Failing to get up the Eiffel Tower

Tags

Eiffel Tower, Monet, Paris, Rodin

One of the new experiences on my to-do list for 2012 was go right to the top of the Eiffel Tower, I’ve stood at the bottom looking up on several occasions but have always wimped out.  I was in Paris last week and still have not been to the top of the Eiffel Tower, though I did stand underneath it.

This failure isn’t entirely my fault.  On Wednesday the top was closed and as they’d also closed three out of four of the lifts as well we’d have had to queue for an hour or so just to get the second floor (I damn well wasn’t using the stairs).  So we went to the Musée Marmottan instead which, all things considered, was a much, much more rewarding thing to do.

The Musée Marmottan is now one of my favourite museums in the world.  It’s a former hunting lodge and it’s full of Impressionist paintings, including the Monet of Le Havre which was called ‘Impression’ and gave its name to the movement.  The original part of the house is furnished and you wander through elegant rooms gawping at what’s hung on the walls, next to mirrors, above tables, in corners – wonderful things by Monet, Caillebotte, Pissaro, Renoir…  One or two of the rooms literally took my breath away.  And there’s an extension with the pictures that are too big to hang in a normal house, I have a feeling that as Monet got better known and could afford more paint and bigger canvases his horizons expanded, several of his waterlilies, the Japanese bridge at Giverny, landscapes.

Last, but not least, the Marmottan also has a great gift shop, (the Louvre didn’t even have an adequate range of postcards), full of inexpensive fun things to take back as small presents.  For instance I bought my husband a Monet pencil and Monet himself to rub out any mistakes.

We knew the top of the Eiffel Tower would be open on Thursday, our last day, so we headed back there.  I doubt we’d have had any problems with the queues on account of this:

The Tower is there,  behind the building on the right…

We decided to go to the Musée Rodin instead which turned out not to be a particularly good move.  We knew that most of the garden was closed as there was a big sign outside but didn’t realise until I’d bought our quite expensive entrance tickets that the Hotel Biron which has the majority of Rodin’s sculptures in it was also shut for renovation.  The temporary exhibition of Rodin’s drawings was not an adequate consolation prize.

Rodin’s sculptures thrill me to the core and I’d really wanted my daughter to see them and understand what I get so excited about.  I was in danger of becoming seriously grumpy until she bought me a present,saying that perhaps we could use it in book group meetings to aid intelligent discussion.  Le Penseur was one of the few things we actually managed to see.  In fact she’d seen enough to put going back to the Musée Rodin on the top of her list when she goes back to Paris (in equal place with going back to the Monet’s at the Muséé Marmottan).

And I didn’t get to see the Berthe Morrisot’s at the Musée Marmottan either, which we also on my to-see list, as they’d been closed off to prepare for an exhibition.  Three failures in a three day trip is quite some strike rate…but that’s what you get for going when (most) of the tourists aren’t there.  It was a fabulous stay though, full of super things, and the three misses have given us an excellent excuse to go back again.

New for 2012 – number 5 (and breaking some rules along the way)

Tags

new experiences, new year's resolutions, Paris

I’ve never been one of those people who reads all about a place before going somewhere new.  Of course I consult guidebooks – I’m not that much of a free spirit and anyway I’d feel remarkably stupid if I missed out on a treasure because I didn’t know about it or turned up on the one day it was closed.  But I don’t compile a reading list in advance though I’ll often read all about where I’ve been, getting even more pleasure from being able to place where the action was.  A horribly crowded flight from New York was transformed by the New Yorkers by Catherine Schine which I’d picked up the day before because I’d enjoyed a couple of her other books.  It was set two streets down on the Upper West Side and I spent a wonderful seven hours not feeling I’d left New York at all.

