France: Day 2 (tea, no fabric, thoughts on the Eiffel Tower)

After starting out the day with a reconnaissance mission to the local Monoprix (supermarket) for some essential groceries, David and I started our excursions by meandering across the street to Montmartre Cemetery. I mentioned that our window overlooks the south corner of it, and it was fun to explore a little bit. Footprint-wise it's not that large, but the density of crypts makes for both an aesthetic appeal and a challenge when you're trying to find any particular grave. Still, we did locate a few of Montmartre's famous final residents, including Stendhal...


...whose relatively modest grave, erected by "friends of Stendhal," had the following prayer propped up on it:


"Mon Dieu, si vous existez, ayez pitie de mon âme, si j'en ai une." (My God, if you exist, have pity on my soul, if I have one.) The man has his bases covered!

A decidedly more elaborate tomb was that of Alexandre Dumas fils, who was endowed with custom statuary complete with wreaths of laural (although now missing a few toes, whether to weather or souvenir-happy Traviata fans).


Émile Zola was originally buried here as well, but he was exhumed and moved to the Panthéon early in the 20th century. It seems to me that any "honor" involving exhumation is kind of a mixed blessing, but there you go. We did stumble upon the sleek, "stealth" grave of New Wave filmmaker François Truffaut, which had a few offerings from fans:


Yesterday was maybe the worst day in terms of jet lag, and after the cemetery we were in need of a pick-me-up. Being Americans, "pick-me-up" to us apparently meant "shopping." So we dropped my big camera at home (photos to follow are still of the cemetery, not our further adventures) and headed east to seek out a lovely little tea shop which David, a passionate tea lover, was interested in visiting. Palais des Thés is extremely attractive in its layout and packaging. The woman working there was very nice, and sampled a Japanese green and a violet-infused black for us. I had probably my most extended French-language interaction yet with her, as well. (Everyone tends to switch to English immediately when they hear my accent or hear us talking to one another.) David had a grand time smelling various fancy Pu Ers and Bing Chas, and left with a beautiful selection of teas and tea paraphernalia to add to his collection.


We then hiked back in an easterly direction, past the high-end sex shop district that houses the famous Moulin Rouge, where we were a bit discouraged to find that, even in Paris, the English phrase "Sex Shop" is the label of choice for such establishments.

In the roiling tourist streets at the base of Sacré Coeur was our second shopping destination, the Marché Saint Pierre fabric store and surrounding fabric-centric neighborhood. With five floors of fabric at the Marché St. Pierre, and more in the surrounding shops, I felt sure to find something to take home, but surprisingly I actually didn't. As it turns out there is a strong emphasis on home décor fabric, which is not my thing. The garment fabric selection was fairly good, and there were some top-end silks, wools, and cashmeres whose price points I might have braved if I'd had any particular projects in mind for them. But my sewing of late has been very biased toward evening and party clothes, and since I don't actually have that many opportunities to wear that kind of thing, I was more interested in picking up something unique, but suitable for day wear. For that kind of fabric I actually feel the selection is better in Portland, as sacrilegious as that feels to say! I saw some lovely cottons and linens, but nothing very different from the curated selections at a shop like Bolt, and (obviously, since this is Paris!) everything was about four times as expensive. So I opted against buying anything, which means more books for me! (And I'll save some money to buy fabric when I get back home. What do you think, Mom, a trip to Bolt when we return?)


(I was not actually as sad as this lady to leave the shops without fabric.)

Braving the crowds, we shouldered up to Sacré Coeur, and inside the basilica we found an oasis of calm as the nuns were singing a mass in clear, high voices. We sat and watched them for a time, before making our slow way around the outer side-chapels, where the brilliant sun (it's quite warm here) shone through the stained glass and colored the light in a cooling, soothing way. Sacré Coeur is obviously not medieval, with construction having begun in 1875, but the things I learned in Art History classes about the medieval belief that light filtered through colored glass encourages a holy or spiritual frame of mind, made some sense there, as it has in more ancient cathedrals I've visited in Spain and elsewhere.

Finally, we walked back down off the hill, freshened up, and followed up a recommendation by the excellent Anthony to try the rooftop restaurant at the Hôtel Terrass for dinner. We enjoyed the warm breezes and fantastic panoramic view of Paris (Sacré Coeur in one direction, the Eiffel Tower in the other) as we made our leisurely way through drinks and dinner. I ordered a gin fizz in honor the young Simone de Beauvoir, whose favorite cocktail it was when she first started frequenting the night clubs around Paris in the years just before meeting Jean Paul Sartre.


Having a view of both Sacré Coeur and the Eiffel Tower, it occurred to me how both monuments were very controversial and viewed as in bad taste while they were being constructed. It's funny that now they both, and the Tower in particular, have become so iconic of the city that initially wanted to halt progress on them and/or tear them down. And looking at the Eiffel Tower is also an odd experience in itself, I think. I've seen so many, many representations of it through the years—and even in the last few days, since every t-shirt stand in Montmartre and along the Boulevard de Clichy sports endless Eiffel merchandise. Looking at the real thing, I'm unable quite to react to it as different from all those simulacra. I'm not able to see it as "an attractive structure" or evocative of anything except itself. I'm almost a bit surprised to see it there, as if it's a cliché I wasn't actually anticipating finding, or as if I've become desensitized to it through repeated exposure to Eiffel images. Strange! Nonetheless, philosophizing aside, it did make a lovely and romantic focal point for our leisurely meal, and we came home excited for Day 3.


Today we're planning on actually leaving our immediate neighborhood, possibly checking out the Musée de Cluny (medieval museum) and even Gallimard!

Cross-posted to Family Trunk Project.