![[sic]blog](http://www.sicblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/sic_revised_3.png)
Notre Dame
It’s impossible (pronounced impossible) to say whether I’d be a total dick if I were French. But I recently met every French person living in France and they were all total dicks.
Well, I guess that’s not entirely true. I really only met about six French people, and half of them were actually pretty nice. The other half were at least fair. But I saw a lot of French people being total dicks. Tons of them!
Shucks. To be honest, I probably would be a mass dick if I were French. I’d be slender and fashionable and I’d hold my cigarette just so. I’d be drinking a champagne cocktail and clutching my perfect baguette, even though I would be out of hands by now. The afternoon sun would cast a fanciful glow around me and my highly-evolved crew at our sidewalk table as a blind accordion player in striped shirt and pencil-thin mustache squeezed sublimely nearby.
And then I’d speak…
It wouldn’t matter what I said. I could say ‘come with me to the Casbah’ or even merely ‘I just saved a ton of money on my car insurance by switching to Geico‘– and it would sound the same. French is such a moist, lyrical language– you just sound more fashionable and sexy speaking it. Read the phonebook. Please, read it again. Je taime…
We arrived in Paris at that golden hour late Saturday afternoon from our chunnel journey from London. The train had been a very pleasant and civilized experience with WiFi and a bar. It’s possible my guard was down a notch as we emerged from the soaring Gare du Nord station into the lap of Paris.
That light. Those smells. The tension and magic. The chaos of Paris!
Edie whirled a whirl and we high-fived our being in Paris. I remember that we were standing still and that everything else was moving fluidly around us, as if animated.
Edie punched up our destination.
We learned in London that I was a useless navigator and a generally more agreeable traveling companion if my phone was deep in my bag and my credit card was near the top. We had efficiently crafted an arrangement that enabled us move about without me having to switch from wifi to data to google maps to translation. Sunglasses off, readers on. Battery half-charged. Where are my safety pins?!
It was definitely in Paris that I decided my phone was at half-full battery, not half empty. The ability to read a Lonely Planet guide book or negotiate a paper map has been evolved out of us. But we don’t have to let reliance on our devices define or distract us! I felt after two days in London that my deference to my phone as travel agent was fouling my experience. So I put it away. Of course by that time, my 19-year-old daughter was there to navigate and empty my drool buckets.
Edie deftly guided us to our AirB and we cracked the code of the front door. We ascended the 107 spiralling steps to our top-floor apartment overlooking the magnificent Church of Saint-Bernard de la Chapelle to 
the east. The apartment had a sufficiently-appointed kitchenette and a brilliant library of European coffee table books & American classics translated to French. The linens were soft and there were plenty of pillows. But there wasn’t a square of toilet paper in the place!
No matter. We hadn’t come all the way to Paris, France to hang out inside. We hit the streets looking for soul food.
The lower Pigalle- Saint-Georges’ district was alive and buzzing with Parisians smoking, drinking and French kissing. Cafe after cafe was swamped with beautiful young people socializing on a pleasant early spring Saturday at dusk, spilling out of the doors and onto the patios. We were hungry– but the idea of having to order a meal in a crowded bistro in our broken French at the top of our lungs kept us moving along until we found a quieter little sushi place with an empty table. Hamachi in French is Hamachi; sake means sake.
Strolling back toward the pad afterward showed us more colorful doorways, more ornate wrought iron rails and more handsome locals. We were able to purchase toilet paper instead of paper towels (no bolsa) and we lucked into a very French experience in the tiny Rouge Bar only a few blocks away from our home base. A dozen regulars were seated around a large table in the back, singing folk songs and banging on various percussion instruments. One guy was plucking away on a kind of 1-string washtub bass type thing, and the group was taking turns on verses, joining in on the choruses. We had no idea whatsoever what the songs were about, of course– but we enjoyed a glass and the good vibes before collecting our TP and climbing the stairs to the apartment.
I’m not a great sleeper. Never have been. And when I get into a groove of insomnia, not much can wreck my flow. I had had some luck in London, and the bed in our Paris AirB was comfortable and the apartment quiet. I was exhausted. But still– sleep would not show itself to me on that first night.
At 4, I offered Edie the bed and took to the couch. I figured one of us might as well get some quality rest. At 6, I quietly dressed and slipped out into the hall. Shoes in-hand, I tiptoed down the winding oak staircase so as not to wake the neighbors.
Dawn was just starting to stir as I hit the sidewalk, turning north. The only sound was the gentle cooing of the pigeons, possibly startled to see me. It was clear and cold. (I’d checked the weather on my 
phone before leaving the 6th floor and learned it was 35 degrees on the street). Perfect weather for a morning hike in Paris. For some reason, “Looking Glass” by the La’s was playing in my head.
