France

At the end of our trip, during our last weekend in Paris, we had a little trouble deciding what to do. On the one hand, we wanted to do some memorable highlights, but on the other, we also wanted to try some new things. On Saturday, at least, we managed to be very efficient in our sightseeing. As we traveled, it struck us that four out of every five street musicians was an accordionist. We must have seen ten (including one playing aggressively in a subway car on Sunday) over the course of the weekend.

We didn't quite reach our goal of opening the Louvre at 9, but we were there well before 10, and long before there were any crowds. Having spent some time on the ancient civilizations of the Near East and of Egypt and having extensively studied the Roman Republic and Empire, we decided to fill the gaping hole in the middle — ancient Greece. So we followed the ancient Greece tour in our kids' guide to the Louvre. We admired a few of the Pantheon marbles that somehow the French got before Lord Elgin brought the rest to London, and we learned about Greek painting through a study of vases. Well, Margaret did. John was not all that excited by the Greek artifacts, though he did perk up a bit as I tried to explain the fate of Agamemnon at the end of the Trojan War! We also deviated from our program to look at some of the French Crown jewels and some Roman mosaics. It may not last, but John and Margaret now both insist that they want to make some mosaic art of their own after we return to the States.

On our way out, we paused to take a photo to say our farewell to the greatest museum in the Western world. Now that we've been to the Uffizi, the Vatican Museum, the National Gallery in London, and the Metropolitan Museum in New York, we feel pretty confident in saying that the Louvre is best. (Though we haven't been to the Getty yet, so maybe we need to take another trip before we can be sure....)

So efficient were we determined to be that we ate lunch (peanut butter sandwiches) on the walk from the Louvre to the Orsay, where, once again, we were reminded how great the Paris Museum Card is, since we got to skip the ticket buying queue and went straight into the museum. The kids began by sketching — Margaret drew a sculpture of four women (representing the four continents of Africa, Europe, America, and Asia) supporting a globe; John sketched the big clock hanging above the museum.

After the sketching, we toured through the parts of the collection we had not gotten to on our first visit and looked again at Margaret's favorite part — the art nouveau furniture collection.

We had a schedule to keep, so we made sure to get out of there by about 2 and walked determinedly in the direction of the Place de la Concorde and the English-language bookseller, WH Smith to buy some books for the kids to read on the flight back on Monday (yikes, are we leaving that soon?).

On the theory that our kids like best sights that involve stairs — either up to elevated viewpoints or down into tunnels — we made our way to see the little museum of the sewers of Paris, the entry to which is in our very own neighborhood, the 7th. The internet can't do justice to the smell, or so says Margaret. But the displays, which explained the historical development of the Paris water and sewer network and had a lot to say about how the workers keep the sewer channels clear of sand and other debris. Our favorite device was a giant ball, which is pushed through by the pressure of the water behind it, clearing away the debris in front of it. Here's one of the few pix we have:

After the sewer, we wandered through the Rue Cler for a little shopping . . . and snacking . . . and more shopping. Then it was home for dinner. But did the evening end? No, we took the bus (our first bus trip in Paris) up to the Etoile to climb the Arc de Triomphe (and our last use of the Museum Pass).

On our way up there was a curious ritual we encountered a few times before. Susan and I had free admission to the site, with the Museum Pass, and the kids' admissions were also free. But at the ticket window, we all had to be issued tickets. But since our admission was free, why did we need tickets? Didn't they trust the ticket takers later on to be able to read the dates on our Museum Passes?

At any rate, as we arrived, there were still soldiers in full dress uniform at the end of the daily ceremony at the French Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. We were treated to hearing the military band playing the Marseillaise, whilst the assembled French audience sang with the soldiers. The view from the top was spectacular, and shortly after we arrived the Eiffel Tower put on its hourly display of strobe lights. Our pictures of that spectacle didn't come out so well, but here's a shot of the Champs-Elysees, looking towards the Place de la Concorde, where a Ferris Wheel had just been erected.

Sunday

Our last day was devoted to visits to places we had not seen on our trip of four years ago. We began with the catacombs of Paris (continuing with the theme of sights featuring stairs). Unlike the ancient catacombs of Rome, these were constructed during the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, when the Parisian health authorities decided that several of the city cemeteries were endangering the public health. But if the dead were to be exhumed, what could be done with them? Put them in the abandoned mines that crisscrossed the deep underside of Paris, naturally. The tour takes one through some of the mines and then through chambers and chambers filled with the bones of the re-interred dead of Paris, as these had been "artfully" arranged by the Parisian authorities at the dawn of the nineteenth century.

