November 5 2013
Halloween was nice time but it was back to reality on November 1st. Of course in my case reality is a lovely fact: I live in Paris and I owe it to myself to make sure I profit from this existence. And damnit I will! It was not an especially beautiful day, but being All Saint’s Day (Toussaint in French) I decided I would make use of my freshly charged Navigo pass (my Métro frequent flyer pass) and go to Montmartre to see the Musée de l’érotisme (the erotica museum). I’d walked by it at least a hundred times but I’d never been in; it was time!
Being a sex museum, there aren't many pictures of the exhibits that are appropriate for the blog.
I dont know what the goal is for an erotica museum. Is it to educate? Is it to startle? To make you wonder? To introduce you to other cultures? To arouse you? Whatever it is, I left there feeling like I’d wasted an hour of my afternoon. The walls of the first two or three floors were covered with pages from the Karma Sutra and with cases full of statues, mostly with giant penises with the occasional carved vagina thrown in for good measure. There were also some reproduction (ha, pun: reproduction) Greek ceramics with sexual imagery, but it was very blasé. The next floor was mostly about whorehouses in Paris, which was actually sort of interesting. Photos of the prostitutes, the whorehouses, and details about the era were all very interesting. Then the upper two floors were dedicated to contemporary artists who base their art on super raunchy topics. Once again: not impressed. Just because it’s super raunchy and there are boobs involved does not mean it is good art. There was also exhibit space in the basement but it wasn’t great either - the most memorable part of the basement was a larger than life reclining nude picture that moaned.
After a less than exciting visit to the museum, I decided that maybe I should get some culture in and around Montmartre. So I passed a few cabaret theaters (including the infamous Moulin Rouge, which is basically a sex museum in itself) and headed up to my favorite church in Paris: Sacre Coeur. It’s not that the church is especially amazing (it is pretty good, however), but I think it has the most incredible views of Paris. I guess if I was Catholic I’d say I was going to confess for all the sinners in the Museum. But alas… Anyway, I stayed for a little while, watched the first bit of an All Saint’s Day mass, and then decided I would take the metro into the city center to see what was happening there. Well I had to change metro lines and there was a control to make sure we were all legal. I had my pass and I was legal. Or so I thought. What I didn’t realize was that the Navigo pass has two pieces, and both are equally important. One is a cardboard piece with a number on it and the other is the plastic pass, with the microchip, with the swipe section, and everything. Apparently it is illegal to go with just the card and not the cardboard section (which is also supposed to have your photo on it and your name) and the violation of this rule costs you a cool 45 Euros. Oh, and don’t worry, they bring the credit card machine into the Métro system with them so they can be sure to collect your money. Sometimes being a stupid American doesn’t pay off; I guess I should have actually read the rules. Luckily this was not a problem for me in 2011 when I was a student in Paris and I was stopped. Or perhaps I should say, luckily the Controleur in 2011 was not a grumpypants.
The next day’s cultural expedition was yet another museum, this time the National Maritime Museum located at Trocadero, facing the Eiffel Tower. I’d heard good things about this museum, and they were right - it’s a very nice museum. Neither too big nor too overwhelming, it is a really nice museum with a lot of really interesting artifacts. The most impressive artifact was, without doubt, the first one you saw upon entering the museum space: Napoleon’s Imperial Barge. Built in twenty one days in 1810, and at over sixty feet long, it is truly a work of art. At the time it was built it lacked both its figurehead and its iconic crown on the aft cabin, which were added by Napoleon III in 1858. It was used in 1902 for an official naval show and was last in the water in 1930 when it was moved to a different building in Brest, France (where it had been stored for about 80 years). It was moved to Paris in 1943 (when France was under Nazi rule) but it wasn’t until 1945 that official permission was given to pierce a hole in the side of one of the buildings the Palais de Chaillot (which had been built in 1937 as part of the Universal Exposition) which was being transformed into a national maritime museum.
