9th arr

I made a very grave error in my rundown of the 8th arr: I mentioned the area around the Opera as being part of the 8th, but in reality it's part of a little triangle of the 9th which juts into the 8th.  Sorry!

Anyway moving on, about half of the 9th is very much like the 8th in appearance and attitude; that is to say, it's very upper class, with Haussman buildings, wide boulevards, and expensive shops.  This is the area near the Opera and the big, chic department stores Printemps and Galeries Lafayettes.

The Opera (aka the Palais Garnier):

And a lovely picture, which is not mine, of the Galeries Lafayette from Christmas 2004:

It's big.

Anyway, heading north of this area a bit, it's still quite upper middle class, but more residential.  It features the large but not hugely interesting church of Notre Dame de Lorette (not my picture):

and also, oddly enough, two of the main non-Marais synagogues (all of the following pictures are from Wikipedia - I have in face been in the Synagogue Buffault but pictures were frowned upon).

Firstly, the Grande Synagogue de Paris, the largest in the city.  Dreyfus was married here.

And here is the Synagogue Buffault, where the family I work for had the bar mitzvah last year.  It's really beautiful inside, I wish I could have taken my own pictures.

If these appear very similar from the outside it's because the same architect designed both.  He had started building it but became involved in a dispute.  It seems that the Grande Synagogue was going to be Ashkenazy (Eastern European-style Judiasm) and didn't look kindly at Sephardic traditions (Middle Eastern/North African/Spanish-style Judiasm).  Being that the architect was Sephardic he was miffed and went to work for the other one.

That's pretty much everything that's in that half of the 9th arr, so I'll move on a bit.  Another bit of the area is taken up by a typical business atmosphere, with office buildings and such, so I'll skip that as well.

The remaining third or so of the 9th is part of the Pigalle area - the former and current red light district and former stomping grounds of poor artists.  Mostly these two populations were fed off each other, so in the mid to late 19th century Pigalle was somewhat isolated.

Pigalle is really what is at the foot of the hill Montmartre, the area currently famous for its art district.  However, a hundred twenty five years ago the award for "most bohemian, slightly gross, but also very interesting area of Paris" definitely well to Pigalle.  If you think of operas and novels with artists dying of tuberculosis in Paris, these will nearly all be set here.

Montmartre and Pigalle were also home to the first popular-level show theaters in the city - think can-can dancing, places like the Moulin Rouge.  One of the most famous of these places, although always in the higher class of shows, was the Folies Bergere, still well known today (again, not my pictures).

Whether you remember it or not, you have definitely heard of the Folies Bergere in some capacity: the subtitle on the building says it's "the most famous music hall in the world" and that is no lie.  The performances that came out of this place, starting around the 1880's, influenced the entire world of performance art to come, from music, dancing, spectacles, even to modern movies and musicals.

And you have probably seen this style poster, popular for the Folies Bergere through the 1930's:

The hall has seen many legendary performers, like Josephine Baker, Frank Sinatra, Charlie Chaplin, Edith Piaf, Marcel Marceau, Maurice Chevalier, and W. C. Fields.  Its shows were a bit more tasteful than those of, for example, the Moulin Rouge, but they still managed to be delightfully scandalous.

Today Pigalle is less of an artist haven and more of a red light district.  It's not particularly dangerous until much after dark, but there isn't much to do there unless you are a poor student - housing and food there is a lot cheaper than in most of Paris.  Several of my friends have visited and stayed in hostels there, happy about the low prices, only to find it a bit unsavory after dark.

That's not to say there aren't still interesting things in the area, there are.  Mostly there are some smaller but cool museums, like the Musee de la Vie Romantique (museum of life in the Romantic era), the perfume museum, the Musee Grevin, a wax museum, and the Musee Moreau, dedicated to the artist.

Anyway, although there are some isolated interesting things in the 9th, it would not be at the top of my list for tourists in Paris.  The Opera is certainly worth seeing, and if you're a shopper you'd like that surrounding area.  The rest of it certainly is no must-see, but for someone trying to get to know the character of Paris it would be a good stop.

Valentina Visconti, Duchess of Orleans

1368-1408 (the birthdate on her statue is actually wrong!)

