It’s my daughter’s first day of tenth grade. My baby is a high school sophomore. That would be hard to believe, if she didn’t look so grown up. And if she weren’t regularly driving. She got her learner’s permit at the end of June, and so far, she’s a cautious but not overly fearful driver. She’s determined not to be like me, hesitant to drive on the “big roads,” which I define as anything with an on-ramp.
Only two more such “first days,” and then she should be off to college. Now that is truly hard to believe.
As September rolls around, I get a bit nostalgic for the years when my daughter didn’t go back to school. Or for those years when school meant only preschool, three mornings a week. I like to recall crisp, sunny afternoons, when she and I had nothing more pressing to do than to wander the neighborhood in search of signs of fall. We’d collect acorns, pine cones, and brightly colored leaves. Some we used for decoration; others for crafts. (See here.) After our walk, we might spread an old quilt on the lawn and spend a couple of unhurried hours lazing there, talking, reading and snacking.
Back then, there were no hard-to-find school supplies to track down, no quandaries over which binder is better, no piles of tedious forms to complete and sign. No back-to-school nights for H and me. We’d already met the teachers. We knew them. And we had absolute confidence that if our daughter needed extra help with the curriculum, we were experts in every field of study: we knew our ABCs, we knew how to count, and how to spell our daughter’s name.
Afternoon on the lawn, September 2001.
This year, as D takes pre-calculus and chemistry, I’m glad I married someone whose intellectual strengths are my weaknesses, and vice versa. Should our daughter need assistance in math and science, my husband will be on it. I can advise on some aspects of history and English. But we’ve learned to wait to be asked. Both of us are very glad that we no longer have homework, and we have no interest in doing our daughter’s.
Thinker with a sippy cup: D in the fall of 2001.
What’s harder is not offering up certain nuggets of unsolicited advice on non-homework topics. Sometimes we know we should keep quiet because we need to let D live her life. Many situations are only made worse by our meddling in them. Other times, we realize that by saying one thing, we might prompt D to do the opposite. She’s not a rebel. But she is a teenager.
It’s Labor Day, a time when my family confronts our many unfinished projects of the summer. No better time, then, than to resume new posts on Wild Trumpet Vine. Some, like this one, will look back to last spring, while others will be more timely. So now, back to our leaving Paris for London in April.
Getting to the train and on board was by far the most stressful segment of our trip. The night before, we’d asked the hotel concierge to arrange for a taxi to the Gare du Nord at 9 AM. Our train was to depart shortly after 10. When we trooped down with our bags in tow, the friendly concierge was surprised to see us. The taxi was to arrive at 10 AM, just as we’d asked. Uh oh.
The concierge called for expedited service. A tense twenty five minutes ticked slowly by before we were on our way.
The enormous Gare du Nord was more congested and confusing than I had ever seen it. Lines for the Eurostar were snake-like and slow-moving. When at last we made it to the area leading to customs, an attendant pointed us toward a counter to fill out a boarding card. Did we each need to fill on out? He wasn’t sure. Time was short, so we completed one for the family, as I remember doing on overseas flights. Although, oddly, come to think of it, we had received no boarding cards on our Air France flight. Arriving in Paris, we had breezed through customs with barely a pause. It was like sailing through the Easy Pass lane in a New Jersey toll plaza.
Further along, another attendant asked for our boarding cards. And no. We all needed one. Didn’t we see that it said “Name” and “Passport Number”? How can that apply to an entire family? The unexpressed question being: Are you idiots? Maybe. But H and I both remembered that rather archaic wording on the cards at the airlines: To be completed by Head of Household, or something to that effect. We rushed back to grapple with the boarding cards, again. Of course, there was the typical pen problem. Those anchored to the counter (on not-quite-long-enough chains) were running out of ink. In search of working pens, I rummaged awkwardly through my purse, which was stuffed beyond full. H stared at me in exasperation. Why is he not expected to have instantaneous, magical access to some writing instrument, I wondered. Perhaps because we were in such a rush, the requested information seemed ridiculously detailed. Address in London? Are you kidding? Anyone have the hotel address? We muddled through.
We were flustered and on edge as we approached the customs agent, who sat scowling fiercely in his little glass box. Why, exactly, were we going to London? What was the purpose of our trip, he asked ominously? He grilled H and me first, then turned a laser focus on our daughter. Apparently he expected her to cave and reveal that our trip had some vile, nefarious goal. Sight-seeing? Reeaally? And what sights do you wish to see? You want to compare London and Paris? Indeed? To what end? At last the agent tired of the interrogation, and waved us on, still hostile but bored and dismissive. With relief, we made our way down to the platform, where the train was, thankfully, still waiting. It was due to depart in seven minutes.