The catacombs tour takes one through more than a mile of underground passages, depositing one at some distance from the entry. We passed a bakery, picked up the best baguette we ate during our whole week here (and for only 90 Euro cents!), and got back on the tube, heading from the southern end of central Paris to the northern end and Monmartre. Rick Steeves does note that the neighborhood one walks through to get to the Sacre Coeur is a bit seedier than the rest of central Paris, but we were not prepared for just how nasty it was.

Even so, we had a nice picnic part-way up the hill (and as far as we could get from the people selling hot Marlborough cigarettes and fake Louis Vuitton luggage);.

We admired the church (some of us more than others). John lit a candle and finally bought the small wooden cross he has been for some time trying to get. He's been wearing it proudly ever since.

We had thought about touring Monmartre but decided that we wanted to remember Paris as more beautiful than seamy, so we headed to the Ile de la Cité and walked from there to the Ile St. Louis, which was simply delightful. Had we not felt quite so poor, we might have bought some art, but we contented ourselves with admiring it. Instead, we bought the kids a couple of Nutella crepes and some take-away coffee.

Once home, we packed for a bit, then ate our farewell dinner at a local cafe-bistro, La Terrasse du 7eme. Susan is finding it hard to to say au revoir, but a fancy meal helped! We took one final look at the Eiffel Tower all lit up for the evening, and headed home for our last night in Paris.

Tomorrow night, we expect to be sleeping in America!

au revoir,
Joe

Isn't the Louvre open late on Wednesday night?

We had big plans to get the most out of our last Wednesday in Paris. I finished my column on Tuesday evening, and Susan rose early and went first thing to the local supermarché so that we could have a quick dinner in and still get back out to the Louvre's evening hours.

Deceived by some early rays of sunshine on her early morning errand, Susan decided it was going to be warm enough that each of us could forego an extra layer of warm clothing. Paris, however, betrayed us. It was quite cool, breezy, damp, and raw — ah, the feeling of Maine in November, here in Paris.

We took the metro over to Châtelet (Paris's metro is absolutely the best subway anywhere — lots of lines, lots of trains, generally clean, and quite cheap. It must be ridiculously subsidized, but it's very convenient.)

By the time we walked the couple of blocks over to the Seine (and yes, I took a wrong turn and led us, briefly, away from the river not towards it — and was briefly fooled into thinking St. Eustache was Notre Dame), we were all freezing.

I wanted to see the Conciergerie anyway, but Susan probably would have objected, except that entry was free with our museum pass, and she was freezing. The place is not that much to see — a gothic basement, basically, with some prison cells where those waiting to be judged by the kangaroo courts of the French Revolutionaries were stored. There was a memorial wall listing all of the 2780 people executed by the guillotine during the Terror, and I was surprised both that the number was so small, by comparison to the atrocities of the Twentieth Century, and that so few of them were nobles.

From there we walked the two blocks up to the Sainte-Chapelle, which has the most amazing high gothic interior anywhere we've been, with a magnificent set of stained-glass windows. To appreciate the place properly, one would really like to go on a sunny day and have a pair of binoculars, so that the windows could be studied. We contented ourselves with identifying the few scenes that were low enough to see clearly (Moses being put into the reed basket, David and Goliath, Judith and Holofernes, etc.) and headed off to our next adventure.

After making it past the organized gang of beggars at Notre Dame, we quickly ate our lunch in the square and peeked into the cathedral. Having been recently cleaned and repaired, the facade is spectacular.

We really liked the statue of St. Denis holding his own head . . .

and the gruesome demons in the last judgment.

But when we went in, we found that noon mass was in progress. So we sat quietly for a bit, then went out to see about going up the tower. But for reasons not explained, it was closed. What to do? Shop.

We walked from the Ile de la cite (quickly, because it was still cold) towards the Bon Marché department store. (It seemed to be the closest thing Paris has to a Harrods, but, for the record, that's not very close). Along the way, we passed St. Sulpice church and enjoyed reading the church's official refutation of Dan Brown's interpretation of its astronomical gnomon and of the letters P and S in its stained glass windows. We snacked in a cafe across from Bon Marché to prepare ourselves for the store and headed in. I wanted to spend all our remaining money on foie gras and truffles (the mushrooms, not the chocolates), but Susan wouldn't hear of it.

