The Great Indoors

Paris woke to rain. The sun doesn't rise until about 8:30 anyway and with rain, it felt like the darkness continued for an extra hour. Sennen was determined that this would not be another lazy morning like yesterday, but that despite the dampness and cold, we would continue seeing the city. Ailyn had struck the devil's bargain yesterday in exchange for extra laziness, so she was ready to comply. 

Only our choices were necessarily informed by the weather. Luckily, as beautiful as Paris is outside, it also offers the great indoors. After some pastry and freshly squeezed orange juice at the neighborhood bakery, we bought new tourist passes for the Metro (our original five days expired) and headed to the Musee d'Orsay. Unfortunately, I hadn't caught that Ailyn wore her more comfortable, but less grippy sneakers and she took three spills before we made it onto the first train. We had to go a little slower and I realized it helped if we held hands. 

Arriving at the d'Orsay was an initially shocking experience – the line ran from the building across a square and then wrapped around the neighboring Museum of the Foreign Legion. Sennen was ready to call it quits – nothing was worth that line. Ailyn the artist wasn't ready to throw in the towel – the museum was important to her – but she was daunted and unsure. So I suggested we walk around the entrance to the museum and get a full perspective on the line. I'm so glad we did because it turned out there was a much shorter second line on the other side – but even better, once we got in that line, the d'Orsay staff came around and told the families with children they could get into a much shorter line. So we waited no more than ten minutes before jumping the line and getting in. 

I wasn't fully sure what to expect once we got into the museum. In the limited museum-going we've done, Sennen has asked a ton of questions about history, culture and religion and Ailyn has quietly looked at particular things that catch her eye – but not said much. Now, Ailyn is enthusiastic about art and Sennen has always preferred history to art itself.  

Sennen loved the sculptures lining the center of the downstairs, while Ailyn took immediately to the paintings in the rooms off to the left. We started with Daumier and Millet and worked our way through the left side galleries from there. Ailyn took her time with each painting. She often wanted to show me what she loved about them, how much work the artist much have put into each one – how long and hard they were to create. Ailyn appreciated light, perspective, color, technique. Nothing escaped her and when she wasn't absorbing a painting, she asked me to take photos of her favorites.

Sennen was going to lose his patience with the paintings if I didn't intervene. For him, I did a crash-course art history lesson explaining how art is a conversation of ideas that includes not only art itself, but culture, politics and even debate about morality and societal direction. That sparked more interest and thankfully Daumier made a set of sculptures caricaturing leading politicians and financiers of his day – which proved my point and gave Sennen a very concrete, digestible example of what I meant. Plus the sculptures were from the July Monarchy period – which Sennen has been interested to understand – so it all began to coalesce for him. That in turn, bought Ailyn more time as Sennen settled into examining and appreciating the paintings. 

After some time with the paintings, we returned to the central gallery with all of the sculptures where the roles reversed and Sennen spent long periods exploring different works and reading the blurbs about them on their placards. He had lots of questions about different myths, and stories that gave context to the art. Meanwhile, Ailyn really just wanted to sit down – especially since she was a little sore from her spills. 

The unexpected treasures though were at the back of the building. One gallery of war and battlefield art transfixed both kids – and necessitated a quick explanation of the Crimean and Franco-Prussian wars from me – followed by an exhibition about the Paris Opera House – or Palais Garnier. With paintings, models, plans and a model of Paris centered on the Opera house under clear glass on the floor – allowing the visitor to float over 1870 Paris – the kids were transfixed. This exhibition worked for me too as the Palais Garnier is my favorite building in Paris. While they had some trouble fully appreciating it when we viewed it a few nights ago – the exhibition helped them see the Opera inside and out from multiple perspectives via several media. Suddenly, their appreciation of my favorite building grew exponentially. 