Once on board the uncrowded train, a welcoming, quiet calm enveloped us. Whew! Only after we were settled did I look at my ticket and see, written there in bold print: Arrive at least 30 minutes prior to departure for check-in. We had completely forgotten that helpful suggestion. Because we had printed our tickets at home, the need to allot time for check-in had escaped us. Had we known how extremely close we were cutting it, we really would have been worried.
The journey from Paris Nord to London’s Saint Pancras was smooth, quick, and uneventful. We were soon served a pleasant breakfast by polite, soft-spoken attendants. In less than a half hour, we were gliding silently through the tunnel. A half hour later, we emerged into sunshine and the same gently rolling fields of brilliant gold that we had seen in France. Rapeseed, I learned, grown for its oil. An unfortunate name for something so pretty. The entire trip took about two hours and fifteen minutes. It was vastly quicker and more efficient than in the old days of train, boat and train, each segment prefaced by a long wait in a smoky departure lounge.
My family and I wouldn’t have considered adding London to our itinerary on this trip if it hadn’t been such a convenient train ride from Paris. But I was glad I lived through those old days and had the memories to show for it. Glad I had the chance, with my fellow middle-school aged friends, in 1975, to cross the Channel by slow ferry. See European Vacation, ’75: Crossing the Channel. I had described that crossing in my travel journal as a highlight of the trip. Had we traveled then on a sleek, fast train, there would have been less opportunity for adolescent adventure. While the Eurostar served my family’s purpose perfectly on this recent trip, I’m happy it didn’t exist on my very first European vacation.
Before we left for Paris, we had reached a family decision to take the Eurostar train to London instead of traveling further in France. We’d compare two major European capitals. It would be a great experience for our daughter. My husband was interested, since he had spent little time in England. But I wasn’t sure I was ready to return to London. It had been twenty-five years. I had waited too long. So long that any return trip would always be too soon.
When I was last in England, I had felt very much at home. A year of living in London, traveling regularly to Cambridge and Oxford and elsewhere throughout the UK had left me feeling like a local. The next year, a month-long follow-up visit seemed like a return to the old home place.
But England was no longer home. That priceless cache of experience I had accumulated piece by painstaking piece–all that familiarity, all that intimate knowledge of a place and its people–it had mostly vanished. Staying away for two and half decades will do that. Now, I’d be just another middle-aged tourist mother traipsing from site to site, attempting to decipher an unwieldy map.
The whirlwind of mixed-up memories that spun around me in the garden below my old Paris dorm room had been daunting enough. I was afraid London would stir up a contrast even more uncomfortably extreme. Could I face yet another collision of the current me with the student me from half a lifetime ago? Of course I could face it. But I doubted very seriously that I would enjoy it.
I understood with new clarity how my father must have felt when we stood on a certain medieval bridge in Germany. As an eighteen-year old fresh out of high school, he’d been stationed in Regensburg with the U.S. Occupational Forces after World War II. Before long he was seeing a beautiful German woman in her mid-twenties. She’d lived in an apartment building on the other side of the bridge. He’d become like one of the family, welcomed by her mother and her small daughter. When his overseas service had been cut short following the sudden death of his father, he’d never said a real goodbye to Anna-Marie. He thought he’d return shortly. He didn’t.
Sixty years later, he was in Regensburg again at last, accompanied by his wife, daughter and granddaughter. Did he want to cross the Stone Bridge and see if anything remained of the old buildings he remembered? No, he didn’t. It was all too much. Too much time past, too much change, internal and external, to wrap one’s head around.
A sixty-year wait for a return trip is certainly too long. A lapse of twenty-five years wouldn’t be nearly as overwhelming, would it?
A View from the Stone Bridge, Regensburg, April 2011
Like so many tourists, our daughter finds she can walk on water
near I.M. Pei’s Louvre pyramid.
The Grand Palais, an enormous exhibition hall on the Champs-Élysées,
was built for the World’s Fair, held in Paris in 1900.
The interior of the glass-domed Grand Palais abounds with sinuous Art Nouveau ironwork.
More Grand Palais elegance in iron and glass.
The Grand Mosque of Paris, which dates from 1926.
The Odeon Theatre, near the Luxembourg Gardens.
The present building dates from 1819.
A typically grand Paris doorway.
Interior view of the Pantheon.
The Sorbonne.
Produce vendors along the rue Mouffetard. On weekday mornings, the long, narrow street is the ideal setting for a moveable feast.
