The Arc de Triomphe

The Arc de Triomphe, Napoleon’s monument to his battle victories, lies due north and across the Seine from the Eiffel Tower. In fact, a line drawn through the south and north piers of the tower points straight as a compass needle to the Arc, which was completed in 1802. Did Eiffel, in 1889, purposely locate his tower in its precise relation to the Arc? The guidebooks don’t say. But I wonder.

Our route to the Arc was more indirect. Sipping espresso and nibbling chocolate, we looked at the map and determined it would be a nice walk from the café Champs de Mars to the Arc de Triomphe. Of course it would. Paris is the city of nice walks. We had just enjoyed our first lunch in Paris, and I wondered just how much weight a man could gain, in 12 days in Paris. When we got home, I had lost two pounds. Paris is the city of nice walks, and we took many of them.

This one took us north on Avenue Rapp for half a mile, to the Seine at a point where the river begins a bend to the south. The bridge, Pont de l’Alma, was busier than most with vehicle traffic, and on the north end of the bridge we arrived at a bustling convergence of wide streets. This was the Place de l’Alma, the tip of an inverted triangle formed by Ave. George V, Ave. Montaigne, and the base, the Champs-Elysees. Within this triangle are many of the fashion establishments for which Paris is famous.

We did not go that way. We angled left, onto Ave. Margeau, which approached the Arc in a gentle dogleg left that kept the Arc from our view until we were only a block or so away. It is this rounding-the-corner experience that makes cities like Paris, with monumental structures scattered like jacks on the sidewalk, so interesting. Here’s a handsome street of five-story buildings, and then the view ahead opening up, and around the corner a glimpse of something that dwarfs the buildings, and it is the by God Arc de Triomphe.

The Arc reminded me of the Alamo. You can’t get to the Alamo by car; last time I was there, all the streets were one-way away from the mission. Too bad William Barrett Travis didn’t think of that in 1836. The Arc is surrounded by a traffic moat called the l’Etoile, basically a traffic circle at which 12 major avenues converge. Vehicles of all shapes and sizes enter l’Etoile and emerge again without collision or screeching noises. Italians would scoff, but it was damned impressive to us. The only way to get to the Arc itself is via an underground passage off the Champs-Elysees. We didn’t take it. We circled the circle, Karen taking photos. The light wasn’t very good; gray and flat.

Dusk, and the illumination of the Arc, was only half an hour away, but we were tired, still jet-lagged. We couldn’t find the Metro stop, and we had to go to the bathroom. Paris is dotted with public toilets, or toilettes, clearly marked, free, many of them below-ground. We descended stairs to one of the below-ground ones. It was tiled, clean, orderly, overseen by a woman attendant sitting in the doorway of a small office. She was in idle conversation with an older gentleman, slightly stooped, in a blue wool sweater, hearing aids in both ears. When we were ready to resume our Metro search, Karen approached them, smiled, engaged. Neither of them spoke a word of Anglais, but you know the rest. The gentleman escorted us back up to the street and across the Champs-Elysees toward another underground access with the familiar “Metro” sign.

He gestured cordially and said, “Linea un.” We waved good-bye, went down, caught a jam-packed Line 1 back to a stop two blocks from our flat. Heckuva transportation system in Paris.