On the news this morning is the controversy of the day…France’s President Nicholas Sarkozy is being accused of “colonial nostalgia” for inviting representatives of African nations who are celebrating 50 years of independence from France to march in the Bastille Day parade…and in the front of it to boot! Really? Is there no other news? Colonial nostalgia? Sheesh, I worked in communications for many years and I have to take my cap off to the person that could turn that non-story into the news lead. Unbelievable. Or sadly, very believable.
We bring the washing in from the balcony, put on our sunscreen, I take a scarf/shawl because, hey this is Paris and I figure the sun may be hard on my “fresh meat” shoulders.
We have to disembark the Metro two stops from Place de la Concorde because of all the international nut jobs that have made everyone super sensitive about security. So are walking the last half-mile or so seeing increasing police presence as we near the Champs Elysees – serious police presence, like a dozen vans in one street. And we are here…the French Tri-colour flag is everywhere. We can see the tops of the gendarme caps in ranks on the road. We can’t see anything else because there are 20 to 30 feet of sidewalk crowded with people behind two rows of metal barricades flanking the Champs. It is wild and exciting and happy. We can’t see much, but we are here!
Out of nowhere, jets scream overhead depositing a trail of blue, white and red, turning the sky into a French flag and we are positioned perfectly between the trees lining the Champs and the buildings that are a few feet behind us.
Rank after rank of airplanes fly over very low. Big, small, with radar pods, groups simulating refueling; Dennis is in air show heaven because they are so low you can almost see their rivets.
The fly past ends and music starts and the column on the Champs Elysees moves forward. I’m not sure how they are doing the music, whether there is one band somewhere that is being broadcast, or how it works, but the is music is filling the street and it must help keep all those marching in time with each other. It certainly adds a festive ambiance. It is fun watching parents with kids, older people and those just showing their French pride out in the streets. Is that a drop of rain? Well, I definitely hear thunder so I guess…holy hell, and we head to the closest building and cuddle to it’s face. The sea falls from the sky. The music continues, people march on the street; everyone near us is scurrying for cover. People put anything over their head…one guy goes by with a chair upside down as a hat.
The heavens close and we all breathe a sigh and move ahead on our paths. Dennis and I choose to move more towards the Place de la Concorde which we know is the centre of the action, but beyond is the Tuileries and we want to go to the Musee de l’Orangerie. The parade continues on the street. Pretty soon we are in a crush of people competing to get around a corner. Soon it becomes apparent that the horse brigades have been marshaled here for the parade and are now moving into the ranks on the Champs. However, the motorcycle police are the ones to follow the horses and they are all waiting for the horse brigade to turn the corner right in front of them and some horses don’t like the sound of idling motorcycles and rear up on their hind legs. There are some tense moments as we wait for the rearing horses to settle.
We flow with the crowds through a few tough crunch points where I realize that the local strategy to barge ahead of others is to turn sideways and force yourself forward pushing other people out of the way. This bugs me to no end, since we are all trying to get ahead, so I stick out my elbows sometimes and rake a few interlopers and receive dirty looks in response. Tough!
The crowd, and other impasses – like street cleaning machines cleaning up the horse poop that amassed after marshalling the horses for who knows how long – cause us to move a few streets back from the parade route. We reroute and get back near the Champs in a lovely little park. We have brought sandwiches and eat them as the music and marching continues, then – is that rain? Again with the bath tubs emptying above us. We have only the trees for protection this time. Our tree hosts 15 or 20 people trying to find the sweet spots where little rain gets through the cover. The sandy ground is turning into a river.
We wait out the rain as the tanks and big guns roll by. The toys of war are getting bigger so we are near the end. Then with no ceremony, the parade is over, the rain is over, and the crowd has thinned.
We head generally in the direction of the Louvre thinking that we might do the Musee de l’Orangerie because we bought the ticket in combination with the D’Orsay. Streets are still blocked off because they are emptying the reviewing stands of the VIPs. It is easy to tell them apart; they are the only dry people!
We go where we can and pretty soon we are in a circle with lots of police of all ranks and a few pedestrians like us. I see a beautiful metal gate, partly gilded and ask the gendarme guarding it what we are looking at. He tells me it is the Ministry of the Interior, with great friendliness and pride on his face. So I ask if it is the Ministry or the Residence and he says, “Both.” I thank him and move back, take a picture and another gendarme tells me “Non, no pictures and moves up to me menacingly, at which point I don my grandmotherly face and say, “Sorry, I didn’t know” and he barks a few other things and finally moves away saying, I think, “Erase the photo!”