A pedestrian-only street, the rue du Pot-de-Fer, or Street of the Iron Pot.
Like rue Mouffetard, which it intersects, and several in the area, it
escaped demolition during Haussmann’s revisioning of Paris.
All the transparent life layers have flipped by in a whirring flash. I’m back to the present, and it’s April 13, 2014. But the past is incredibly close. It circles around me like a bird immediately overhead; I hear the beating of its wings and feel the air they displace. In the garden of the Cité Universitaire on the southern edge of Paris, I feel as though I’ve just learned the resolution of a suspenseful film. I don’t know the end of the story (thank goodness), but I’ve discovered the end of the middle, and it’s an immense relief.
Throughout my teens and twenties, whether I’d ever marry was an open question. I knew I wanted marriage, but I wanted it with the right person. I’ve never held to the notion that there’s one perfect match out there for each of us. There are no perfect matches. Probably, for most of us, we might come across several people over the course of a lifetime with whom we could forge a more or less happy union, depending upon circumstance and our commitment to perseverance. But it’s a limited number, while the number of bad choices is huge. And making that choice is a tricky business, as the divorce rate attests.
I bided my time for so long because over and over, I’d seen that Right One morph into a Never Mind. Appearances are deceiving, as are first impressions. In a recurring dream, heavy with doom, I found myself married to one of my many Mr. Wrongs. They were all nice guys, but after a promising start, they turned out not to be right for me. I didn’t want that dream to become a reality. As I stand here with my husband, my husband of nearly nineteen years, it hits me like a revelation: I found a good one, and I think it’s gonna work out!Whew!
He’s my Mr. Right: with H in front of the Maison Internationale at the Cité Universitaire.
Like many women, I’d worried that in postponing marriage, I might miss out on being a mother. I knew I wanted a child some day. Certainly one child. Possibly two, if I got started early enough (although that seemed unlikely). But not three or more. I know my limits. I had grown up a contented only child. I saw no reason to crowd up the house with kids. But I really wanted my shot at motherhood. Would I get it? The answer seems to be revealed anew: Yes, yes, yes! I’m here with my daughter, my fifteen year old daughter. I got my girl! The girl I’d always wanted. While I had prayed for a healthy child, boy or girl, I’d secretly always wanted a daughter, with the hope that she and I would be close, just as my mother and I are.
Me and my girl, my buddy, in the garden of the Cité. My old balcony and its open door are visible above.
How glad I am that I went back with my family to my former Paris residence. Given the opportunity, I will continue to return to such places supercharged with memory. The swirl of emotions they stir up is not for the faint of heart, nor is the undeniable reality of time’s passage. There’s no doubt about it–I’m quite a bit older. Perhaps older than I’d ever imagined being at nineteen. But in returning to this spot where I was so memorably youthful, I can still sense the essence of that youth, which seems to hang in the air like the smoke from fireworks on a hot July night. I’ve changed, but I haven’t changed. I think I’ve gained some wisdom over the years. My ninety-four-year-old grandmother once remarked to me that she still didn’t feel truly old. I’m starting to understand how she feels.
In going back, I came to see more clearly who I am and how I became that way. And it has made me emphatically grateful for the loving family who went there with me, for the first time.
Standing in the garden of the Cité Universitaire this past April, below the room that served as home during my college summer in Paris, I felt like I was in a time warp with tunnel vision. I could reflect on successive Paris life layers at once, one atop another. Today’s post concerns a time thirteen years after my travels in France as a grad student. It’s 2002. For the first time, I’m in France and I’m not a student. It feels strange. The responsibilities of adulthood have caught up with me. I’m a wife and mother, here in the city with my husband and my parents. We’ve left our nearly three year old daughter at home with H’s parents.
It had long been a goal of mine to accompany my parents to France. During my year in England, we had traveled together for three weeks, but we hadn’t yet done France. In the spirit of parental sacrifice, Mama and Daddy had repeatedly stayed home and paid, or helped pay my way. We had always said Sometime, we’ll all go. That sometime seemed to have arrived in 2002. We were all healthy and ambulatory. H, like me, was eager to return to France. Fourteen years had passed since his semester in Rennes. The overlap in the timing of our European student adventures had provided us with a point of commonality that may have been crucial in drawing us together initially. (See That French Connection, April 2014.) Ever the dutiful son-in-law, H didn’t complain about traveling with his wife’s parents, or sharing the tour-guide obligations.
