A-Z Blogging Challenge - Quick trip to (and in) Paris

This is cheating slightly, but the only place beginning with Q that I’ve visited was in Canada, and I’m trying to stay in Europe for these posts.

So we’ll take a quick trip to some places in Paris and start with my favourite, Notre Dame Cathedral. There’s a slightly spooky story attached to this. When I was about fifteen (before I ever visited Paris), I had a dream that I was walking along a street in Paris, with three or four storey buildings either side. When the buildings ended on my left, I turned and saw the huge façade of Notre Dame in front of me. That’s all that I remember from the dream but for some reason it stuck in my mind.

My first visit to Paris was about four years later. I was with a friend who had lived in Paris for about a year (during her gap year), and we were due to meet with some friends of hers at a café near Notre Dame. We caught the metro to Ile de la Cite, and when we came out into a narrow street, she said, ‘Come on, it’s this way.’ I knew immediately that Notre Dame was the other way although I had no map and we couldn’t see any part of the cathedral from where we were. Afterwards my friend said I was so insistent that she had to follow me! You’ve guessed it, of course. We turned into the street that I’d dreamt about and came out in front of Notre Dame. One of those strange experiences that I can’t explain.

Whenever I go to the Musee d’Orsay, which was originally a train station, I can’t help but remember this photo of an ‘Oops’ moment. This happened at the Garde l’Ouest, not the Gare D’Orsay, but the stations are somewhat similar, architecturally.

Since 1986, the Musee d’Orsay has housed what is now the largest collection of Impressionist and post-Impressionist art in the world. It is a huge gallery, on four floors, but I always make a bee-line to the galleries with the paintings of Monet and Van Gogh.

I first saw all the Impressionist paintings when they were housed in the Jeu de Paume, which was originally a court for playing the ‘palm’ game, a precursor of tennis but played without racquets. The game started to be played with racquets from the 1600’s.

The Jeu de Palme is at the edge of the Tuileries Gardens, near the Place de la Concorde, and was used during World War II to store Nazi plundered art treasures from French Jewish families. Some of this art found its way into Goring’s and Hitler’s collections, but the so-called ‘degenerate art’ (modern art) was sold to other art collectors in Europe to raise funds for the Reich. The museum’s curator, Rose Valland, kept a secret list of items that were sold, and after the war a lot of these works were returned to their rightful owners. George Clooney’s recent movie, The Monuments Men, is based partly on Rose Valland’s work.

My last stop in this quick tour of Paris is Montmartre. I love the narrow streets that wind up to the top of the Martyrs’ Mount, where the Sacre Coeur basilica looks out over the city, and from where you get a fabulous view.

Near to Sacre Coeur is the Place du Tertre, a haven for artists who charge tourists exorbitant prices to make quick sketches or caricatures of them. Although it’s pleasant to sit at one of the tables in the square, you’ll probably pay double the usual price there for a glass of  wine or a cup of coffee!

All around this area are ‘living statues’ – people dressed in white, silver, or gold robes, who stay motionless for hours. We’d passed one statue several times. He was in gold from head to toe, even his face was painted gold, and he didn’t move a fraction – until I happened to slip on some wet cobblestones and went crashing to the ground. The 'statue' immediately leapt off his plinth and rushed to help me up. So that was the first (and only) time I was ‘picked up’ by a statue! Sadly, neither I or my daughter had the presence of mind to take a photo of him, but he looked something like this.

 

And finally, because no trip to Paris would be complete for me without this, here is my favourite café - Le Depart, in the Place Saint Michel - a perfect place to sit in the evening and people watch!