Valentina here is an interesting lady to put in this collection.  I had only heard of her in passing previously, so all this information is rather new to me.  She is mostly remarkable because of various intrigues and family ties (and family intrigues) but she certainly had an interesting and tumultuous life.

Firstly, she was Italian, and born to the very powerful Visconti family of Milan, her father being the first duke of Milan.  I talked a bit about the influence Italian Renaissance families had on art and culture in this post, at the beginning.  Although the Viscontis more or less rose from the business class to form an oligarchy in Milan, they were soon considered noble enough to intermarry with the royal houses of Europe.  Valentina's mother Isabelle was a French princess, making her grandfather the king of France (Jean II).  Isabelle's marriage dowry was the area of Vertus, in Champagne, near Germany.  For reasons I don't fully understand, Valentina's father did not take control of this region, and instead Isabelle was named its sovereign countess, a title which eventually passed to Valentina herself.

Being already a member of the French royal family, I suppose it made sense for her to remarry into the line, and at 21 she married her cousin, Louis, the duke of Orleans and second son of the French king.  She was her parents' only child, although she had younger half brothers, and thus she was an heiress in her own right, which is why she inherited that small region in France.

Valentina's life at the French court was always on a bit of a fragile footing.  Court life was fraught at this time, anyway, being right in the midst of France's low point of the Hundred Years' War with England.  The king at the time, her brother-in-law Charles VI had periodic bouts of psychosis which ranged from believing he was made of glass to forgetting he was king, not recognizing his children, and thinking his name was George for a full year.  (It was his madness and inept ruling which led to the conditions that allowed Joan of Arc to be accepted in the French army, in fact.) So he was not the most reliable king, and it fell to his close family and advisers to run the country and take custody of his children - and his family member who had the most power was his brother, Valentina's husband, Louis.

However, Louis was known as a womanizer and generally not a very nice person and he was very unpopular.  The duke of Burgundy, a mostly independent area that nonetheless was a vassal of France proper, Jean "the Fearless" was much more popular, and eventually named regent during the king's madness.  Louis disputed this bitterly and their feud lasted many years.

In the meantime, Valentina grew very close to her sick brother-in-law in the first years of her marriage.  She appears to have been a friend to him (never rumors of any affair, so it was definitely not romantic) and his queen was jealous.  The queen might well have been jealous - there were also strong rumors that she was having an affair with Louis.   The climate was all around nasty, and more rumors were started because of the power struggles.  People were worried that the king would die, leaving Louis as king.  Valentina is recorded to have backed her husband in this, naturally, and developed a rivalry with Jean the Fearless' wife, because the royal family was afraid he'd try to steal the throne.  Gossip began to say that Valentina had actually used witchcraft to make the king ill.  Because of all this and Louis' disputes with men of power at the court, Valentina was exiled and never really allowed back at court for the duration of her marriage. 

At this point matters were made worse because when Valentina's doting father heard about her exile he also threatened to declare war on France.

Things finally came to a head in 1407, when Jean the Fearless had Louis assassinated rather gruesomely.  One day he was coming from visiting the queen in the Marais, with a number of unarmed men with him.  Fifteen thugs hired by Jean the Fearless attacked him while he was on his horse and repeatedly stabbed him until dead.  Despite the very public and violent nature of the assassination Jean the Fearless had enough support that he was able to nearly acknowledge his role in it, and had a theologian write an essay in defense of killing tyrants to justify it.

Valentina was apparently devastated by her husband's death and only lived for one year after it.  On her deathbed her sons swore vengeance against the Burgundians, but by her death her eldest son also entered the line of succession for the territory of Milan.  He was unfortunately captured during battle with the English and held captive because of his possibility of ascending the French throne.  His son in turn claimed the dukedom of Milan after Valentina's half-brothers died without sons, causing one of the periods of wars known as the "Italian Wars."

Although we know little of Valentina's personality and acts, it's apparent that she must have been a very strong and probably kind person.  She stood by her husband in spite of his unpopularity and poor reputation, endured her unfair exile while still supporting her family's cause, and was a friend to the king, who was not only sometimes insane and paranoid but deeply unhappy for most of his life.  She had ten children, only four of whom survived childhood, but her eldest son was a renowned poet, probably France's most famous of the Renaissance.