Our daughter was old enough to understand that we weren’t leaving her for good. H’s parents were willing and able to care for her. Very briefly, we considered taking D with us. But I could see how the trip would unfold. She’d be continually preoccupied with something that seemed totally inconsequential to adult eyes. Under the fascinating spell of fallen leaves in the dirt, she’d be oblivious to the historic splendor all around her. My entreaties would go unheard: Look up, sweetie! Look at the beautiful towers. See those funny creatures way up high? Those are gargoyles. My mother would miss most of the sights she’d anticipated for so long. In an effort to make the trip proceed more smoothly for the rest of us, she’d devote her attention to placating her granddaughter. I’d feel guilty. We’d all be testy. Best to leave our toddler with Grandma and Grandpa at home, where she could enjoy, unimpeded, the pleasures of domestic leaves and dirt.
On our first day in France, May 2002: H and my parents at a crêperie near Notre-Dame.
My objectives for travel abroad have varied according to the stages of my life. As a student wearing the rose-colored glasses of youth and freedom, the realm of possibility was vast. Who knew what adventures, what fulfillments of fantasy lay ahead? Caprice, romance, astounding coincidence–while I didn’t take such winged creatures as my due, I also didn’t rule them out entirely. Who’s to say absolutely that I would not meet a sensitive, handsome young man as we admired the same obscure, underappreciated painting in the Louvre? Was it utterly impossible that he’d be involved in the thoughtful restoration of his family’s ancient and immense château? That my fresh American sensibility would invigorate him like a breath of fresh air? That we’d fall in love and live happily ever after among the rose-blanketed walls of honey-colored stone? That the surrounding village would be peopled by delightfully eccentric and charming characters, who would hold us particularly dear as Lord and Lady of the Manor? Such a scenario was clichéd, antiquated and extremely unlikely. But it wasn’t entirely impossible. After all, I was young. Anything was possible. And I’d experienced the unlikely before.
On this trip, it’s a different story. As a no longer young adult traveling with my husband and parents, my goals are considerably more modest and down-to-earth. I’m looking forward to seeing my parents appreciating my favorite French sights, and to comparing student experiences with my husband. I’m hoping for beautiful scenery, comfort, the avoidance of injury, illness and mishap. While my parents are hardly frail or weak, they are, obviously, even less young than I. A successful visit will be free of emergency room visits, crippling accidents, assaults and major transportation breakdowns. It will mean not losing Mama or Daddy temporarily or permanently on the Metro. Perhaps most importantly, it means an uneventful return that brings us back home safely to our little daughter.
Without incident, we check off the sights my mother the history buff had been waiting years to experience: Notre-Dame, the Sainte-Chapelle, the Louvre, Versailles, the Arc de Triomphe. (Daddy is sunnily content to go wherever she, H or I suggest.) We avoid misadventure but find ourselves on its heels several times, as when we stumble upon the aftermath of a purse-snatching and the apprehension of the thief. My parents are hardy, adaptable, unfussy travelers. They don’t even grumble when, after wandering the Versailles gardens and Marie Antoinette’s Petit Hameau, we miss the last passenger trolley and have no option but to walk for what seems like many miles. We enjoy several pleasant days in Paris before we head to the Loire Valley. Mama wants to see some châteaux.
We take the TGV train to Tours, where we rent a car. Although in 1988, Daddy drove Mama and me swiftly and confidently along Britain’s winding roads, this time he’s happy to yield the wheel to H. Our home base in the Loire Valley will be the picturesque little town of Amboise. The royal Château d’Amboise, a multi-turreted castle worthy of Sleeping Beauty, is the centerpiece of the town. It’s a short, lovely walk to the Château du Clos Lucé, where Leonardo da Vinci, as artist and inventor in residence and buddy to Francois I, spent his final years. The Châteaux of Chenonceau and Azay-le-Rideau are nearby.
The Château d’Amboise.On the grounds of the Château d’Amboise is the 15th-Century Chapel of Saint-Hubert, said to house the remains of Leonardo.The town of Amboise seen from the Château ramparts.The Amboise clock tower.The Château du Clos Lucé.Chenonceau.H and I at Chenonceau.
Also within an easy walk from the center of Amboise are several so-called troglodyte homes built into the cliffs of soft tufa, a kind of limestone. The stone, evidence of a prehistoric sea that once covered the area, was quarried for local building. The resulting caves offered unique housing opportunities. Much sought-after, they’re typically equipped with most modern conveniences and need no heat or air conditioning.
An Amboise cave home.
