Ten Little Chances to be Free (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
tenlittlebullets) wrote2007-07-30 11:42 pm
tenlittlebullets) wrote2007-07-30 11:42 pm
Entry tags:
dead dead deaaaaad.
Okay. So, I am in Paris. My internet situation is rather precarious; there is indeed unsecured wifi in the area, but I'm in a really cheap hotel with no power outlets in the room besides the one for the TV. Which I don't think I'm supposed to unplug and use for the computer but oh well, if they don't like it they can suck it. (The only rules I've seen posted in this hotel anyway are "Don't throw garbage out the window," "Don't use the bidet as a goddamn toilet," and "Leave your key at the front desk when you leave.")
However, given the slightly sneaky nature of my 'net usage, and the fact that I have a whole shitload of stuff to do and only three days to do it, photo posts might have to wait until I get back home. Trust me, I have taken a lot of photos. Photos of the Monument to the Girondins in Bordeaux. Photos of Montreuil-sur-Mer. Photos of every location in Paris that might conceivably be related to LM.
Trip was rather hell--had an overnight from Bordeaux to Paris that got absolutely ruined by a bunch of screaming kids who kept banging on the back of my seat whenever I was about to doze off. Oh, and I packed way too heavy. This was not really a problem until I got to Montreuil-sur-Mer and discovered that I should have paid more attention to Hugo when he said the town was divided into upper Montreuil and lower Montreuil. The train station is in lower Montreuil, i.e. the part that's actually "sur mer." The upper part is an old garrison city at the top of a very, very steep hill, with ramparts and fortifications and everything. My arms still hurt from dragging my suitcases up that damn hill.
I'd thought the hotel I booked was rather twee, but it turns out that the entire town is like that and the hotel was just an intensification of it. For all I know, Montreuil-sur-Mer's main industry could have been the manufacture of black glassware once upon a time, but in the present day, its economy seems to be made up of tourism, gastronomy, flower arrangement, and artisan tchotchke makers. It's very cute, in a cobblestone-streets, lace-curtains, flowers-in-every-window kind of way, but it was a little much for me. The ramparts and the citadel were honestly more interesting than the town itself--pretty, but very old and steep and slightly sinister in a way. I could picture a murder mystery centered on someone getting pushed off the ramparts, but get back into the center of town and it's just hard to imagine anyone murdering anyone else. Actually, it was hard to imagine Fantine in destitution there. Everything was just so pretty and perky.
And when I say the economy was mostly centered around tourism, I mean that most of the biggest businesses were hotel/restaurants offering specialties of local cuisine, the tourism office was bustling, and about half the people on the streets were visiting Brits. (As a side note, I am going to burn in gastronomy hell, because it was obviously a mecca of northern French cuisine and I ate... kebab. Yep, going to hell.) They do have lots more regional and military history than just the LM gimmick, but that didn't stop me from finding a clothes shop called Gavroche, a chocolatier who for some reason called his store Les Miserables, beers named after Valjean and Cosette, and a lingerie store called--I am not shitting you--Les Dessous de Fantine.
The Spectacle Son et Lumière based off the novel was rather fun--nothing brilliant, but fun. All the dialogue and narration were made up of quotes from LM, and it was set in a "frame story" of Hugo visiting Montreuil in 1837 and writing to Adèle about his idea to set a novel there. Valjean had a funny red coat, Javert looked like a Disney villain, and I could have done without the random song about Eponine and the equally random dance numbers, but there were some really nice moments. Including an actual staging of Valjean running into a burning house to save the children of the captain of the gendarmes, a lovely juxtaposition between the nuns of Petit-Picpus and the convicts of Toulon, a revolution that actually looked impressive with several hundred volunteers, and a fireworks show to round it off. Some of the dance numbers were actually quite nice in an artsy way, like the drowning man and the dance between good and evil while Valjean is stewing over the Champmathieu affair, but there were others--I'm thinking the dancing dolls in Montfermeil in particular--that were utterly pointless and stupid. I have audio from the show if anyone wants it.
I would also like to note that by train, it is 20 minutes from Montreuil to Hesdin, 25 minutes from Hesdin to Saint-Pol, and 25 minutes from Saint-Pol to Arras. So the journey that took Valjean eighteen hours actually takes a little over an hour nowadays due to the wonders of modern technology. ;)
And then I got to Paris and, uh, what to say. I love it. IloveitIloveitIloveit. I dislike New York because it's ugly and Bordeaux because it's a bit stuffy and boring; take all the beauty and history of Bordeaux, add in the size and variety and bustle of New York, then multiply it by about six and that is my first impression of Paris. ♥ Unlike Bordeaux, I get the impression that I could actually live here after the "ooh, shiny!" wore off and not drive myself nuts. Maybe I'm just a city brat at heart, but... Paaaaris.
