I am at the halfway point of my trip and, much as I love Paris, spending so much time in a city reminds me of why I love living in a very quiet suburb. At home, I hear birds and very little else, for the most part. On my morning walks, I see deer, rabbits, often foxes, and, sometimes, a coyote. I find cities overwhelming now, but I love museums and so instead it is frequently cities that I wander.
Speaking of overwhelming, last night was the Fete de la Musique, and directly under my window I heard five or six hours (it ended at 1 a.m.) of European house music.
Because of that, and also because I needed to hand in a Bicycling story and it was pouring rain, I decided not to join my group to visit Versailles. I’ve been there, but, honestly, do I need to celebrate the monarchy that bankrupted a country and let people starve while they built palaces? Honestly, it’s not my scene.
Yesterday, we visited two of the museums on this tour about which I was most excited: Musée Carnavalet and Fondation Alaïa.
Carnavalet is the history of Paris Museum. It starts with the pre-history geography of the place, before people arrived, and ends with, approximately, 1977. In between, of course, you have the French revolution, Napoleon and Josephine, La Belle Epoque, the era of Hemingway, etc., and French intellectuals, workers’ strikes, and student revolutions. I loved it. It is filled with artifacts. I don’t think it really “told a story,” although, of course, when you tell the story of history, you are creating a point of view that is often exclusionary. Still, it’s a little “third person,” rather than “first person.”
I had lunch at a bistro with the podcast hosts of our trip, April Callahan and Cassidy Zachary, which was very interesting, and then we went to Alaïa.
For those of you who don’t remember, Azzedine Alaïa was a Tunisian designer who created the “body con” (conscious) look of the 1990s. The exhibit on display was the photographic work of Arthur Elgort and all the 1990s supermodels who wore Alaïa. It’s a well-designed small place with a great fashion bookstore and cafe.
Today, I wrote a lot, but I also walked around some neighborhoods that are new to me. I saw an arch that is the entrance to a market that I had never seen before. It reminded me of Antigua, Guatemala. Paris has 20 arrondissements, and so far I’ve been in eight of them. Tomorrow and Saturday I will be on L’île de la Cité and the left bank, so two or three more.
Paris feels very different from New York. New York is a city for strivers. Paris is a city for people who enjoy the moment. Despite being noisy and crowded, there is an overwhelming feeling of contentment. You’re in Paris. That’s enough.
yogadonna 
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