The shopping done, we went home for an early dinner, followed by our second trip to the Louvre. We tried to follow the "Age of Revolutions" itinerary in our guidebook, but this tour involved traversing virtually the whole of the palace, since it started with the monumental 19th century tableaux, then moved through the smaller-scale late 18th and 19th century French paintings, and headed at last to the state apartments of Louis Napoleon (though, alas, we didn't make it that far). We did as best we could, admired the heroic Davids and got as far as the striking portrait of an African woman (one of the few paintings by a woman in the Louvre and one of the even fewer to feature an African as the subject). But, exhausted, we headed home. . . after taking one more photo:

Exiting the metro stop at almost 9, I proposed that we walk the two blocks to the Champs de Mars to see the Eiffel Tower put on its top of the hour light show, which we did. And then to bed.

If it's Thursday, this must be Versailles

The forecast for Thursday was sunny, but cold, and it seemed the hands-down best choice for our day trip to Versailles. Thanks to our late evening of touring on Wednesday, we didn't quite get the early start we had first envisioned, but we were still out of the flat by 9, which got us into the vicinity of the Palace (after a ride on the Metro and RER) by about 10. We had to check the backpack with our lunch, but our Museum Passes got us into the King's Apartments for no further charge (sans audioguide). The place was not too crowded, though we spent most of our time sandwiched between two Asian tour groups, the first of which was dressed and made up like a convention of Tokyo streetwalkers, but might just have been a group of high school or college students from Japan. They giggled too much, and posed at every moment in groups of four or six making "V for victory" signs for one another's telephones. Their guide — the only male in the group — basically ignored it all and plowed relentlessly through his spiel.

In each room was a ridiculous work of modern "art," each more grating and annoying than the one before. Par example. . .

I would like to think that these were intended as a high-minded commentary on the nature of monarchy. Once upon a time, people claimed to be ordained by God to rule over the rest. . . and this claim was believed! The king "needed" a palace for his mistress! And the public treasury paid for the thing. (It is beautiful, by the way, but I digress). These works of "art" are exactly the same — pieces of ridiculous crap that some impressario called "art" and demanded a lot of money for — and people believed him! And so the state, and prestigious foundations opened their wallets to pay vast sums to buy a "work" of "art" consisting of two inflatable children's pool toys attached to a galvanized chain-link fence! Unfortunately, I think that the people who organized the show actually liked the stuff!

For the record, John said he would have given Versailles three stars out of five (we'll have to post his full set of castle ratings at some point), but the modern art was so ugly, he knocked it down to two.

In fact, even apart from the "art," Versailles was something of a disappointment. We enjoyed the Rick Steeves self-guided tour, and the rooms are very nice, but we've seen a lot of palaces in the last ten weeks, and Versailles is not displayed as effectively as, for example, was Schönbrunn. The hall of mirrors is, of course, spectacular, but it's sad to realize that the mirrors that were a marvel when they were installed are decidedly inferior to what can be bought for almost nothing today at any Home Depot. After touring the King's and Queen's rooms, we retrieved our bag and headed out to the garden. Margaret, our good, rule-following, eldest child insisted that we had to take our picnic in the officially designated picnic grounds. But there was a group of French school children there, making a lot of noise, and Susan refused to subject herself to the presence of fifty middle-school kids, French or not. So we wandered a bit through the garden, till we found a discreet place near a fountain, and ate our cheese and baguettes.

We continued on our walk away from the palace and reached the Grand Canal, where the bike-rental stand was still open. I felt bad that John had pretty much hated the palace, and so we rented the bikes. We biked around the Grand Canal, where, back in the day, the king had imported real gondoliers from Venice so as to amuse and debase the French nobility.

Then it was off to the two Trianons. The Grand Trianon first, because everyone who has a really big palace needs a little and more intimate palace to spend some private time in when the splendor of court life proves to be too much. And then to the Petit Trianon, which Louis XV had built for Mme de Pompadour, but is now marketed for its connection to Marie Antoinette, whom the French dream of marketing as effectively as the Austrians market their Sissy. The highlight here are the English gardens and the fake village Marie Antoinette had built so that she could play at being a dairy maid (inspired, alas, by Rousseau).