I would speculate that she is mostly included in the series of statues because of her tangential role in the Hundred Years' War, but I do wish more academics studied her as her own person, because I think she could be very interesting.  (And kudos to those who got through this soap opera of a life story!)

Place de la Concorde

As I previously mentioned in my rundown of the 8th arrondissement, the Place de la Concorde is my favorite spot in Paris.  Not because it's the prettiest or even the most interesting (although it is pretty interesting), but because it was the central spot for my favorite historical event - the French Revolution of course!

I'll start at the beginning, though.  The area was designed and started in 1755 under King Louis XV, and it originally featured a giant equestrian statue of him in the middle.  It was a good location for such a place, being at the opening of what I think of as the "royal sector" of Paris: it is at the mouth of the Tuileries gardens, which is the land outside the Louvre palace, which in turn is across the street from another royal residence, the Palais Royal (see my post on the 1st arrondissement).  At the time the Tuileries and obviously the Louvre were for royal use only; the side that is currently open, allowing the public in, was closed, and there were walls around the entire thing.  And down the street from the Place Louis XV, as it was known then, was the huge new church La Madeleine, which was built to be the new official royal church.  Here is a view down the street looking towards the Place de la Concorde from La Madeleine:

So it's not very far.

Also built along with the Place were the two remaining lovely stone buildings on each side of the street on the north side of the circle.  You can mostly just see one here, but they're identical (this is my mom's picture).

The building on the right was originally the home of the Naval Ministry but I believe it's either a hotel or offices, or both, now.  The one on the left was the home of a French duke, and continued to be home to aristocracy until 1907.  It was the Nazi headquarters during their occupation of Paris, and suffered damage from tanks during the Liberation in 1944.

From its construction to the Revolution the Place was mostly just a busy intersection with a large statue, as there is a bridge across the river right next to it.  By the 1780's, however, the royals had pretty much abandoned the Louvre palace for Versailles, and so by the time the Revolution came in 1789 it was, as far as the revolutionaries were concerned, up for grabs.

By 1793 the radical revolutionaries had come to power and several, including Robespierre, took up parts of the palace as their offices.  It was convenient, anyway, because the National Assembly building, which is more or less Congress, is just across the bridge on the Left Bank.  Given the Place's practical and symbolic significance it was easily chosen as the new home of Madame la Guillotine in the same year.  It was also renamed the Place de la Revolution.

Virtually every important person who was executed during the Revolution died here: royals Louis XVI, Marie Antoinette, Louis' sister the Princesse de Lamballe; Marat-assassin Charlotte Corday; revolutionaries Robespierre, St Just, Danton, Desmoulins; early feminist Olympe de Gouges.  As heads came off in front of a huge crowd, an old woman sat beside the guillotine, cutting sections of victims' hair for souvenirs.

Legend says that the blood from the guillotine irreversibly penetrated the pavement, and that for years after the Revolution horses used the shy away from entering place because of the smell of blood (not true).

The guillotine was removed in 1795 and shortly after the Place was renamed Place de la Concorde, to set the new phase of the Revolution apart from the radical guillotining phase.  Then followed a string of name changes that indicated how the political winds were blowing: it stayed pretty much the same under Napoleon, but when the monarchy was restored in 1814 it switched back to Place Louis XV, then in 1826 Place Louis XVI (to honor the king who was beheaded there).  Finally after another revolution in 1830 it was reverted back to Place de la Concorde and has been ever since.

Starting in the mid 1830's the Place underwent major renovations, which pretty much constructed its modern appearance.  The Ottoman (Turkish) Empire gave this real ancient Egyptian obelisk to France as a nice present; it was soon placed here as the centerpiece of the modern Place:

(Semi-related story: in 2008 I was feeling mopey one night and walked from home to the Place and called a friend from NY while sitting underneath the obelisk.  Being nighttime I thought I was safe from tourists but next thing I knew a group of 50+ Japanese tourists were all taking pictures of me - not the obelisk, but me.  I guess they thought it was a nice picture to get a mopey Parsian sitting next to a monument.)