From Amboise, we drive west to Rennes. Although it’s familiar territory for my husband, I’ve never been here. As we walk through the old town and the University section, he recalls his student days. I’d heard the stories, now I can experience the setting first-hand. He points out the buildings where his classes met, the cafés, parks and shops he frequented. As he shows me the route he took to school, I can see him riding through town on his moped, blonde curls visible under the helmet. Thankfully, he was wearing that helmet when a truck hit him one morning. Were it not for that helmet, it’s doubtful we’d be standing here together.
In old town Rennes, a pizza delivery cyclist loads up.
Although H had been in sporadic contact with his French host family since he stayed with them in 1988, he hadn’t told them our travel plans. Our time would be short, and a visit could be awkward since my parents speak no French. But on the road to Mont Saint-Michel, H realizes that we’re tracing his old route to town. Their home is so close. Seems like we almost have to drive by. H has no trouble spotting the house. As though on cue, his French parents are walking out the front door. They recognize H immediately, after fourteen years and no prior notice of his arrival. Monsieur and Madame Treguier welcome us warmly. They are merrily insistent that we return for dinner that evening. We find ourselves saying yes. Who knows when we’ll be back? My parents urge us to go. They’re invited, as well, but they’ll stick with dinner at the hotel. That’s probably a good decision, since Daddy tends to find any long conversation tedious, even if it’s in his own language.
That night, after a beautiful day with my parents at Mont Saint-Michel, H and I are treated to what feels like a homecoming meal. The Treguiers’ younger daughter lives in town and is able to join us. Of course she’s a grown woman now, but H remembers her as a little girl. Madame Treguier brings forth dish after delectable dish, seemingly effortlessly from her tiny kitchen, beginning with a dramatically heaping platter of bright red langoustines. I really don’t know how she does it. For H and me, it takes all our collective brain power to speak sustained, passable French for several hours. The constantly flowing wine helps, until it hinders, and we have to resort to covering our glasses with our hands. The Treguiers are as generous with their wine as H had remembered. In fact, as soon as we arrived, Monsieur Treguier had proudly showed us his brand new wine storage area, his “cave,” built under the garage.
It’s a wonderful, celebratory evening. I get to peel back the layers of my husband’s life, just as I have my own. I see him as his host family remembers, as a very green, very American college boy. They recall fondly that when he first arrived, they secretly despaired. Would they ever be able to communicate with him? He had had only one year of college French, and his language skills were rudimentary. Fortunately, he showed remarkably swift improvement, and his charm was immune to the language barrier. Wow, I thought. With many more years of French study behind me, I’d lacked the courage to stay in a French household during my Paris summer.
Seeing H through the eyes of the Treguier family brings to light one of the traits I most admire about him: his quiet confidence. Whatever the challenge, if he considers it worthwhile, he’s up for it. Immerse himself in a totally French-speaking environment with minimal skills? He’ll manage it. Drive an enormous delivery truck through all the boroughs of New York City? Sure. Fix the car, any car? Easy. Repair the hole in the ceiling? Yes. Master windsurfing on his own? He’s done it. Teach his daughter to ski? Of course. Show her a better approach to that algebra problem? Certainly. Yet he’s never showy or arrogant. He has no ancestral château, but what a guy. Indeed, what a great guy. I can tell that the Treguiers agree.
That night in Rennes, the Treguiers’ deep affection for my husband is apparent. What’s more, they extend their high regard and good will graciously to me, and even to our daughter, back at home. They urge us to return in the near future, to bring her and spend more time with them. As we say our goodbyes, it’s like leaving a family reunion in some best of all possible worlds. It’s one of those times when the bonds of true friendship are revealed at their strong, resilient best, stretching across miles, years, languages and cultures.
Mont Saint-Michel in Normandy, one of my favorite spots in France. (See European Vacation ’75: Part II: Mont Saint-Michel, April 2013.)
My friend Nancy and I attempt attitude-filled poses at the Cité Universitaire, July 1982.
I had not been back to the Cité Universitaire since I lived there that summer thirty-two years ago. (See That French Connection, April 2014.) I hadn’t expected to return on this trip. I thought it would hold minimal interest for my husband and daughter. But on our first day in Paris, a Saturday during spring break, we found ourselves engulfed in crowds. The area in front of Notre-Dame Cathedral was a roiling sea of humanity. The line for the Sainte-Chapelle stretched for blocks. We expected Palm Sunday at all the expected sites to be equally busy. This factor may have persuaded H and D that we should visit the Cité, located in an unfashionable area at the bottom of the Paris map. Tourists would certainly not be flocking there.
