"Oh, Paris, you've really done something to me..." or "If you don't expect too much from me, you might not be let down..." or "With the roar of cars and the lulling of the cafe bars, the sweetly sleeping sweeping of the Seine..."

Paris is a city of clichés: the City of Light, the City of Love, a city of great wine and great cheese, a city of poets and painters, a city beloved by everyone from Humphrey Bogart (or at least Rick Blaine) to Earnest Hemingway, from Pablo Picasso to Woody Allen. With this type of notoriety, I don’t know what I can say about Paris that hasn’t been said in excess by others far more eloquent than I am. With that disclaimer on the record, here is what I’ve been doing the past few days.

My hostel in Paris was surprisingly nice. Located right by the St. Paul Metro station, I was never too far from any destination in the city. Armed with my three-day unlimited Metro Pass, I hit the major tourist attractions. First came Notre Dame, which is as beautiful as I had always imagined. Then I headed to the Eiffel Tower. Even after being inundated with romantic photos and films of the Eiffel Tower my entire life, I was still extremely impressed when I saw it up close. The next day, I hit the Catacombs, which was well worth the wait and entrance fee. The damp underground corridors were lined on all sides by human bones and skulls, which was a lot more “in-your-face” than I had imagined. Pretty creepy. I also visited the Louvre at sunset, though I did not actually go inside (the building was impressive enough for me). Here are some photos of all of these things:

Bridge over the Seine.

The Seine, cutting through the center of Paris.

Notre Dame.

High ceilings inside Notre Dame.

Inside Notre Dame again.

Stained glass window and sculpture inside Notre Dame.

Above the entrance to the Notre Dame.

The Seine... again. I just couldn't get over this river.

The Eiffel Tower. Obviously.

Me and the Eiffel Tower. Obviously.

Night on the Seine w/ wine and cheese. So French.

Skulls in the Catacombs.

More bones.

Creepy corridor in the Catacombs.

The next "Dying Fetus" album cover?

Down in the tunnels.

Near the Louvre.

The Louvre.

Approaching the entrance at sunset.

The pyramid at sunset.

I also visited a renowned cemetery in Paris that houses the tombs of important and famous people. The grounds were peaceful, and the ostentatious tombs were beautiful. When I arrived, I intended to see the final resting places of Oscar Wilde and Jim Morrison, both of whom are buried there. However, I did not find a map, so I failed. Initially, this bummed me out, but then I remembered two simple facts that made me feel better: (1) I’ve never read a word written by Oscar Wilde, and (2) the Doors are overrated. I left the graveyard without regret.

Pere Lachaise cemetary.

NOT Oscar Wilde's grave.

NOT Jim Morrison's grave.

Montmarte was my favorite area in Paris. On my last day, I went to check out the Salvador Dali museum, which houses over 300 lesser-known works by him. I have always loved Dali’s work, and the museum had loads of sketches, furniture, sculptures, and paintings by the quirky surrealist.

Art in the Dali Museum.

A sculpture adapted from "The Persistence of Memory."

Dali in Paris.

Dali with Communists on his mustache? I would kill to have this poster on my wall.

In addition to the Dali museum, Montmarte is home to the best site I visited in Paris: the Basilique du Sacre Coeur (the Basillica of the Sacred Heart), a towering, hilltop, white-domed church that offers an incredible view of Paris. On the inside of the church, the domed ceiling has an enormous devotional painting on it. There were plenty of tourists there, but not as many as this church deserves.

The view from the Basillica of the Sacred Heart.

The church itself.

The amazing art on the ceiling.

Paris also allowed me to fulfill my dream of visiting Shakespeare & Company, an English-language bookstore that has been frequented by great ex-pat writers of the past. City Lights Books of San Francisco, my favorite bookstore in the world, has a sister relationship with Shakespeare & Company. The bookstore is also featured in the first scene of Before Sunset, one of my favorite films. Furthermore, Shakespeare & Company was a hang-out for some of the best writers of the 20^th century: Earnest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Henry Miller, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, and more. The store is small and musty, and the walls are lined from top to bottom with books. However, it’s not organized the way a Borders is. In all honesty, Shakespeare & Company somehow only seems to stock books that people like me would be interested in reading. They’ve got everything, and the staff is extremely knowledgeable. This is a bookstore for people who truly love literature.

Shakespeare & Company.

A random scrawling inside the store.

Wall-to-wall books.

A shout-out to City Lights, my other favorite bookstore.

I could literally spend days in here.