I’m going to Paris with one of my daughters at the end of the month which is in fact a trip inspired by a book.  I was reading The Private Lives of the Impressionists last year during a particularly tough time and when everything got on top of me I’d say to myself that when it was all over I’d go to Paris to the Musée Marmottan and see Monet’s pictures.  So I’m going at last and staying bang next door to Notre Dame (can you get a better location than that?) thanks to those internet coupons I bought.  I’m not going to read up all about Paris before I go – that smacks too much of homework, but I decided that on this trip I’d only take books that were about Paris or set there.  As there are just one Paris related book in my to-read bookcase this also gave me a convenient excuse to break the rule I imposed at the beginning of the year that until I managed to make a visible dent in the to-read pile the only books I’d buy were ones I needed for my bookclubs.  I have to confess here to a serious book-buying habit which has become worse since I discovered Awesome Books but at least I don’t have a tottering pile of to-use handbags.

I already had The Lost Mona Lisa by RA Scotti about the theft of the Mona Lisa in 1911.  It wasn’t recovered until two years later by which time several near perfect copies had been made.  I’ve been fascinated by this story since I was about 8 and a friend of my parents, a delightful old picture restorer, told me of being a student in Paris before the theft and going to see the Mona Lisa nearly every week.  After it was retrieved he viewed it again – and said it wasn’t the same picture.  He believed the experts simply hadn’t been able to tell which was the original and which was the fake.  He added that he’d also heard that to make sure their judgement could never be questioned the experts had ordered that the picture they deemed a fake be destroyed.  Just the sort of story that would fascinate a child and I’m really looking forward to reading the book and seeing just how much of Mr Booker’s theory was based on fact.

I had a lovely morning looking up books about Paris before deciding that I’d buy myself Hemmingway’s A Moveable Feast, about Paris in the 1920’s, and Foreign Tongue by Vanina Marsot which everyone seems to love.  Three books seemed plenty for a four day trip and anyway the hotel is five minutes walk away from Shakespeare and co so if I get really desperate I can always nip over there.  Lets face it, I will anyway.

So feeling very virtuous that I was only going to buy two books I logged on.  And saw that Dancing To The Precipice about the life of Madame de la Tour du Pin, something I’ve wanted to read for ages was on Amazon at half price.  Of course it would have been silly not to buy it.  Then there was French Secrets by Roisin McAuley whom I met last summer and really liked.  At least it’s about France as is The Lantern by Deborah Lawrenson.

Oh well, what’s the point of making rules if you can’t break them?

New for 2012, Numbers 2 – 4

Tags

internet bargaains, lunch, new experiences, Paris, police

I’m lumping this together not just because I’m lazy but because they really aren’t that dramatic and certainly didn’t warrant a post each.

Number 2 – Cooking Jambonneau – ham knuckle.  I’ve often seen these in the supermarket but have never bestirred myself to see how they’re supposed to be cooked.  They were on special a couple of weeks ago so in the spirit of the family can eat something different for once I got one and looked up recipes when I got back home.  I braised it in cider and served it with leeks in white sauce for Sunday lunch and it was nice, not fantastic, but good.  However the pea soup made from the ham and cider stock the next day was delicious.

Number 3– Buying coupons from an internet discount site.  I’m going to Paris soon with my daughter and a friend put me onto a site where you’re offered discounts on hotels, flights, spa treatments, dinner deals etc – what you have to do is buy the coupon entitling you to X amount of nights and then contact the hotel to see if they can fit you in when you want to go.  So it’s a bit scary because paying for three

No room at the hotel...

nights in a hotel in the centre of Paris, even with a 45% discount, is quite a lot of money.  But the hotel is in the shadow of Notre Dame and I knew I’d kick myself if I passed it up so I went ahead and bought the coupons.  Then found the site refused my credit card because it’s English so my husband had to pay with his French one, which is what I suppose you’d call a satisfactory outcome.  For me, anyway.  Now all I have to do is nail the child down and get her to say which dates suit her and then I can have all the fun of seeing if the hotel has any spare rooms.

