Paris, Je t'Aime: Partie Un



Ah, Paris :-)

I’d been wanting to visit Paris since 1997, when my father brought back a tiny bronze figurine of an Eiffel Tower after a trip to France. The longing deepened with time and depictions of the city in films, books and the internet. As a result, I ended up spending my first hour in Paris pinching myself every twenty minutes, for just being there seemed surreal.

The surrealism continued that night as we made our way to our hotel from the Gare du Nord, passing through all the landmarks of the charmingly lit city. I tried to contain myself as we passed the Louvre and the Invalides, but I lost all semblance of sanity as we passed the illuminated Eiffel Tower. I squealed, gawked, drooled, laughed and also shed a tiny tear - all in the span of a (very confused and uncomfortable) minute.

But Paris has that effect on people, as is evident by the expressions of the hordes of tourists, who seem to be omnipresent, noisy and photo-crazy . WIth so many tourists everywhere, I think Parisians had no choice but to be snooty :-P. Kidding!

In my opinion, the city of Paris is like New York on weed - it has the population, the scale, the connectivity, the pickpockets even, but none of the pace. But Paris makes up for the lack of pace with its old world charm. I’m not talking just about the city’s historic buildings, or its chicness, or even its cafe-lined lanes. That, we all know. I’m talking about live music in subways, reading paperbacks in rush hour metros and spending Sundays lounging in the Luxembourg gardens or the Jardin des Tuileries, sans electronic devices. The city’s old museums have modern audio guides, the old metro has LED displays and the old palaces host modern-day fashion weeks! That’s the magic of Paris - its soul is conventional but its heartbeat is contemporary.

Paris’ red flags hide, quite literally, under the razzle-dazzle of the entire city. The people, barring those who work in the hospitality sector, aren’t the most friendliest, especially when you come from a place like Amsterdam, pickpockets are rampant and drug dealers are both manipulative and clingy. But you won’t remember all this when you’re standing on the Pont Des Arts, watching the boats sail in the Seine while the Eiffel glitters in the background. When one speaks of Paris, you’ll remember the lights of the Eiffel, the gold of the Pont Des Alexander, the crunch of the croissants and the painting you loved the most in the Louvre. At least that’s what I remember. 


Tips:

  • Try not to aggravate Parisians with anything loud - voice or clothes!
  • Use the words ‘Bonjour’ ‘Bonsoir’ and ‘Pardon’ as liberally as possible - they might make life a bit easy in the tough French capital
  • More often than not, street food is way better than food in cafes. Also, try croissants!


The Louvre


A part of the Louvre from outside - the metro entrance is right beneath the glass pyramid 

The golden 'throne' that 'floats' below the glass pyramid

Saying that one has completely explored the Louvre in a short trip to Paris is about as truthful as saying that one has summited Mount Everest in a day. Also, I’m pretty sure that the number of people who have climbed Mount Everest far exceeds the number of people who have explored all the 403 rooms of the Louvre! But to go to Paris and not even attempt to explore Louvre is pure sacrilege, so one morning we took off, sans breakfast.

One thing I loved about the Paris metro (and the NY metro) was that the metro stations take one right into the foyer of the museum without having to get onto the road (In India, we have given that honour to malls, for some reason). Another good part about the Louvre metro is that there are trained classical musicians playing music in the underground passage, thanks to an initiative by the museum itself.

The metro entrance to the Louvre resembles a mall, for one lands directly into a lobby surrounded by various, huge gift shops. A bit of a walk leads to the main ticket counter and for us hungry souls, a patisserie, Paul. 


The inner courtyard (of sorts) of the Louvre

The audio guides in Louvre were unsurprisingly the most extensive audio guides we’d ever seen. There were specific tours, ranging from the regular chronological tour of the artwork to the tour of the masterpieces, to tours of individual rooms. There are also guided tours of the museum, which start from 11 am everyday. Since we had entered the museum at 9 am, the audio tour was our only guide, and since we had only a couple of hours dedicated to the museum, we picked the masterpiece tour (which, needless to say, we couldn’t finish).

