Over the Top in France - August 14

(argh - out of order!  And I tried so hard to get it straight.  Oh well, read me next-to-last)

Our last day!  But we haven’t (fill in the blank)!  We’re going to go off the tourist-track for a bit and search out 49, rue de Rome, my mother's digs during her JYA 60 years ago.  It is right near the Gare St. Lazare, and the neighborhood is now home to serious music stores:  some books, a piano store, but mostly it is a block of luthiers, each specializing in a particular instrument - violin, bass, and so on.  

Walking around the Gare St. Lazare, says Peter, is like driving through Maine: there is the rue de Rome, rue de Madrid, rue de Copenhagen, and so on.

If my mum returned there, she could stay at the Hilton Paris Opera, which is rather grand, and was hosting a Paris Lego exhibit with things like a giant Lego Sacre Coeur.  

On recommendation from Andy and Tom, we pop into the Palais Garnier, also known as the "old" Paris Opera.  If you are going to skip Versailles on your trip to France, but are still looking for some lavishly over-the-top decoration, the PG is a (smaller but) worthy substitute.  It is huge, and fantastically decorated with gilt and mosaics and statues and chandeliers (once all candles, imagine!) and mirrors.  The Grand Foyer stretches the length of the building and you can spend as much time there as you like.  This is where high society would come to mingle and be seen and refresh itself during an intermission.  This place makes the Napoleon III apartments at the Louvre look almost restrained (almost).  Izzy skips around, which is a sure sign that she is delighted.  

There are many sources of delightment and fascination at the PG but one Izzy particularly likes are the costumes on display from various operas and ballets (this being the home of the Paris Opera Ballet).  We find Paquita and La Bayadère and bien sur, La Casse-Noisette.  

You can even go into the little boxes and look at the auditorium although the stage has a work curtain drawn.  This space looks exactly as you imagine a belle époque opera in Paris should:  all deep red velvet and teeny boxes, each with a little anteroom with mirror and coat hooks, and what Tom Laskin says are the most uncomfortable chairs ever.  There is a new opera building in Paris, very mod, at the Bastille.  I'm sure the seats are far more comfortable but it is clearly lacking in gilded opulence.  Above the seats here is a spectacular round ceiling mural by Chagall, with colorful sketches of some of the great operas and ballets performed here.  You could stay here forever imagining performances and society and intrigue and the Phantom.

Overheard at the Palais Garnier (mom, or some other older female in charge):  "Derek, Nick, get over here.  You have to see this.  Nick, come here.  Look at that, just look at that.  This is incredible.  That ceiling is a Chagall!"

(Derek or Nick)  (sigh)  "What's a Chagall?"

So it goes when traveling with teens.  I'm pleased to report that ours was far more receptive to being exposed to great art.  It is also good to have a teenager along because he can identify some of the themes in the street art that you see, like the guy who does the pacman figures in tile all over the place.  

Our lunch plans in the Marais were foiled by Août, damn you Internet for telling me it was open, but the afternoon recovered nicely with brief immersions in the two ends of great French art:  Picasso at his museum and La Dame et Le Licorne at the Cluny.  

At the Picasso museum one sees, well, Picasso stuff.  Apparently when he died, the family gave most of his private collection, which was vast, to the govt. in lieu of paying prohibitive death taxes.  And then when his second wife died, she gave the rest.  So this lovely hotel in the Marais houses all of that.  Unfortunately, floors 0 and 1 were under preparation for a big exhibit opening in October, so we could only see the material on floors -1, 2, and 3.  If you go there, start at the top and work your way down, because that is how you see the evolution of his style, and some very lovely sketches of Francoise (wife 2), which rather stand out among all the other ladies of P's world.  

What do you think is on floors 0 and 1, I ask Bill.  More Picasso, he replies.

We dash back to our side of the Seine under darkening skies, to check out the tapestries at the Cluny – with the Paris Museum Pass you can pop in and out of museums at will.  We are all entranced by the Lady and her unicorn and stay until the guard announces in the quietest voice ever that the museum will be closing in 20 minutes.

We end with dinner at Bistro Paul Bert which involves a long metro ride and a walk and still ends up being the most Americans we've dined with all trip.  It’s excellent but I’m slightly bummed to not have to use my now pretty damn good dinner French one last time.  More beautiful haricots verts and steak tartare and if you order baba au rhum they set the rum bottle next to you so you can booze it up even more.  We wonder if the later crowd, which is probably more French, gets the really good rum.  Izzy has a perfect raspberry "macaron" which is basically a giant macaron with some raspberry mousse and fresh raspberries in it.  It is beautifully pink.  Bill would like me to say that he was  thrilled with his oh-so-French Grand Marnier soufflé.