So what else do we know about Paris?

Well, it doesn’t photograph well. Or maybe it’s better to say that it doesn’t photograph right. All of the detail and the elaborate decoration and the views … it’s just not coming across in the photos. (Here’s my Paris slideshow, all the same.) So we know –

1. You had to be there. All my misgivings about the French and the language problems notwithstanding, I’m still glad we went. It was really, really breathtaking. In fact, I guess the best way to convey that in words, since pictures won’t work, is to say that walking along street after street of beautifully sculpted, carved, designed vistas with fabulous pale-colored facades and fountains and sculpture gardens, Greg and I both independently thought that you could almost understand how the French got stuck in the mindset that they’re a force to be reckoned with. It’s actually hard to conceive of the kind of wealth that must’ve existed in the Middle Ages in Paris. Enough, apparently, that King Louis IX could build Sainte Chappelle — a Gothic masterpiece but a small cathedral, if you can imagine such a thing. An intimate little affair that could probably only hold 100 people comfortably, but with stained glass windows that soar to heaven. The reason it’s so small is that it is really only a chapel — it was built to house what was believed to be Christ’s original Crown of Thorns, and part of the True Cross. We saw Notre Dame because it’s the law that all tourists see Notre Dame, (as it’s the law, apparently, that people have to be gamboling about acting dumb in front of it, as a silly flock of dance students were doing when we were there), but I think Ste. Chappelle is what I’ll remember the most.
2. It’s true. The food is heavenly and the service is hellish. I had heard, as everyone has heard, about the wonders of French food, but it still managed to take me by surprise just because I’d been in Great Britain for two weeks. And it is still inconceivable how one entire culture could rise up that has such a dreadful time making food even partly palatable and another culture so close by could turn it into a form of pagan worship (or if they didn’t, they should’ve, just based on the pastries alone.) However, just as the pagan gods were wrathful and exacted heavy prices for their favor, you don’t get the French food without the French service. Now, just to be clear, I’m not talking about surly help — most of the people we had were quite friendly. But the deeply held French belief is that if you’ve come to eat in their establishment, it must mean that you have an afternoon to kill. It’s a cultural thing, and I did warn Greg about it. But you can’t help it. When you’re an American and you got the entree on Wednesday and now it’s Saturday, you kind of want the check. And by the way, if you want to get over any inferiority about the French palate, just remember that they like mayonnaise on their French fries. That’s just nasty.
3. Rules, rules, rules. They love rules. They love the rules and the bureaucracies for which they stand. There are good things to say about the French approach to some things (although I admit I’m not naming many), but this is just an unlovable trait. So when they needed to get the pedestrian traffic off the Champs Elysees for an event they were holding the next day, the gendarmes just started ordering everyone behind barricades as if no one would ever need to cross the street again. Greg was so bold as to grab this photo from the middle of the street, but was reprimanded by a little dink on a scooter for it (”It is forbidden to take pictures of the Champs Elysees from the middle of the street!”) and ended up outside the barricade with me on the other side and another gendarme refusing to let him in. It was ridiculous.
   On the other hand, if the rules need to be enforced for very long, apparently they just lose interest. Or so I would gather, given that guards in the Musee d’Orsay were snoring on chairs as everyone took damaging flash photographs of the paintings in spite of signs everywhere saying it was forbidden (their favorite word, I suppose). Why the incongruity? I’m thinking massive boredom is a big factor.
4. And finally, they have bizarre bathroom needs. I hate to keep picking, but what the heck is wrong with these people? Our hotel had a skinny rectangular toilet, which was odd — as human posteriors don’t come in that shape — but serviceable. But then directly across from it, they had a lower, similarly skinny-rectangular fixture with taps and a soap dish — a bum bath. Who needs this thing? Have the great inventors and manufacturers and marketers of the human race not given us the blessing of toilet paper to take care of all this unpleasantness? Who is it who finds it necessary to dunk their butt so often that they require a special butt-dunker in the immediate vicinity? I could be missing something here, but if so, I really don’t think I want to know.

So there it is. Complex and often annoying people, lovely-sounding but inconvenient language, but you need to go there and see it anyway. Everyone needs to go there at least once. The lucky thing for me is I’m done now. Phew! Sacre phew!