It was a fairly surreal experience to be alone in a city as normally abuzz as Paris: just me, my gradually shortening shadow and last night’s barf & piss. The cafes and bar tabacs were buttoned up tight. No busses. After 20 minutes I finally saw a garbage truck, but it didn’t seem to be picking up any garbage. Rather it was just kind of cruising as if casing the garbage. Eventually the peoples began to emerge– jogging, gymming, walking the dog. Texting at the wheel. All the same stuff Americans do in the morning…
I wandered north then west, slowly climbing higher into the picturesque Montmartre neighborhood. The peaks of the iconic Sacre’-Coeur came into view and I turned in their general direction, winding up and down cobblestone lanes lined with arched doorways draped in wysteria.
the Basilica of the Sacred Heart of Paris at sunrise
Upon reaching the travertine plaza of the Basilica– the highest point in Paris– all the air was sucked from my lungs by the breathtaking setting and view. The glow of the rising sun coming from the east illuminated the perfect domes of the temple, and the rest of Paris lay sprawled out to the south– ready for another busy day. There were a half-dozen other people out there also gawking, though most of them were paired up. It was a pretty romantic setting, after all. Suddenly I missed Patti and remembered her telling of her first experience in Paris where she’d felt a little gypped to be stag. The only other unmatched person up there was a bearded guy who positioned himself squarely in the center of the courtyard and proceeded to jump rope. It was odd…
On the way down the hill, I passed along a street with a number of butchers who were just opening shop. Cured and fresh meats were being unwrapped and hung out for display. Ice bins were being filled, sidewalks hosed down. On the curb in front of one shop was a metal shopping cart filled to the very top with huge bones (beef femurs?). It was the deepest collection of the biggest bones I had ever seen. I slowed and discreetly slipped my phone from my bag and snapped a photo from waste level.
It wasn’t discreet enough…
A butcher emerged from the shop as I started to walk away. He was agitated and confronted me, blocking my path.
“Supprime-le,” he said sternly. “Supprime-le!”
Of course I had no idea what he was saying. I shrugged out a no Francias and a perdon for good measure, but he just kept repeating ‘supprime-le.’ Eventually he mixed in some clarifying language which I guessed was none too flattering. But he always returned to ‘supprime-le.’
It’s painfully obvious now of course that he was demanding I delete the photograph from my phone. Supprime-le = delete it. But at the time I just didn’t get it, and at one point actually thought he might have been offering to snap a photo of me posing with the bonecart using my camera– for a fee. Can you even imagine?
Eventually, he was able to mime my phone out of my bag and point to the delete icon on the screen. I was quite embarrassed when I finally realized what he was getting at and of course deleted the image immediately. Supprime-le, my advisor…
It’s ironic that I said to him “I’m sorry” in English as he turned to go back into his tiny shop. I’d been walking around all morning practicing the phrase I expected to get the most use out of while in Paris, that being ‘Je suis de’sole’ or I’m sorry. I’d been wandering around this beautiful neighborhood whispering I’m sorry to myself for hours, and when the perfect opportunity presented itself for me to show off my French, I totally dorked out and made a bad situation worse by apologizing in English.
Probably just as well. I learned at the end of our stay in France that in my attempt to shorten the phrase from what I understood to mean ‘I’m sorry’ to simply ‘sorry,’ I had lopped off the wrong half. So in Paris and through the south, I had been sheepishly saying ‘I am‘ when mixing salt into a cappuccino or fumbling with the money. De’sole = I am. Je-Suis = sorry. Sheesh…
I don’t blame the French for being resentful of foreigners. They have a pretty bitchin’ culture which they’ve been forced to share with the rest of the world for centuries. We’re learning in our modern age 
that it’s awkward to refuse immigrants and not economically feasible to discourage tourism. Any western joker with a thousand Euro and a passport can spend a week in Paris, displacing locals by soaking up AirB’s, clogging the narrow sidewalks and strangling the language. All the natives can do is roll their eyes and say supprime-le. Kinda hard to fault them…
I picked up some beautiful little pastries at a real live French bakery and some fruits at a sidewalk market and returned to the apartment to wake Edie who was still sleeping at 9:30. We got cleaned up and boogied to the insane Marché aux Puces de
not Notre Dame
Monday morning brought vintage shopping in Le Marais en route to the Centre Pompidou. We’d been dissuaded from chasing the Louvre by more than one well-meaning domestic friend, and if you’re in Paris for 2.5 days, you can’t really justify spending one in the Louvre. At least I can’t. Three hours in the Pompidou was plenty. All the AC/DC and Thin Lizzy was on the 5th floor, which was where I hung out. The view from the rooftop terrace was spectacular, too, and actually proved a useful perspective in the planning the rest of our afternoon.