As you can see from the photo, it really was the first "Disney" village, but, luckily for us in America, the French were not so good at marketing.

From the Petit Trianon, it was most of an hour's walk back to the train station and about another hour's worth of travel back to the flat. A quick meal of leftovers and it was off to bed for everyone.

Notre Dame, more Modern "Art", and a date with Jean-Jacques Rousseau

We got off to a slow start this morning. Though I was in bed by 10:30 last night, I didn't rise until nearly 8, which was about when the kids awoke as well. We weren't on our way till nearly 10 and, though the weather had turned cloudy and gray after yesterday's sunshine, we headed off to do one of our "must see" sights — the view from the Notre Dame tower. When we arrived, the queue was deceptively short. Though there were only about 30 people ahead of us, it was almost a half hour till we entered the tower, with another ten minute layover in the bookstore. When we got to the level of the facade between the towers, we discovered that the top of the South Tower, which is normally open, was closed. There was no explanation. No sign. Only a locked door. C'est la France! Despite (or perhaps thanks to) the gloom, Susan got some good photos of gargoyles.

From Notre Dame, it is only a short walk to the Shakespeare & Co. bookstore, which is an excellent, highly literary bookstore, with a varied and interesting collection of classic novels and recent literary fiction, with a smattering of thoughtful works of history. Unfortunately, we were really looking for a good children's section, which S&C didn't have. Worse, the one store employee wandered off somewhere, saying she'd be back "in a few minutes." She left as we arrived. After twenty minutes, John had decided that he might just read a Hardy Boys mystery. Margaret had found nothing. I would have bought the mystery had the proprietress been there to take my cash, but she wasn't. We waited a minute, until John realized that he'd rather go to another bookstore than wait till this mysterious Frenchwoman decided to return to her day job.

We crossed back over the Ile de la Cité and stopped by a charcuterie and bought lunch, which we ate in the square in front of the Hotel de Ville.

Thence to the Pompidou Center, which we skipped on our last visit to France.

The building is good for a few laughs, and the modern "art" is good for a few more — except for the really disturbing stuff, which may give me nightmares tonight. We've succeeded in imparting all our prejudices against post-representational art to our children, so they begged us to leave at the first available opportunity. After about an hour, we decided that they had suffered enough, and we let them free. Unfortunately, there is not much going on outside the Pompidou on a Friday in November, so we had to go elsewhere for our fun.

At this point, we separated. I have been eager to see the Musée Jean-Jacques Rousseau in Montmorency (a north suburb of Paris), and the rest of the family has been equally determined not to go. So Susan took the kids on a forced march from the Pompidou, back to the Bon Marche, from there to the Louvre Carousel, and only then, after hours of walking and shopping, allowed them to take the metro home. By contrast, I tubed it up to the Gare du Nord, got on the suburban line to Einghein les Bains, and walked from there to 5 Rue Jean-Jacques Rousseau in Montmorency (our map doesn't reach that far, so I had sketched one on a piece of notebook paper, based on the museum's website). The museum is located in the house Rousseau lived in after leaving the Hermitage on Mme d'Epinay's property, and in which he wrote Julie, Emile, and the Social Contract. (Actually, he did his writing in his "dungeon" — a sort of stone shed in the garden out back). The guided tour, in French, was excellent, and I understood almost all of it. The highlights were the manuscripts on display (of the Confessions, and of a letter) and the pastel portrait of Rousseau by Maurice Quentin de la Tour, which is the only portrait of his that Rousseau ever liked.

As luck would have it, I and the rest of the family arrived back at the Ecole Militaire metro stop on the same train, though in different cars. We toyed with going to the evening hours of the Louvre tonight, but we had all done too much walking during the day for that.

We are in our last week of the Grand Tour. Days now include, “today is the last Tuesday in Europe,” etc. We can hardly believe that it’s almost over! But, what a great place to end our journey—Paris!

We arrived in Paris early Saturday evening. We are staying in a very small apartment in a great neighborhood, the “Rue Cler” neighborhood, near the Eiffel Tower (the 7th Arrondissement, for Paris-junkies). After arrival, we had enough time to gather some groceries at the local “Supermarché.” Then, it was time to settle in and get things organized. The apartment is quite small, so organization will be key.