The obelisk stands just where the guillotine used to be.  Interestingly, two obelisks were actually "given" to France at this time, but the other one was too large and heavy to be moved, so remained in Egypt even though technically it belonged to France.  It was kindly "given back" to the Egyptians in the 1990's.

The next project was to install the statues and fountains.  The fountains are allegorical: one represents river commerce and navigation (with personifications of the Rhone and Rhine rivers) and the other is the same for oceans (with personifications of the Atlantic and Mediterranean).

A close up picture, which is not mine:

The statues are at each of the eight angles of the Place.  They are female figures, each of whom represents one of the major cities of France: Brest, Rouen, Lyon, Marseille, Bordeaux, Nantes, Lille, and Strasbourg.  Paris isn't there because well, they're in Paris.

This one, as you can see, is Strasbourg, and illustrates how seriously people took these statues: in 1871 when the city was lost to the Germans in the Franco-Prussian war the statue was covered with a black mourning shroud until it was won back after World War I.

The lights and other decoration were later made with a similar green and gold nautical motif from the fountains:

Today the Place is the busiest intersection in Paris after the Arc de Triomphe roundabout at the other end of the Champs Elysees.  It's a bit hard to appreciate all the interesting details here when you're concerned about getting hit by cars going in every direction.

I still like, it though, and like I mentioned, I go there sometimes if I'm feeling down.  It cheers me up in a morbid way I suppose!

It also has a really nice view of the Eiffel Tower.

My Glorious Return

this is a long one, so get out your reading glasses!

Most of you have probably heard by now that I will be returning to NY this winter - one assumes for good.  There are two main reasons.

- It is hard, although not impossible, to renew my visa here.  Without being an au pair again (which was fine, but I don't want to do it for another year), I would need to find a place that would hire me full time as an employee, and would be willing to sponsor my visa renewal.  That means they would have to pay extra for my medical insurance - everyone here must be on the national plan, but for foreigners that means employers have to pay additional fees to do it - and given my position here it's difficult to find a place willing to do that.  In the meantime I'm doing some miscellaneous hourly work until I leave.

- I've said this in the past, but I really don't know that many people here and it's fairly hard [for me] to make friends.  I was friends with some other au pairs last year, but as that is usually a one-year thing, they've all left Paris.  I'm really not the type to randomly go out and meet people, so it's been somewhat lonely here (although I am by nature a loner so this is not so big a deal as it might seem).  However by now I really do wish I could be around my friends and family again.  I've missed three or four weddings since being here as well!

- Additionally, thanks to some amazingly lovely people in my old office (hello, SFS!) I'm not incredibly stressed about finding a new job in NY, which makes the transition at least easier.  I don't know yet what exactly I'll be doing after I get back, as it's hard to figure that kind of thing out from an ocean away, but that is not as heavy a burden as it would be otherwise.

Obviously it is going to be a big transition for me to go back, in some good and some bad ways.  I have mixed feelings about it.

Things I will miss:

- Paris!  All of it.  I will miss walking along the Seine; trying to memorize the order of the bridges; climbing up my hill towards the Pantheon when I come home; taking my shortcut through the Luxembourg as I come home from babysitting; saying hello to my local baker, produce people, and sandwich people; discovering new little streets I'd never seen before; finding new cheeses and wines I'd never tasted.  Living in the midst of incredible history.

- Speaking French all the time.  Immersion is really the best way to learn a language, and if you don't practice it, you will lose skills. I didn't even begin learning French properly until I was 19, and I've only been speaking it semi-fluently for a few years.  Learning a language that late has disadvantages, mostly that it's a lot easier to lose as you lose it less.  Not only that, but it's a beautiful language and I will miss using some of the more descriptive or fun phrases.

- My tiny little apartment.  I've grown very fond of it in my time here.  Despite all the stairs and my lack of a stove I really do like my space, and I love my location in the city.  I will not miss my stupid low wooden beam, though.

