Pre-Camino Travels | Camino Part 1 | Camino Part 2 | Camino Part 3 | Camino Part 4 | Camino Part 5
The Pre-Camino Jaunt through France...because why not?:
You might be reading this because you thought it was a good idea to hear what I was doing in Europe, trying to walk 500 miles across Spain. I'll get to that in a bit. But first...
I spilled into the Charles de Gaulle airport on a Tuesday afternoon weaving through a French film crew making a young boy race down escalators over and over again while passengers waited patiently for the film crew to capture their moment. Welcome to the birthplace of film! Wooooo, France! Per usual, people mistakenly think I know what I'm doing in public and I explained (IN FRENCH) to a woman how to get to another terminal in the airport. I don't speak French, you guys, but I am totally literate with numbers and pointing and mumbling cheerful vowels. After giving instructions to a stranger in this foreign land of fromage and omelettes, I knew I was going to be just fine.
The hostel (I had booked a few hours before during my layover in Dublin) was right next to the Gare du Nord train station. This made it the ideal destination to stumble to in my jet-lagged state. I am also probably the only person in Paris who is visiting without any knowledge that the Euro Cup is going on all over France. Large groups of men chanting things in matching shirts, some wearing a flag from their home country as a cape, roam the streets.
In my jet-lagged first night in Paris, I joined the Englishmen at the hostel bar and got (re)acquainted with football (yes, soccer) rivalries and their preferred chants and off-key songs. My favorite was when the Irish insulted the Swedes by chanting: "Go home to your sexy wives."
The lack of French in the air reminded me of one of my favorite headlines from The Onion: "George Bush gives France 30 days to speak English." As I would find out throughout the week, the first question to me as an American is to explain our unbelievable Presidential Candidates. I shrug sorrowfully and say I am a vegetarian art teacher who loves Europe and Mexico.
Paris Day 2:
My friend, Dallas, who I met in Spain last year, connected me with her French boyfriend, Quentin, (pronounced: Gon-TA while speaking through your nose) who was working in Paris and, thanks to Facebook communication, graciously met up for a drink with me. He is a protection officer, who interviews refugees seeking asylum in France. I learned that while Germany has accepted over a million refugees this past year, France has only accepted about 70,000. I have the impression that Quentin is helping a lot of people in this world.
I joined Quentin in the Fan Zone to watch the France v. Albania match. Thousands gathered to watch a jumbo screen in the field in front of the Eiffel Tower. The security to get into the Fan Zone was intense. It is good I did not have the French words to express my feelings to the girls around me pushing to get to the front of the women's frisk line.
The experience at this sporting event caters mainly to the male population so I used the men's toilets. The security guard found me and began snapping his fingers at me to get out of the men's section. I'm happy to report I did my part to liberate the female bladder muscles from the oppressive women's waiting lines. "Allez Les Femmes!"
The fan zone consists of thousands of people gathered in front of the Eiffel Tower roaring at the screen when France scores a goal and booing at the screen when the camera pans across French President, Francois Hollande, seated in the stadium. Do You Hear The People Sing? I certainly did.
After the match, Quentin and I walked for several metro stops, passing through the Latin Quarter, amazingly lit up at night, before we could eventually get onto a metro train that didn't have huge queues
Paris, Day 3:
I walked to the legendary Montmartre neighborhood and walked past Moulin Rouge and then the temporary residences of Van Gogh, the oh-so-French musician Eric Satie, and even a residence of Renoir. I climbed up to unbelievably scenic Sacré Cœre, as you do, but returned to La Rue Lepic for a lunch at Le Cafe de 2 Moulins, made famous by the movie, Amelie, of course, where Amelie works as a waitress. There was definitely a bigger fan girl there though when I sat down at an outside table. She was dressed in Amelie-like clothes with a very Audrey Tautou haircut. In the photo below , you can see her friend taking a picture of her from across the street.
I ate at an outside table while watching construction workers saunter by chewing on torso-length baguettes. It was everything. I probably would have cried happy tears if I hadn't been so dehydrated.
