Drama is high with writhing muses and stoic statues everywhere. Wine provides a veiling theme for this erotic, drunk, chalice tipping Bacchanal twisting among vines.
*ahem…”Bar tender. I’ll have what she’s having.”
Art Nouveau’s chameleon colors and materialism also enrich the space.
I get a bit desirous of an impressionist’s portable easel:
But down the swooping staircase we find another world. Collections of odd antiquities fill one hall. A crocodile wrestling drinking horn from ancient Greece must have amused a few Atheneans:
The Art Nouveau dining room, however, beckons us to luxuriate in its winding wood curves:
But free art is not relegated to museum walls. Paris clutters every urban inch with fantastic crafts, such as this oak tree framed door, whose branches extend like icicles into 3D glass panels.
Colorful shops abound, including La Pistacheri: yes, a shop devoted to pistachios.
Hell bent on finding more free museums, we stumble into the Museum of Modern Art. Intimate paintings and indescribably vast monuments to modernism color the blank white rooms.
From Delaunay to Art Deco, Chagal to Picasso, the museum shows a verve, futurism, and vibrancy that seems dead to the irony of post modern artists.
A walk down the Champs Elysees opens free museums to materialism with Mazaratti, Ferrari, and Mercedes flaunting their car craft (and me impersonating gull wing doors):
But we find the true gem of Paris on our last day. Musée Carnavalet: The Museum of the City History of Paris. Imagine, if London, Istanbul, or Rome, held a garage sale of its entire history in one day.
Rebuilt apartments, bedrooms, and dance halls jump decades and centuries as we walk through its galleries.
Items from the French Revolution strike us most, such as Voltaire’s desk, Robespierre’s hair, keys and pieces of the Bastille, Marie Antoinette’s slippers, Louis XVI’s last razor, or this militant room:
It all overwhelms us. But we power on. Even the Neo-Classical paintings are worthy of the Louvre. This detail was by Gérard.
Just past Marcel Proust’s bedroom is the most amazing hall from the 1940s. Silver leaf covers it floor to ceiling, which was then painted with something out of Tolkien:
But then we find a shopfront saved from the Art Nouveau period: G. Fouquet’s Jewelry Shop.
Imagine sticking your head in a Tiffany lamp. Every edge, every light, every screw, every backlit lifesize bronze peacock was hand crafted:
Completely undone by Musée Carnavalet we head back to Montmartre to pack for the last time.
But enough of the past. The New Year calls upon the present. Time for one last drink to the future.
Rain and cold grip the outdoors. So our glasses tend toward the sunny Southern hemisphere. But I worry this will be a monster of alcohol and fruit. Will it overwhelm this hardy but still vegetarian dish?
The waiting room looks chic, clean but lonely, baring an Australian couple and a fab model of Saint-Nicaise basilica that preceded the Champagne house (which the French Revolution flattened).
Taittinger is one of the last major Champagne houses still owned and run by its namesake family (let us ignore that brief stint of American ownership in 2005). But they are infants in Champagne. These wine merchants took over 1734 bubbly house Fourneaux and moved into Champagne only between the world wars. They now own a huge 288 hectars of vines that comprise half of their production. Ever opportunists, after WWII they snapped up today’s abbey buildings and adjoining caves. These caves make them special.
Served like wine in the latest of flutes, Taittinger’s house has sublime balance. Golden delicious apple, lemon peel, an chalk tango with slivers of almond on a warm croissant. Their NV is very good (4 of 5) as always. Paying around $50 for a bottle (which costs $14-$20 to produce) is a total treat.
WAYWARD WINE 