paris, je t'aime

I would love Paris more if I weren't quite so sick; my cough put quite a damper on the day, starting with the Eurostar ride. Before the train left St Pancras station in London, I had a coughing fit and the old man behind me tapped me on the shoulder to ask if I might ask the attendant to find me some cough drops -- not because he was worried about me, but because I was making an 'awful noise.' I figured that the train attendants were not also apothecaries, but I found her and asked her anyway, and she offered to move me instead. Ironically, after I moved, I only coughed a couple of times the entire rest of the way to Paris, and my seat was better anyway (I had an entire four-person table section to myself).

The trip to Paris was uneventful; I love taking Eurostar, since it's so civilized compared to air travel. I got to the station forty minutes before my train was supposed to leave, went through security and passport control in three minutes flat, and had time to get a latte and some water before boarding. On board, I had breakfast, several cups of tea, and a nice, relaxing time with my Paris guidebook to make my plans for the day.

When I got to Paris, I took the Metro to my hotel. I'm staying half a block off the Champs Elysees, near the Arc de Triomphe, in this entertaining little boutique hotel where the carpet is purple shag, the walls and ceiling are white with a purple design painted on them, and the lamp bases are made of rock crystal. This makes me happy, since I have ridiculous taste; even better, I was able to check in at 11:30 and drop my stuff off before heading out into the afternoon.

I probably should have taken a nap when I got here; I slept less than four hours last night, and didn't really sleep on the train. Instead, I pushed myself, which given my lung capacity may have been a mistake. I went to Ile de la Cite with grand plans to see Notre Dame, Ste-Chapelle, and the Concierge, but the lines were long at Notre Dame, and by the time I got there, I realized that I might need to eat something immediately. So, I found an outdoor cafe and spent over an hour people watching while eating a delicious onion soup (French, obviously -- and more than half of the 'soup' was the cheese covering). The day was absolutely gorgeous, perfect for sitting outside -- mid-seventies, sunny, slight breeze, etc. And people watching from Parisian cafes is an important part of my research, right?

Anyway, after I paid for my soup, I rallied and went to Musee National de Moyen Age (the Museum of the Middle Ages), located in one of the oldest medieval buildings still standing in Paris, which is conveniently adjacent to and now merged with the ruins of a Roman thermal bath complex. I spent far more time than most people my age would like to (nearly everyone there was either on their last legs or apparently forced into it by a school trip) examining statuary, reliquaries, tapestries, and a variety of artwork and other artifacts. There were some really gorgeous tapestries (including a six-piece cycle of a lady with a unicorn that took up an entire large room), and the statuary was interesting -- a lot of it was rescued in the aftermath of the Revolution, since the revolutionaries seemed to delight in pulling down and desecrating religious sites and so tended to knock down a lot of statues of saints and kings.

After immersing myself in the Moyen Age (and getting some great ideas for my young-adult book), I walked back across the Seine to check out Ste-Chapelle, but the line was absurdly long and I was feeling rather poorly. So, I came back to the hotel and took a nap from 4:30-7:00 -- perhaps not good for the jetlag, but it felt v. much needed. I successfully roused myself and walked down the Champs Elysees in the direction of the Tuilieries and the Louvre; shortly after the Place de la Concorde, I found an outdoor cafe and had a delicious smoked salmon and goat cheese salad (with a diet coke, of course), followed by a perfect creme brulee and a very good coffee. The advantage of living in a city as expensive as San Francisco is that sticker shock doesn't happen quite so badly when traveling to expensive foreign capitals -- but I do have an issue with the fact that they charged me 9 euros for a glass of diet coke, which was about as much as the creme brulee and the coffee combined. I mean, diet coke is the nectar of the gods and so should be priced accordingly, but 9 euros seems like highway robbery.

Anyway, after sitting around and people watching and brainstorming my young adult book (and coughing surreptitiously into my napkin like a tuberculosis patient on her last legs -- although if I am a tuberculosis patient, I'm waiting to see the glorious porcelain skin and fire lighting me from within that it will supposedly produce just before I breathe my last), I walked back to my hotel. The Champs Elysees was bustling with hordes of people even at ten p.m., and since Paris is on the western edge of its timezone, the twilight was just starting to fade and the streelights came on as I was walking back. While I am sick and therefore not enjoying myself to the maximum extent (wine and cold medicine don't mix), I can see why people fall in love with Paris -- it's a beautiful city, the people are polite, and the food is incredible.

Now, though, I must force myself to go to bed so that I can try to redeem today's wrecked schedule tomorrow. I want to go to Notre Dame as soon as it opens and proceed to Ste-Chapelle from there, so that I can avoid the lines; I also want to see if I can make it out to St-Denis, which is where all but three of the French kings from the last thousand years are buried. Sunday is Versailles and Chartres; in order to get into shape for all this, I went to a pharmacy, where the woman behind the counter sold me some pills that are supposed to end my cough. I don't know if they're working yet, but it's worth a shot; it's incredibly awkward to cough in a vast, open gallery, so anything that will stop my lung disaster will help. Goodnight!