Musée Rodin

It was cold, dreary and rainy the day we went to the Rodin Museum. The grounds were so beautiful that I put my shawl over my head and walked through the garden in the rain. By the time I took this picture, it was raining fairly heavily. My lovely daughter wanted to stay dry and let me walk alone in the rain.

The Thinker, perhaps Rodin's most famous piece, simply stuns you with his presence. I was enjoying the quiet and solitude. Being alone in the garden was calming.

This piece, The Gates of Hell, was the most magnificent and enthralling work that I saw all day. It might be my favorite work of art in any medium that I saw while in Paris. I remember feeling awestruck. By the time I made my way to stand in front of this enormous work, my lovely daughter had come looking for me. We went inside and went through the museum together.

This piece is small, but stunning. I think the most striking thing about Rodin's work is the sense of movement he communicates with an inanimate sculpture. This is The Toilet of Venus.

The entwined hands are called The Cathedral. I love the graceful look of this sculpture.

This lovely marble bust is called Diane. Another small but stunning sculpture.

I don't remember the name of this headless lady. I honestly don't remember who the artist is, either. The museum was full of pieces by other artists that were collected by Rodin. Even though I've chosen sculpture to display here, there were paintings, drawings and pottery in the museum as well.

I love the intimacy of Eternal Idol. It is truly breathtaking. It embarrassed my daughter just a bit when I wanted to stop in front of it, gaze at the beauty and snap a photo.

My lovely daughter alongside a Rodin sculpture. The name was something along the lines of Fish Lady. My girl said she couldn't leave the museum until I took this picture. Reserved is not a word I would use to describe her.

By the time we left the museum, the rainfall had dropped to a drizzle. We left the grounds and walked along the streets of Paris, making our way to Invalides to see more treasures of the City of Lights.

Cathédrale Notre-Dame de Paris

Excited is not a strong enough word to describe our lovely daughter's reaction to Notre-Dame Cathedral. When she was a little girl, one of her favorite movies was set here. Being a Disney animated movie, the detail in the film was pulled directly from the cathedral and brought the setting to life for my little girl at the tender age of four or five, long before she had dreams of speaking French and walking the streets of Paris.

These figures, or others like them, came to life and had sly conversations about Quasi Modo and his adventures with Esmerelda. Our lovely daughter was delighted to see that the cathedral really housed such statues.

Even the gargoyles had their parts. Three of them were Quasi Modo's best friends in the film. The look on her face when she saw the first of the gargoyles on the facade was priceless. Even after eleven or twelve years, she was still in awe of the way the animators had brought the cathedral to life.

I asked her to pose before we went in. I adore this picture. You can see how much joy she's feeling from the look on her face.

We walked slowly through the cathedral after we entered, looking at the breathtaking French Gothic interior. The most beautiful statue of Joan of Arc I have ever seen resides in the cathedral's sanctuary.

The stained glass throughout is gorgeous. This rose window in particular is breathtaking.

Much of the story in the movie takes place in the South Tower which houses a 13 ton bell called Emmanuel. This bell chimes the hours of the day. It is now rung using machinery, but for hundreds of years was rung by hand as it is in the movie. As we stood in line to go into the tower, mist began to fall. Once inside we were glad for the dryness and the relative warmth. We climbed the winding stairs all the way to the top so my daughter could see the bell room and the bell itself. The higher we walked, the stronger the wind became. As we ascended, the stairs became smaller and more curved. It felt almost as if you were climbing around a pole. I remember slowing down because I was becoming dizzy.

She was not disappointed. This is the best shot of her I was able to take in the bell tower. You can see how the wind is whipping her hair across her face. I had to hold the camera well away from me in order to keep my hair from covering the lens of the camera. It was worth all the trouble, though. I wish that you could hear her giggling. The bell tower enchanted her.

The view was fabulous. If it had been a beautiful, calm day, I think we would have spent hours taking pictures and exploring the tower. As it was, we stayed just as long as we could stand the cool, damp air and the wind.

There wasn't a moment of Paris that disappointed, but for our lovely daughter, this day was one of the best.

the best bookstore in Paris

In the pictures above, on the corner across the street, you see before you the most magnificent bookstore in all of Paris. I'm getting a little ahead of myself, though.

