The Hunchback of the Grand Old Opera

The next morning was Saturday. We had a not very good guidebook with us, which my friend had borrowed from another American who had visited Paris before us. The guidebook had a penchant for superlatives. We were staying in Montmartre—the most romantic neighborhood in Paris. We decided to go back to Sacre Couer in the day time, so after the hotel provided breakfast (baguettes with jam and café au lait) we headed back up the hill, through the swarm of bracelet weavers to the Church. The view was just as dramatic as at night, and the guidebook informed us this was the best view in Paris (second to the Eiffel Tower, which was apparently also the most dramatic view in Paris). The interior of the church was also lovely, and there were no people buried under the floor, which is a plus. I hate walking on dead people, which seems to be what you have to do in every church in England. We decided not to miss out on the dead people entirely though, because our next stop was the Montmartre cemetery (after a brief stop in front of the Lapin Agile, which was closed, but we genuflected in front of it and moved on). One of the most famous cemeteries in Paris (according to the guide book) it contained the bodies of Degas, Delacroix, Zola, Stendhal and Francois Truffaut. The cemetery provided us with lovely maps in order to locate the rich and famous dead, but they were confusing and hard to follow. So I can safely say I’ve been to the graveyard where Degas, Delacroix, Zola, Stendhal and Francois Truffaut are buried, even if I didn’t see their graves.

The Montmartre area is much nicer in the day than in the night. At the top of the hill (right near the church) there was square which was filled with artists hawking their work, and the tourist shops sold prints of Toulouse Lautrec and Picasso along with their croissants and crepes. We could easily have spent our four days in that section alone, but there was more to Paris than just that quartier, so we moved on.

Our next stop was the Latin Quarter, the most ancient quarter of the city. I liked the Latin Quarter immensely. The streets are still small and narrow and full of twists and turns. Somehow they never got Haussmanized, so much of the neighborhood is the same as it was in the medieval period. The streets we walked down seemed to be filled with ethnic restaurants, bookstores and cinemas—the Paris version of a college town. The narrow streets made it difficult to walk when cars drove through, but the French drivers seemed to take it all in stride, moving slowly down the roads and not using their car horns, which was terribly decent of them. We got off the metro at St. Michel, and walked through the streets until we came to Shakespeare & Co.

Shakespeare & Co. is an English language bookstore across the street from Notre Dame run by the grandson of Walt Whitman. It used to be frequented by such famous ex-pats as Henry Miller and Ernest Hemingway, and the shop still maintains a room on the second floor for transient authors and poets who are broke in Paris. They had a wall filled with cards from all of the people who had slept there. It was one of my favorite stops of the day.

After Shakespeare & Co. we made the obligatory trip across the road to Notre Dame de Paris—the grand church of Literary or Disney fame depending on your taste and generation.
There was amazing stained glass as well as some interesting relics on the inside (pieces of the true cross and St. Genevieve’s finger bone) but the entire scene was incredibly overwhelming. Katie, my traveling companion, is a preacher’s daughter and the level of commercialization overwhelmed her. There were coin machines in the church, which would turn euros into commemorative coins from Notre Dame, which she likened to money changers in the temple. I wasn’t that offended by it, but I did feel bad for the three or four people who were attempting to worship there. I find those big churches aren’t very conducive to worship because they are so overwhelming that you end up admiring the architecture more than communing with God, but I imagine the swarms of tourist snapping photographs and talking loudly doesn’t help too much either.

That evening we wanted to go see an opera at the Opera Garnier. The Opera house in Paris is a work of art in and of itself. The outside is covered in statues of famous composers and statues of allegories for the arts. One of which, Carpeaux’s La Danse, I recognized from my nineteenth century art class. Apparently the thing caused such a scandal when it was first unveiled that people threw ink at the statue, and there was some talk of having it removed. The objection was that the statue depicted allegorical figures as ugly and human. It was so cool to finally see the statue in the flesh (or in the stone?) instead of just on a slide list.
Inside is just as grand as the outside, they seemed to be really into gold leaf and marble in those days. The ceiling of the theater was also cool: it was a fresco by Chagall.

I was excited to see the Opera because they were doing Le Nozze de Figaro, which is my all time favorite. When we got there they said that they were all sold out for the run, but if we waited in line for that evening we would be able to get partial view seats. We decided to stick it out because we figured that with opera it was more important to hear than to see, and when the time came we were able to purchase seven euro tickets for seats in a third tier box. I was ecstatic, and was thrilled when we finally got to our seats. I was thrilled right up until the opening chord, which was decidedly not by Mozart. It turns out that we had read the schedule wrong, and had accidentally purchased tickets to the modern dance performance instead of the opera! Partial view may not matter much for the Opera, but it definitely puts a damper on watching a dance performance. We couldn’t see anything, and by the time intermission roled around I was ready to simply go home. But my friend is a very determined character, and she went and found a couple who were leaving at intermission, and got them to give us their seats. There were three pieces in all, and we ended up watching the second two from seats in the orchestra that cost a hundred and thirty euros a pop! Not bad for the seven euros we paid.

After the opera we made our way back to the hotel, and had a late dinner in Montmartre (Indian food, which was amazing. Better than the Indian food in England, which just makes no sense) before turning in.