At the west end of the Ile de la Cité, the Place Dauphine.
The Big Café On the Avenue, Not On l'Ile
With Photos of the Ile de la Cité
By Richard Erickson
Paris Kiosque - December 1999 / January 2000 - Volume 6, Number 12
Copyright (c) 1999 Richard Erickson - used with permission
Yesterday I came out of the exit of
the métro Cité to go to the main Paris Police
Préfecture, to get a change-of-address for my Carte de Séjour.
This took less time than feared, so it allowed me
a little island tour. The weather was half bright, but
I knew the batteries in my camera were low. As
expected they drooped pretty quickly.
The Ile de la Cité
is dominated by Paris' Palais de Justice, the Hôtel Dieu
de Cité hospital, the central police Préfecture and the headquarters
of the Police Judiciaire on the famous Quai des Orfévres.
Plus, of course, there is the Notre Dame cathedral, the
Conciergerie and Sainte-Chapelle church.
Near both the upstream and downstream
ends of the island there are also residential areas. The
Ile de la Cité is at the centre of Paris
and always has been, so it has at least some
2000 years or history.
On my short cruise yesterday, I
decided to come back today to get a whole picture
of the whole island. As far as pictures go, this
I have done.
Today there is the minor edge of
a storm that is battering northern
Europe and the winds are
cool as they blow down certain streets from the northwest.
With winter overcast, the photos will be dark, but will
not have the excessive contrast they get from the winter
sun.
I start at the Latin Quarter side of the
Pont Neuf, go through the Place Dauphine, and then along
the Quai des Orfévres, past the Judicial Police cop shop.
Looking down the very old Rue des Ursins, in
the Cité's northeast corner.
At the Pont Saint-Michel, I turn
left on the Boulevard du Palais and take a café
in a bar across from the Palais. After this I
continue north and turn right into the Quai de Corse
and head upstream.
Along here I pass the trees
and plants in the garden marché in the Place Lépine.
I continue heading east on the quay, past the Hôtel
Dieu, and into the Quai aux Fleurs, where there are
no flowers. The island's other residential area is In this
northeast corner.
It has its miniature mediaeval-residential part, which it
shares with the park of the Square Jean XXIII, the
area behind Notre Dame. After this tour, which takes a
couple of hours and fills up the recharged camera with
51 exposures, I get on the bus 38 and go
home.
I intend to look everything up later; all the
history that will fit into 1500 words or more. Looking
it up and writing it down will take from three
to five hours. Then there will be the photos to
do and finally, putting the page together.
Now, let's skip
ahead to Sunday noon. From inside my apartment I suspect
the sun may be out, and I can use a
strong café before settling down to a 12-hour stint of
Metropole production.
A lot of people are out and about
on the sunlit avenue and even more are in the
Monoprix and in the Rue Daguerre.
The trees on
the avenue have lost most of their leaves, but there
is one in the hospital grounds across the
street that looks like its annual development stopped on October
First - it still has a full complement of golden
leaves, ready to fall.
George Washington did not sleep here, but two famous lovers did - a long time ago.
Another reason to go out for a café, is to
be disengaged enough to think up an idea for the
week's cartoon. The word 'clochard' comes from the time Les
Halles was in full swing - in the '20's and
'30's - a bell - 'la cloche' - would sound
to announce the end of the market's daily activity and
this was the signal for the needy to swoop in
and pick up free food.
I am thinking of mutating
Metropole's cartoon 'clochards' Charlie and Eddie into being artistic types.
The avenue close to me has a colony of real
clochards who I see all the time. I was in
their shoes one time for several months so I know
how it is - mostly monotonous, with a future counted
in hours rather than days or weeks.
There are also
a lot of working artists and artisans around here. I
think if I promote Charlie and Eddie into this scenario
there will be more scope for their adventures, plus they
will be easier characters to deal with.
I am thinking
this up in the big avenue café while I have
my Sunday morning 'disengagement' double-express café. The sun is coming
in the windows on the avenue side, almost turning the
terrace into a wintergarden.
A fellow is sitting in the
sun, warmed by it and the café's heating, and he
is writing notes of some sort. Except
for a very
old lady dressed entirely in black, at a table with
one glass of rouge on it, there is no one
else on the sunny terrace.
The old parts of the
Ile de la Cité are not large, but they are
old - like this wine dealer's shop.
The café is
full of mirrors, so I can look at the terrace
and everything else going on behind in the café, at
the same time. A man in a raincoat is eating
a big plate of very rare steak and green beans
at the bar.
The waiters are dealing with customers
who are mostly on the north, shady side of the
café. When the writer of notes leaves, a waiter who
I've spoken to before, says hello to me, with the
'I know you' handshake.
It is not an impersonal 'big-intersection'
café. It has its own character, if a bit bourgeois,
and there are always people in it because it has
comfortable booths on its north side, and the service is
good.
This is in the big city of Paris and
this café, even in, or especially in, its mirror view,
seems to be a rare thing. Do all big cities
have places like this? It is not a bar, it
is not a pub, it is not a gastatte.
With
its high ceilings and windows, with all its mirrors, with
its kitchen and all of its waiters, it is all
of the above and more.
It is not like a
train station, although its nearness to the major métro corner
of Denfert must contribute to its seeming prosperity; to its
life and its ebb and flow. People come into it
and live in it for periods of time. Sort of
like a living room with service.
Parisians live on the
Ile de la Cité too, in cohabitation with the police,
the hospital, the
courts, plant dealers, churches; as
well as its snack bars, souvenir and postcard shops, money-changers,
hotels, cafés, bars and restaurants; and several million tourists.
On first view, it seems as if there would be
no room for ordinary residents - but they are there,
along with one of the cheapest hotels in Paris. Residents
have two choices for shopping: the Right Bank or the
Left Bank, and plenty of bridges to both.
Someday, instead
of going to court, I'm going to look at Sainte-Chapelle.
Between my mini-tour on Thursday and the all-over tour on
Friday - today's dateline above - and today, Sunday, I
just don't feel like going into the books to find
the nuggets of historical anecdotes about the Ile de la
Cité.
Some of these have already appeared in past issues
of Metropole. No, today is a Sunday. It was good
having the café on the avenue and thinking about the
café and the cartoon characters Charlie and Eddie and their
possible future.
For these reasons, this is not about the
Ile de la Cité. It is about nothing and everything
for a micro-moment on a Sunday in December.
Only
the photos here are about the Ile de la Cité.
For today, you'll have to imagine how it looked a
couple of hours ago in the big café on the
avenue when I had a double-café and my editorial conference
with myself.
Richard Erickson, living in Paris for the last twenty years, has been putting
Paris online as long as anyone. More of his writings can be found in
Metropole Paris
where this article first appeared.
He can be contacted via
erickso@world-net.sct.fr.
