OK, so I have to come down on the side of not choosing this again, not at least with kids in tow. Evidently I didn't figure out which metro stop puts you closest in without a walking over highways, watching the ladies load into vans after the evening shift (which apparently ends around 1 pm), seeing one too many guys taking a leak, and a little too much cruising, and walking through a few too many wooded paths that you can't see around. Other than that we got our rowing in, and the lakes are actually quite lovely, but too much algae - the oars kept getting covered.
We will be ready for Lake Cheston and our own little deserted woods in a couple of weeks.
Bon soir.
Tuesday, June 8, 2010
Monday, June 7, 2010
Les Mis and les animaux
So yesterday we went to see Les Mis at the theater in ENGLISH at Chatelet. It's OK to like musicals - they are so huge and wonderful! What better story to tell, what better song to sing than the song of angry men? And if you don't think that freedom chaffing up against the law and tradition is part of a daily message in Paris you don't have your eyes open. In the USA, we are told we have so many freedoms, and in a way, to assume that you have them makes you a little lazy. Here you are told every day that you have to fight to keep from being trod underfoot. It may be part of Paris' museum-like atmosphere but really you hear some version of it from everyone here.
Today at the Louvre we saw among other thing Gericault's Raft of the Medusa and Delacroix's Liberty Leads the People. If my children are not little revolutionaries by the time we leave, it's not my fault.
Finally I took them to France's attic - not a museum, but the collection of taxidermied specimens and natural world collectibles at Deyrolle. Although a fire nearly destroyed the place a few years ago, we can attest to its back from death's door, living large existence today. Cabinets of butterflies, beetles, shells, and cases of birds, surrounded by giant polar bears and baby giraffes and a...phoenix...but I couldn't really bring myself to purchase anything except a couple of notebooks, but then again couldn't really look away having been brought up in house stuffed with preserved snakes, bats in formaldehyde, and real koala skin made into a teddy bear. Just another Parisian indulgence. Like the ice cream and cookies we had after. (They had to have something while I fed my caffeine habit.) (The one I had given up for 4 years.)
Today at the Louvre we saw among other thing Gericault's Raft of the Medusa and Delacroix's Liberty Leads the People. If my children are not little revolutionaries by the time we leave, it's not my fault.
Finally I took them to France's attic - not a museum, but the collection of taxidermied specimens and natural world collectibles at Deyrolle. Although a fire nearly destroyed the place a few years ago, we can attest to its back from death's door, living large existence today. Cabinets of butterflies, beetles, shells, and cases of birds, surrounded by giant polar bears and baby giraffes and a...phoenix...but I couldn't really bring myself to purchase anything except a couple of notebooks, but then again couldn't really look away having been brought up in house stuffed with preserved snakes, bats in formaldehyde, and real koala skin made into a teddy bear. Just another Parisian indulgence. Like the ice cream and cookies we had after. (They had to have something while I fed my caffeine habit.) (The one I had given up for 4 years.)
Saturday, June 5, 2010
Shakespeare and Company 2 Following a Maritime Tour
I have to work backwards again, and in a twisted circle will start with yesterday's visit to the Museum de la Marine and a return to Shakespeare and Company.
I have a thing for boat models, so this was a lot of fun. Apparently the founder of the museum, François-Edmond Pâris, did as well, and his worldwide travels resulted in a collection of boat models and lovely watercolors that appear in the current exhibit Tous Les Bateaux du Monde. Having learned a lot about Pacific Sailing vessels when we went to Tahiti, it was fun to be able to recognize some different types and also to see the star charts made from reeds and shells. The english language audio tour was a little wordy, with a character pretending to be the admiral. But at least the audioguide worked!!
After a long tour of all the boats of the world, we headed to the city center and had ice cream (don't tell anyone) and spent an enormous amount of time at Shakespeare and CO. There is a children's room upstairs, just as tiny and well-loved as the other nooks and crannies there. Joshua bought The Underneath and Rachel bought A Fool's Girl (which is a children's book that takes place in Shakespeare's time). (Rachel also reminds me to tell everyone she is working on a story called Once Upon a Fairytale. Marketing lessons have not been lost.) I bought a beautifully produced book about Beirut called White Masks also available at Amazon.