Sunday morning, we went to worship at the American Church in Paris, also not far from the apartment. People at the church were very warm and friendly. We enjoyed looking around the church, which featured some beautiful stained glass windows (including one of the wise and foolish maidens, the Gospel lesson of the day, and another of the Genevan Reformers, whom we got to know better last weekend).

After church, we wandered down the Rue Cler on our way back to the apartment. We marveled at all of the things we could buy-- from antiques, to children's clothes, to luggage and shoes, to chocolates, to fruits and veggies, to cheese. Oh, the cheese! We stood in the window for awhile watching the locals order cheese from the people in white lab coats (we were thinking of YOU, Laurie Osborne!).

Our little stroll over, we returned to the apartment to start some laundry and to have some lunch. Though gray and gloomy, we set out in the afternoon to take a look around. We ended up taking a monster walk, from the flat, past the Hôtel des Invalides. . .

over the Pont Alexandre III. . .

and by the Grand Palais up to the Champs-Elysees. We walked all the way down the Champs Elysees to the Arc de Triomphe and then to Trocodero to see the Eiffel Tower. We thought about going up the Tower, but the crowds scared us away. With the holiday on Tuesday, the weekend was a four-day weekend for many, so we found crowds at many tourist sights.

Finally, we made our way back to the apartment for a quiet dinner in.

On Monday, we went to the Louvre first. On our way in, Susan took a moment to express her thoughts about the Da Vinci Code (this is not the Holy Grail, despite what Dan Brown has suggested):

We found a nice kids guidebook that included nine self-guided tours. We took the first tour, of the major masterpieces.

To visit the major masterpieces required that we march around a lot of the Louvre, which is some undertaking. The Louvre is enormous. Tired, we headed out to the Napoleon Hall under the Pyramid and grabbed some lunch. Then, it was back into the museum. For our second tour, we focused on early writing of Mesopotamia. Thankfully, this kept us in a much smaller area. We saw lots of interesting items, including the Code of Hammurabi.

Margaret has been studying ancient civilizations that this was an especially good learning opportunity. But by the end, we were pretty much wiped out:

Mid-afternoon, we took in some window shopping and then a break at a café, where we feasted on Nutella crepes, along with café au lait and hot chocolate.

Finally, because the day wasn’t over yet(!), we visited the Orangerie, to see some really huge paintings by Monet. Impressive impressionism.

Finally beat by art, (and that the museum was closing) we headed to the apartment.

Tuesday morning, we found the weather clear and glorious (not exactly expected as a couple of weather forecasts called for rain), so we went to the Eiffel Tower first. This was a “must” for John and we hoped to beat the crowds. Indeed, we did beat the crowds. Deciding to climb the stairs to the second level (stairs are not available to the third level), Joseph, John and I were joined by an alien child who looked and talked an awful lot like Margaret. The only problem was that she willingly, even happily, welcomed the idea of climbing the stairs. And she didn’t even ask for one thing in return, not even a morsel of food. Here is the alien, at the top (the number indicates the number of stairs we climbed):

Here's a shot of three of us at the 2nd level of the tower:

We enjoyed our time with the alien child, although she did insist that we take the elevator to the third level, a plan with which I was most unhappy. Still, we got some nice photos, such as this one of the Louvre:

But, finally, when we arrived back at the bottom of the Tower, Margaret came back to claim her space in our family. She was hungry and tired and started making demands. The Margaret that we know and love so well was back.

We had a nice picnic lunch, with some delicious French goat cheese, and then we hiked it on over to the Rodin Museum, one of the museums that we especially enjoyed on our last trip to Paris.

After the Museum, it was again time for a brief reprieve from sight-seeing. We stopped at a café for a little snack.

Then, off to the Orsay. Yes, I say, the Orsay! We didn’t spend much time at the Orsay, but enough for the kids to settle in with a Monet (not exactly my choice, but they were happy) and do some sketching.

We closed the place and headed home by RER and Metro. On our way home, we stopped at the local bakery for a one-Euro bagette (the best 1 Euro we spent all day, according to Joseph). Just as we were walking the last block towards the flat, it started to rain — first a few drops and then a downpour.

But we made it home with ourselves, and our bread, mostly dry.

Au revoir,

Susan