My lovely daughter and I got up early for a day alone on the streets of Paris. The weather wasn't cooperating with our planned shopping excursion to Montmartre, so we came up with another plan. We took the Metro from Oberkampf to Opera and walked to the high rise shops called Galeries Lafayette. The shops are situated near the perfume factory we had visited earlier in the week and the gorgeous Opera Garnier. We had lunch that day in the cafeteria on the top floor of the high rise and had wanted to go back to wander through all the lovely things we saw on our ride up the escalator.

I'm not a shopper, as I am sure I've mentioned here before, probably multiple times. My lovely daughter got her shopping gene as well as mine and maybe those of two or three other people in the family. We stopped and looked at each and every little stand displaying wares for sale. There were items as diverse as scarves, souveniers, women's shoes, towel wraps for your hair, and children's toys. I think it took us an hour to walk from the Metro stop to the Galeries Lafayette.

Once inside, we marvelled at all the beautiful things available for purchase. There were six or seven floors, each one filled with gorgeous goods, like an upscale department store, but French. As we ascended, we looked at things to purchase for my daughter or to take home with us, and we looked just to look. My daughter had me take pictures of these lovely designer gowns so that I could try to recreate them for her next dance or prom. They both cost more than a small used car. You should have seen the prices on the wedding gowns.

She wanted a coat. We began looking in an area that we thought was the juniors department. We were on a floor of designer clothing, and the prices were more than we wanted to pay. Some of them much more. But she continued to look and as we made our way around the floor, we came to a designer who specialized in more affordable clothing for young women. There she found a little trench coat she loved, just longer than a mini skirt in a soft army green. It is beautifully cut and fits her well. She is wearing the coat below in a picture taken at the gate of the Tuilleries Gardens. (Her aunt says this picture is very "Madeleine, the teenage years").


We bought shoes, dresses, some tops, teal blue tights, a couple of lovely patterned silk scarves for me, and little presents for her brothers and father, my parents and my mother-in-law. The escalators ran all the way to the roof of the building, for gorgeous views of Paris. Even though the day was overcast and gray, you could see the Eiffel Tower in the distance.




We had a fantastic time, but we were tired and needed sustenance. After a meal in the Lafayette Caffe followed by ridiculously decadent desserts, we decided to return to the hotel. As we watched the underground world of the Metro pass us by, we discussed our purchases. My lovely daughter realized she had forgotten one important thing: a French language dictionary and a book, about third grade level or so, that she could use to improve her French reading and vocabulary skills. She thought that someone in a bookstore might be able to help her choose well. We were leaving in just a few days and might not have much more free time. I remembered that first day we had seen what looked like a charming little bookstore near the hotel. It was still open when we passed by on our way to the hotel from Oberkampf Station, so we rushed to the hotel and took our bags and parcels to our room. We ran back down the three flights of stairs and out the door, walking the two or three city blocks and crossing Boulevard Voltaire to get to the book store, Paperterie Appel Librairie, which I think is literally translated "stationery call bookshop".

We had stopped in the little grocery for drinks and as we walked in, we carried them with us. A man about my age spoke to us sharply in French. We did not understand. My daughter said, "Pardon?" He immediately recognized that we weren't French and said in his heavily accented English that drinks weren't allowed in the store. He walked over to where we stood and took them from us, placing them on his counter for us to retrieve when we were ready to leave. A woman who we supposed to be his wife asked if we needed help. She had dark, short curly hair and dark eyes. She was impeccably dressed and groomed, and reminded me of a grown up version of the French exchange student in Better Off Dead. My daughter spoke to her in schoolgirl French, asking for a good dictionary and a book recommendation. There was much back and forth, and a young girl not much older than my daughter came from the back and started to speak to us in excellent English. The older woman walked away and busied herself at a shelf of books.

My lovely daughter settled on a small, thick dictionary, one that was recommended by the young girl, Larousse dictionnaire français-anglais. She held a stack of children's books in her hands, trying to decide which interested her most. She has been a Harry Potter fan from a young age, and the book she selected, Ma soeur est une sorcière, translates literally to "my sister is a sorceress". Perfect. I selected a note pad printed with fleur de lis in a subtle pattern.