So why am I telling you that you can buy this at Amazon. Because for several weeks I had been wondering about the idea of loud Americans. Really I thought that scenario only happened at the Eiffel Tower or Versailles, the part with loud Americans. Oh we are quite obvious regardless if we are being silent - I've decided it would take 3 years to learn to dress with the aplomb of a Parisian. But I really thought the loud part was unfair until yesterday when a woman was talking to her 20 something daughter who was recommending a book and, I will add, hinting that she wanted it for herself and the woman, who had been speaking loudly about whether or not to buy a signed James Frey book (really?) said in her really really loud voice forget it, she could order that, or any of these, from Amazon "for half the price. Really, for half the price." Which isn't even true because the books at Shakespeare and Co. are not overpriced. I couldn't even look, her daughter appeared to want to melt into one of the crevasses in the floorboards. I was thrilled to buy my kids a book at Shakespeare and CO. Or the Red Wheelbarrow. Or any Paris bookstore. Am I just delusional? I don't want to make fun of her - it just made me really sad. Maybe she had buy-me-mommy fatigue. Maybe she lived alone and had lost her job and used her savings to visit her daughter and things in Paris were a lot more expensive than she had thought they would be.
The killer was that the daughter was holding a copy of The Unbearable Lightness of Being. Irony: discuss. What would it have meant to give all that bound between two covers, plus a happy memory of tooling around St. Michel on a perfect day and looking at books? I hope I get to come back to Shakespeare and Company in 10 years and buy my kids another book. But who knows, I might have shopping fatigue and try to weasel my way out of making a purchase...
OK, I'll save the rest of the catching up for later.
I have a thing for boat models, so this was a lot of fun. Apparently the founder of the museum, François-Edmond Pâris, did as well, and his worldwide travels resulted in a collection of boat models and lovely watercolors that appear in the current exhibit Tous Les Bateaux du Monde. Having learned a lot about Pacific Sailing vessels when we went to Tahiti, it was fun to be able to recognize some different types and also to see the star charts made from reeds and shells. The english language audio tour was a little wordy, with a character pretending to be the admiral. But at least the audioguide worked!!
After a long tour of all the boats of the world, we headed to the city center and had ice cream (don't tell anyone) and spent an enormous amount of time at Shakespeare and CO. There is a children's room upstairs, just as tiny and well-loved as the other nooks and crannies there. Joshua bought The Underneath and Rachel bought A Fool's Girl (which is a children's book that takes place in Shakespeare's time). (Rachel also reminds me to tell everyone she is working on a story called Once Upon a Fairytale. Marketing lessons have not been lost.) I bought a beautifully produced book about Beirut called White Masks also available at Amazon.
So why am I telling you that you can buy this at Amazon. Because for several weeks I had been wondering about the idea of loud Americans. Really I thought that scenario only happened at the Eiffel Tower or Versailles, the part with loud Americans. Oh we are quite obvious regardless if we are being silent - I've decided it would take 3 years to learn to dress with the aplomb of a Parisian. But I really thought the loud part was unfair until yesterday when a woman was talking to her 20 something daughter who was recommending a book and, I will add, hinting that she wanted it for herself and the woman, who had been speaking loudly about whether or not to buy a signed James Frey book (really?) said in her really really loud voice forget it, she could order that, or any of these, from Amazon "for half the price. Really, for half the price." Which isn't even true because the books at Shakespeare and Co. are not overpriced. I couldn't even look, her daughter appeared to want to melt into one of the crevasses in the floorboards. I was thrilled to buy my kids a book at Shakespeare and CO. Or the Red Wheelbarrow. Or any Paris bookstore. Am I just delusional? I don't want to make fun of her - it just made me really sad. Maybe she had buy-me-mommy fatigue. Maybe she lived alone and had lost her job and used her savings to visit her daughter and things in Paris were a lot more expensive than she had thought they would be.
The killer was that the daughter was holding a copy of The Unbearable Lightness of Being. Irony: discuss. What would it have meant to give all that bound between two covers, plus a happy memory of tooling around St. Michel on a perfect day and looking at books? I hope I get to come back to Shakespeare and Company in 10 years and buy my kids another book. But who knows, I might have shopping fatigue and try to weasel my way out of making a purchase...
OK, I'll save the rest of the catching up for later.
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