I will say that I'm glad I spent the month in Bordeaux beforehand, because coming here straight off the bat would have given me a really skewed impression of... well, everything. It's touristy. Half the conversations I've had here--in shops, in restaurants, whatever--have been conducted en franglais, and there are places where you walk in and get greeted in English automatically. Not very conducive to studying French. Now, I've made my concessions to the tourist gods--my friends even dragged me up the Tour Eiffel, though we only made it to the first level before my fear of heights kicked in--but I do not want to be a perpetual tourist here, by god.
And as for LM stuff... look, the metro stop nearest my hotel is Les Halles. Which means I emerge practically on top of the site of the barricade, and walk up the rue Rambuteau towards the rue Saint-Denis to get to my hotel. I am in nerd heaven here. I snickered at the wine bar at 16 rue de la Verrerie, I took pictures of Saint-Merry, I peered over the quay between the Pont au Change and the Pont Notre-Dame, I got shat on by a pigeon in the Luxembourg. I also got to hear all my figments cry out in horror at the same time at the discovery that on the site of the former Café Musain, there is now...
...a McDonald's. What an undignified place to hold secret revolutionary meetings.
Tomorrow, I shall be up bright and early to take a little tour of the LM-related spots I still haven't got to. Mostly in the Marais, save the rue Oudinot, and then I shall be visiting Ol' Vic in the Panthéon, holding my nose for the Musée des Égouts, and if I have time, taking the RER out to Montfermeil. This is mostly to have all the really obsessive stuff out of the way, so that I can go back to being a tourist on Wednesday and Thursday and do Notre-Dame, the Louvre, the Opéra Garnier, the catacombs, the Conciergie, the Place de la Bastille, the Place de la Concorde... oops, there I go, being a history nerd again. It's probably just as well that none of the souvenir shops sell miniature guillotines, or I'd undoubtedly end up buying one.
Five days is not nearly enough time to spend in Paris. sjdkl;jdf
(List of Miz-related places I still need to visit: Église St-Paul-St-Louis, 11 rue Sévigné, 6 place des Vosges, Place de la Bastille, 6 rue des Filles-du-Calvaire, rue Oudinot, Panthéon, Musée des Égouts--and, if I have time, 50-52 blvd de l'Hôpital, rue du Champ de l'Alouette, and Montfermeil.)
There's more, I'm sure, but I can't think of it at the moment. o_o Paris. That is all.
However, given the slightly sneaky nature of my 'net usage, and the fact that I have a whole shitload of stuff to do and only three days to do it, photo posts might have to wait until I get back home. Trust me, I have taken a lot of photos. Photos of the Monument to the Girondins in Bordeaux. Photos of Montreuil-sur-Mer. Photos of every location in Paris that might conceivably be related to LM.
Trip was rather hell--had an overnight from Bordeaux to Paris that got absolutely ruined by a bunch of screaming kids who kept banging on the back of my seat whenever I was about to doze off. Oh, and I packed way too heavy. This was not really a problem until I got to Montreuil-sur-Mer and discovered that I should have paid more attention to Hugo when he said the town was divided into upper Montreuil and lower Montreuil. The train station is in lower Montreuil, i.e. the part that's actually "sur mer." The upper part is an old garrison city at the top of a very, very steep hill, with ramparts and fortifications and everything. My arms still hurt from dragging my suitcases up that damn hill.
I'd thought the hotel I booked was rather twee, but it turns out that the entire town is like that and the hotel was just an intensification of it. For all I know, Montreuil-sur-Mer's main industry could have been the manufacture of black glassware once upon a time, but in the present day, its economy seems to be made up of tourism, gastronomy, flower arrangement, and artisan tchotchke makers. It's very cute, in a cobblestone-streets, lace-curtains, flowers-in-every-window kind of way, but it was a little much for me. The ramparts and the citadel were honestly more interesting than the town itself--pretty, but very old and steep and slightly sinister in a way. I could picture a murder mystery centered on someone getting pushed off the ramparts, but get back into the center of town and it's just hard to imagine anyone murdering anyone else. Actually, it was hard to imagine Fantine in destitution there. Everything was just so pretty and perky.