The Louvre
The next stop was the Louvre. My.very.first.time. I was supremely happy being among so much humanity that I barely noticed the...humanity. The crowds were bad but not that bad. I spent many hours in my undergraduate years reading about the origins of French Modernity, and here I finally was in front of Ingres, David, Delacroix, and a few other classical gems to make my heart race. I was too happy to finally be wandering this amazing building. It is also an experience to watch large crowds look at themselves through a screen standing in front of Leonardo Da Vinci's Mona Lisa. My favorite overheard conversation was between a boy and his father in American English standing in front of the nude statue. Boy to his father: Dad, is Venus de Milo a boy or a girl? Dad: She's a girl. That's about all I can tell you.
I will admit that I even snapped a shot in front of the Mona Lisa with my niece's baby molar. This brings me to the bag of teeth I am carrying around. During my going away party, I asked people to a bring a rock or a quote for me to carry with me on my trip. I have a few really good rocks and I'm honored to carry them in a little plastic baggie on my person at all times. They are tucked between my passport and an emergency energy bar. One of the objects in my bag is from my friend Robert who gave me the fossilized tooth of an Oreodon, a creature that existed 35 million years ago. He dug it up in Nebraska. A relative of Robert, Sky, who I've never met before but is a true artist soul, arrived at my party and gave me a "stone of safe return." I think its powers will reveal itself as I walk with it. One other notable object I am carrying comes from my niece, Sarah. You see, Sarah had a loose baby tooth when she arrived at my party. She began working really hard to wiggle it free during the course of the party. I'm not sure if it was going to come out in an hour or a week but she's a tough girl and out it came. She offered her tooth to me as an object to carry through Europe. (Of course, the tooth was photographed first for tooth fairy verification.) So now I have a 9-year-old baby molar and a millions-year-old Oreodon molar to accompany me.
Paris, Day 4:
Today was the day I was to reunite with my friend, French-speaking Swiss Rachel, whom I met in Mexico almost 5 years ago. I had travelled and learned Spanish with her for a few months and we had not seen each other in almost 5 years. Upgrading from a random hostel full of Brits to an Airbnb fancy-pants apartment is an odd lifestyle shift. I had booked 3 nights in the tre chic Le Marais neighborhood weeks ago to share with Rachel. The only problem was that I completely forgot to check if there was a door on the bathroom. The good news is that Rachel reminded me of our hostel experience in Chiapas where I was really sick with parasites. Travelers like us don't require modesty and our 'so French' apartment definitely didn't need bathroom doors. Before Rachel arrived, I toured Saint Chapelle, nearby Notre Dame, known for its jaw-dropping stained glass. Soon thereafter, Rachel arrived from Lousanne, Switzerland and we wandered the neighborhoods of Paris catching up on 4+ years of life since we had seen each other last.
Paris, Day 5:
Rachel and I went to the Museé D'Orsay and I basked in the delight of Cezánne and Manet. I gave Rachel a personal tour through the history of Modern Art startling myself with the abundance of oddly detailed information I know about this influential period of human cultural production. High five to my liberal arts education! Student loans almost paid off!
It was at this time that I needed to find wifi and start booking trains and accommodations for my impending detour through Bordeaux and onto the Camino. That is what I'm here to do...walk across Spain. Paris is just a little break and side excursion. To our surprise, the Museé D'Orsay did not provide Wifi service. For an institution representing so many artists who pushed beyond the status quo, the museum was remaining comfortably right at about the year 1995. Get your wifi in order, Museé D'Orsay! I've got a train to catch. I mean, you've got a few things going for you. Keep it up. But Toulouse-Lautrec would totally be all up on Instagram like a pro.
We just missed the last tickets of the day for entering the Rodin gardens and we returned to our tiny apartment, without regret, crossing back over the Seine and the rain-soaked streets of Paris. I know the Museé Rodin is supposed to be great but I had plenty of art and beauty and 19th century bourgeois aesthetics to fuel me for a long while. I had to get back to the Internet and buy a train ticket.