Number 4 – Taking a man out for lunch.  It’s really strange to think that I’ve never done this before, I’ve shared the bill of course and I was in PR and advertising for some years so I used to entertain clients and journalists but for some reason it was always women.  When I first started going out with my husband I wanted to take him out on his birthday but he refused, saying loftily he’d never allowed a girl to pay for him and he wasn’t about to start now.  His noble attitude was a flipping nuisance as I had a pretty hectic job and would far rather have gone out than have to rush home to whip up a birthday dinner.  A few months later we married and spent the first night of our honeymoon at Claridges on the correct assumption that we’d never be able to afford to go there again. After all the bowing and ‘Congratulations Sir, Congratulations, Madam,’ when we checked in there was the inevitable, ‘And how will you be paying, Sir?’  ‘American Express.’  ‘I’m afraid we don’t take American Express, Sir.’  My brand new husband turned to me, ‘You’ve got your Barclaycard, haven’t you?’ and informed the desk that ‘the wife will pay.’  To be fair he then discovered he had his company petrol card on him so the surprised accountant at the firm he worked for got a bill from a five star hotel rather than the normal local Shell garage in Battersea.

The importance of checking facts: gendarme uniforms have been updated.

So last week for the first time ever I took a man out to lunch, a policeman no less,who is helping me with the research for my book.  I’m not writing a crime novel as such but there is a French detective in it and though I looked stuff up on the net the French policing system is so incredibly complicated that I wasn’t left much wiser.  The only thing I did gather was that the two arms of law enforcement, the gendarmes (military) and police (civilian) don’t always get on very well.  Fortunately my daughter came with us to help with translation for, though his English is quite good and my French is passable, the way crimes are investigated in France is so different to the English system that it’s near impossible to find the words to describe it unless you’re completely bilingual.

It was a good lunch, he’s a nice man and I really enjoyed myself.  What he told me is incredibly useful too.  I’m going to have to re-write a couple of scenes in the book and got one section completely wrong but I was spot-on with one element at least.  There really is a considerable degree of- ahem – rivalry between the gendarmes and the police.

Almost French

Tags

living in France, Paris

I didn’t get 2012 off to a good start reading-wise.  The first off the To Read pile was something that described itself as a “enthralling tale of dark suspense” which seemed perfect for New Year’s Day.  I waited in vain to be enthralled, or for the suspense, dark or otherwise, and finally put my pedant’s hat on and chucked it in the charity pile when I got to ‘she passed a 4 x 4 with two setter dogs barking loudly.’  What else is a setter and barks?  An otter?  A Horse?  Seal?

Then I started next month’s book group choice, set in the Spanish Civil War, and based on my experience with Hemingway braced myself for some fairly gory passages.  Actually the gory passages would have been a welcome change from nothing happening and some of the most excruciating writing I’ve ever come across.  One girl had a plait that swung from hip to hip as she walked, it was intended to show how graceful she was I think, but in this reader it produced an ineradicable image of a drunken sailor lurching from side to side.   I really try hard not to give up on book group reads but when I realised that the thought of picking up this horror was actually making me feel depressed I decided to pass it straight on to the next unlucky soul in the list to read it.

So thank heaven for Almost French by Sarah Turnbull which was published about eight years ago.  I can’t remember who it was on one of the Living In France blogs who said this was really good and in a different class to most of the books about making a new life in France but she was absolutely right.  Thank you so much for I don’t think I’d have read this otherwise.

Sarah Turnbull is an Australian journalist who moved in with Frederic, a Parisian lawyer in his thirties, only weeks after meeting him while backpacking around Europe.  She spoke barely any French, didn’t have any employment, barely knew her lover and knew even less about the people and the habits of the city she was now living in.  She was a true Australian, impetuous, informal, friendly; he was typically French, close to his extended family, formal, used to smart dinner parties where everyone wore black and didn’t speak to strangers unless they had been properly introduced.   What sets this apart from all those other “I came to France and have adapted books” is that she’s remarkably honest about herself.  She comes across as very likeable but you still get the impression that she could be difficult and unbending on occasion, in other words thoroughly human.  There are no neat answers, it’s the story of two people who have to learn to change to make their life together and it’s a wonderful read.  The fact that it’s also very well written is a bonus.