At that point, the kids were saturated with art museum and were ready for a light lunch. On the way back to the Metro we came across a dim sum cafe. What is a dim sum cafe, you may ask? A place with ready-to-steam containers of dim sum as well as quiches, Vietnamese sandwiches, croque monseiurs and salads. The prospect of dim sum had all of us excited and the reasonable prices were a strong perk. Only it turned out that the Vietnamese proprietors didn't know the usual Cantonese terms for all thee varieties of dim sum and could refer to it only by the French such as "vegetable raviolis" – which was, well, weird. Their xiaolong bao were actually puffy breaded items – like a baotzi – only passed off as dumplings. Long story short – it was the most disappointing lunch of the trip, although not a terrible one, and quick enough to keep moving to our next destination: Au Printemps.

Ever since Ailyn saw the grands magazins (department stores) of Paris Friday night, she has been dying to get back during business hours. What amounted to a good rainy day activity in my mind, was a sunny day to Ailyn's. Au Printemps and Galleries Lafayette on the Rue de Caumartin are each three entire buildings, most with eight to ten stories apiece. France originated the department store – with the Le Bon Marche (Rive Gauche location)in 1852. Au Printemps followed in 1865 while Galleries Lafayette came along almost 30 years after that. Ailyn cared more for prices and selection than historical experience, so we went with Au Printemps which in itself could be an all-day activity.

Within the first 20 minutes, Ailyn spent the remainder of her Hanukkah shopping money on a Clarins hydrating face cream. The very kind and model-beautiful sales girl worked kindly and devotedly with Ailyn to help make the right selection and Ailyn assured me that it would obviate her needs for foundation or concealer…. (????!!!????). Her money, her choice and she felt like a million euros having made such an adult purchase in such an elegant place. When the cashier threw in a few additional Clarins samples, Ailyn looked as if she had won the Lotto.

Sennen went into Au Printemps with an attitude that clearly said he was doing this for his sister. However, once seeing the sheer grandure of Au Printemps, he became curious as to what the Men's building might hold. So after exiting the Beauty/Home/Children's building, we explored five stories of Men's. 

I once read an author who wrote that only in Paris can you find straight men who dress so meticulously and accessorized that they would be made for gay anywhere else. Au Printemps Homme is ground zero for that sexuality-blurring fuzziness with story after story of high fashion clothing, accessories and objects I not only didn't know I needed, but never suspected existed. With disco playing softly throughout the store, and numerous skinny gay patrons, it was clear Au Printemps knew its market for flashy haute couture. When Sennen saw a leather jacket that roughly resembled mine, but in his size, he became excited and was hoping the storewide sale would apply to it. Sadly, not only was the jacket not on sale, but it cost 1000 euros. on hearing thee price, Sennen jumped back from the jacket as if it bit him. He then wanted to see the price tag of every item he even slightly liked until he understood this store was well beyond his means – at which point he decided we should go to the Women's building for Ailyn.

Ailyn was under no illusion she was going to find a quick bargain and approached Au Printemps Femme much the way she had the Musee D'Orsay hours earlier. She took it in, appreciated the art of what she found, enjoyed the experience – and touched nothing. I suggested we go to the 7th floor where they had renovated a room that was part of the cupola of the building. It turned out that not only was it super cool to be in the cupola (whose contents were of no interest) but it led out to a terrace where we could see out across Paris and get an entirely different view of the Au Printemps building itself. That was the best part of the Au Printemps experience for me.

By the time we left Au Printemps, looked at a few other neighboring shops and rested at a cafe for a little while, it was past 5pm. Our crew was running out of steam  - so we decided to head back to the apartment for a reset and grab dinner in a very nice neighborhood brasserie when we were ready.

"Paris means our days are always so full. I liked Cannes because we didn't have to do so much to see it and our days weren't so full," Ailyn said over dinner. "I like Paris, especially with all the art – but I liked Cannes better."

My favorite part of the day was when the kids were talking about dream futures and finally decided that Ailyn would live half her year in Paris – pursuing her career as an artist – and half her year in Rome baking for her brother's future restaurant. Sennen said he was really glad to hear that because otherwise he would have had to move his restaurant to Paris – he couldn't live without Ailyn. She hugged him with love joy, love and appreciation pouring out of her.