A great little place called Paris
Have you heard of it?
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At the end of my last newsletter, I wrote that I was on a plane to Paris. I was going to spend a few days there with my friend Emma who was on holiday from Chile. She had been in London about a week before, and in planning our trip we decided that our three main aims for our few days away would be to look at art, be chic, and eat and drink a lot. I think we did quite well at all three.
I love Paris. I lived there for a year when I was 21 — a fact that poor old Emma probably heard too much about on our adventures around the city — and every time I’m there, I feel warmly cradled by a sense of familiarity and nostalgia. There’s a lot of freedom to walking around a place that isn’t your own hometown, not needing to use your phone to find your way, knowing that there is a nice café down that street just over there, and easily navigating the metro if it is pouring with rain, as it was on our first morning.
We stepped out of the flat, pretty much right opposite the Moulin Rouge of all places, and ran as fast as we could to the kiosk by Blanche station to pick up umbrellas, then headed into the metro to make our way to the Centre Pompidou. We were going to see the Brancusi exhibition and our slot was 11:15, so we had a bit of time to fill with a Formule Petit Déjeuner — café, pain au chocolat, jus d’orange for me, chocolat chaud, pain au chocolat, jus d’orange for Emma. I had been practicing my coffee drinking before the trip because I was determined to be one of those people who sips an espresso with my pastry rather than my usual tea, and I will tell you what, I succeeded. What I thought would be bitter and horrible was smooth and rich and creamy. Let it be known — I am converted.
Neither Emma nor I had ever heard of Brancusi. When we were researching what we wanted to see, I just quite liked the poster and trusted the Pompidou to put on a good show, but both of us were completely delighted by it. He was a sculptor and in the first room, each cabinet contained a piece by Brancusi alongside the artwork that inspired it. There was Brancusi and Gauguin, Brancusi and a piece from Greek Antiquity, and so on. It was a really rich and textured way of showing where an artist emerges from, their inspirations, and what that means for the future of their career.
Then there was a big long room dedicated to his biography. Born in Romania, he moved to Paris (on foot!) in 1904 and swiftly found a place for himself amongst friends like Marcel Duchamp and Modigliani. Isn’t it mad that you could just do that? Get yourself to Paris and fall in with some of the most influential artists of the 20th century. These friendships were shown really beautifully through letters and photographs and works that they had each inspired in each other. But aside from being a beautifully told story of one man’s life, it felt like stepping into a snippet of history and getting to know the comings and goings of the art world — and with it the social and political world too — of that era.
The following rooms were filled with Brancusi’s sculptures and studies and sketches — some “inspired by the human form”, melting the boundaries of female and male bodies in a way that was quite scandalous at the time, and probably still is today. There were portraits, pieces inspired by animals, and several examples of his Infinite Column. I particularly loved “Le Baiser” (the kiss) which I just found very sweet and affectionate.
By the time we left the Pompidou, after a stroll through the permanent collections as well, the rain had stopped and the sun was out so we walked across the river, past the Notre Dame, along a bit of the Boulevard St Germain, and down towards Montparnasse where we visited the Musée Bourdelle. Again, neither of us had ever heard of it but it had been recommended in a newsletter, and I thought we should have a little look.
It was the home and studios of the sculptor Antoine Bourdelle, who according to the man giving a tour to a group of oldies, is often forgotten because of his chronological position between Rodin and the later, more radical sculptors. Poor guy. The museum itself was really extensive, and I loved the pieces out in the courtyards, basking in the sun. I also loved the bowl of garlic soup we each had from the café upstairs before we looked around. Very lucky that the waiter had two last pieces of chewing gum in his back pocket or we would have been in trouble.
The afternoon continued to be glorious after we left, so we stopped at a terrace for a while and drank wine in the sun, watching the very well-dressed and good-looking buskers play jazz on the corner. We were due to meet Emma’s friend Bleuenn at the Palais Garnier at 6, so it was the perfect way to fill the time.
Bleuenn had just been nominated Étoile of the ballet and was going to give us a tour around the building, which we were both a bit giddy about. For the first few months I lived in Paris (there I go again!), I walked past the Opéra every day on my way to work but was never compelled to go to a show. Maybe I was too skint, maybe I was more interested in dingy bars. So it felt very special that my first visit was a private tour with a prima-ballerina. The whole place was incredible, with its gold and its red velvet, and the Marc Chagall frescoes on the ceiling — which we observed from both on stage (!!) and the audience. But some of my favourite little moments were the tutus hung n hooks back stage and the pile of pink pointe shoes on Bleuenn’s dressing table. Like something out of a little girl’s dream!
