Let’s start out our Parisian photo essay with the first thing I actually saw in Paris when I stumbled in to the (very nice) hotel at which my mom was waiting. I saw her! And her cute new hair!
Now, I don’t know what your mom does when left to her own devices for several hours by herself in Paris, but my mom goes and gets her hair cut at a gay salon called Space Hair. Why I don’t have a picture of Space Hair is unclear, but that’s the story of my life. Seriously, I’m going to spend more time telling you about pictures I should have taken as opposed to those I actually did take. Here’s her hair, anyway.
And here’s something near Les Halles and the Pompidou Centre. I can’t tell you what it is, sadly. There’s Mom though, way down at the bottom.
This is a lovely large disembodied head with hand, also near Les Halles. I had an inclination to stick my head in this guy’s nose and then take a picture but I was strong and I resisted the desire and instead you just have a picture of a large disembodied head with hand.
The Seine, along which we walked, as is required by law when visiting Paris with one’s mom. Is that the Louvre? I cannot tell you, as we didn’t go there. Man, these pictures aren’t very helpful, are they.
Here’s what everyone’s reading, though, as they walk along the Seine with their moms. Why didn’t I take a picture of the racks of vintage Playboys, though, like I wanted to? That would have made a great photo. Seriously, people, don’t put me in charge of picture-taking. It will only end in disappointment and pain for everyone.
So we were walking along near a square that was very important to my (completely non-exisitent) mental map of Paris, and saw a couple of big tents stuffed with people and smelling very deliciously like bread. Turns out there was a Festival Of Bread going on, just like it says on the bus. A bus that takes you to the Festival of Bread is a very fine bus indeed.
A French baker giving me a steely glare, not happy to be distracted from his baguette. Being a French baker is apparently a really big deal and these guys were into it. In the background there you can see they’ve got some people from the crowd trying to make croissants or something, and there was this guy up there giving a lecture about exactly what kind of flour is used for which kind of bread and so on. At least, that’s what I think he was saying. I couldn’t follow all the French and also I was paying more attention to all the free samples that the Very Serious Bakers were handing out.
Starting them out young, here.
One of the best parts about the whole Festival Of Bread was, of course, the croissant-dough folder machine. First you paint on about a gallon and a half of butter, as pictured above.
And then you sort of stretch it a little.
And then I’m not exactly sure of the physics of the whole thing but you stick it in the croissant-dough folder machine thing and the machine whirrs for a while and then the dough comes out and it sort of looks the same but apparently it’s been folded in such a way that makes the croissant flaky and yummy and good. It’s very esoteric, being a French baker. Sometimes you just have to trust it’s all going to work out fine.
When I wasn’t tasting bread, I was over at the lovely Middle Ages Museum, which was pretty much the only museum I was really interested in going to because I guess I am some sort of art heathen and also because when I was a kid I had pictures of the Lady and The Unicorn tapestries hung up in my room. (Be careful of that link, it has crazy music). I didn’t get to take pictures of the tapestries themselves but I did take lots of others at the museum, which was peaceful and a great walk from where we were staying. Something I thought about a lot during my week in France, which was very heavy on the highly ornate buildings, was the place of physical symbolism in the culture of people who don’t read. They can’t read words on paper but they can read a whole language of various levels metaphor and meaning in various images and colors and numbers, represented in sculpture and art and even architecture. I think you have to be an art historian to understand that now. I don’t understand it so well myself, so I just took what pass for arty pictures, considering that it’s me who’s taking them.
What’s amazing about these tapestries is all the color shading and detail work. The museum has a medieval garden outside planted with some of the flowers shown in the tapestries and Mom was able to identify a lot of them. Also amazing is that the women embroidering all this would work from a sketched out painting on the back of the cloth, so they were essentially making all these images backwards. They would have the whole thing on a big scroll loom thing, just working on one section at a time, and would never see the whole thing until it was completed. We were goggling over all this and Mom leaned over to me and whispered “All women’s work, of course.”
Sunday was Mom’s last day so we went to what was her first chateau but only the first of many I visited over the next week. This is the Chateau de Fontainebleau and we had a lovely day there.
The inside, as you can see, was pretty well decorated, but we preferred the gardens.
You probably can’t see it, but there’s a cat hiding near this little grotto. The French gardens were very formal and geometric and rectangular but the English gardens were much more to our liking, with little windy streams full of ducks and patches of flowers set near weeping willows. We thought the ducks must like it there very much and I pretended to be a French duck for a while. So did my mom. I get it from her.
Louis: Hey, baby? I feel like the south garden needs a little extra something.
Marie-Antoinette: I know. I just can’t decide what to put there, though. I was thinking, though, that what I’d really like would be a fountain that involves some dogs pissing.
Louis: Hmm. You might be onto something there. If only we could have pissing dogs and some vomiting deer, I mean that would really be the ideal accent piece.
Marie-Antoinette: I was going to stop by Home Depot on the way home from work, should I try to pick something up?
My favorite car in France. I kept pointing and laughing every time I saw one. I did this in Geneva with Dave and Joey too, much to their consternation. “You really like those Smart Cars,” they’d said, little worried frowns on their faces. “They’re just so little” I’d wheeze back. Look at it! It’s just so little!”
And thus end the Paris pictures. Here I am, after Mom had left at some horrible hour in the morning, all ready to go with my pack and everything:
Not pictured:
–The timbered ceiling of the hotel we stayed in.
–The eighty five thousand croissants I ate.
–Me astounded by the fact that the Metro actually hooked up with the train station, as if public transportation was supposed to be easy and convenient.
–Me holding hands with my mom and being glad to be with her.
–Me walking arm and arm with an eighty-five year old native Parisien, being given a tour of what used to be the Jewish neighborhood where he grew up.
–All these big French guys with tiny little purse dogs.
–Me struggling with my French but realizing I do actually speak it.
–Me drinking a glass of cidre, a beverage with alcohol in it.
–Mom sitting on the stone steps of the chateau and looking into the gardens, perfectly happy; Mom telling me she’s going to come back to Paris every year.
–Me realizing that there I was, finally on my trip, finally finally finally.