Three days of culture, but what different culture. Tarzan and the Virgin Mary! Then the history of the Paris Commune.The Musée du Quai Branly on the Left Bank near the Eiffel Tower is a modern museum with a collection of primitive art. Its latest show, Tarzan , is a French view of the American hero Tarzan from the first throughts of Edgar Rice Burroughs to the German ad for Homme perfume. Historical analysis, books, paraphenalia, posters, products and movie clips including a wonderful 1932 rendition of Marlene Dietrick and Cary Grant in a night club where she plays a gorilla amongst a bunch of black faced female, scantily clad, jungle dancers. The show is wonderful view of Americana but not from American eyes.
We went book shopping following that for a new French novle, L'Élegance du Herrisson, which I shall enjoy, though I doubt it is about hedgehogs. A couple of Greek salads near Boul Mich completed the afternoon.
Our evening was a lovely meal at a local Lebanese restaurant where John and Eric know the owner. La Zénobie, at 234 rue Championnet near their apartment in the 18th. Very nice shish kebab, and an excellent table of mezze made for a lovely evening. We had two very good bottles of Lebanese wine to wash them down. John and Eric's dog, Abby, joined us quietly for the evening.
Friday, September 4, we headed off to Chartres Cathedral, a wonderful medieval cathedral with some of the loveliest stained glass in the world. We found the world's worst traffic on the way, taking nearly three hours to do the 100 km run.
But the cathedral is magnificent.Sited on top of a hill, it comands the countryside for miles around. It's surrounded by a quaint medieval town, someone restored.
The cathedral itself is in process of rehabilitation. Most of the windows have been cleaned and double glazed. The baroque altar is currently hidden because of restoration. The windows, though, are brilliant in their colors as the sun shines through. Fortunately, we learned a lot about them from an English medieval architectural docent, who had been leading tours and writing about Chartres for 50 years. He also had a very wry sense of humor: "That's the sixth tour of Japanese this morning. I have this idea that Japan is so crowded they have to send some of them abroad all the time so the rest have room to move."
The hour long tour includes descriptions of the exterior as well as the windows. We learned more about the visual representations so necessary to the education of a medieval worshipper.
We enjoyed a fine lunch of salads, omelettes and sandwiches at the Serpent, a 19th century style tea shop on the cathedral close. I particularly enjoyed my bettereve salad.
We thought we had encounted horrid traffic going...returning to Paris took over three hours with traffic that rivalled Bangkok in its snail pace. John had never seen it so bad in all his years in France. Accidents and breakdowns, combined with Friday rush hour led to total gridlock.
We had a lovely dinner at home and retired.
Saturday we took a metro over to the Butte de Caille, a hill in the 13th, near place d'Italie. The hill was the last stand of the Communards who fought off the 3rd Republic after the Franco-Prussian war. We celebrate the event at home with framed newspaper cartoons of Parisians enjoying the last meat available—their zoo animals. We walked the neighborhood and then enjoyed a small lunch at the Restaurant Cailloux on the square of zucchini with grilled shrimp and carpaccio of beef.
Last we joined old friends for a lovely evening at home. Mark and Noel were completing their three week vacation which included a canal boat ride on the Canal du Midi and a few days in Aix en Provence with other friends Bernard and Edward. Since we have known Mark and Noel for many years but not seen them recently we had much to talk about. The evening lasted until 1 AM!
Today, Sunday, September 6, we finish a week here in Paris. We will miss our hosts and Abby as we drive north to Bruges.
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