This morning, I happened to walk past a doorway, one which I have passed many times, a doorway that resembles any building entrance in Paris. I caught a glimpse that made me backtrack. I gazed into an enchanting be-gardened charming row of mews-homes lining both sides of a pathway of blossoming trees and plants laid out in hodge-podge English garden fashion, worlds away from the usual orderly French parterres. This pathway ends at the entrance to the Dubuffet Foundation, which I had never before noticed.
This takes me back to my very first trip to Paris, where my second goal had been to find les Arènes de Lutèce, right after the visit to Notre Dame. I have always been fascinated by ruins, the older the better. The arena is not easy to find, as the entrance is an unprepossessing doorway. A hallway leads you into just another bourgeois apartment building. Not so! You walk into an open-air ampitheater where characteristic Frenchmen 'boule', children cavort, and picnikers and bookworms enoy the twittering birds and calm from the impatient French drivers blowing horns on Rue Monge. This totally unexpected panorama only increases the delight of the find.
Morale of the story: In Paris, you can not tell a book by its cover, it seems.
I had a similar experience last night. I was invited to an art opening, and was given an address in the Marais. I was certain I had the address wrong from my jet-lagged friend, for all I saw were huge forbiddingly shut oak doors. None of the usual art scene was spilling into the street either. As I walked towards this address with a puzzled look, a hip doorman dressed in the sartorially requisite black suit of the art and entertainment world silently opened the door. This imposing doorway was hiding a stately courtyard of one of the many aristocratic hôtels particuliers of Paris, where a sedate vernissage was indeed in progress. Sedate, because although there were the requisite stars, princesses, collectors, artists, curators, and even a french rapper, it was all quite contained and quiet, all the moreso considering the many Americans milling around. Let's face it, our contrasting conceptions of space make the average American alot louder than your average Frenchman.
This takes me back to my very first trip to Paris, where my second goal had been to find les Arènes de Lutèce, right after the visit to Notre Dame. I have always been fascinated by ruins, the older the better. The arena is not easy to find, as the entrance is an unprepossessing doorway. A hallway leads you into just another bourgeois apartment building. Not so! You walk into an open-air ampitheater where characteristic Frenchmen 'boule', children cavort, and picnikers and bookworms enoy the twittering birds and calm from the impatient French drivers blowing horns on Rue Monge. This totally unexpected panorama only increases the delight of the find.
Morale of the story: In Paris, you can not tell a book by its cover, it seems.
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