not Notre Dame
We exited through the giftshop and headed in the general direction of Notre Dame. It was well-past the lunch hour by this time, and we were feeling a little rummy with fabulousness overload in this picturesque neighborhood. Possibly a bit low on bloodsugar. Every corner we turned brought us face-to-face with a new architectural marvel and we would stand reverently in its shadow, gazing up and shaking our heads. “Wow,” we’d whisper. “Notre Fucking Dame…”
And it wouldn’t even be Notre Dame! There are just so many ridiculous buildings down there that you can mistake any one of them for Notre Dame if you haven’t been holding up a picture of Notre Dame with one hand for most of your life. The Paris City Hall is wikked cool! But yeah– it’s not Notre Dame…
By the time we actually did get to Notre Dame, we were just about wetting our pants laughing about all the buildings we’d mistaken for it. So we felt pretty bad when it burned down two hours later.
not Notre Dame
We saw no sign of the Yellowvests in Paris, and–as in London–observed very little sign of economic angst or presence of the unsheltered. There was the occasional sidewalk tent, and actually Paris did have what seemed like a fairly civilized network of doorway mattresses, almost like the Lime bikes and scooters. There was no apparent ownership– rather if you needed a place to sleep, you just flopped on an available mattress. Once you woke up, you moved on– freeing up the bed for the next weary Parisian down on luck.
We did not have time to venture deep into the Left Bank. Our host neighborhood was described as Montmartre on Airbnb, but it was quickly obvious that this was fairly wishful marketing. Our neighborhood was literally on the other side of the tracks from the Montmartre in a neighborhood we later learned was informally known as Little Algeria. It bordered a bustling Bangladeshi neighborhood along the Rue Marx Dormoy where there were very few women visible at all, particularly after dark when the street vendors took over the sidewalks. On our last night there, we encountered a burgeoning race riot outside a grocery store that looked a little too much like Do the Right Thing with a large crowd of unhappy young men pushing up against the metal accordion fence of a small grocery. The shopkeep appeared to be evicting a representative of the crowd whose shirt was ripped and there was a lot of spitting and shouting. We totally valued being in an authentic neighborhood not seemingly catering to tourists. But this particular moment also seemed like a pretty good time to cross the street.
not even the Arc de Triomphe
We had ventured to the Republique’ neighborhood earlier that night, enjoying a drink in a Greek place and some snappy tappas at a little Spanish joint. It was late when we got back to the apartment and I turned my attention to confirming a roof for us for the following night in Lyon. We weren’t exactly walking into towns with our backpacks and looking for a place to sleep like in the ’90s. But booking this stuff only one night in-advance was an exercise in agility nonetheless. Edie & I had agreed not to over-plan, and short-notice reservations were part of this agreement. We’d done well in Paris booking this apartment from London and we fully expected to get as lucky in Lyon. But booking trains at the last minute can be limiting– and the only cheap seats left bound for Lyon the next morning were on the 5:50. We’d need to get up at 4 in order to make the train. So of course I didn’t sleep.
We got loose of the pad (at 4:20!) and down to the street to meet the only Uber we’d take the whole trip– as the Metro didn’t start running till 5am. Before I knew it, we were chugging gently through the rolling green fields of the French countryside– dotted with herds of sheep, tiny villages (always with a tall church steeple in the middle), and the occasional medieval castle on the hill. The coach rocked side-to-side as I watched Edie sleep from across the tiny train table.
Lyon is a cool town. But arriving at 8 o’clock on a rainy Tuesday morning, it didn’t seem like the locals were really all that mass stoked. Commuters trudged up and down the slick platforms, their umbrellas up and the corners of their mouths down. I hadn’t slept on the train and my eyes burned like fire. The toilets in the station cost .80 Euro, which I couldn’t manage to count. My left hip clicked with each step.
Edie punched up our destination.
We marched across the square in a steady rain and up into a network of narrow cobblestone lanes rising steeply out of the downtown. Five minutes later we were inside our building and climbing a limestone staircase open to the interior courtyard of the building, up toward the 4th floor flat. At this rate, by the time we reached Barcelona, we’d be on the ground floor! The key to the apartment was where it was supposed to be and it actually unlocked the door. I am always amazed when this stuff works.
