Buns2025: Day 6 – Paris

Soundtrack: “Never can say goodbye”, The Communards

I have Louvred. Somehow I managed to get up early (probably due to my body not yet knowing what time it’s supposed to be) and headed down to that big old museum. Stopped for breakfast at an artisanal boulangerie, where I couldn’t decide if I wanted the croissant or the the pain au chocolat so I went for both. And they both were very nice, either dunked or undunked. I’m still not converted. Does dunking add something to the croissant? Not really if it’s fresh. Does it add anything to the coffee? Nope.

I booked a 9.30am admission so when I wandered to the Louvre at 830am there was a huge crowd for 9am. Took the time to stroll around the Tuileries Jardin for a while. The Tuileries user to be a huge building, until the Communards (19th Century French version, who as far as I know never released any Top 10 songs until Jimmy Sommerville joined much later) burnt it down in the 19th Century, probably not with the intention that the area should be turned into a park but I think the result turned out fine. Lots of happy dogs going for early walks, joggers (Paris has a lot of joggers, they seem to be everywhere, so it’s probably not the best city to hide a body), and a boulangerie van. Go for a run and then get a cookie dough croissant. I figure if the Communards knew their hard work would be turned into a jogging spot for the petite bourgeoise they are probably revolting in their graves.

From the arch in front of the Louvre there’s a clear line to the Arc de Triomphe, with the obelisk at Place de Concorde lining up nicely in the middle. Sadly for anyone out there with OCD, the Louvre glass pyramid doesn’t also line up, it’s a few degrees out, so that’s a missed opportunity. But that’s kind of Paris really, they do some straight lines, but they also do lots of crazy angles, like it would be a crime to make a simple 4-way intersection with right angles or something.

I bit the bullet and joined the 930am queue before 9am. It’s amusing to see that the French can organise queuing when they need to, in spite of being quite queue averse the rest of the time. At the Louvre each 30 minute entry time has its own place, and they even appear to check the time of each ticket. Of course the queues themselves get populated by all manner of nationalities for which queuing is a curse: USians, Italians, Chinese, Australians, sadly even the English these days, it seems they are sadly succumbing to a bloated sense of individual entitlement. Queuing may have once been the English pastime, but like all the sports they invented, eventually they became crap at it.

Once inside, of course the first thing I went to was the picture. You know the one, painted by a ninja turtle. As it was still early, I did manage to get to a position at the front of the barrier, where there was only 3-4 metres of air and bulletproof glass between me and the work. Yeah, there are a lot of truths about this painting: it’s not huge, it’s not finished, sure the artist was Italian but it was the French king that took pity on the sucker and bought the work in progress, and yeah, she doesn’t really smile. Is it overrated? Who can really say, I’ve seen a number of da Vinci’s portraits and they are all incredibly striking (people literally pass one of these in the gallery outside, many without even noticing, on their way to the main event), when he wanted to that guy could paint. Is it unfair that a single work should get so much attention? Absolutely, but hopefully the millions of folk who brave the queues each year for a glimpse of La Jaconde spend the time checking out other things. And FYI, that painting is better than any daft stunt I’ve seen by any tiktokinfluenceridiotasshole. So just go and stick your mockumentary stick up your arse and just go and quietly admire something pretty neat.

FYI, after saying goodbye to the work I found my new favourite Titian painting in the same room, Woman with a Mirror. I’m not going to go into great detail about art and stuff here, I have at least one occasional reader whose art knowledge makes me look like wikipedia with a head injury. But I do like Titian. There’s wonderful contrast in their work, light and dark, with bits of colour, capturing such plain yet stunning facial expressions. And that sucker could paint hands, natural looking hands with amazing detail. Titian, check them out.

I also checked out another turtle, Raphael, who has some amazing pieces in the Louvre. Big imagery, lots of colour, impressive technique, and seemed to spend a lot of time painting nude baby jesus. In fact, that whole gallery has an uneven distribution of clothing, so for every well dressed noble, or rag dressed peasant, there were many babies, women, and men wearing nothing or at best a little strategically placed strip or wrap, maybe a hair ribbon if that counts. Artists: getting people naked since the 15th Century. Maybe that’s what the whole Renaissance was about, the moment where artists started to be allowed to get folk naked as long as they fulfilled their quota of jesus paintings.