We took our selections to the front of the little shop and put them on the counter. The woman reappeared with a book in her hand. She conversed with my daughter in English, searching carefully for her words. The book was a gift for my daughter, for her to read when she mastered reading books in French. The title is one of the woman's latest favorites, hygiène de l'assassin (hygiene of the assassin). She wanted my lovely daughter to have the book because it pleased her that "this sweet American youth" was studying the French language.

The gift was surprising and delightful. It made me teary eyed that a complete stranger would have such a reaction to my daughter's quest to master French. There are wonderful people all over the world. Two of them own a bookstore on the corner of Boulevard Voltaire and Rue Jean-Pierre Timbaud in Paris.

a stroll through the Louvre

Touring the Louvre Museum was the absolute highlight of our trip to Paris for me. I don't have the words to describe the breathtaking, utterly amazing collection. My photographs don't do it justice, but I'll share them with you anyway. These are some of the wonderful things we saw in the two days we spent touring the halls of musée du Louvre.

A view of the pyramid as we arrived. I think this was on the second day. The first day, it was raining, and we entered from the Metro through an attached shopping mall. We arrived so early that day, we did not have to wait in line to enter the museum. When we began walking in the corridors, they were nearly deserted. I was in heaven.

One of the corridors as seen from a staircase. Every inch of the museum is lovely.

There is an exhibit in the basement of the Louvre that details the history of the building. This is from inside, part of the original structure, a fortress that dates to the twelfth century. The showy palace that you see from outside was added much later.

I love this majestic lion. He is a Roman antiquity, fashioned of green basanite and yellow marble.

This flaxen funerary hanging, Death Between Osiris and Anubis, depicts Osiris, the departed, and Anubis. The arm that Anubis extends offers protection in the afterlife.

The title of this lovely piece is Psyche revived by the kiss of Love. It is one of my favorite sculptures that we saw. This photo simply does not do it justice.

There were many gorgeous vessels such as this amphora.

An unwrapped mummy. My lovely daughter thought it quite funny that he was draped in that fashion.

Dircé, wife of Lycus and devotee of Dionysus. In Greek mythology, Lycus was a ruler of ancient Thebes. She was sculpted by Bartoli, a Florentine artist between 1824 and 1834.

Mercury, messenger of the Gods, by Giambologna, about 1608.

Egyptian jewelry

An incredibly detailed mummy of a pharaoh, though I don't remember which one. Notice the intricate pattern on the face.

The goddess Nut raising the sun, engraved on the basalt lid of the sarcophagus of Djedhor, a Pharaoh of Egypt's Thirtieth Dynasty. He came to power in 362 B.C.

I don't remember who this guy is anymore, but isn't he fabulous?

In the Denon Wing, we saw many students copying the great masters. My favorite was an old man copying a beautiful Italian painting, but for some reason I cannot find a picture of him. Their work was always quite amazing.

Egyptian artifacts

I could have spent the entire available time walking through the galleries of the Louvre. We saw parts of two wings, the lobby and the gift shop. I suppose I'll just have to go back.

cimetière visitant du Pere-Lachaise

When I made a mental list of all the places in Paris a sixteen year old girl might want to visit, a cemetery did not make the cut, no matter how famous. Much to my surprise, Pere-Lachaise was high on my lovely daughter's list of places she could not miss.

I had always wanted to visit Jim Morrison's grave. I was something of a Doors fan in my teenage years. When the Val Kilmer movie was released in theaters, my daughter was an infant. I took her with me in the middle of the afternoon. That must be where she gets her affinity for the Doors.

I visited the cemetery's website before our trip to get an idea of where the grave was situated. I found the graves I knew were there that I wanted to visit: Jim Morrison, of course, Oscar Wilde, Marcel Proust, Eugene Delacroix, Moliere, Isadora Duncan, Edith Piaf. To my surprise I found Bizet, Chopin and Maria Callas were also laid to rest in Pere-Lachaise.

We visited late in the week, a day or two before we returned home. We started out with the group, taking the Metro from Oberkampf, changing lines at Republique and deboarding at Rue St. Maur. We walked up Avenue de la Republique and turned onto Boulevard de Menilmontant. The neighborhood was different from the area around our hotel which was situated between Avenue de la Republique and Boulevard Voltaire. This area seemed more common, more like everyday people might live here. The smells coming from the boulangeries and food shops were heavenly. I wanted to stop and look in every window.