I really enjoyed Paris, but I was initially a bit underwhelmed by it. After all of the hype, I expected to be swept off my feet in Paris. That didn’t happen. In addition to this, the city is crawling with tourists. Obviously, it’s ridiculous for me to complain about this, as I am part of the hoards of Americans who come here to take photos of the Notre Dame. Nevertheless, it’s hard to feel the magic of a city when you see as many camera-happy tour groups as you do genuine Parisians. As I said (and as should be obvious from my descriptions above), this did not affect how much I loved Paris. This is a world-class city if ever I have seen one.

That said, though, my trip got me thinking about the conluence of tourism, expectation, and memory in a city as famous and romanticized as Paris. For decades (even centuries), Paris has been described as a city for lovers and poets, winos and art lovers. Indeed, the city offers all of these things and more, but it has all been commercialized in the form of kitsch souvenirs and excessive entrance fees. There are literally tour buses on every corner, and the lines at the major attractions are out of control. I guess that's the problem with idealizing a place like Paris: it still retains all of the art and romance, but it now does so (at least partially) to feed the expectations of foreigners (like me). When Shakespeare & Company was founded, it was in a dodgy part of the city. Now, the area is extremely commercial and chic. This is the predestined trajectory of every Bohemian Mecca. From Greenwich Village to Haight-Ashbury to North Beach, neighborhoods that spawn great movements ultimately get changed and trampled beneath waves of artistic pilgrims and tourists (like me). It's uchangeable fate. Greenwich Village will never be as cool as it was in the 1940s. Haight-Ashbury is a commercialized shadow of what it must have been like in the summer of 1967. North Beach retains only a fraction of its Beatnik cool from 1956. Paris is much like these places. The painters have been displaced by caricature artists. Berets are a novelty. People did not seem to go to the Eiffel Tower because it's organically romantic; they seemed to go there because we all agree that the Eiffel Tower is the most romantic place on Earth. Unfortunately, there is a difference between these two motivations. Don't get me wrong: I LOVE all of the places I just mentioned. It's just that I have to approach them in the same way that I visit a museum. I love North Beach because it's where Lawrence Ferlinghetti and Gary Snyder and Allen Ginsberg drank and recited their poetry (past tense). I love Haight-Ashbury because it's a dying vestige of the earnest Summer of Love. However, if I expect to find genuine Beat poets in North Beach or the new Grateful Dead in Haight-Ashbury, then I think I'm in for some serious disappointment. When the socio-artistic movements gain popularity, the gentrification and "yuppification" (*I am coining this term) beings. Much to my dismay, I am fully aware that I am as much a part of this entropy as anybody else.

Damnit. I’ve made my blog negative again. Honestly, I don’t want those last two paragraphs to leave the wrong impression. I thoroughly enjoyed Paris. I would say it’s one of the best cities I’ve ever visited. At the end of the day, maybe it IS better to preserve the legacy of Hemingway’s Europe, even if we have to do that through miniature statues of the Eiffel Tower and “I <3 Paris” T-shirts. Even in spite of these negatives, Paris is an unbelievably romantic and beautiful city in its own right. Even if no one had heard of Paris—no hype, no cheesy souvenirs, no romantic films, etc.—I still would have loved it. I guess that’s my point: Paris is not about the hype. I was not swept off my feet. I did not fall in love beneath the Eiffel Tower. I did not even fall in love with the city of Paris. Nevertheless, maybe my expectations were a little unreasonable. I found my new favorite bookstore; I saw some of the most beautiful churches that I could ever imagine; I drank wine on the banks of the Seine; and I smoked hookah just off the Boulevard St. Michel. If that doesn’t indicate that Paris is a fantastic city, then nothing would. 

Tourists could never ruin this scene.

So that's it. I hope this blog didn't leave you thinking: "Ben is such a negative dick." Consider it one big backhanded compliment to Paris, which I really did love. It is a wonderful city, and I hope this blog didn't detract from that. To shamelessly rip off the film title: Paris, je t'amie.

"Be well, do good work, and keep in touch."

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"College town boy..." or "Do you want to go to the seaside?" or "London calling..."

This is going to be a short entry. Really, this probably should have been included in the last entry. The theme is pretty much the same, so just consider this an addendum.

I met my friends Stephanie and Oli my junior year at IU, when the two of them spent a semester abroad in Bloomington. I thought their University was in London, but that was like thinking Bloomington is in Chicago. In reality, they both attended the University of Kent in Canterbury. Another IU friend, Caitlin, has also been living in Canterbury on a year abroad.