- The children I do/used to babysit.  They really are good kids, and it's sad to think I won't see them after this winter (although I've already been invited to the next bar mitzvah, which would be in February 2014!)  They all improve my French, even the little ones.  I'll miss cooking with them, gossiping about their school friends, brushing little M's long, curly, perpetually tangled hair (I'm the only one she lets do that - not her mom, dad, or her new nanny), answering baby O's impossible number of questions about everything (he's not really a baby anymore, at more than two, but everyone calls him that anyway).

- Watching Parisians.  They really are the most beautiful city of people I've ever seen.  I love looking at their outfits and eavesdropping on their conversations.

Things I'm excited about:

- Seeing everyone!  That is of course the overwhelming good part about this whole thing: I'll be around New York again not as a visitor but as a resident.  When someone tells me about their concert coming up in a couple of months or is planning a birthday get together I can say yes, I'll be around, I'll see you there!  I won't have to plan how to fit all the people into a limited time because I'll have unlimited time.

- Speaking English all the time.  Possibly a contradiction with the above, but oh well.  It will be nice not to have to think about what comes out of my mouth.  Are my subject, verbs, adjectives all in agreement?  How do I form the imperfect tense with that irregular verb again?  Oh..what is that word, I know I know it!  I won't have to think about all of that, I can just talk.

- Related to the above, being surrounded by American products again.  One of the trickiest parts about living here is that there is a lot of specific vocabulary I don't know: less common food (especially cuts of meat), medicines, things you'd get at a drugstore, things like that.  Also things are of course measured with the metric system here; it took me a while to get used to requesting produce and such by the kilo or get a good feel for conversions in recipes.  It will be so nice to be able to just go into a store and pick up exactly what I need instead of trying to describe something random to the salesperson.

- Food.  I do love French food, but I'm very excited to get spicy things again!  Mexican, Indian, Thai, Japanese...ah, the possibilities!  I just hope I can still find good falafel.

Things I'm apprehensive about:

- Having missed certain things, or generally being out of the loop.  This has happened every time I've been home: I don't hear about some pieces of news - this could be on a personal, local, or national level - because I'm not around.  People forget to tell me things because they forget that everyone doesn't just know.  Or, because I've gotten out of the habit of reading local NY news online and get most of my news at an international level, I miss little news stories that everyone else has heard of.  I always feel really dumb!

- Running.  I've been running frequently of late, and I do it in the Luxembourg gardens, close to my apartment.  Parisians don't really run on the streets/sidewalks, and gyms are crazy expensive, so that's the appropriate place to do it.  I don't know what I'll do when I go back, as I'd feel weird running on streets and there are either no good parks for it (in Northport), or the ones that are I'd feel weird about running in (in Brooklyn, ie Prospect Park; Central Park is too long of a journey from Brooklyn).

- Finding a new apartment when I eventually move back to Brooklyn.  I loved my old one so much that I feel like anything else will be less!  Also I've been perusing prices and they appear to have gone up, boo.  For the record (since I've heard rumors that certain uncles are suggesting I should move elsewhere), I believe the only places I could ever live long-term in the US would be NYC or Austin - although the latter is a bit dubious because it is, alas, surrounded by Texas. 

- Explaining to move and my plans to each and every person I encounter when I go back.  I understand the need to do this but it gets tiresome and every time I recount things like that it makes me question myself again.  I hope to negate some of that via this post!

So those are pretty much all my thoughts on the matter.  I'll probably post a bit more in the upcoming months about it, with greater amounts of angst about leaving Paris, and excitement about returning to NY.  I'll be back for good December 21st, and will be making a pre-move visit around Thanksgiving.  See you this winter!

8th arr

Warning: very long and picture-heavy!

Today we find ourselves in the 8th arr, the first time we've been on the Right Bank since the 4th.  If you recall, for the most part the Right Bank is characterized by being comparatively more modern, spacious, chic, wealthy, and business-oriented than the Left.

The 8th embodies kind of high culture and fashion that a lot of people think of with Paris.  It's beautifully laid out, with wide boulevards, lots of centralized squares and roundabouts, Haussmann buildings, and top notch fashion and luxury stores.  Walking around here you get an overall idea of sophistication and a "unified urban landscape."