Clearly we were someplace interesting; so we held tight. Pretty soon, a few unmarked vans arrived and excited people with credentials; the type that I recognize from my former career and bad TV shows as the advance team… and then there are at least 25 motorcycles and serious tension and security around a black sedan that stops right in front of us.
Someone steps from the car to applause and we realize from the number of cameras that are doing Hail Marys and the polite applause that President Nicholas Sarkozy is doing a walkabout just a few feet from us. Dennis has his camera attached to a monopod and is able to get clear shots above everyone as the glad handing proceeds. No doubt he is using the small and friendly crowd as a media photo op to counter the colonial nostalgia buzz du jour. As quickly as he is here, he is gone and we look around the circle that holds a few stores like Prada and other if-you-have-to-ask-you-can’t-afford-it places. We continue on past a little palace that is clearly holding a post-parade bash for the VIPs and soon we are without security and roped off roads and in front of a Pierre Cardin store…not clothes, but things for the home. The sky is getting very dark; this time there is thunder! Really? More rain? As it begins to bucket down we are thrilled to have Pierre Cardin’s awning and deep sofa-like windowsills. A couple of Australian guys are in the windowsill adjacent to ours and comment that one of the high style desks that is hollow and lit from the inside looks like a tanning bed for babies and we all have a laugh, but seriously they are right.
The curbs are now running six inches deep in a river of rainwater, but it is slowing up so we venture out. A few blocks closer to the Musee, at the edge of the Place de la Concorde with it’s now empty reviewing stands. We have about two football fields of space to cross with no shelter so we consult the sky and…is that rain obscuring the Eiffel Tower and coming our… yup! “Fire hose” would describe it this time. Fortunately we can take shelter in the Metro and watch other storm tossed folks wash in. It is a very interesting wet T-shirt, or dress, or uniform, or suit contest. Four sailors drift in and their nipples and chest hair shine through their see through blouse-like tops. I’m sure Dennis is watching other see-through attire ;-)
After about 15 minutes the rain isn’t letting up and goose bumps have broken through the sunscreen that I am glad I remembered to put on, so we hop the Metro back to Montmartre and warm up with Dennis’ delicious coffee in our apartment. I write, Dennis plays on the iPad and in a couple of hours the sun is back and acting like it wants to be friends again so we head down to the Louvre which is open late on Wednesday nights to be told, “Not this Wednesday” though it has been open all day! Hmmmm.
It’s not like there is nothing else to do! The great thing about Paris is that I think you would have to be 200 years old before you ran out of new adventures. We walk toward an area we have not been. Turns out it is tres ritzy, but we keep walking and find more people like us and places to eat and finally bump into Les Halles a huge cinema, multiplex and shopping centre that replaced the food market that stood here for centuries. It had been known as “The Stomach of Paris” and in the books I read there is still controversy about whether the change to this centre was a good one. I have to say that the number of people lined up for the cinema and the vast quantities of young people about, it is serving some niche that was needed. I nip into a Mickey D to use the facilities and it was sure nicer than any over at home. It looks more like a regular restaurant.
We’ve walked a lot and need to sit and watch the world go by. A Scottish Pub fills the bill. We park our butts and get a drink and realize we are on Rue St. Denis! Cool.
I have to say that the people watching in this town is world class…and perhaps even better than that! So many characters populate the city, both knowingly and unknowingly.
Refreshed, we leave the pub and start walking to the Pompidou Centre, famous because it has all it’s services like air, escalators, electricity, etc. on the outside of the building, leaving open space on the interior; they call it inside out. Each of the services is painted in its own bright colour. It is interesting and industrial, but also artistic. We are able to enter the main level of the building and an interesting store of cutting edge design, but we decide to forego the modern art museum, which is closing soon. We are just full enough of wonder and magic that we don’t want to make ourselves sick on it.
We head outside and run into an artisan on the plaza and buy a puzzle mandala that configures into the symbols for many of the planets…I know, sounds weird, hard to explain come over and see it!
Tired now, we head home to do laundry. I am writing the blog I posted yesterday when something in the direction of the Eiffel Tower catches my eye and Holy Moly there are fireworks tonight. And they are amazing! Dennis was taking video and at one point left because there was a lull and he thought they were over and VOILA…more fireworks. He came back after changing his shirt and there was another “act” of the festival going on. Shot from the Trocadero facing the Eifel Tower across the Seine, the display is beyond anything we have ever seen. At one juncture, the fireworks slow and the tower puts on her dancing lights in response, then the fireworks arise as a lover and dance with her then lovingly take the stage. It is the most beautiful thing I have seen.
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