I had remembered the Cité as being far removed from the city center. I was surprised to see that it was only three stops from Luxembourg on the RER. I was also surprised to see the complex looking almost exactly as I recalled it, but spruced up and considerably less seedy. It wasn’t exactly run-down in 1982. Perhaps indifferently maintained is a good way to describe it. The grounds were wild and weedy, closer to messy than pristine. Litter was common. This past April, the Cité was looking comparatively fresh, fit and clean. The plantings were lush and well-tended. The buildings were grander and more imposing than I had remembered. And there were fewer shady characters skulking about.
In this view of the back of the Fondation des Etats-Unis from July 1982, I’m the red blotch on the balcony, fifth window from left, one floor from the top.
My little room was perfectly adequate, and I loved my balcony that looked out onto the big evergreen tree, the then-scruffy garden, and the Mexico building. On the top floor were much sought-after artists’ lofts, with high ceilings and skylights.
The Fondation, April 2014.
In the photo above, the open balcony door at the right suggests that the current resident was in my old room. The same red-orange draperies adorn the windows. The tall tree still flourishes in the courtyard.
July 1982: I do laundry in my room. Trying, and succeeding, in looking pitiful.
Although the institutional décor left something to be desired, I enjoyed that humble, well-worn room. In addition to the vinyl-covered armchair, there was a decent bed, desk, and a reading lamp with a shade covered in peeling contact paper. The open balcony doors provided all the air conditioning needed. Not a single mosquito, gnat or fly ever flew in. Toilet cubicles and showers were down the hall, of course. There was no adjusting the water pressure or its temperature in the shower. You pushed a button, which triggered a quick burst of water that lasted about three minutes. Luckily, the button could be pressed multiple times, or I never could have rinsed the shampoo from my hair. The atmosphere was classic Paris student.
The sight of those bare shelves in that room reminds me of how lightly and simply I traveled that summer. Some aspirin, soap, toothbrush, a little make-up, some paper, pens and pencils, a book or too. My address book and airmail envelopes for letters to the States. I did bring a travel iron, at my mother’s insistence, which I don’t think I ever used. Its adapter was nearly as large as the iron. No cell phone, iPod, iPad, no laptop. From the looks of the trash bin at my feet, I had recently polished off two boxes of French crackers. My friends and I snacked on packaged melba toast-like crisps and La Vache qui Rit cheese. For further between-meal sustenance, I had brought a large supply of grape Tangy Taffy from home.
Thirty-two years later, as I stood there in the garden behind the building, my husband and daughter by my side, looking up at the open door to my old room, the memories swirled around me. Some were vivid, others were just out of reach, like dreams upon waking. The experience was unsettling. I understood then why some prefer never to return to such places. As for me, though, I’ll go back. Those chances to glimpse the present through the eyes of the past, and vice-versa–they add a richness to life that I want to savor. Even if there may be bitter along with the sweet.
View of the Pantheon from the Luxembourg Gardens, July 1982.
From the Pantheon and our hotel, it’s an easy walk down rue Soufflot to the grand gated entrance to the Luxembourg Gardens, a green oasis in the heart of Paris’s streets of stone and brick. The name is proof that the French don’t forget their history. In the early seventeenth century, the land was owned by the Duke of Luxembourg. The palace and gardens owe their existence to Marie de’ Medici. After the assassination of her husband, Henry IV in 1610, the Italian-born Queen needed a change of scenery and a move from the Louvre. She bought the land in 1612 and commissioned a palace and gardens inspired by her memories of Florence’s Pitti Palace and Boboli Gardens.
The circular lawn panel.
The fifty-five-acre park features expanses of perfectly manicured lawn, bordered by allés of carefully tended horse-chestnut trees and bright flowers that change with the seasons. Many statues accent the greenery.
The Italian Renaissance-style Palace was completed in 1627. It now houses the French Senate.
The central pavilion of the Palace.
A popular spot in the park is the eight-sided pond known as the Grand Bassin. While children sail sturdy rental boats, parents may relax in the rows of green garden chairs.
Pelouse interdite.
Lawns are scarce in Paris and highly prized. Early on during my Parisian student summer, our group was picnicking in a park. We noticed an approaching gendarme, gesticulating enthusiastically. We thought he was happy to see us. Soon it became evident that we had mistaken his exasperation for overt friendliness. We learned then that the pelouse is typically interdit. In the Luxembourg Gardens, some of the lawns are preserved by alternating pedestrian access. While the above panel was off limits, a nearby one was populated by picnickers and sun-seekers.
Our daughter claims a perch between French Queen and a local child.
The Medici Fountain dates from the time of the Palace.
