randomosity

Last night marked a first visit to the IFI (Irish Film Institute). The IFI, I have gathered and can now confirm is a wonderful

venue for those in the know. They feature a full slate of movies, largely European indie flicks, definitely of eclectic rather than popular taste. Last night for example featured: Paris, City of Men, L’Heure d’été and Ledjis.
Last night’s objective was to see the rather innocuously named Paris. Read the movie summary, but went in with little idea about what we were going to see. This 2008 film from Cédric Klapisch earns a very strong must see recommendation! It centres on the flamboyant professional dancer Pierre (Romain Duris), who has been diagnosed with a terminal heart condition and his sister (Juliette Binoche) who sheds work responsibilities to move in and care for him. Much in the style of his earlier, and superb L’Auberge Espangnole, Klapisch ingeniously webs a series of tangentially interlocking story lines. He keeps you guessing at to when and where the stories will intersect, and aside from some rather clumsy foreshadowing in one of the tragic sequences, he plays his hand well.

Cross-posted to Dublinica.

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Speaking with Matt Leighninger this morning I was reminded of one of my best tips for those looking for offbeat sights in Paris - the military models at the Musée de l’Armée. The museum is a treasure. A grande promenade stretching from the Seine leads up to the building. The courtyards are filled with captured and antique canons…hundreds of them. The canons are often works of the craftsmen’s art. Inside the museum are amazing collections of all things military stretching from earliest times to the present. There are guided tours, expositions and of course Napoleon’s Tomb adjoins the museum proper in L’Eglise du dôme. The museum is enormous and can easily occupy the better part of a day for the day.
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One of the most fascinating stores in Paris and well worth a visit is Colette. The location is prime - along rue Saint-Honoré near the Place du Marche Saint-Honoré. Colette carries a wonderfully eclectic inventory of things amazing. catering to a diverse clientèle from the curious, the tourist to the glitteratti, the hand-picked items in store are displayed creatively and offer the finest of the trendiest.
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Having just returned from one of my favourite cities in the world, I was fascinated to find a Paris Metro Virtual Experience. This media-rich site offers wonderful history of the Paris Metro and the opportunity to take a virtual tour with static images and rel-time soundtrack along a number of lines. Additionally, the author of the site has completed station by station architectural mosaics of particular lines. If you have ever had the opportunity to travel on the metro (arguably one of the most efficiently run systems in the world) this site may bring back some memories.
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The Gardens at the Palais Royal are distinctly different from those at the Luxembourg. A grand urban courtyard, the Palais Royal have been a public garden from immediately prior to the Revolution. The Palais Royal was owned by the Duc d’Orleans, an aristocrat who sought popular appeal. As today, the courtyard was surrounded by cloistered shops and atelier and served as a meeting spot for the ‘common folk’.
Today, the garden itself is green and large and a wonderful spot to sit and read and be amongst a milieu.

Entry to the garden is through the palais itself and the contrast from the bustling street to the south could not be more extreme. You emerge from the concrete jungle into a lush garden with a bordering walking paths and a fountain in the centre that creates two separate private areas. Chairs are provided and one can easily while away the hours engrossed in a fine book.
At the south end of the garden is a rather discordant sculpture featuring black and white cylinders that have risen to varying heights out of the patio itself. Impressive, artistic, tasteful?? hard to say. Definitely unique.
What is particularly nice about this garden is the oasis that it provides amongst the hustle and bustle of the surrounding streets. Its a defined area and you are very conscious of the surroundings. But the lushness of the gardens themselves allow you to easily escape in appropriate diversion.

There’s a neat spot, a little off the beaten track, in Paris that I have some fond memories of. It’s an oasis, small in scale and slow in pace. It’s not the sort of place that you find in the tourist directories and its not enveloped by the legend of Paris vacationeering. Bercy Village is a trendy upscale redevelopment project in the 12th which features little shops, a cinema, bars and restaurants, situated within and without of a old wine market. Metro 14 - Cour St-Emilion lands you right in the village.
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I have long wanted to jot down some thoughts about some of my favourite places in Paris. Meaning to eventually present these as an appropriately georeferenced set with appropriate navigation, for now I thought I would add them as simply blog entries. When I thought about where to start, it took me all of a second to ecide to begin with one of my absolutely favourite spots: The Luxembourg Gardens.

There are a plethora of wonderful gardens in Paris, but the Luxembourg is a favourite for a variety of great reasons:

• Convenient
• Adjacent
• Sustantial
• Gorgeous
• Clean
• Safe

The gardens and the Palais de Luxembourg date the seventeenth century and the construction of the palace and surroundings for Marie de Medici. The garden is surrounded by a wall and the garden/park itself is intersected by pedestrian avenues or crushed stone. It is centred on a fountain/large grassy area (I can’t remember which guise it is in right now). There are polite city forests and wonderful statuary surrounding the main promenades.

What I like most particularly about the gardens are the wonderful seats. They can be dragged to any place one desires and come in three flavours. There are the standard upright, like a standard chair type (really great in combination with others for your feet), slightly reclined ones and the best: full reclined spacious metal lounges that are not unlike a Parisian version of an Adirondack deck chair. Getting to the garden early enough means you get your pick of both chair and spot and you can find a wonderfully sheltered spot close to the wall around the central water, and spend the day reading, writing and simply taking in the ambiance of this very special environment.
The central ‘plaza’ area always had this wonderful, huge wading pool in which children rented little sailing boats and pushed them about. Just a really nice ‘park’ kind of thing to do. However, if I am to believe Google Maps (after the Katrina thing I am ever so slightly skeptical), it looks as though this area has been filled in and is just a grassy area now. Maybe its a seasonal, annual thing…I sure hope that is the case.
The area around the Luxembourg also makes it superbly situated. In the Latin Quarter, near the Sorbonne and the Pantheon, it is also near the entrance to the Catacombs (about them in a further entry). There are all sort of wonderful eating opportunities in the area, many of which re great takeaway food that you can return to the park with. I really like this little Japanese yakatori place, a three minute walk from my seat in the park.
On a more somber note, the wall to the northeast is the site where Marshall Michel Ney (the Bravest of the Brave) was executed in 1815 for his part in Napoleon’s return to power. This tragedy is not without its controversy, both due to the circumstances of Ney’s court martial as well as the persistent rumours that he was able to escape to the United States following Napoleon’s second abdication and lived out his days as a rural school master.
The Luxembourg Gardens are easily accessed, both by foot walking south from the Seine having crossed the Pont Neuf, or via the Luxembourg Metro station which deposits you right at the northeast gate of the park.

Always a wonderful site for the offbeat images of Russian society, English Russia has a great photo spread of a Ukrainian man who built a wonderfully detailed model of the Eiffel tower out of matches. What’s more it has a whole network of little LED lights to make it all the more true to life. I’d sure love to know more about the process and the time behind this one.

From Michele comes this very musing correspondence about an Englishwoman’s experience in ‘polite’ Parisian society. It provided me with a good chuckle and I hope it does the same for you. I guess I wasn’t hanging around in polite enough circles to have been apprised of or embarrassed by my behaviour. Things to be aware of for your next sojourn to the city of light.