Buns2025: Day 8 – Paris

Soundtrack: “Cemetery Gates”, The Smiths

Sadly it seems the crowds in the Metro have got me, and I can feel the first hints of getting a cold. The Paris Metro system, generally seems to work okay, once you work out how the ticketing goes. Took me a while, it all hinges on little paper cards that can be recharged. In theory it can work on phones, but after installing one app, then the app that needed, then yet another app that something needed, I hit a wall of it also seeming to want me to create another account for something else. So instead I found a machine that would spit out the magical blue card, which I could then charge with the number of rides I wished to take, at 2.5 euro each one. Of course not all Metro entrances dispense magic, which is a bit annoying, but given the trains seem to run frequently I can forgive the extra inconvenience — if I missed a train that only ran every 30 minutes because I spent 5 minutes finding the ticket machine I would have certainly wanted to expose the French to some of English’s finest four-letter words, but when the next train is in 5, c’est bien.

Apparently even the Parisiens talk about how crowded the Metro is, and it’s true. Paris seems to have the ideal situation for public transport: the roads are chaotic; things aren’t too far away from each other; and the trains run frequently. Why would anyone drive? I suspect without any research that there’s also a large population, especially among 1st and 2nd generation migrants, who simply don’t own cars. I don’t know if Paris is an expensive place to have a car, but with roads full of buses and cyclists and emergency vehicles I’m happy enough just knowing the French word for car (voiture).

So there are lots of people on the metro: workers, schoolchildren, folks begging. There are signs everywhere to watch out for suspicious objects and pickpockets, but the most dangerous situation I encountered was an accordion player, but there doesn’t seem to be a hotline number for reporting this. I did notice that at times there did seem to be more African-French (I’m sure there’s a better term to describe these people) on the Metro, but maybe that was just because of the lines I was taking or the time of day, I don’t know.

All I know, thanks to the tickle at the back of my throat, is that some asshole gave me a cold. Be prepared for future tales of near death experiences and woe.

Today started slowly, trying to rest more, before heading out to the Musee de Cluny, or the museum of the middle ages. Basically old pal K talked me into adding this to my itinerary, on pain of never making me anymore of her wonderful chocolate brownies, so along I went. It’s definitely an interesting museum, not huge, but well laid out, focussed mainly on more religious artifacts and customs, so there weren’t rooms of weaponry and armour. Stand outs for me included a Virgin Mary item that opened up to have crucified Jesus virtually burst from her chest (now there’s a movie for you Ridley Scott); and of course the big ticket item, the 6 tapestries of the Lady and the Unicorn. These magnificent and huge tapestries have been interpreted as one for each of the five sense, plus a sixth sense of plain old kicking ass. These are worth the entry fee alone (which in my case was covered by the Paris Museum Pass). I will say that I think they missed a trick in the gift shop, where there’s a souvenir microfibre glasses cleaning cloth but the sense chosen: taste. I mean, if ever there was an opportunity for a sight souvenir, that was it. Ah, those wacky French.

From the Musee de Cluny I hopped over to the Musee de Curie, only open a few half days each week, in the building where her and her husband did much of their groundbreaking, two-time Nobel Prize-winning research on radioactive things. Fortunately the building has been mostly de-radiated now, I probably got more rads from my flights than I did standing where objects used to glow in the dark. Was fascinating to see her office and lab, and some of the instruments that she used. Even if I don’t really understand how they were used, this science is magic to me, but somehow it’s possible with some brass and custom glass tubes, and other steampunk props, to identify different radioactive elements. There’s also a little garden where the Curies used to hang, so I stood on the steps and admired the sheer amount of science that had taken place in this little area.