One of my favorite spots in the city is the Gardens’ Medici Fountain. The strangely beautiful, grotto-like structure reminds me of something I’d hope to see in a dream. It stands at the end of a short allée of chestnut trees. Even on the hottest summer days, by the fountain it’s cool and quiet in the welcome shade.
You take some of this park with you when you go. Your shoes will be coated with a tell-tale layer of fine white dust.
Many significant Paris attractions were within easy reach of our small hotel by the Pantheon. Typically, we’d begin our excursions by heading down rue Soufflot. One afternoon during our visit twelve years ago, my husband and I took an opposite route. For us, and perhaps for the typical tourist, it was the road less traveled. We followed the narrow streets behind the Pantheon, down the hill for several blocks, to emerge onto a lively little square. The upper stories of the old buildings leaned in all around, as though in intimate discussion. We had stumbled upon La Place de la Contrescarpe.
La Place de la Contrescarpe, seen from our entry point on rue de l’Estrapade.
It was a warm day in May, and we quickly settled into an inviting outdoor table at La Contrescarpe, one of several cafés bordering the square. We sipped our beers and watched locals running errands and socializing. The school day had recently ended, and the square was abuzz with activity and the musical sounds of French conversation. Teenagers from nearby lycées headed to the cafés or chatted by the fountain in the leafy center of the square. Parents and younger children paused for gelato, pastries and baguettes at the many small shops.
La Contrescarpe.
Because we discovered the square near the end of our trip, we didn’t get a chance to return. When we discussed plans for this visit, my husband and I agreed that we should go early and often to our favorite little Place. On our first day back in Paris last month, after leaving our bags at the hotel, we set off down the familiar streets for lunch at the café.
The square was just as we had remembered it, just as authentically French, still relatively untrodden by throngs of international tourists. Because the weather was sunny but chilly, we took an outside table within reach of an overhead heater. Thanks to these, April in Paris is more comfortable than ever. H and I ordered our celebratory “cinquantes,” 50-cl draft beers that we associate with an unhurried afternoon in France. Our daughter sampled her first Croque Monsieur. Or did she have the Croque Madame, topped with a fried egg? One of those, which she heartily enjoyed, along with her Orangina. The food was tasty, and the service was efficient and polite. The waiter understood our French without any apparent trouble. What’s more, he continued to address us in French, something we’ve learned to take as a compliment. It was quite the pleasure to be back.
La Contrescarpe became our local café, our destination for rest and refreshment after hours of sightseeing. It was a prime spot for viewing Parisian street theatre, which continued unabated. Several featured players, quirky character actors, as it were, returned again and again. Occasionally, when they became overly boisterous, they were courteously but firmly shooed away by the café staff. We enjoyed the feeling of being part of the scene.
View of La Place de la Contrescarpe from our outdoor café table.
I didn’t realize until after we had returned home that the Contrescarpe area, traditionally a working class district, has a rich historical association with writers. Rabelais frequented the area’s taverns. Balzac set much of Le Pere Goriot in the neighborhood. Victor Hugo’s Jean Valjean haunted its streets in Les Miserables. James Joyce wrote Ulysees there. George Orwell lived and worked in the neighborhood.
Its most evocative literary ties, however, may be with Hemingway. Just steps from the Place, and within sight of our table at La Contrescarpe, is the apartment at 74 rue Cardinal Lemoine, where he and his first wife lived in cheerful poetic poverty. On the opening page of A Moveable Feast, Hemingway writes how “the cold wind would strip the leaves from the trees in the Place Contrescarpe.” He rented a small garret room for writing around the corner on rue Descartes, in the same building where the poet Verlaine died in 1896.
I had generally avoided reading Hemingway because I wasn’t drawn to tales of bullfighting, fishing, boxing, or war. But A Moveable Feast, a memoir of his early years as a writer in Paris during the 1920s, had been on my to-read list seemingly forever. About two years ago, I read it. Hemingway’s Paris, so vividly and often comically evoked, was the Latin Quarter. “My” Paris. I remember appreciating the many references to my favorite spots, to the names of streets I traversed as a student. Like Hemingway, my friends and I were always on the lookout for cheap places to eat and drink. We were familiar with his Paris, of great beauty, bare-bones accommodations and inconvenient plumbing.
But the repeated mentions of La Place Contrescarpe, I’m disappointed to say, rang no bell of recognition. I recall thinking the unusual name sounded vaguely familiar, but I didn’t realize Hemingway’s first Paris home was immediately off that very same square H and I had enjoyed so much. I had no idea that as we sat at our favorite café table, we were facing the writer’s former “flat at the top of the hill.”