The day was gray and we walked through a light drizzle. It was unusually cold for March, and I wore an ankle length sweater skirt and wool cape to keep the chill away. From the street, the cemetery was not that impressive. Once we walked through the gates, though, it was old and musty and absolutely spectacular.


The first thing we did was search for Jim Morrison's resting place. The graves are laid close to one another; some large, some small, some very old, some recent. The cemetery is on a hill, and we started walking up, following curved paths and the occasional graffiti marker (the one below was scratched onto a bench).




Like everyone else, I'd seen pictures of the stone adorned with a bust of Jim Morrison and we'd seen postcards of it in some shops in Paris. I couldn't remember just how the new headstone looked, all I could remember was the odd Greek inscription, "kata ton daimona eaytoy", which has been variously interpreted as "according to his own demon", "down with his own demons", "true to his own spirit", and "to the divine spirit within himself", just to name a few.


We walked through the cemetery, following the winding cobblestone paths. The atmosphere is eerie and a bit macabre, especially on such an overcast and chilly day. Some of the crypts and graves we saw along the way were gorgeous with age.

We had heard there were sometimes crowds around Morrison's gravesite and were expecting to fight our way through or wait in line to get close enough for pictures or to place a flower on the headstone. But when we arrived, there was no one in sight.

It was obvious others had been there, the headstone and the grave were covered with flowers, along with the occasional joint, and empty liquor bottles were nearby. We added our flowers and one of the girls had a picture of her father's rock band that she left on his behalf. My daughter and I lagged behind so that I could pour my little bottle of vodka on the grave without other teenage eyes watching. My daughter hummed a bit of her favorite Doors tune as I poured the libation:

All your love is gone

So sing a lovely song

Of a deep blue dream

Seven horses seem to be on the mark

Yeah, don't you love her

Don't you love her as she's walkin' out the door

She stopped short and told me to turn around and look behind us. There was a cat watching us intently from the top of a coffin shaped crypt. He continued watching us for a moment and then turned his back as if we had bored him. I think I've mentioned before how imaginative and dramatic my daughter can be. She became quite convinced that the cat was inhabited by the spirit of Jim Morrison, come to watch the ridiculous rituals that fans perform at his grave.

We walked through the stillness alone, just the two of us, taking our time and snapping photographs. There were graves, crypts and memorials both beautiful and haunting.

My lovely daughter had to stop by and give Oscar Wilde a kiss and sing a little "La Vie en Rose" to Edith Piaf. We wandered through the narrow, curvy paths and along the wider ones paved with cobblestones, reading names both foreign and familiar. We lingered at holocaust memorials and spring flowers in bloom. A couple of hours later we found ourselves at the entrance on Rue des Rondeaux opposite where we entered. We decided to walk around the cemetery rather than backtracking.

We walked on the sidewalk along the high stone walls dotted with moss, turning to go back to Boulevard de Menilmontant. The stone wall stretched out in front of us, but the sidewalk ended abruptly along with the street we were on. We took a pleasant detour through quiet streets, passing an old church along the way. We passed apartments where we saw young boys playing soccer in a courtyard and followed a young mother pushing her baby in a stroller while her toddler ran behind to catch up. On a corner we were greeted by young men passing out flyers for a coming election, each one advocating a different stance, and good naturedly competing for our non existent vote. We smiled and took the colorful papers lined with French, pleased that we didn't look like the lost tourists we were. Just as we decided we had been wrong not to turn back, we came upon this staircase that led us back to the street. The Phillipe Auguste Metro stop was a welcome sight, and we descended underground to plot the path to our next adventure.

Paris is a wonderful place to be lost.

lost in Paris

In March my lovely daughter and I went to Paris for a week. We stayed in a lovely old hotel on rue du Grand Prieure in the Marais district. We left on Saturday afternoon and arrived in Paris on Sunday morning. Simply checking in to the hotel and taking the tiny lift up to our third floor room was an experience. We were exhausted from the trip, but too excited to rest for long.

