i've always enjoyed paris but i have never been crazy about the eiffel tower. it suggests cheap rhinestone pins with matching french poodles, can-can girls at the moulin rouge, berets, and all the most cliched tourist concepts that apparently are still fresh in some people's minds. they sell well in the cheesy souvenir shops now lining the rue de rivoli. you'd think toulouse lautrec was still alive and you might pick up a painting by a young, up and coming impressionist in the place du tertre.
for a change, here are images from paris that might capture a more contemporary concept:
the windows of the institut du monde arabe, designed by jean nouvelle. on a sunny day, the openings (like the iris of a camera) shut down to reduce the light levels within; on cloudy days they open wide. in either case, they are also said to reflect the design of screens used in interiors in those sunnier parts of the world.
and, as a bonus, the institut has a rooftop bar and restaurant (quite pricey) with a view of notre dame and the seine and cafe (ground floor) with a cheerful handsome young syrian waiter who yearns to come to the USA for the music scene. alas, most of the exhibitions were closed, in the process of change.
determined to see some of the sights i'd never visited before, i took the metro to pere lachaise cemetery. i've never cared much for cemeteries and i didn't care much for this one, with its thousands of gloomy little temple-like family tombs, many very neglected. the biggest surprise was oscar wilde's tomb covered in lipstick kisses (click on the image for good detail). someone had left a stack of sheets with his witty sayings, including these: "america is the only country that went from barbarism to decadence without civilization in between" and "a little sincerity is a dangerous thing and a great deal of it is absolutely fatal."
it's a bit difficult to find the tombs of the many individuals you admire, but i did find colette (an unattractive very new red granite slab: why?) and chopin and jim morrison. his tomb was the easiest to find, as you just follow the streams of young and middle-aged folks clutching maps and wearing 'doors' tee shirts. it's not much to look at.
do you remember the old-fashioned waiters in the cafes of paris? middle aged and elderly men in black with long white aprons who steadfastly ignored you and then had an annoyed, supercilious expression when you ordered your cafe au lait in perfect french and snapped "yes, of course, right away, mademoiselle."
here's an improvement: a handsome, cheerful waiter at the cafe danton, right at the odeon metro stop. i had my petit dejeuner there on several mornings and he was professionally smiling, efficient, and never needed to show off his english. he didn't even mind when i asked in perfect french (if only) to take his photo.
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