Not coincidentally, I arrived in Canterbury for Stephanie's 22nd birthday celebration. After taking the train down from Lancaster, I met all of her (very friendly) roommates, and we all wet out drinking at an on-campus pub and then dancing at a club. Canterbury is essentially a (very old, historic) college town. It has all the fixings: bars, academic buildings, student housing, late-night restaurants, etc. In a lot of ways, being in Canterbury felt like I had stumbled into a medieval Bloomington. I am always amazed at how similar colleges are across the world. From Indiana University (Bloomington) to University of Kent (Canterbury) to Tribhuvan University (Kathmandu), college campuses feel remarkably similar around the globe... at least from what I can tell. Hanging out with Stephanie and her roommates reminded me very much of my own living situation(s) in Bloomington. Not that I expected any major differences, but it's always cool to see that things are pretty much the same no matter where you go.

"The Venue" on Steph's birthday.

The next 4 days or so, Steph and Caitlin graciously filled their days showing me around Canterbury. We did a fantastic boat tour of the city. Canterbury is extremely historic—St. Augustine spread Catholicism there, the buildings are ancient, and the town is beautiful. Most notably, Thomas Becket was killed there, which led to Canterbury becoming a pilgrimage site for Christians. This history, as any unenthusiastic Brit Lit student can tell you, offered Chaucer the fodder for his classic Canterbury Tales, the bane of every high school senior’s existence.

We visited Canterbury Cathedral, which was yet another mind-blowing church filled with tombs, lovely statues, high ceilings, garden courtyards, and the infamous site of Thomas Becket’s aforementioned murder.

West Gate, the edge of the city center.

The view from our riverboat tour.

Canterbury's amazing cathedral.

High ceilings.

Outdoor walkway.

One day, Caitlin and I visited Whistable, a nearby seaside town. I have always wanted to see the English seaside, so I was glad to check that off the bucket list as well. Whistable is extremely quaint, and there’s really no other way to describe it: quaint pubs, quaint fish ’n chips shops, quaint streets, and quaint boats along the beach. It was exactly how I had imagined the English seaside, and I mean that in the best sort of way.

Quirky (and awesome) dixie jazz band in Whistable.

The quaint English seaside.

Catch of the day.

Just how I'd always imagined a place like Whistable.

Stephanie studied theater at Kent, so she is heavily plugged into the drama department at the university. On one night, she took me to an annual comedy show, hosted by the comedy program, at which alumni perform. Many of the graduates are now giving comedy a go on the professional UK comedy circuit, so the four acts we saw were hilarious, and I very much enjoyed myself.

My last full day in England, Caitlin and I went to visit London. Oli no longer lives in Canterbury, and he has been working in London. Although I would have loved to spend more time in London, it was a very jam-packed day, and the runaround reminded me of Ferris Beuller in Chicago. We walked around the Natural History Museum, which has some incredible exhibits. We visited the tourist spots on/near South Bank: the London Eye, Parliament, and Big Ben. We wandered around Brick Lane and surrounding markets, an extremely trendy hipster area with great restaurants and record stores and chic shops. I finally experienced an Ice Bar, which (if you haven’t seen one) is exactly what it sounds like: a bar in below-zero temperature, in which everything is made of ice, including the glasses, tables, and seating. Once again on this trip, I felt like I had raided some bourgeois party intended for people much more urban and fashionable than myself. Still, it was pretty awesome, and I’m glad I experienced it.

Natural History Museum in London. Science rules.

Oli getting dinosaur questions wrong at the interactive exhibit.

Jewel encrusted snuff box made for a Russian ruler as a gift. Coolest tobacco box ever.

Hipster area of London.

Oli and Caitlin.

Caitlin and I at the uber-trendy Ice Bar.

So trendy.

"What a shitty circus." --Garth Algar of Wayne's World.

The London Eye.

I feel really happy with my day and London, and I think I got a good taste for the city. Furthermore, it was great to hang out with Oli since he hadn’t been around like Steph and Caitlin since I arrived. Parting ways at the end of the day, as I would later do with Steph, was kind of odd. After all, I really can’t say for certain the next time I will see either of them, assuming I see them again at all (I do think that I will). It’s not as tragic as it sounds, but it’s definitely pretty unique to 21^st century friendships. In such a flat, globalized world—a world of Facebook, Skype, and Boeing 747s—it’s easier than ever to accumulate a truly global network of friends. These days, everybody knows at least somebody who lives abroad. And that’s a good thing, as it makes for really interesting and enriching relationships with people. However, the necessary downside is the constant uncertainty about when you will see them next—if at all.

In any case, my trip to Canterbury and London was fantastic, and it was great having local tour guides in Steph, Caitlin, and Oli. They kindly let me crash with them and showed me around the sites they are surely tired of by now. I really appreciated it.

After a 9-hour bus ride from Canterbury, I have finally arrived in Paris, the so-called city of love and light. I’ve spent today walking around the city, and I’ll be here for a few nights. But that’s for another blog entry.

“Be well, do good work, and keep in touch.”

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