So, as you might have guessed, last weekend I bopped down to Paris. Because that’s the sort of thing you can do here.

This was my first trip to Paris since I was about three feet tall, and all I can remember from that trip is that it was cloudy and we couldn’t go any higher than the second level of the Eiffel Tower. This time, there wasn’t much point in trying to fit the Complete Paris Experience into twenty-four hours; I figured if I managed to intercept Jeff and Ann VanderMeer in the middle of Jeff’s European tour and maybe hit the Musée des Arts et Métiers — in honor of my teenage obsession with Foucault’s Pendulum (the book, that is) — I’d be doing okay.

Result: success!

Not only were the VanderMeers cool people to meet, at long last — the best we’d managed to date was forty seconds in a WFC elevator — they were great people to wander around Paris with, drink with, and generally hang out with.

I got in around 2:00 Saturday afternoon. Being me, I decided to walk from the Gare de l’Est to my hotel over by L’Opéra. On the map it’s pretty straightforward, but, being me, I only memorized about half the street names, and I overestimated my sense of direction by about 90 degrees, so it took me about an hour longer than it should have. But if I hadn’t, I never would have got to see three dead rats hanging in a window.

But if you want to see them, you’ll have to continue on, below the jump . . .

Figure 1. Paris exterminators take their work seriously.

Eventually I found the right neighborhood.

Figure 1. L’Opéra.

Checked into my hotel (the Best Western Folkestone Opéra, not to be confused with the other twenty Best Western Something Opéras), took a shower (this was the last day of the big European heat wave, at least in Paris), changed clothes. (Small, like most European hotels, but pretty nice. If you’re wanting to stay in that neighborhood, I’d recommend it.)

And I got in touch with Jeff and Ann. But I wasn’t smart enough to take any pictures of us that afternoon. I’m trying to break myself of the habit of photographic architecture instead of people, but for now you’re going to have to settle for this:

Figure 1. La place Vendôme. Just out of frame to the left and right are some very pricey jewelry shops. The guy on the pillar is Napoleon as Caesar, in case nobody got what he was about. In 1871 the Communards knocked it down, but the Third Republic put it back up and sent Gustave Courbet the bill.

We headed down through the Tuileries and over to the Grand Palais to meet up with writer and all-around cool guy Neil Williamson for a couple of really good Belgian-style beers and a salad parisienne. (Butter lettuce, sliced ham, and emmentaler cheese, mostly, in mustard dressing. Great stuff.)

Figure 1. Rhino vs. pride of lionesses, Tuileries. I wasn’t sure it was a rhino till I figured out where the horn had ended up.

Figure 1. The Grand Palais. You gotta see the roof on this thing. It’s like the botanical gardens from The Book of the New Sun or something.

By then it was evening; Jeff and Ann were in need of some down time, and Neil was off to meet up with his girlfriend, Emma, who was sitting in with the Paris Rocky Horror krewe, the Sweet Transvestites. (By all accounts her Frank N. Furter brought the house down.) So I crossed the river and headed down to the Tower.

Figure 1. Not as disorienting being there as it was being down in Pisa, but Eiffel’s baby really is something else up close.

The lines for the elevators filled about half the space under the tower, so, after waiting about forty minutes for the one ground-level toilet facility to get cleaned (in defense of whoever’s responsible for these things, it was damn clean) and wandering around the square, I settled for getting some frites and a bottle of water (ordering them in the best French I could manage, which didn’t stop the girl behind the counter from telling me my change was “five eighty”) and headed back toward my hotel.

Figure 1. The line for the frites was shorter than the one for the elevators, and the frites were cheaper too.

I say “toward” because this was more or less a repeat of my first Paris walking experience, only through ritzier neighborhoods: embassies, banks, boutiques, fancy hotels. (Overheard outside the Four Seasons Hotel, among a gaggle of American girls: “And that’s why Philadelphia is the greatest country on Earth!” Unfortunately I was too late to hear the reason, but I’ll take her word for it.) (I think I heard more English in one weekend in Paris than in five months on the streets of Basel.)

Next morning the heat wave had broken. I checked out and took the Métro down to meet up with Jeff and Ann for breakfast at their hotel down in the Quartier Latin (also a Best Western — the Best Western Grand Hôtel de L’Univers, no less).

Figure 1. The trip involved changing trains at various stations with picturesque names, viz. this one, Sèvres-Babylone. Not sure what differentiates it from any other Babylon. Apparently it used to be called Sèvres-Croix Rouge.

Breakfast was very good and very Continental. We did confuse the staff trying to explain how my breakfast was supposed to be billed to Jeff and Ann’s room, though.

Jeff: I’m just sure I’m going to get these names wrong. Corrections welcome. I suck at names.

Jeff’s mom, Penny (in Paris — well, the vicinity of — this summer researching 19th-century cemetery sculpture), and his sister Liz (down from Scotland) were supposed to meet us at eleven. We weren’t sure they’d turn up, but eventually they did, at eleven-thirty, just as Jeff was leaving a note for them at the front desk.