Hemingway avoided the café that adjoins the house he lived in. Then known as the Café des Amateurs, he described it as “the cesspool of the rue Mouffetard,” “a sad, evilly run café where the drunkards of the quarter crowded together.” While we didn’t sample the current café in that location, preferring our post across the street, it looked perfectly pleasant, neither sad nor evil. Obviously times change. I can’t help but be relieved, however, that it wasn’t La Contrescarpe or a previous incarnation that received such a bad review. I like to think there were spring evenings when Hemingway, happy after a successful day of writing, joined his wife Hadley at an outdoor table there on the Place de la Contrescarpe. Should he have appeared during our visit, “Midnight in Paris” style, my family and I would have been glad to clink glasses with him in a contented “Salut.” I know he would appreciate the cinquante as much as H and I did.
Our favorite table at La Contrescarpe, with a view toward rue Cardinal Lemoine. The former Café des Amateurs is now the Café des Arts.
For me, one of the great pleasures of travel is returning to a well-loved place. “My” Paris is the Latin Quarter I came to know as a college student. That summer, on weekday mornings, two friends and I would take the RER train from Cité Universitaire to the Luxembourg stop. We’d emerge into the lively bustle of Paris to that unique smell: car exhaust, of a distinctly Parisian type, mingled with the freshness of the new day. We’d walk past the elegant Luxembourg Gardens and the big corner cafés, glimpse the Panthéon at the end of rue Soufflot, and continue down the Boulevard Saint-Michel for a couple of blocks to the Sorbonne, where we had our classes. We’d pass a restaurant where a waiter, setting up his tables, would blow us a kiss and make the beating heart gesture. That kind of chivalric appreciation could brighten even a dismal day. And that summer, dismal days were few.
August 1982: Toward the end of our Paris summer, my friends and I posed for photos around the Latin Quarter, trying our best to look cool. Above, Joanne and I on rue Soufflot, with the Pantheon in the background.
April 2014: My daughter and I try to recreate the photo. The dome of the Panthéon is currently undergoing a massive re-stabilization.
Each time I’ve returned since then to Paris, the Latin Quarter has been home base. With each visit, I discover more to love. Twice now H and I have stayed at the same hotel immediately across from the Panthéon. This area is in the heart of historic Paris, with its roots in the Roman era, yet it’s a bit removed from tourist circuits. While the big tour buses swing past the Panthéon, on the sidewalks you’re likely to pass more actual Parisians than foreign sightseers. Many Americans are apparently unaware that there is a Panthéon in Paris. A typical comment is “I thought that was in Italy.” For the record, it’s a grand neoclassical building inspired by the classical Pantheon in Rome and situated on a hill known as the Montagne Sainte Geneviève. Begun as a Roman Catholic church dedicated to Geneviève, the patron saint of Paris, it was finished during the Revolution as a humanistic temple honoring the great men of France. It may look familiar to Americans because its majestic dome and portico were architectural sources for our U.S. capitol.
Surrounding the Panthéon on its Place, or square, are elegant buildings that function as centers for civic and student life. There is the Mairie, or Town Hall, of the fifth arrondissement, where locals marry, vote, attend concerts, meetings and special events. Opposite the Mairie is the University of Paris Law School. Another neighbor is the Bibliothèque Sainte Geneviève. This library’s arched reading room appears in many Art 101 textbooks because of its early use of structural cast iron. Near the library is the beautiful Church of Saint-Étienne-du-Mont, dating from the thirteenth through sixteenth centuries. Behind the Panthéon sprawls the historic Lycée Henri IV, which incorporates buildings from the medieval Abbey of Sainte Geneviève. Below are some of my favorite views in the old neighborhood I adore.
May 2002: View from our hotel of the Place du Pantheon. From left, the Law School, the Bibliothèque Sainte Geneviève, and the portico of the Panthéon.
April 2014: View from in front of the Panthéon looking down rue Soufflot toward the Luxembourg Gardens and the Eiffel Tower. The colossal bronze statue of a portly nude man was installed in January. A work by the Chinese artist Hong-Biao Shen and entitled Mongolian(Standing Position), it immediately became a popular photo-op destination.
The typical Paris street sign offers explanatory information.
April 2014: the entrance foyer of the Mairie.
In the light of sunset this past April, the buildings of rue Soufflot glow coppery gold.
A blog about motherhood, marriage and life: the joys and frustrations, beauty and absurdity, blessings and pain. It's about looking back, looking ahead, and walking the dog.
