in his time period, I bet he would have done a dozen portraits of you." I held it together long enough to excuse myself and find Erin, but then laughed all the way down the street after we'd left.

Then we went to Parc Butte-Chaumont, a lovely hillside expanse of greenery that you're actually allowed to sit on, for a picnic of the delicious little chickens that we had bought at a market in the 9th. Our enjoyment of the feast, however, was soon halted by the arrival of a cute and evidently hungry dog:

Okay, now for some stuff that happened awhile ago. Good lord I'm behind.

A little while ago Susan pulled some strings with a curator friend of hers at the Louvre who was able to get us VIP access on a day when the museum was closed to the public.

Regarde! The halls are empty!

We even got to see the Mona Lisa without anyone else around it:

Sebastien, our curator guide, told us that the Mona Lisa is basically famous for being famous. No one even thought it was that cool until it got stolen.

I went on a quest to find the Venus de Milo, and I did. This was on a regular museum day though, hence the crowds.

The view is better from the back because no one is interested in seeing the Venus de Milo butt crack.

Other famous Parisian things: L'Arc de Triomphe, built by Napoleon.

A few weeks ago we toured the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, where lots of famous French artists trained. In one room there was a collection of copies of famous sculptures, paintings, and examples of architecture, so that the students could practice imitating their styles without having to go all the way to Italy and various other locales that had the real thing:

We had class in the room where the prestigious Prix de Rome was handed out every year to one lucky art student. The prize allowed for a travel and living stipend so the artist could go to Italy and further refine his craft. The painting on the wall is by Delaroche, and portrays centuries of famous artists all talking and intermingling.

It occurs to me that I've never shown you the outside of my apartment. Here it is! I live on the fifth floor.

From now on I'll be more timely with my updates.