Sunday, November 9, 2009. Larry didn't have many items on his agenda when we came to Europe, but he had a couple of things that he did really want to do and see. The one thing in Paris was going to the Cluny museum. When I went and looked in my Paris book for the Cluny, there was a reference in there that seemed to disappear. It was on one map, but it wasn't under "museums" and it wasn't in the index, so I was completely puzzled, as I was sure that I had come across the name in the book someplace. Since the wonderful Hotel Seine actually has wireless internet access, we got online and I looked up the Cluny. What has happened in recent years to make the Cluny disappear from my guidebook is that the name was changed to the Musee National de Moyen Age. What they have done in the book is use it interchangeably with "Cluny" making this rather confusing to read and to actually locate in an index. I went online to search for the Cluny and for the catacombs, since I had a bad experience last time when Amanda and I showed up at the catacombs only to find out that they were closed for repairs. I didn't want this to happen again. I'm glad we looked- apparently they had a vandalism incident the weekend of September 22nd. All I can ascertain is that skulls and bones were strewn all over the paths down there and they had to close. There is no day posted when they might re-open, so once again I'm completely thwarted trying to see the Parisian catacombs. It's a really creepy and macabre history: the city kept getting bigger and bigger and real estate more and more premium, so they moved the cemeteries into 186 miles of underground catacombs from mid 18th century through the mid 19th century. There was a huge cemetery which had been used for 10 centuries in the middle of what is now "Halles" and in the 1780s it became apparent that it was the epicenter for rampant disease spreading through the district. The king ordered removal of the cemetery and bodies and relocation into the tunnels beneath the city to stop the disease threat. They had to do this in the middle of the night, carrying rotting and rotted corpses on carts through the streets of Paris in the middle of the night to relocate the bodies. They are kind of famous for these art-deco designs with skulls and bones. It became a fun and famous thing for the aristocracy togo down in there at night, much like they did in Rome's catacombs starting with King Charles 10th and ladies of the aristocracy for a hoot. I have long wanted to see them, and have been hit with closures every time. This is disappointing.
Since the catacombs were out, I looked up the museum (I've heard of it, never been there), I was kind of shocked that I hadn't ever been to the cluny- it's like a Funpark for Shelbys: it's a museum solely dedicated to the medieval period. Particularly the french medieval period. Color me happy! This was a find! We went to the Latin Quarter by metro and came above ground at the Cluny/Sorbonne station. They are doing some excavation just outside of the museum that looked roman, around a corner from the Metro station is this courtyard and a gorgeous medieval manor that is the Cluny. The structure was built in 1333 and was home to the Abbots of Paris, it was confiscated by the city in 1793 and housed Mary Tudor after Louis XII died, it was lived in by a french physician in the 1800s who used the medieval chapel on the 1st floor as a dissection room, and in 1833 it was bought by Alexandre du Sommard who installed all of his art there. Upon his death, it was again acquired by the state and installed as a museum, with Alexandre's son as the first curator. Today it's a very impressive collection of medieval parisian art and artifacts. I loved it. Most important in its collection is the 6 tapestry series The Lady and the Unicorn. I sat in the circular room for a good half an hour, looking at them, completely in shock that I was actually seeing them in person. In person! I'm still just totally shocked.
They also have a rather startling collection known as the "Kings of Judah" which is a series of startling heads with a rather startling history. In 179, 28 statues of the Kings of Judah were removed by the french revolutionaries from the facade of Notre Dame and sold to a builder as scrap material. They were considered lost for good. In 1977 when Paris was constructing a new road, 21 of the 28 heads were dug up along with lots of fragments of the bodies of the sculptures. It turns out that they were bought and not used as scrap material, but were respectfully buried instead. They were restored to a place of honor in the cluny museum after their discovery. The photos above are the Kings, and the closeup is King David. The whole museum was very cool and we spent a few hours wandering through its 2 floor, massive collection. Midway through, as you get up to the second floor in one of the first rooms up there was the Unicorn collection, almost overlooked as we veered away from a herd of French 3rd graders of some kind of field trip. It was going backwards when they left that I was surprised to realize I almost missed them!