I talk so much about the physical layout and architecture here because there is such a large difference between strolling around in a place like this (not my picture - in the Marais):

 

and a place like this, Boulevard Malesherbes in the 8th:

 

Anyway, the history of the 8th lies almost entirely in the 19th century, and nearly everything you would see here was built in the mid to late 19th century.  It is the epitome of the bourgeois class of Paris during this time: Haussmann's reconstruction of the streets of Paris he started here, because it was where all the newly rich middle classes lived.  They wanted wider streets for their large carriages, wider sidewalks for ladies' dresses, more modern and aesthetically pleasing roads, and no old-fashioned cobblestones.  There is very little here that is historically significant aside from its role in Paris' modernization.

Today it's easily the largest of Paris' central arrondissements, and as of the last census had more jobs than any other one but was one of the least densely populated.  So this is an area, like the 2nd arr, where a lot of people work but few live.  

The 8th is home to many places of interest.  First and foremost of course, is the Champs Elysees.  That world renowned street runs for a bit over a mile on the southern bank of the 8th and has an important landmark at each end.  On the west side is the Arc de Triomphe (not my picture):

 

While very famous, not a lot of people know what it actually is.  It's a monument to those who died in the French Revolution and Napoleonic war, a tribute to Napoleon's victories, and more recently the main Tomb of the Unknown Soldier for the country.

On the west side is the Place de la Concorde, my personal favorite spot in Paris!  This was formerly known as the Place Louis XV, the Place de la Guillotine during the Revolution, the Place de la Revolution post-revolution, and now is the aforementioned name.  So did you catch that?  Place de la Guillotine.  This is in fact the infamous spot where the aristocrats were beheaded during the Revolution, with the guillotine placed symbolically at the end of the grounds of the Louvre palace and in the center of the city.

More about this circle in a later post.

In between those two monuments is the Champs Elysees, possibly the most famous street in the world - and historically often described as the most beautiful.  Just for fun here are a couple of historic pictures of it, the first from 1891 and the second from 1944, with General de Gaulle's victory parade.

And here it is today (not my picture).

It is now more or less an American-based shopping mall.  I try to avoid it whenever possible, except at Christmastime.  Every year the big Bastille Day parade goes up the street to the Arc de Triomphe.

There are a few notable buildings along the Champs Elysees, including the Elysee Palace, France's White House.  Not far from there are the Grand Palais and Petit Palais, which were never inhabited palaces, both built for the 1900 Universal Exposition, and now are art museums.  (Not my pictures).

Grand Palais:

Petit Palais:

Moving northward from the Place de la Concorde, which you can see in the background here, you can go up one of the lovely wide boulevards...

to the Madeleine, a huge church built in the early 19th century in Neo-Classical style.  I talked about it a bit here.

It is immense.  La Madeleine, the Arc de Triomphe, and the Pantheon exemplify the Neo Greek/Roman architectural fetish that Paris had in the 19th century - taken nearly wholesale from those traditions, and brought about because the French Empire under Napoleon really believed itself to be the next Roman Empire.

Anyway, the areas around La Madeleine and the Arc de Triomphe are the places for high fashion and luxury in Paris - and therefore the foremost in the world probably.  You can see pretty much every haute couture designer in one of those areas, every exclusive jeweler/watchmaker, etc.  The types of stores where they intimidate you from going in if you're not dressed accordingly.

In the north of the 8th is the most fashionable of Paris' many train stations, the Gare St Lazare (don't ask me how a train station can be fashionable - I think it's mostly by virtue of its location).  And next to that is this monster of a Neo Byzentine/Neo Gothic church, St Augustin.  It's so large I couldn't get it in one picture.

Here is one, not mine obviously

In my opinion it's not terribly attractive, and the inside is not that remarkable.  For being such a new church it's very dark and gloomy.  Definitely the most notable thing for me was that it has wooden floors - the only church I've been to here that does, and it made my boots embarrassingly loud!

Finally, the last part of the 8th I want to show is the Parc Monceau, a lovely and little known park, and it appears to be the only one of its type on the Right Bank.  It really should be more appreciated by tourists.