This apartment was our host’s home. Her bills were on the desk, her laundry in the hamper. She was probably staying with her sister on the 2nd floor while I slept in her bed. We had just booked the place 9 hours ago. And not only was she willing to cut out on short notice, but she actually was kind enough to let us check in early. I would not have inquired about a mercy checkin if I’d known this was someone’s home. A lot of these places are vacant, like a sock waiting to be used*. But not always…
We rid our packs and took off our shoes and immediately fell asleep side-by-side on the couch. All I wanted to do right then was dormir, but I knew if I stayed down more than about an hour I probably wouldn’t sleep again for the rest of the trip. So I made myself get up after 90 minutes and put my shoes back on. I dropped back into the downtown and ordered a cafe creme’ deporto at a coffee shop in which I would become a 2-day regular. The rain had stopped and the sun was beginning to peak out. I sat on the stone steps of yet another fantastic unnamed church and pulled out my journal and pen. Good day, Lyon!
Large Sraight, Lyon
I woke Edie up at 2pm, this time with a bottle of white wine and some cookies. She’d had a solid nap and was ready to rock, as was I. We rolled a quick game of Yahtzee (I had packed dice) before cleaning up and getting back on the street. Edie’s Sunnyland homie Nick had just landed in Lyon the week before, beginning a similar study abroad experience to the one Edie had last year in Barcelona. We were meeting him at 6, so we had some time to kill cruising Lyon’s canals and crossing the quaint footbridges over them. There were statues built into caves on the other side and a huge cathedral looming on the hill. Our accompaniment for this segment was “Yeah Yeah Yeah” by Alice Cooper– a brilliant afternoon!
It was great seeing Nick. He’s one of my favorites of Edie’s buddies from home and he seems to really be digging his experience in France so far. We strolled around through the old town catching up, eventually selecting a Fine French Restaurant for dinner. In some foodist cultures, it is an honor to be seated by the kitchen. In this situation, we were merely being seated at the back of the restaurant. The 4-course experience involved much pointing at the menu. It was OK– not necessarily what I’d call fine…
Unlike England, France is kind of known for its food. But much like England, our culinary experiences were not super fine. My general distrust for the internet makes it hard for me to shop for restaurants online. “Look, Edie– this one has quatre e’toiles. Only 80 more blocks!” I am much more-inclined to eat when I’m hungry and drink when I’m dry. Just like Bob Dylan. Sometimes the place that presents itself at the right time is killer; other times less. But Yelping our way around Europe is not what I had in-mind and Edie was fully in agreement. Whatever. We didn’t starve.
Speaking of Dylan, we missed him in Paris by two days. I don’t know whether I would have efforted to see Bob Dylan in Paris if our paths had crossed. But they didn’t. We also narrowly missed Teenage Fanclub and Lake Street Dive. And in London I missed UFO by three days! I definitely would have done whatever necessary to make that show had the dates aligned. And then Paul Raymond died eight days later. Timing– it’s universal…
Paris is known for its gothic cathedrals, its majestic river and quaint cafes. Lyon has all that stuff too, but without the mountains of garbage that you have to climb over in Paris. How anyone could think 
about dropping as much as a gum wrapper in that holy place is hard to figure– but I don’t think I’ve been in a dirtier town. I like a gritty city, but Paris is just plain littered and shat upon and that’s less romantic no matter how you look at it or in what language you describe it.
Being a less-common destination, Lyon may even be a skosh Frencher than Paris and we found it very usable. Divided by the Rhone River to the east, the Saone River in the center and the hilltop Fourvière to the west, Lyon is the 3rd largest city in France at a half-million people. Posing patiently above the old town is the sultry Basilique de Fourvière. It isn’t ancient– the current version was completed only in the very late 19th century. But it is architecturally stunning and the view over the city from the grounds is dizzying. We climbed up there on the sunny second afternoon in town, and Edie left from there to go meet Nick and his friend from school. I went inside the sanctuary and sat for a long time, staring up at the coved, tiled ceiling. I dislike organized religion in general and Christianity in particular. Catholicism perhaps most of all. But dang– those guys sure do know how to build a churchhouse.
I don’t think anyone was on-duty in the confessional by the front door, but I paused on my way out and considered spilling a gut anyway just the same. I wasn’t carrying anything particularly heavy. But I was sensing the impending mortality of this adventure, being at about the halfway point that day– England behind, Spain ahead. Struggling to be in the moment every moment isn’t really a conventional sin, but it is a hangup. And I thought that maybe if I could admit to a stranger that I was even thinking about the end of a trip from its middle, it might help me stay in the present more completely. I stood at the threshhold of the booth for a minute, pondering. Eventually I crossed the street to the gift shop and bought a postcard instead. They were playing Judy Garland and Gene Kelly’s “Ballin’ the Jack” in the shop, which made me feel a little better since it didn’t seem to have anything to do with France, Christ or redemption. I scaled back down the 800 stairs (yes, I counted) into downtown and got a glass of whisky at a cafe overlooking the river, feeling great. I addressed the postcard to myself and placed an Airmail stamp into the upper right corner.
