Paris on $5,000 a Day (warning: this post contains sex and violence)

Having offered to carry bags for our resident academic to an international conference on pesticides, we all wound up in Paris last week for a 3-day see-all-you-can. We had accommodations in the rough-and-ready 13th arrondissement:

Our hotel-like establishment was run by a hospitality contractor for the French government, which sponsored the conference. In addition to walls and a roof, the refinements in our room included indoor/outdoor carpeting, a jailhouse shower (no tub or stall; drain in the middle of the bathroom floor), and a sofa bed for those of us (Michelle, me) who didn't get into the room fast enough to claim the actual bed.

(Why didn't we pull rank, you might ask? To avoid a knock-down-drag-out within three minutes of our arrival, that's why.)

After a cursory bedbug check (really, who wants to actually find them?), we hit the streets. Herr Metz, Hannah's viola teacher back in Munich, warned us not to bother with the Eiffel Tower. But we weren't about to listen to him. We paid the extortionate ticket fees--Tobias added them up and suggested we construct some sort of landmark tower in our backyard--and up we went at sunset. Tres bien. Flash frozen by a Siberian wind, we were back to earth within 20 minutes, retreating to a nearby cafe I can heartily recommend for its central heating. Tobias saw the tab and suggested we open a cafe. "This place is proof," I encouraged him, "that all it takes is a storefront and a sign."

Of course, the French are famous for their food, and we arrived in Paris with a list of "moderately priced" bistros recommended by one of Michelle's foodie colleagues. We came to refer to it simply as The List. That first night we scouted out a place, and while awaiting Paris's fashionably late dinner hour to commence, we ended up huddling for warmth in a mall. Like just about any Paris street, the mall had one lingerie shop after another that left little to the imagination about what French women (and French men, for all I know) are wearing under their stylish outfits by day, and between the sheets by night. But Tobias was struggling to get his mind around it.

What the...??

"Mom," he said, "Why would anyone wear a nightgown like that? There's no way that's going to keep you warm."

"Ask your father," said his mother.

It was an understandable cop-out. There's a short answer to the question that anyone past puberty would understand. But for the prepubescent, 10,000 words probably aren't enough. And I didn't want to be parsing the topic over my steak tartare and creme brulee. So in the name of expedience, I plucked some mumbo-jumbo from my "Man from Nantucket" satchel of bawdy talk, and voila! T was laughing too hard to ask any follow-up questions. By the time he had collected himself, I was distracting him with a different absurdity in an adjacent shop window:

Next morning, we had our feisty New Yorker take on the hotel clerk about the sofa bed, and of course they upgraded us (army cots in place of the sofa bed). Feeling flush with that victory we double-timed it to Place d'Italie, where we caught the metro for another whirlwind day of sightseeing.

(A split second later I tripped over the toddler on the leash)

Our first stop was the Louvre. There are many complicated reasons for the chilly relations between France and the rest of Europe, but the Louvre is certainly one sore point. It's packed to the ridgepoles with the booty that Napoleon plundered from museums, churches, historical sites and the bottom of many a barrel while conquering Europe and North Africa.

Because of its nearly endless space, the Louvre apparently sees no need to hire curators. Taking in the collection is like drinking from a fire hose. No wonder, then, that legions of tourists are in and out just for the Mona Lisa, probably the most famous painting in the world. A small work, it hangs behind thick glass, with a 15-foot guarded buffer zone, surrounded by 100 other minor and irrelevant paintings, in a gigantic room that is mobbed by people with cameras:

All that makes it difficult to appreciate, at least as a work of art. It's more of a veni, vidi, vici experience:

There it is! Just over the guy's left shoulder.

Meanwhile, a stone's throw from the ML are some very worthy pieces that go virtually unnoticed. Credit goes to Michelle for spotting these:

The death of Cleopatra, by a painter I don't think I need to psychoanalyze.

Tobias!

Some massacre or other

OK, lunch time: We ended up at a bistro that wasn't on The List because your intrepid correspondent threw down his gauntlet: "I am not about to spend another $150 just for lunch!" (Moral of the story so far: You force me to sleep on a rib-sticking sofa bed at your own peril, kids.) So instead of spending $150 for lunch we spent a mere $100. (Tobias: "We should open a bistro!") But as I watched Hannah eat a steak from a steer that spent a lifetime dragging cannons for the French Foreign Legion, I came around to agreeing, somewhat grudgingly, to stick to The List from that point on.

By the way, my Travel 101 suggestion--that we cobble lunch together from a baguette, fantastic cheese, and no end of other goodies spilling from the cornucopia of market stalls of Paris--struck my children as a senseless imposition of shame and hardship upon the people I supposedly love. It earned me nothing but withering contempt. It was a non-starter. So I took solace in their good instinct to spend other people's money, while reminding myself that traveling is most fun for me when Michelle is the bursar, and I just bury my skinflint head in the sand.
  
Enough about Paris for one day. Stay tuned for a possible report (or not) on Notre Dame cathedral, the museum of French Impressionism, and more get-rich-quick schemes from our budding entrepreneur.