It's an odd place, but I'll talk more about it in a later post.  For now, just a few pictures.

I like the 8th arr quite a bit, despite its air of exclusivity and pretentiousness.  It feels more comfortable to me than the 7th for some reason.  They're similar in many ways, but I like that the 8th mostly wants to just revel in its culture and fashion; I suppose it seems more open.  Anyway, although there are huge tourist spots here, like the Champs Elysees, there are also some little-known gems like the Parc Monceau.  There are a lot of things to see here and it makes a nice few hours of exploration.

Laure de Noves, poetical inspiration

Laure de Noves, c.1308-1348.

This is going to be a tough one for those who are not connoisseurs of poetical styles, and I find her the strangest inclusion in the gardens.  Laure de Noves was a daughter of minor aristocracy, and as far as we know did nothing actively interesting with her life.  She lived in Avignon, where the writer and poet Petrarch happened to spend some time.  According to legend (and somewhat according to his own poems, but those are hard to take literally), he saw her leaving church one day and instantly fell in love with her.  He proceeded to write nearly all his poems about her.

This is important because Petrarch developed his own style of poem, the Petrarchan sonnet, and because he was one of the earliest humanist philosophers and writers of the Renaissance.  So nearly all of these new innovative sonnets were about Laure de Noves.  Despite the fact that he hardly spoke to her, she married someone else, and she did nothing in particular, she's renowned for being the earliest poetical muse, and an embodiment of the idea of courtly love, where a knight or troubadour pines after a lady above his station in love without ever receiving anything in return.

There is some debate as to whether or not Petrarch's "Laura" was real, or if he used some imaginary ideal woman to write his poems.  If she was real it seems sure that she was this woman, Laure de Noves, who lived in the same town, was the right age and station, and had a similar death date.  It's not known whether she was aware of Petrarch's fixation, either.

Interestingly, she is an ancestor of the Marquis de Sade, who took the idea of love in the complete opposite direction. 

Travel in Europe

I got an email today from a business that emails me regularly with updates and deals.  It advertised the following "bons plans," or "good ideas":

38 Euro round trip flight to Venice

37 Euro round trip to Marseille

52 Euro round trip to Berlin

76 Euro round trip to Casablanca (Morocco), from Lyon

108 Euro 5 night trip to Marrakesh (Morocco), including flight and hotel

101 Euro 5 night trip to Budapest, same thing

102 Euro, same thing to Libson (Portugal)

114 Euro, same thing to Madrid

And more.

Let me tell you, if I had someone to take with me I would be going to Marrakesh this weekend.  Literally the only thing stopping me from doing that is because, for safety reasons, I hesitate to go to Morocco without a guy.

I thought I'd share this because often Americans are either baffled or very impressed by my tendency to travel around, last minute, on my own.  It's really not hard here to plan a quick, safe trip to another country for a very low price.  There are budget airlines to get to farther-away places, and fast, efficient trains to go places nearby.  They often also have student and/or young people deals.  Every major city also has student/young people hostels which are safe and very cheap.  Finally, most major cities here have great public transportation to get around easily once you end up there.

One must also keep in mind that European countries are generally impossibly tiny compared with what Americans are used to: excluding Russia, France is the third largest country in Europe (after Turkey and Ukraine) and is smaller than Texas.  The Netherlands, for example, towards the small side but still a popular destination, is bigger than Maryland but smaller than West Virginia - it's about 16,000 square miles.

So when I pop over to London for a weekend, that is about 285 miles by train; to Brussels is less than 200 miles; to Berlin is about 620 miles.

It's easy, convenient, and quick to travel around Europe once you're already here; it's not much different from my traveling to Boston or Washington DC from NYC if I wanted to.  And with knowing English and French, I can communicate pretty much anywhere I might go.

I guess for some people it would be difficult to travel to a new, foreign city alone.  I don't really have a reason for being comfortable with that, other than that I've been doing it a long time, I've done it enough to know what to do/what not to do, and generally I prefer traveling alone, anyway.  It lets me do exactly what I want to do.

And you can see how tempting it is to go around when I get emails with deals like that all the time!