I think I might suggest this for the book group…

New year, new experiences…

Tags

new experiences, new year's resolutions, Paris, Sicily

Catherine Fox, who wrote the wonderful Angels and Men, was coming up to a serious birthday last year and decided to ward off any suggestions that she might be becoming a stick-in-the-mud by making a resolution to try to do one new thing every week.  As she’s a black belt at karate I doubt anyone sensible would call her a stick in the mud but I’ve had a nagging feeling recently that I might be slipping into a rut and perhaps it’s time to do something about it before said rut becomes a trench.

I’ll have to play  fair of course and try to do things that are really new or stretching my own boundaries.  So reading 52 new books this in 2012 would definitely be cheating as would trying out a whole load of different  recipes as I’ll be doing both of those anyway.  Though I might try making choux pastry, I’m no baker and when I get a new cook book usually don’t bother to even glance through the cake section.

Even if you’ve led a pretty adventurous life you tend to find that by the time you’ve reached fifty or so you’ve actually done quite a lot (even if you can’t always remember doing it.  I had put ‘visit a volcano’ on my to-do list for this year and then realised we visited a little one on our honeymoon ).  There aren’t many classic authors I haven’t at least tried, even for the sake of rut-busting I don’t think I’m prepared to tackle Ulysses, I’ve bottle fed a lion cub and a badger, made a tiger cub purr, driven a steam engine – albeit a half-size perfect replica, appeared on television, walked around the Statue of Liberty, climbed the highest sand dune in Europe, cuddled a Koala and seen a Duck-Billed Platypus (much smaller than I’d imagined).  I’m an adventurous eater so there aren’t many normal foods I haven’t at least tried.  I admit I haven’t ever knowingly had dog, cat, horse, monkey’s

Not today, thank you.

brains, shark’s fin, anything that slithers, insects, eyes or private parts and orifices from any species and I don’t intend to start now.  I’m not keen on feet either.  I’ve never eaten ostrich or kangaroo though…

I’m not interested in new experiences gained from hallucinogenic drugs or cocaine either, I don’t think I’m up to the pilgrimage walk to St Jacques de Compostela  and as I don’t have an unlimited budget, or much of a budget at all, I can’t go to India, go up in a helicopter, have a balloon ride, buy myself a serious piece of jewellery or go down to the bottom of the ocean where it’s so deep the light doesn’t penetrate and it’s very, very strange, something I’ve wanted to do since I was about twelve.  But I am going to Sicily, where I’ve never been, to see my daughter and though I’m not sure I’ll be able to do one new thing a week like Catherine, I’m going to try for 52 new things over the year so at least it averages out.

So far my initial list of possibilities goes like this:

• Going to the top of the Eiffel Tower in the elevator (something I’ve always been too chicken to do).
• Visiting one museum in Paris which is completely different to my normal taste.
• Drive my husband’s 4 x 4 (the thing terrifies me).
• Mow the lawn which means using the tractor mower on quite a steep slope.
  

  I'm sure this will count as "doing the mowing".

  (Fear isn’t involved here, it’s blind terror.)

• Make profiteroles.
• Cook scallops – I’ve always been frightened of bogging it up and wasting rather a lot of money.
• Visit the caves at Lascaux
• Go to one of the places that’s marked on our map as being ‘of interest’ without looking it up to see if it’s worth it first.
• Plant three apple trees.
• Make regular detours to follow those signs that direct you to a tenth century church, a medieval château or a ‘point de vue’.
• Go to the Musée des Beaux Arts in Bordeaux

There’ll be more added as things occur to me but any suggestions (reasonable ones, children) will be most welcome.