After the Cluny, we walked down the street and saw the massive Sorbonne, still in operation as a university today. The area is totally crawling with college students, and the University of Paris is a few streets away from that. As we wandered toward the Pantheon, also in this area, we passed lots of bookstores and vendors selling cheap food. We went to the pantheon, but didn't go in, directly across the street from U or Paris, where I found a statue in the middle of the street had been decorated by some students who must think they're very funny. Then we walked to Luxembourg palace, and sat watching the ducks swim around and nibble in Marie de Medici's grotto, my favorite spot in the gardens.
After luxembourg, Larry got a parisian panini- 3 cheeses in a french baguette loaf, heated in a panini press to melty goodness. Walking a little further looking for the metro station, I spotted a lebanese place that had a chicken curry sandwich, so we stepped into this little storefront restaurant, the proprietor heated my sandwich and he made us cups of sweet spearmint tea while we waited, which was really lovely. We headed back to the hotel for a few hours, before we went out at night for a nice meal our last night in Paris. It was a place the hotel's blog recommended which was only a few blocks away. We dressed up and got there at 8pm, rather 15 minutes before they opened, and had their prix fix menu, which was 26 euros and was fantastic. I had a goat cheese salad with crustini and honey that was really fabulous, then a ratatouille deconstruction with a delicious whitefish and a balsamic reduction drizzle that was also fabulous, and for dessert we both had a raspberry tiramisu. We had a carafe of the house red, which was okay but good with food after this strange sweet cocktail that was supposed to be a martini... we still have no idea what that drink was. It was a nice night, and we retired ready for the airport after a quick breakfast the next morning. We left the hotel after breakfast at about 7:30am, our delightful host at the desk had told us how to use the RER system the night before which seemed easy enough. We walked the 150 feet to the B line RER station, which would connect us to the C line and thus to Charles de Gaul. We got down there and there seemed to be a lot of confusion between the two station agents, who kept telling us to wait while they were conferencing. It was strange and taking a long time. Larry walked over to the ticket machine and he said it was right in there- a one way ticket to CdG, so what was the problem? What came out was that there is no train service at all at this time to the airport. The line was not having any trains. We had some moments of panic, and I said "We're going to have to take a taxi." We went back to the hotel where the host who had explained the RER the night before was back at the desk, and he calmly said he knew there were issues on one of the lines, but he wasn't aware that there were no trains to the airport. We could take a taxi. We were actually down to our last 30 collective euros, and the taxis in Paris do not all take credit cards, but he would call a cab for us, and specify that we needed one which did take a credit card. I was a bit too nervous that we'd get all the way to the airport without enough euros and a credit card that for who knows what reason wouldn't work- so I just walked the block and a half to the nearest ATM and took out 50 more euros.
Within the promised 7 minutes, a very lovely and enthusiastic cabbie was waiting for us. We got all loaded into the cab and he tried to communicate with my bad french- most of his conversation I had no clue about, just kept laughing and saying "oui." We drove comfortably through the narrow and lovely streets of Paris to say goodbye, before we got onto the city-circling freeway and got to CdG in about 40 minutes. It was good. 55 euros later, we were at the airport in plenty of time, whizzed through customs and at our gate. I bought a quick last souvenir and soon enough we were boarding our full flight back to SFO. We were in the first row after the business class, seated with a very nice frenchman who is some kind of business exec for a tech company who, however nice, had some halitosis and had no trouble lobbing his body into my seat. He took the whole arm rest, and some of his body was in my chair, so I spent a very uncomfortable 14 hours flight with this man in my space. Larry on the other side, so I essentially had no arm rests on either side (why do women always feel we have to suffer to let the men take up the space? Why do the men not feel the same compunction to make us comfortable? Why is this?). Not a fun plane ride. The flight was amazingly smooth, and we went over the top of the globe and flew into SFO only 20 minutes behind schedule. We picked up bags, got on Bart, and went home. It was a very, very long trip and by the time I got home, there was no way on earth I was going to be able to stay awake for the 4 hours left until 6pm when I had set as a reasonable target for bed. Ugh.
Travel aside, a good trip across the pond. And I do love Paris...
home.