The Louvre, where the French stashed bits of stolen Greece and Egypt before the British got in on the act. The British Museum cops a lot of bad press (mostly, but not all, due to the Scottish guy “acquiring” bits of the Acropolis), but I’d not be surprised if the Louvre has as much, if not more, similarly “acquired” artifacts. I also wouldn’t be surprised if they had a competition in the 19th and 20th centuries as to which had more. Once day I’ll get to Greece and Egypt, but until then I can’t really get too uppity about the provenance of historical artifacts. I’ve certainly benefitted from being able to go to the UK, France, Germany, the US, to see things that I wouldn’t have otherwise. Since people started travelling they’ve started taking things from one place to another, sometimes with permission, sometimes not. At the same time throughout history people have demonstrated they probably shouldn’t be put in charge of safeguarding important stuff, especially when money is involved. Basically, people are assholes, and I have no answers.

I certainly enjoyed wandering the Egyptian collection. Those folks sure knew how to bury rich people. Some amazing stone caskets, including a huge black one, with matching lid, that I couldn’t help but admire the work involved (as well ans the hernias for anyone who was involved in moving it). While I’ll happily be cremated, if a spot did open up for burial in that then sign me up. Also blue hippopotamus.

Like all hoards of stolen treasure, it’s easy to get all museum-ed out at the Louvre. There was so much more to see but I got tired, so made the woman with no arms my final stop. Again, it’s an amazing work, and I’m happy to have seen it. I’m not really a huge sculpture person, they are very pretty, but I generally get more from getting up close to paintings, seeing the colours and brushstrokes and little details that shaped marble doesn’t give me — it’s almost the opposite, where you don’t want to see the toolmarks.

I had a courgette soup for lunch, and thoroughly enjoyed it, before taking my bag of washing to the local laundromat (the French call them libres, even though they have nothing to do with books, go figure). It took a while to master the payment system, as it was a case of load machine, go to central payment box, put in the number, then go and hit start — fine with the wash but took me a while to sort out the dryer as the trick was to stand there and pay multiple times to get more than one 9 minute cycle.

French bistro dinner: escargot, onion soup, entrecote avec frites. For me snailes are fine, a slight texture, and lots and lots of garlic and butter with some green herbs. Delicious. Onions soup also, hearty beef broth, caramelised onions, topped with chunks of cheese on toast, what’s not to like, it’s almost a perfect meal. And steak and chips, and the French might not have invented fries but they do a great job making them.

Took a wander around the Bastille, or where the Bastille was. I guess that was the whole point of storming in way back when, to destroy it and what it symbolised. They did a great job, no longer an oppressive prison, it’s a public square, a big tower, and a lot of joggers. It’s technically not a glorified roundabout, as it’s not possible to drive all the way around it, it’s more of just a traffic inconvenience.

I finished the evening at a cafe called La Fee Verte, which unsurprisingly specialises in many types of absinthe. At least a dozen. I started with the Libertine Intense, at a rather non-gentle 72% abv. The server brought me the absinthe in a glass, sugar cube with spoon on top, which she then dunked in the liquor before setting it on fire. A handy apparatus then dripped cold water onto the cube until it dissolved or dropped into the glass below. Who doesn’t love some theatrics. The final glass contents would have been at least half water, diluting the absinthe significantly. What I was left with was a glass of warming fennel liquor, a soothing aniseed. I last had absinthe over 20 years ago, and definitely found it crazy and harsh back then, but I’m now used to cask strength whisky and high abv. My second absinthe was Jade 1901, which absinthe bloggers seem to rave about, and I can see why. Wonderful depth of flavour, with hints of mint in the aniseed, and a smooth almost creamy body. Delicious, I can see myself drinking that again. Absinthe won’t replace whisky, but I think I can certainly appreciate a glass occasionally. No fairies were harmed in the making of my evening, no visions were had, but my eyes were very glad to close once my head hit the pillow.

Tomorrow is more modern art, the Musee d’Orsay, home of much cool things as well as a bunch of post-impressionists.