Dinner that night was at a wine bar up the hill towards Montmartre. We shared a burrata, I had the daurade (bream in English — but isn’t daurade such a nice word?) and we all drank our own wines to our own tastes, recommended by the waiter who was new and very sweet and looked as though he was consulting an inner Excel spreadsheet when asked which wine went well with what. We walked off our meal browsing the sex shops that line the streets around the Moulin Rouge — they really are an attraction in themselves, very amusing, and manned by clerks who are almost too knowledgable. We left them all empty-handed but after a day of high culture, it was a trip to the gutter that we needed to even things out a bit.
The next day — Friday — we had tickets for the Louvre at 1pm, so the morning was spent eating breakfast on a terrace, drinking espresso like the Parisian I dream to be, and mooching around the vintage shops. In the past couple of years, I have become a lot fussier about the clothes I buy, and I think it’s for the better. My general criteria are that they should be secondhand, ideally, and if they aren’t then I am happy to spend more on something that is going to last me. In either case, the material composition is my main point of interest. We spent some time in Kiliwatch where they stock a mix of old and new — much of the vintage is a little tatty, but as I flicked through the shelves, I found my treasure:
It was the only thing I bought the whole trip apart from some postcards, and I’m fairly certain I will cherish it forever. I’ve never felt anything quite like it against my skin and it makes me never want to wear anything but silk for the rest of my life.
One thing to know about the Louvre is that even if you buy timed tickets, you still have to queue to get in. Another is that you’re better off heading away from the crowds before braving the main halls with their hoards of camera-wielding tourists jostling each other to get a snap of La Joconde. We started in the sculpture halls — I am realising now that sculpture was a real pillar of our trip — where the marble bums were all too good, then made our way through the French and Northern European painting sections. I would really recommend doing it this way because the spaces are so calm and you can get a proper look at everything. I am also a sucker for a Dutch still life, and there were Rubens a-plenty. Things started getting a little more hectic as we moved through ancient Egypt, Greece, and Rome, and it was positively wild by the time we got to the lower halls. Best to take your time, deep breaths, and enjoy the spectacle of it all.
A spot where a timed ticket means immediate entry, on the other hand, is l’Orangerie at the other end of the Jardin des Tuileries. After the Louvre, we were in need of a little rest, so we each bought an ice cream and sat down for a minute to regain our strength before our 16:00 entry to see Monet’s Waterlilies. In an ideal world, the two rooms holding these paintings would be perpetually empty, ready for quiet, solitary reflection, but even in a world where other people also want to see masterpieces of Impressionism, it’s not hard to admire and enjoy them. You kind of melt into the colours and feel the time of day in each of them — the fiery tones of sunset, the dark blues of twilight, the bright greens and blues of the afternoon. All from a few strokes of paint on canvas.
Friday night was perhaps my favourite chapter of the trip. All that art and architecture and culture had filled us right up and it was about time to get gassed. The evening started at a little bar in the 11e called La Buvette. It was run by an older lady who had her two feet firmly on the ground and knew her stuff about wine, but probably also most things in life. Emma had a glass of red and I had two whites accompanied by a classic plate of saucisson and possibly the most unique wine bar snack I’ve yet to come across — a pink pickled egg with Furikake on top, so good that we got two portions. They were perfectly marinated in some kind of secret brine, perfectly vinegary, creamy, smooth, salty, sweet, crunchy, everything you could possibly ever want from a pickled egg!
For dinner, it was Justine for a big bottle of red and steak frites, and then we thought we would do a bit of a bar crawl, but sitting at the bar at Nun’s Café on Rue Saint Maur, we were pretty much set for the evening. The bartender was everything you could ever dream of — charming, cheeky, welcoming, funny, kind, generous. He would ask us what we wanted and when we didn’t know he would magic us something from scratch. We were doomed, really.
Because of our position at the bar, people would have to lean right over us to order. In any other case, this may have been a nuisance, but here it just meant we made friends with everyone. The chatting and joking and laughing was loud and probably a little grating for the younger, grumpier, more serious bartender, but that didn’t really matter to us, surrounded by new faces and stories and the odd admirer. The bar closed around 2, so we asked our hero what we owed. He thought for a second and said, in no uncertain terms, €16 please. Neither of us could really believe it — we even checked our bank statements the next day to see if we had paid at some other point in the evening, but no, we’d gotten (almost!) a free ride till closing time.
The next morning, our final morning, we woke up with dry mouths and sore legs, so we took it slow before I had to go back to Charles de Gaulle — ibuprofen, a slow breakfast, sun in our faces, and our last chats before parting ways. Emma and I haven’t been friends for very long, and for much of our friendship, she’s been in Santiago and I’ve been over here, but to spend three days with her on exactly the same wavelength, equally enthused by the days and nights ahead of us, and just happy to be in each other’s company, was really something special. I’m home now and so is she, but I’ll be thinking about our trip for a long time!
See you in the next one,
Annabel
Just finished this and absolutely adored it 🥐 très bien
DREAM! And that tutu pic ❤️