WHAT'S IMPORTANT MIGHT NOT ACTUALLY BE WHAT'S IMPORTANT

It’s crazy out there. Aside from the political scene (which we were informed by French taxi drivers was the same everywhere), Europe is mobbed. A friend who just got home from three weeks in England and France gave up on visiting the British Museum because the line stretched multiple blocks. When we visited a couple years ago, so many people were crowded around the Rosetta Stone it was impossible to see—or enjoy what we were seeing.

We just returned from two weeks in France celebrating hubby’s birthday. Getting into the newly restored Notre Dame felt impossible. No timed entry tickets were available online, and when we walked by to check it out, the lines covered the entire cathedral plaza. (We solved that by attending 8 AM mass and walking around afterwards, a tip from a guy at the table next to us one night at dinner.) I bet you also heard the Louvre shut down because of the crowds. Same thing around the Mona Lisa as around the Rosetta stone when we were there last year: mob scene. Never mind the posing, to show you saw the great piece of art, like this woman in Musee de L’Orangerie, seeing Monet’s Water Lilies. Or was she?

Of course, there was no one in the Louvre’s fourth-floor display of Dutch art, and many fewer people at the MEP’s exhibition of Marie-Laure de Decker’s photographs of civil unrest. In Angers, we saw the Chant du Monde tapestry with only about fifteen others.

And another weaver’s response to Chant du Monde in the serendipitously found museum behind our hotel in Tours:

Maybe the moral of this story is to pick museums and monuments carefully, and be willing to go for the lesser known and off beat.

COVID’s “end” seems to have exploded humans all over the world, like a giant popped zit. There was a block-long line to get into a mediocre steak restaurant in Paris (reviewed on Travel Advisor), while dozens of lovely (unreviewed) bistros with tables sat within two or three blocks.

And Versailles! My God. Van had never seen it. When we arrived, the lines to enter stretched across the courtyard. Tickets were timed, so we thought we were OK. For a while, we were—in the Queen’s apartments. But when we entered the section leading to the Hall of Mirrors, it was like exiting the Meadowlands through a four-foot-wide tunnel after a Beyonce concert. Or the digestive tract of the boa constrictor.

I was royally dressed down by a woman for trying not to lose Van in the melee, as if getting ahead of her would actually get me anywhere. Good grief. To add insult to indignity, outside in the beautiful garden where you could finally breathe, they were blasting music.

The only place that seemed to have its timed entry under control was the Louis Vuitton Foundation, where we saw the magical David Hockney retrospective. There were still crowds, but one didn’t feel suffocated, and it was possible to see the art without getting trampled. On another day, we walked up to the Montparnasse Cemetery, where Simone de Beauvoir is buried to see her lipsticked grave. No crowds there. (And in case you’re wondering whether women’s rights and voices matter, check out the offerings, all to her, even though Sartre is buried with her.)

I’m not giving up travel, but I need to plan differently: off season, off-beat attractions, honor the local culture—all things I’ve always believed anyway. And I know, I’m part of those crowds. I’m culpable, too. Maybe what I’m trying to learn is that when I travel, just like in everyday life, the point isn’t to see the “important” stuff, but to see the stuff that’s in front of me.

How do you travel? Take care of yourself out there (and those around you), and thanks for reading.

Events

July 19: I’ve got a five-minute guest spot at Jerry Johnson’s online book launch of Bad Fruit. Here’s his website to follow up if you’re interested: https://jtjohnpoet.com/. He’s a great reader himself, with timely poems about the state of the nation.

Also, if you’re local to Connecticut, check out the offerings at Keeler Tavern, arranged by Barb Fulton Jennes, former poet laureate of Ridgefield. There are workshops with Martin Espada, Mark Doty and Danez Smith with readings afterward. Here’s the link for Espada; all the rest can be found under Calendar. https://keelertavernmuseum.org/events/532/poetry-workshop-with-martin-espada/