Like many maritime museums the National Maritime Museum had dozens of models, including some that were just enormous, and a great number of figureheads, which blow their American counterparts out of the water in both scale and refinement. I had no idea that French boats had such incredible decoration (#naiveamerican). Some of my favorite models, however, were those done by French prisoners in bone ivory. They are so small and are created from things that the prisoners had handy, but are so beautiful. Every detail is perfect, which is amazing considering the size (none of the prisoner models that I saw measured much over eight inches and the majority would fit on a deck of cards).
The figurehead of Marie-Antoinette's barge
The AMAZING figurehead of featuring Napoleon I from the Iéna, 1846
I took this photo later just to give an idea of the scale. The figurehead was massive!
The stern decoration from the Réale de France, 1694
Just a view of some of the models in the museum
Tiny models made by prisoners
That night I had the privilege of being invited out to dinner with Ann Lawson and her parents, which was very nice of them. We had a nice meal in a chic little brasserie called Le Coq which, ironically, faced the museum where I’d spent a good portion of my day. The food was very good and, being one who likes to rub in the fact that French food is superior to that of the rest of the world, I took some photos. Obviously there are plenty of American restaurants that have equally beautiful dishes and perhaps even some that taste as good. But nothing tastes as good as French snails cooked by French chefs in a Parisian kitchen. I promise you. (It’s definitely the Parisian air that makes all the difference.)
Some snails
Tuna
Sole
Pasta with ham and truffles (the sort of brown things are the truffles)
Dessert cappucino
A profiterole, a first for me. (Sort of like a giant popover but more bready, with vanilla ice cream inside, then covered with hot fudge sauce.) Definitely low in calories.
The next day it was a beautiful sunny day and I decided that I should do something outdoors, so I took a trip to the Parc des Buttes-Chaumont, which I had never visited. Located on the far side of Paris, in the 19th arrondissement, the park isn’t in the best part of Paris, but it’s really beautiful. It’s not at all like typical French gardens where everything appears super groomed and where you are afraid of what might happen to the one plant that decides to grow out of the configuration in which it was placed. Instead, this was an English garden which, while being every bit as planned as any French garden, has the appearance of being completely natural and savage. Opened in 1867, various parts of the park had been used as dump, a place to cut up horse carcasses, a cesspool for sewage, a quarry, and other less-than-savory uses. All of this was turned into a beautiful garden replete with a sculpted mountain, waterfalls (water is pumped into them), a suspension bridge, and a beautiful little temple from which viewers can see much of the outskirts of Paris (which unfortunately isn’t that pretty). All I could think of while I was walking around passing grandmothers pushing strollers and being passed by runners was how much it reminded me of parts of Central Park in New York. Unfortunately it is in the process of a multi-year renovation project so some parts were not accessible, but I think the pictures say it all.
All the railings are faux-bois, concrete made to look like tree branches. It's really cool actually. Also none of the rock you see in this photo is real, it's all concrete and molded to look like rock.
Fall colors in Paris
The Temple Sybille at the top of the butte.
Looking back at Paris from the temple. That's Sacre Coeur on the hill in the distance.
Looking up at the temple from the ground with the suspension bridge at the right.
I’d like to take a minute here to thank all the people who read my blog because in the last 12 hours visitor number 5000 came to the blog. It’s not a lot of people when you consider other blogs in the world, but as somebody who basically writes this just so I can print it off some day to show my kids what I did when I was young and stupid, I think it’s pretty impressive. I also think it’s amazing to see where everybody comes from as I can see which countries are being represented and it’s a really diverse group. Every time I think it couldn't get any more diverse, it does! In the last seven days alone I’ve had readers in the U.K., Canada, Germany, Japan, Poland, Russia, and the Ukraine, along with the US and France. Then you look at the last month and some other amazing countries appear: Norway, Belarus, Indonesia, Latvia… Really, it’s awesome to know that there are so many people who are reading what I’m writing. I’ll try to bring back a bit of humor in the next post, though. These last few have been a bit dry.
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