Our first outing was to the boulangerie on the corner and down the block to a money machine for euros. We loved walking the three or four blocks to the Place de la Republique, looking at the unfamiliar shops. My daughter translated the French signs for me as we progressed, teaching me the words for book store, supermarket, and bakery.

We leisurely strolled back to the hotel to meet up with the group, eating pain au chocolat from paper wrappers. The side streets were narrow and every where we looked there was a sense of age that cannot be experienced in America, especially here in the Bible belt where my state is just now 100 years old. The staid buildings were punctuated with color on signs, awnings, and doors.

There were about twenty of us traveling together, my lovely daughter's French and Geometry teachers (husband and wife), their college-age son and his fiance, along with a couple other moms and the students, mostly girls with a couple of very happy young men in the bunch. We moved in a group up the wide sidewalks of the Place de la Republique toward Oberkampf station to catch the Metro and travel to Montmartre.

I had been to London a couple of years before and became familiar with the Tube. The Metro is similar, but much simpler to navigate, even in French. I noted the stations where we changed lines and the direction we travelled, mostly out of curiosity. I would be grateful later that I paid a bit of attention to our travel.

We came up out of the Metro into the street and walked to Montmartre. The street was full of shops, some displaying kitschy, touristy wares beside others full of clothing, fabrics and foods. The street was full and abuzz, despite the rain earlier in the day. We walked up the hill, stopping to look at this, touch that, or read a sign in French. As we neared the top, the street opened up into lawn with a pair of staircases leading up (and up, and up) to the gorgeous white Basilique du Sacre Coeur, or Basilica of the Sacred Heart.

Most of the group took the stairs, climbing up among the lovers, musicians, tourists and schoolchildren. But the other adults rode the tram up to the top to save their strength and their legs. My daughter and I walked up leisurely, stopping for a picture of flowers in full bloom or to turn and look back at the street. The climb to the basilica was more than worth the stunning panoramic view of Paris. Leaning on the stone railing and looking to the south, we got our first glimpse of the sights of Paris we'd visit during the week.

We went into the basilica and walked through the darkened aisles quietly, stopping to light candles and look at the beautiful mosaic in the apse. We walked out into the sunlight and wandered around the exterior, taking pictures of beautiful details. After a half hour we realized we were alone in the crowd and began to look for our group. When our search came up empty, we started our descent, stopping to look at each level until we reached the street below. There wasn't a familiar face in sight.

We decided to find a place to sit at the bottom of the hill and found a lovely cafe with bistro tables on the sidewalk. I ordered croque monsieur for both of us with a carafe of water, and my lovely daughter, with her sweet tooth, ordered a crepe filled with nutella and coconut. We sat in the street, the sun just beginning to set, and enjoyed our inexpensive meal. As time passed and the sky darkened, I became concerned that we would find ourselves alone on the streets of Montmartre after nightfall. It had been an hour since we found we were alone and I was sure we'd been missed and searched for. A decision had to be made to go or to stay. After much debate, we decided to make our way back to the hotel. I considered a taxi, even though I knew the fare would be high, but we didn't have the address, just the name of the hotel. My lovely daughter, being sixteen and well aware of the ways of the world, suggested we go back the way we came. We strolled back down the hill, searching for a glimpse of someone familiar all the while. We piddled in a fabric shop, laughed at garish tourist ware, purchased a hat and gloves for my daughter to wear against the chill of the March wind.

At the end of the street, we turned and walked toward Anvers station. After one last look around we descended underground and boarded the train. We changed lines at Stalingrad station, taking the number five toward Bobigny and stopping at Oberkampf. We came out of Oberkampf station on Place de la Republique, but at the opposite end of the station. We were disoriented, having just been there once, and turned the wrong way, but knew we were off track within a couple of blocks when we encountered our money machine from that morning. We turned around and headed for the hotel, almost delirious with joy when we rounded the corner and saw the familiar Hotel Plessis awnings.

We took the lift, just large enough for two (three if you know each other VERY well), up to our room and collapsed onto the double bed. After a couple of frantic phone calls all was well and we settled in for the night. My lovely daughter was asleep almost instantly, as she would be almost every night in Paris. I logged on the laptop to share our adventure with my husband, only to find out he already knew. The French teacher had called him in a panic, thinking she'd lost his family on the first night in Paris.