Rachel's boyfriend, Matthieu, was also in town for a book he had just published. The book has yet to be translated into English, but if you want what I'm guessing is an enchanting French read, look up Percussions by Matthieu Ruf. We took the metro to join him and his friends for dinner. Bravo for amazingly kind and fun and interesting Parisiennes! We discussed presidential candidates, of course, and we also discussed the ways that one can identify a European versus an American walking down the street. Come in close, dear friends, I have a secret: It's all in the shoes. Yep: our nationality is hidden in our footwear. Test it out and tell me how you do. If you get a trick universal shoe brand, look at the "ensemble"-how the shoe pairs with the pants and jacket and any other accessories... and you are sure to find the pedestrian's continent of origin. We expanded our talk of identity into the "bobos" around town. Bo-bo stands for Bourgeois-Bohemian types. They can be described as intellectual types who enjoy food biologique (organic) and high fashion but relish in a good second hand store. I can't quite grasp the distinction between bobos and hipsters but they assured me there is one.
Bo-bo Education
Rachel's boyfriend, Matthieu, was also in town for a book he had just published. The book has yet to be translated into English, but if you want what I'm guessing is an enchanting French read, look up Percussions by Matthieu Ruf. We took the metro to join him and his friends for dinner. Bravo for amazingly kind and fun and interesting Parisiennes! We discussed presidential candidates, of course, and we also discussed the ways that one can identify a European versus an American walking down the street. Come in close, dear friends, I have a secret: It's all in the shoes. Yep: our nationality is hidden in our footwear. Test it out and tell me how you do. If you get a trick universal shoe brand, look at the "ensemble"-how the shoe pairs with the pants and jacket and any other accessories... and you are sure to find the pedestrian's continent of origin. We expanded our talk of identity into the "bobos" around town. Bo-bo stands for Bourgeois-Bohemian types. They can be described as intellectual types who enjoy food biologique (organic) and high fashion but relish in a good second hand store. I can't quite grasp the distinction between bobos and hipsters but they assured me there is one.
Paris, day 6 to Bordeaux:
The next day, with limited time before my train departure to Bordeaux, we took a long breakfast, while people watching on the street near the St. Paul metro stop. We then walked, with my full pack, toward the Promenade area of the city that was once train tracks. It reminded me of the 606 trail in Chicago or the Chelsea high line in New York.
We did not manage our time well crossing back through town though. Rachel and I sprinted through the metro and up to the Gare du Montparnasse with the clock ticking. My electronic ticket, validated through a screenshot on my iPad, let me through to a whistling train, just like in a movie...and there I went, hugging Rachel goodbye, and hopping onto a train, sweating and full of happy adrenaline that I didn't miss my train to Bordeaux.
While riding on the train, I read that Bordeaux is a vibrant city, full of university students, with dazzling food and wine. (Bordeaux, duh.) The train station might prove otherwise. I have seen some dodgy parts of lots of towns but let's just say the train station and the surrounding area might be where the once vibrant university students go when they drop out. Stay in school, kids. While stepping around garbage and swaying teenagers on cobblestones streets, I imagined Bordeaux was some abandoned shell of a city. Maybe some French entrepreneurs decades ago were all like, let's break through the old palace and open up a bistro. My aunt is gonna run a weird hotel. My cousin will run a second hand store and all of the college-drop outs will take care of the stray dogs. It will be great...and it sort of is.
I write this from the little restaurant on a tiny square in Bordeaux. The waitress asked me, in English, (per George Bush's mandate) if I liked my wine astringent. I just smiled and said yes, absolutely. I have no idea what that means but, yes, I love, astringent wine. Astringent wine-loving Jean heads to the start of the Camino in Basque country tomorrow.
And if you have reached the end of this...wow, you good-for-nothing millennial, you read something today! To the rest of you, thank you so much for reading and supporting me on this unusual pilgrimage I'm only beginning now. More on that next time!
Pre-Camino Travels | Camino Part 1 | Camino Part 2 | Camino Part 3 | Camino Part 4 | Camino Part 5