Our tour began at the marble statue, Artemis With A Doe, one of the earliest statues to arrive in France.The statue depicts Diana, the Greek goddess of hunting, with a doe and a quiver of arrows. Although the statue is believed to be carved somewhere in the 1500s, I couldn’t help but connect it to the modern age, specifically to 2017. How could one come to the Louvre and not meet Diana? #WonderWomanReference


Diana, the Wonder Woman (of the 1500s)

The Galerie d’Apollon or Apollo Gallery is a long, high-ceilinged room decorated in gold, forming a precursor to what we were about to see in Versailles. All four sides of the rooms are decorated with ornate gold work, but the ceiling with its paintings of the day, night and the sun signs is a marvel in itself. True to its grandeur, the Galerie d’Apollon houses some of the world’s biggest and rarest diamonds, including ‘The Regent’, an Indian diamond discovered in Golconda (presumably modern-day Telangana).


I tried to get a picture of the Apollo Gallery but there were too many people!

Detail of the sun signs on the walls of the Apollo Gallery



Golconda's Regent Diamond. Why don't we want this to come back to India?

En route to the painting gallery we passed by The Winged Victory of Samothrace, a headless, winged, robed statue of the goddess of victory, Nike, standing on the edge of a ship, seemingly looking at the Sanctuary of the great Gods on the island of Samothrace. It is amazing how the sculptor managed to make marble appear like cloth, especially on the torso of the statue. 


The Winged Victory of Samothrace - this might sound cheap, but observe the delicate marble-clothwork!

Although we generally don’t fall in touristy traps, we couldn’t come to Louvre and not see La Jaconde, or the Mona Lisa (In all fairness, it was also in the masterpiece tour :-p). After going through multiple, large, detailed paintings, the Mona Lisa is a slight letdown. For one, it is tiny (when compared to the other paintings), and also, the area around the painting is always crowded, quite presumably.
The Mona Lisa or La Jaconde - d'ya think it's a big deal?

While I did take a photograph of La Jaconde (under immense mental pressure!), my roving eyes found its way around the gallery and fixed on a colossal painting directly opposite the Mona Lisa. Titled ‘The Wedding At Cana’, the painting depicts Jesus Christ’s first miracle of turning water into wine at a wedding party at Galilee. Painted by Paolo Caliari a.k.a Veronese, The Wedding At Cana is the biggest painting in the Louvre. To me, the entire painting was no less than a scene from a motion picture, and the scale of the painting simply aggrandised that feeling. In addition to many Bibilical characters, a few painters, musicians and political figures of that time also form a part of the painting. I don’t know what it was about this painting - the haloed Christ, the sheer size, the detail - that captivated me, but I couldn’t brush it off easily, so much so that I couldn’t resist buying a 1000 piece puzzle of it! Happy Christmas to me!


A chaperone explaining the details of The Wedding At Cana (in the background). Really appreciated this initiative :-)


A collage of some sculptures in Louvre's sculpture garden

Tips:

  • Do not miss the sculpture garden, and do read the information cards about each of the sculptures. Pro tip - it has wonderful lighting for photos and selfies (meh) !
  • Admire the glass pyramids all you like, but do not utter the words ' Da Vinci Code' - it puts Parisians off! 
  • While the loos in the Louvre are pretty clean, they’re also spaced well apart from each other and have long queues so...well, be prepared!
  • Louvre is open for night tours on Fridays, so plan ahead and book your tickets in advance for it.
After spending six hours in the Louvre and seeing many more paintings, sculptures and artefacts, we had reached saturation point (as am sure many of you reading about it would’ve too). Realizing that this was the most time we could spend in Louvre in this trip at least and that we had hardly seen Paris, we headed out to Sir Gustave Eiffel’s architectural marvel, the Eiffel Tower. More about it in next week’s post, Paris: Deuxieme Partie (Part two).

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