Friday 11 September
The Ibis does a good breakfast buffet, so we stocked up on the ham and cheese section in the hope of making do with a light lunch despite a hard day’s sightseeing. Then we set off for Paris.
After our adventures yesterday I wondered why I had not heard any signal that the train doors were about to close. As I sat on the RER I listened carefully and did hear what I might describe as a moderate humming noise before the doors closed. I suppose that it depends on what you expect but it is a far cry from the strident beep-beep-beeping of a Catalan train and is practically inaudible on a crowded rush-hour platform. Still we had arrived with our luggage – though if we had been travelling to the airport it might have been a different matter.
Our first destination in Paris was the Rodin Museum, a charming château with many works displayed in the garden. It was a fine day and as we walked around we heard not only a lot of Spanish but also quite a lot of Catalan being spoken. The eleventh of September is the national day of Catalonia and we were not the only people who had gone to Paris for the weekend.
The museum itself was most interesting. The Burghers of Calais, are there with the Gate of Hell, the Thinker and the Kiss, which is displayed inside because it is of marble and would suffer in the rain. There are also statue portraits of real people, some of whom were only identified after Rodin’s death.
After the Rodin museum we walked a considerable distance to the church of St Sulpice – yes, the one that features in The Da Vinci Code, though it seemed to be short on blind, albino, monk-assassins when we were there. It is neoclassical in design and they wanted to get their money’s worth in eclecticism: the main façade has all three main Greek column designs placed one above the other. Unfortunately, for us at least, the façade is being restored so we couldn’t see the real thing.
On leaving the church we went to Les Deux Magots for refreshments. This is the place where Hemingway acquired his taste for Margaux. The magots are two Chinese figures that sit on the walls inside the restaurant. Cheap it certainly is not, but it is no worse than places on the Rambla in Barcelona and it is a very pleasant place to sit and watch the Boulevard Saint Germain.
The afternoon was spent in the Musée du Moyen Âge, also known as the Cluny Museum and home to a splendid collection of medieval objects, from warfare to cooking and personal grooming. The building itself is an interesting example of Gothic architecture. The museum also houses the wonderful medieval tapestries of the Lady and the Unicorn and exhibits dating from Roman times, and some statues showing that Louis XVIII was not the only King of France who lost his head in the Revolution. The bottom-right picture below shows a banner hanging on the wall. The lettering in the middle is, ahem, all Greek to me but I am sure that the Latin top and bottom says ‘golden mediocrity’. Can it be so? Can some Latin scholar help?
And so back once again to our hotel in Versailles, where we met some other British people. The reason why we were in Versailles was that Jane was there for an Open University graduation ceremony. She was not graduating herself but was running the stall for the Students’ Association. Other OUSA bigwigs arrived on the Friday and we spent the evening with them. The general decision was to eat in the bar of the hotel. The waiter, our friend from the evening before, told us quite honestly that the bar food was from the freezer and reheated in a microwave, and that as he only had two microwaves he couldn’t serve six meals at the same time. We agreed and, well, I suppose that it saved going out, but a reheated hachette parmentière (shepherd’s pie) was not quite what I might have had in Le Limousin just round the corner.
To be continued …




Section 17
Recent Comments