Paris, avec the Mama: Part Trois
Location: Paris, France
Marie Antoinette: Still Dead
April 22
Our final day in Paris dawns with chirping birds and the vigorous denial of surrendering without a blasted fight. There's not really a whole lot of huge things left to see in this city, unless one counts the anti-matter Eiffel Tower recently imported from dimension X, but we decide to forgo that as a means of protest.
Our first stop, as good hungry Americans everywhere will support, involved a Mexican restaurant, highly recommended by my handy-dandy Lonely Planet guide. Lured by the promise of beef-filled tortillas and frozen tequila-based concoctions, I was powerless to resist, and Mom in her endless supportive optimism decided to humor me. The food was excellent, the service was passable (by the way, I love the fact that we are Americans in France eating Mexican food served by a British waitress... that's 4 national leaps, not far shy of the record, and more than one normally finds on a Sunday afternoon), but the booze left something to be desired. I'm not sure if you would ever have guessed this, but northern France is not the best place to go if you want full-on, screaming margaritas. Who knew?
Perhaps called to mind by giggly images of Mexican laborers rotting in jail for stealing jobs from honest, hardworking Frenchmen, we decide to make our next stop the famous revolutionary jail: The Conciergie. After experiencing the great disappointment that is Place de la Bastille last time I was in Paris, this has a factor of personal redemption as much as anything else.
The Conciergie began as all great European prisons do: as a French palace. Then the king moved out, and the woe-begotten servants decided that the only way to heal their broken hearts was to find replacement residents with character similar to that of the departed royals; namely, convicts. Its most famous prisony time period was during the French Revolution, when it was the primary prison for the condemned sods of the Reign of Terror. You know all those people who got guillotined for fun? This is where they ate their last savory meal before traveling to that big cheese-tasting in the sky. Cool, I know. Even better is that among their number was Marie Antoinette, fabled Queen of Angry Cake Remarks. Oh, hooray! Let's go see where she spent her last despairing months being watched by Peeping Tom revolutionary soldiers for whom auto-erotic sportsmanship etiquette involved unwritten rules such as 'no peeing on the condemned regent.'
The prison is much as you would expect, awesome barrel-vaulted
stone and tiny little cells filled with scarecrows meant to resemble despondent French peasants, which they do in aspect and manner with great mannequined fervor. There's a lot of information, presented in machine-gunned museum style, talking about the French Revolution, which I'm proud to say made even less sense than most capitalized Revolutions. There's a great list, much resembling, say, the Vietnam War Memorial, that contains the names and professions of all 2,780 people sentenced to death by the Revolutionary Court, ranging from generals and statesmen to - I am not making this up - hairdressers and cripples. How bad does your life suck that even the monuments built to commemorate your wrongful execution refer to you only as a cripple? There is serious post-mortem therapy needed here.
After the prison, we're in the mood for something slightly lighter, so we head down to the oddly-named Luxembourg Gardens. It's pretty, full of trees and pretty birdies and small children sailing miniature ships upon a giant fountain. Absolutely no flesh-eating ogres. There is, at one point, a statue of some frolicking satyr-like creature that prompts a debate over the object extending from his rear end: tail or turd? This should give you a good idea of the classiness that my mother and I both embody, especially when surrounded by such august attractions. We sit there for a while watching the people and realizing by degrees that we haven't gotten as much sleep the last few nights as we would have liked to.
It is with great relish, then, that we conclude our time in Paris to be successfully rocked-out and make our way back to the hostel, stopping only for ice cream and sandwiches. We hit the sack early in anticipation of our train the next morning to Bruges, and let Paris linger only in the twisted realms of our little dreamy dreams.
Marie Antoinette: Still Dead
April 22
Our final day in Paris dawns with chirping birds and the vigorous denial of surrendering without a blasted fight. There's not really a whole lot of huge things left to see in this city, unless one counts the anti-matter Eiffel Tower recently imported from dimension X, but we decide to forgo that as a means of protest.
Our first stop, as good hungry Americans everywhere will support, involved a Mexican restaurant, highly recommended by my handy-dandy Lonely Planet guide. Lured by the promise of beef-filled tortillas and frozen tequila-based concoctions, I was powerless to resist, and Mom in her endless supportive optimism decided to humor me. The food was excellent, the service was passable (by the way, I love the fact that we are Americans in France eating Mexican food served by a British waitress... that's 4 national leaps, not far shy of the record, and more than one normally finds on a Sunday afternoon), but the booze left something to be desired. I'm not sure if you would ever have guessed this, but northern France is not the best place to go if you want full-on, screaming margaritas. Who knew?
Perhaps called to mind by giggly images of Mexican laborers rotting in jail for stealing jobs from honest, hardworking Frenchmen, we decide to make our next stop the famous revolutionary jail: The Conciergie. After experiencing the great disappointment that is Place de la Bastille last time I was in Paris, this has a factor of personal redemption as much as anything else.
The Conciergie began as all great European prisons do: as a French palace. Then the king moved out, and the woe-begotten servants decided that the only way to heal their broken hearts was to find replacement residents with character similar to that of the departed royals; namely, convicts. Its most famous prisony time period was during the French Revolution, when it was the primary prison for the condemned sods of the Reign of Terror. You know all those people who got guillotined for fun? This is where they ate their last savory meal before traveling to that big cheese-tasting in the sky. Cool, I know. Even better is that among their number was Marie Antoinette, fabled Queen of Angry Cake Remarks. Oh, hooray! Let's go see where she spent her last despairing months being watched by Peeping Tom revolutionary soldiers for whom auto-erotic sportsmanship etiquette involved unwritten rules such as 'no peeing on the condemned regent.'The prison is much as you would expect, awesome barrel-vaulted
stone and tiny little cells filled with scarecrows meant to resemble despondent French peasants, which they do in aspect and manner with great mannequined fervor. There's a lot of information, presented in machine-gunned museum style, talking about the French Revolution, which I'm proud to say made even less sense than most capitalized Revolutions. There's a great list, much resembling, say, the Vietnam War Memorial, that contains the names and professions of all 2,780 people sentenced to death by the Revolutionary Court, ranging from generals and statesmen to - I am not making this up - hairdressers and cripples. How bad does your life suck that even the monuments built to commemorate your wrongful execution refer to you only as a cripple? There is serious post-mortem therapy needed here.
After the prison, we're in the mood for something slightly lighter, so we head down to the oddly-named Luxembourg Gardens. It's pretty, full of trees and pretty birdies and small children sailing miniature ships upon a giant fountain. Absolutely no flesh-eating ogres. There is, at one point, a statue of some frolicking satyr-like creature that prompts a debate over the object extending from his rear end: tail or turd? This should give you a good idea of the classiness that my mother and I both embody, especially when surrounded by such august attractions. We sit there for a while watching the people and realizing by degrees that we haven't gotten as much sleep the last few nights as we would have liked to.
It is with great relish, then, that we conclude our time in Paris to be successfully rocked-out and make our way back to the hostel, stopping only for ice cream and sandwiches. We hit the sack early in anticipation of our train the next morning to Bruges, and let Paris linger only in the twisted realms of our little dreamy dreams.
posted by Will Jones at 3:19 AM
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