Taking care when crossing the road (just a little Pierre Curie joke) I headed to the Pantheon, the big dome originally intended by Louis XV to be a church, but after his grandson lost his head, the building was proclaimed a mausoleum for great French people. Sadly the dome was off limits to visitors. I wandered the main gallery, which has statues, art, and under the dome, Foucault’s pendulum. Foucault was a guy who had a fetish for hanging large balls from long cables, I guess everyone needs a hobby. In this case Foucault’s hobby was demonstrating to folks that the earth was a sphere and did indeed rotate. Because of the way the ball swings, science folks when asked “How’s it hanging?” can reply with “With perfect diurnal motion”.

The crypt below the Pantheon is where the tombs of the awesome French people are. Victor Hugo, the Curies, Rousseau, Emile Zola, Josephine Baker. It’s a bit sad that, because the bar is so high, there aren’t a lot of folks entombed here, as there have indeed been more than the 80 or so awesome French folks currently occupying the crypt. Louis Braille is also entombed, and his inscription is also in braille. (I could go on at this point about general accessibility issues the Pantheon has, and wonder why all of the tombs aren’t similarly inscribed, but from a able-privilege perspective the little bit of braille is kinda cool.)

More dead people. Headed over to the nearby Cimetière du Montparnasse, final resting place of some other cool people. Was perfect weather for it, cold, light rain, overcast and late afternoon. The first grave I headed for, Alfred Dreyfus, was in a predominantly Jewish section, where I noted a fair few tombs inscribed “Mort en deportation” with dates between 1942-45. Dreyfus, for all the merde he went through, was at least able to pass on French soil. His grave was covered in pebbles, left by other visitors I guess. I just nodded, took a photo, and left him and his family in peace. Other tombs I visited: Guy de Maupassant, Samuel Beckett (I waited a while but no one else showed up), Susan Sontag, Serge Gainsbourg (which was covered in pot plants, I was half expecting the grave to be covered in cigarettes), Jacques Chirac (accidently found while searching for Gainsbourg), and Simone de Beauvoir and Jean Paul Sartre (whose joint grave was covered in pink and red lipstick graffiti).

Out of the cemetery, I passed a wall sign memorial to the Jewish victims deported “avec la complicite du gouvernement de Vichy”. That’s something I guess.

Bouillon Chartier are a traditional French restaurant that are seeing a new resurgence thanks to worldwide cost of living merde. Originally a cheap worker’s restaurant, with menus full of the classics, they are back in vogue and hugely popular, where people can get three courses for around 20-30 euro, depending on what they order. Vegetarian readers might want to skip the rest of the paragraph. After being seated by a waiter dressed like old-school waiters dress, black bow tie, white shirt, apron, black pants, I ordered entree of foie gras, the tete de veau plat, a side of mushrooms, and a glass of red wine, which the waiter wrote on the paper table cover. I’m almost proficient in restaurant French now, I can read and interpret most of a menu, I just struggle with numbers and some other concepts, but I’ve been making sure to ask for the French menu for practice. The foie gras came with some crunchy bread, and was delicious, creamy, not nearly as strong or pungent as I was thinking it would be: there are certainly bolder pates out there. The tete de veau was an experience, definitely not for the health conscious, but there’s something delicious to be found in this dish. It’s also testament to French names making things sound classy: insert the meme “boiled calves head” frowny face, “tete de veau” smiley face. Pretty sure my serve was definitely traditional, as there was the layer of fat around the meat that would sustain any worker, which I found a bit claggy, but the meat within was wonderful, a delicious and delicate beef flavour. Figuring I was already on my way to high cholesterol, I added a dessert of rhum baba to the table cover. A soft cake, some whipped cream, literally swimming in rum. There must have been at least two shots of rum on the plate. Just as the cake absorbed the rum, I absorbed the cake, which was quite delicious. I left the Bouillon Charter with a belly full of sustenance to take me through a full day’s work, just as long as it didn’t involve operating heavy machinery. Rustic French cuisine, for a budget, tres bon.

With my last full day in Paris ahead of me, and a full itinerary, I headed back to the hotel, where cold germs and alcohol could fight it out.