We put Penny in charge since she was the only one of us who’d actually spent much time in Paris. The big church was pretty handy, so she took us over there, first.

Figure 1. It is quite a church.

It was Sunday afternoon, so there was a Mass in progress, but they let the tourists orbit the periphery while the serious folks get the sermon, or light candles, or go to confession. (Which happens in a glass booth, now, apparently, across a desk. Kind of cool, in its way.) I wanted to get a souvenir card of Pope Ratzi — they had some great ones, the real supervillain look, with the cape and everything — but I didn’t have the correct change.

Figure 1. I took a whole lot of pictures inside the cathedral, but mostly they’re pictures of how crap my phone is at taking pictures in low light. This is about as good as they get. Couldn’t let you miss Ste. Jeanne, though.

I managed to lose everybody while checking out the mustaches on this statue of Charlemagne and his boys —

Figure 1. If you had any doubt Charlemagne was a Teutonic barbarian warrior, this should clear it up.

— but eventually they turned up, and we stopped at a cafe for coffee and snacks, resulting in my first photo of actual people.

Figure 1. Clockwise from left: Jeff, Penny, Liz, and Ann.

Then we headed down toward Penny’s old neighborhood. On the way we passed the Institut Curie. It may be a world-class cancer research center, but the building it’s in is straight out of City 17.

Figure 1. Seriously. I’m talking zombie apocalypse here.

Figure 1. These pictures just don’t capture the horror.

I distracted myself by looking at this poster, in a shop window on the opposite side of the street, instead of the building.

Figure 1. Don’t mess with the savage cat.

We ended up at the recently discovered Roman ampitheater.

Figure 1. And you can’t even see the drunks from this angle.

After that we took the Métro up to the Gare de l’Est so that I could get my train tickets sorted out.

Only, well, I couldn’t get my train tickets sorted out. All but two of the ticket machines were down, and the long-distance ticket office was closed. When I found a working ticket machine, it claimed that all the trains to Basel were fully booked. It toyed with me by offering a second-class berth on the overnight train, but after leading me through a twelve-step selection process, declined to actually consummate the transaction.

So, what the hell, I got a ticket for the next day. I figured it’d sort itself out eventually.

Then we walked down, through the rain — through some very serious rain, at one point — to the Muséee des Arts et Métiers. Which, in addition to being the setting for the climactic scene of Foucault’s Pendulum, also turns out to be a pretty neat little museum, part Smithsonian, part Museum of Jurassic Technology (the not-made-up parts, anyway).

Figure 1. “And that is when I saw the Pendulum.”

Figure 1. The original pendulum. The one they’ve got hanging up now is quite a bit smaller and less suitable for killing people with.

Figure 1. Turn-of-the-century motorcycle with WWI-biplane-style rotary piston engine — in the back wheel. All my steampunk is going to be full of these now

Figure 1. I think this bus used to be part of the New Crobuzon public transit network.

Then Penny was worried about the schedule for trains back to the suburbs, so we headed down to the Gare de Montparnasse (on the opposite side of town, pretty much), to get that sorted out. And I phoned up Jeff and Ann’s hotel and organized myself a room for Sunday night — not entirely in French, but I was proud of getting as far as Bon soir, madame; excusez-moi de vous déranger, mais parlez-vous anglais? (Thanks, Jackie! And M. Hamel. Sorry I could never fit French 2 into my schedule...) By then we were tired and hungry and sober, so we stopped for some more beer and more salad parisienne.

We left Penny and Liz to catch their train, but first, I got one more family snapshot:

Figure 1. Check out the wicked Jules Verne moon capsule on that carousel.

Then we headed back to the hotel. (The Grand Hôtel de l’Univers edges out the Folkestone by just a little, with free wi-fi, a more picturesque lobby, and bathtubs rather than showers. And I was still feeling confident enough to start with Je m’appel David Moles — pretty basic stuff, but when you’re spoiled by six years of Japanese, or childhood immersion in Spanish, being in Paris with only one fifteen-year-old semester of French is kinda scary.) After a short break, went out to find Neil and Emma for dinner. We ended up at a cute little North African place, somewhere off Saint-Germain and had a low-rent prix fixe built around some very good couscous.

By that point we were all pretty knackered, so we called it a day.

We took the next morning pretty slowly — lounging around the lobby, lazy late breakfast, taxi to the Gare du Nord. I watched Jeff and Ann’s bags while they got their Eurailpasses authorized, and we settled down to fortify ourselves with more coffee and croissants. Penny and Liz turned up for a last round of goodbyes.

Figure 1. Still under construction, but more functional than the Gare de l’Est.

Then I headed over to the Gare de l’Est to catch my own train, and made it with ten minutes to spare.

Figure 1. The Gare de l’Est, from above.

Many hours later, via Strasbourg and Mulhouse, I made it back to Basel, in time to catch just a bit of the Swiss National Day fireworks. I crashed hard.

Anyway, Paris: Two thumbs up. Recommended. Get one for yourself.