The French don’t:
Very few street performers of any kind in France, actually, other than the occasional strolling accordionist outside the cafe– like the Mariachi’s in Mexico. I did happen upon the French version of the Dy Young Combo on the last night in Lyon, at a small wine bar in the old town. A pretty lady with her hair in a scarf was singing and dragging on a guero, accompanied by an electric guitar and percussionist. As soon as I sat down they launched into “The Girl From Ipanema” and I wondered if it was the first time they’d played it that set. Seemed kind of obvious…
On my way back up to the apartment, I peered into a doorway that had bar sounds coming from within it. There was no sign outside, but ducking down into the tiny, dark room below street level I discovered it was indeed a dank little bar full of wasted locals. French hardcore music was blasting from a small Sonos speaker in the corner and there was one vacant stool at the bar. I slid in and smiled at the bartender.
“Vin Rouge,” I said confidently, trying to be clearly heard by him but not overheard by the entire bar.
“I am sorry,” he said, in English of course and loud enough for everyone at the bar to hear. “I do not have any wine.”
“Oh,” I said, abandoning my attempt to French out. I noticed a chalkboard menu with Absinte halfway down. “Absinthe?”
“Sure,” he said, and poured me the cutest little shot along with a glass of water. “Three Euro-fifty.”
The place looked like the belly of a boat, where bearded slaves shackled together might sit and row to the beat of a whip-cracking coxswain. It smelled like it too. In the back corner, a thick sleeveless woman in her 30s was pouring beer on the heads of the others at her table. Two younger men jumped up and grabbed an arm each, returning the gesture. She shrieked in delight and sprawled across the table, toppling glasses and bottles. The men sat back down laughing and the entire ritual repeated. I had one more shot, but I don’t think that was the place I was supposed to be. I returned to the apartment, packed, and confirmed the AirB for the following night in Montpellier.
If Lyon seemed 15% Frencher than Paris, Montpellier might as well have been Gaul. It looked more Spanish than the other cities, with more palm trees and more white iron– like what I imagine Havana looks like (never been). But it was apparent immediately upon deboarding the train that we would struggle more with integration here. We were hungry so we muscled through ordering a ‘pizza.’ Meanwhile, Edie attempted to punch up our accommodations.
“This downtown area is showing up,” she said looking around before re-puzzling over Google Maps. “But the place isn’t…”
Life’s a Beach and then you smile– Carnon
As it turned out, the AirB was 20 kilometers away in a small seaside resort called Carnon. It was too remote to get any directions through Google Maps. We had an address and a general direction. So we got on a tram that looked like it might take us to Knott’s Berry Farm.
After some eventual third-guessing, we transferred to a bus then walked on our feet a mile and finally got into range where Google Maps would recognize us. The lovely & adorable host at our AirB was there to greet us even though we were three hours late, and she gave us a very detailed orientation of every system & appliance in the apartment– in French of course. We wouldn’t use anything other than the key and the beds, but it was nice to hear some more French spoken as we’d be leaving for Spain in the morning. Plus she gave us the total French cheek peck– un, deux, trois— which we had not yet observed being administered in the larger venues. So we got to cross that off our list…
Carnon also had a pleasant little sandy beach that we went out and sat on for a while. I was stoked to finally behold the storied Mediterranean Sea until I was reminded that it wasn’t the Mediterranean at all really, but actually the Golfe d’aigues-Mortes which was actually more contiguous to the Balearic Sea than the Mediterranean, yo. In any event, it was a sandy beach and there were a couple of guys kind of surfing out beyond the breakwater and neither Edie nor myself had had an aneurysm or even so much as a canker sore– so I guess I was feeling pretty alright about France as I scooped up handfulls of the fine white sand and let it run slowly through my fingers.
Carnon was a little like Ocean Shores and it closed up pretty early. Just as well. I needed to book a bus to Spain and a room once there, so my full attention came in handy. The next morning was Friday and not just any Friday. We shouldered our packs and retraced our path back to the Montpellier train station where we caught the 3:30 to Barcelona where Good Friday observances were already in full swing…
OMENS AND OTHER SIGNS, FRANCE
* Steven Jesse Bernstein
0 Comments on this post
Leave a Comment