7th arr

(Disclaimer: I own absolutely none of the photos in this entry)

Clever people will have noticed by now that the history of Paris was largely shaped by the movements of the upper classes.  Each time another area became fashionable for aristocrats to live there it also became richer, more artistic, and more well organized.  I've told you about the first few centuries of Parisian history, when they were in the 1st arr, then about when they moved to the Marais in the Middle Ages.

By the 17th century the Marais was no longer the thing, and for the first time ever the aristocrats moved across the river to the Left Bank.  Before this the Left Bank was mostly for scholars, artists, students, philosophers, and generally poor people.  They kept out of the traditionally university and/or arts based 5th and 6th arrs, and instead moved to the westernmost portion of the Left Bank, which is now the 7th arr.  At the time it was called a "faubourg," which is an old way of saying suburbs but really indicated that it was outside of Paris proper.  These days it's fully within central Paris, but the association with the faubourg and aristocracy became so strong that even today people use the phrase "the faubourg" to mean, "the areas where rich people live."

The 7th arr remains the area of Paris with the highest average income (2nd highest income in France), and I believe it's the most expensive area to live.  I've never known someone who has lived there - although my Parisian ex-boyfriend once told me wide-eyed about a party there he was invited to once.  It was too posh for him, apparently, and he left quickly!

It's a really pretty and well-organized area of the city, and it's where the American University of Paris is (I took a class there in 2008).  Since it has always been a well-funded area, and was not inhabited as much in the medieval period (which would mean the streets would be tiny and windy and narrow) the 7th features wide boulevards and more modern buildings.  I say "modern" in comparison with some of the previous arrondissements, of course; this area has a high concentration of "Haussmann buildings" that were built in the late 19th century.  These are the buildings you see in most pictures of modern Parisian streets, like this:

They are 6 or 7 story apartment buildings with balconies, almost all made of stone like that and looking alike.

It also has probably one of the highest concentrations of landmarks/tourist spots in the entire city.

Here is the Champs de Mars, an area that has always been a park - and just before the French Revolution a lot of peasants were killed here during a protest.  It had a violent reputation for quite a while.

Today that history is almost entirely forgotten, because the Champs de Mars is now mostly known for being the area in front of the Eiffel Tower (the above picture is taken from the Eiffel Tower, looking south across the Champs into the 14th arr)

There is also the Invalides, which is a very grand building that used to be a military hospital.  Today it's mostly a military museum, and it's where Napoleon is buried.  The church on the grounds is one of the most recognizable buildings in the city if you walk around; you can see it from a lot of places.

Inside the dome:

It also has a lot of notable museums.  First on the list is the renowned Musee d'Orsay, home to the best collection of Impressionist art in the world.

The building was originally a train station, which is very evident inside!

That museum, the second most prominent in the city, is just across the river from its main rival, the Louvre.

The 7th is also home to the Musee du Quai Branly, a modern art museum; the Musee Malliol, an underappreciated eclectic museum with painting drawing and sculpture by artists like Picasso, Degas, Cezanne, Gaughin, Poliakoff, Kandinsky, and Duchamp; and of course the Rodin museum.

It is also a highly political area: along with a number of embassies and offices of representatives, next door to the Musee d'Orsay is the National Assembly, the equivalent of Congress.

The Academie Francaise, the formidable body that governs the French language is also in the area.

Finally there are also a couple of top universities, including the central buildings of the "Sciences Po," the possibly the premier political science university in Europe, particularly for research.  The Ecole Militaire, or military school, is a short walk away from the Eiffel Tower; this is where all officers in the French army are trained and it's the main national defense center.

As you can see, the 7th arr is a particularly busy and notable area of the city.  Virtually any tourists who have ever been to Paris will have found themselves here at some point, whether their interests lie in monuments, like the Eiffel Tower and Invalides, or art, like at the Musee d'Orsay.  However, I go here very rarely as it's one of those places that despite its significance, does not have much for residents of the city.  Because it's expensive and crawling with tourists I hardly ever feel the need to get over that way, unless one of the museums has a cool exhibit.  Aesthetically I like the area a lot; practically it's one to be avoided if you are, like me [maybe], a young, frugal Parisian.