And when I say the economy was mostly centered around tourism, I mean that most of the biggest businesses were hotel/restaurants offering specialties of local cuisine, the tourism office was bustling, and about half the people on the streets were visiting Brits. (As a side note, I am going to burn in gastronomy hell, because it was obviously a mecca of northern French cuisine and I ate... kebab. Yep, going to hell.) They do have lots more regional and military history than just the LM gimmick, but that didn't stop me from finding a clothes shop called Gavroche, a chocolatier who for some reason called his store Les Miserables, beers named after Valjean and Cosette, and a lingerie store called--I am not shitting you--Les Dessous de Fantine.
The Spectacle Son et Lumière based off the novel was rather fun--nothing brilliant, but fun. All the dialogue and narration were made up of quotes from LM, and it was set in a "frame story" of Hugo visiting Montreuil in 1837 and writing to Adèle about his idea to set a novel there. Valjean had a funny red coat, Javert looked like a Disney villain, and I could have done without the random song about Eponine and the equally random dance numbers, but there were some really nice moments. Including an actual staging of Valjean running into a burning house to save the children of the captain of the gendarmes, a lovely juxtaposition between the nuns of Petit-Picpus and the convicts of Toulon, a revolution that actually looked impressive with several hundred volunteers, and a fireworks show to round it off. Some of the dance numbers were actually quite nice in an artsy way, like the drowning man and the dance between good and evil while Valjean is stewing over the Champmathieu affair, but there were others--I'm thinking the dancing dolls in Montfermeil in particular--that were utterly pointless and stupid. I have audio from the show if anyone wants it.
I would also like to note that by train, it is 20 minutes from Montreuil to Hesdin, 25 minutes from Hesdin to Saint-Pol, and 25 minutes from Saint-Pol to Arras. So the journey that took Valjean eighteen hours actually takes a little over an hour nowadays due to the wonders of modern technology. ;)
And then I got to Paris and, uh, what to say. I love it. IloveitIloveitIloveit. I dislike New York because it's ugly and Bordeaux because it's a bit stuffy and boring; take all the beauty and history of Bordeaux, add in the size and variety and bustle of New York, then multiply it by about six and that is my first impression of Paris. ♥ Unlike Bordeaux, I get the impression that I could actually live here after the "ooh, shiny!" wore off and not drive myself nuts. Maybe I'm just a city brat at heart, but... Paaaaris.
I will say that I'm glad I spent the month in Bordeaux beforehand, because coming here straight off the bat would have given me a really skewed impression of... well, everything. It's touristy. Half the conversations I've had here--in shops, in restaurants, whatever--have been conducted en franglais, and there are places where you walk in and get greeted in English automatically. Not very conducive to studying French. Now, I've made my concessions to the tourist gods--my friends even dragged me up the Tour Eiffel, though we only made it to the first level before my fear of heights kicked in--but I do not want to be a perpetual tourist here, by god.
And as for LM stuff... look, the metro stop nearest my hotel is Les Halles. Which means I emerge practically on top of the site of the barricade, and walk up the rue Rambuteau towards the rue Saint-Denis to get to my hotel. I am in nerd heaven here. I snickered at the wine bar at 16 rue de la Verrerie, I took pictures of Saint-Merry, I peered over the quay between the Pont au Change and the Pont Notre-Dame, I got shat on by a pigeon in the Luxembourg. I also got to hear all my figments cry out in horror at the same time at the discovery that on the site of the former Café Musain, there is now...
...a McDonald's. What an undignified place to hold secret revolutionary meetings.
Tomorrow, I shall be up bright and early to take a little tour of the LM-related spots I still haven't got to. Mostly in the Marais, save the rue Oudinot, and then I shall be visiting Ol' Vic in the Panthéon, holding my nose for the Musée des Égouts, and if I have time, taking the RER out to Montfermeil. This is mostly to have all the really obsessive stuff out of the way, so that I can go back to being a tourist on Wednesday and Thursday and do Notre-Dame, the Louvre, the Opéra Garnier, the catacombs, the Conciergie, the Place de la Bastille, the Place de la Concorde... oops, there I go, being a history nerd again. It's probably just as well that none of the souvenir shops sell miniature guillotines, or I'd undoubtedly end up buying one.
Five days is not nearly enough time to spend in Paris. sjdkl;jdf
(List of Miz-related places I still need to visit: Église St-Paul-St-Louis, 11 rue Sévigné, 6 place des Vosges, Place de la Bastille, 6 rue des Filles-du-Calvaire, rue Oudinot, Panthéon, Musée des Égouts--and, if I have time, 50-52 blvd de l'Hôpital, rue du Champ de l'Alouette, and Montfermeil.)
There's more, I'm sure, but I can't think of it at the moment. o_o Paris. That is all.