This day was dedicated to the Louvre, and where I developed the title for the first Paris adventures blog. There is so much to see in this museum that you adopt a kind of 'shuffle,' interrupted only when you want to look at something more closely. We spent the morning looking at the 17-19 century French paintings in the Sully wing, then had lunch at Cafe Richelieu. This was not quite as good as our lunch at Orsay's cafe, but was still tasty. In the afternoon we headed over to the Denon wing, where they have most of their well-known pieces, such as the Mona Lisa, or La Jacond as it is now known, and the Raft of the Medusa by Géricault, which is one MrB particularly wanted to see. It is a huge painting, about 16x23 feet, and surprisingly enough, it was not the largest one in the 'Large format French paintings' gallery. As we were 'shuffling' through to the next big gallery, we passed through a delightful temporary exhibition of Goya prints - caricatures of political and religious figures of his day.
This was also the "Nuit Blanche," or White Night. Apparently, one night a year the museums stay open late, and there are candles and big metal chimneys with designs carved out of them, set out all over the Tuileries Garden that stretches between the Louvre and the Place de la Concorde, including in the main fountain. Then they light them up after it gets dark. I didn't get very good photos because it was at night, and I have no tripod, but you can get a good idea what it looked like anyway. In the first photo below, you can see the two guys who got to wade around in the chilly water in their black top hats and swim suits. We actually sat down in a couple chairs by the main fountain early, before dark, and sat there for what seemed like a looong time while more and more people gathered about in anticipation of the candle-lighting event. It was very chilly by the time the candles and chimneys were lit, so the warmth from the fires was quite welcome.
We didn't make it back into the Louvre that night because the line through security was too long. Even with the Museums Pass you can't bypass security. When we tired of wandering through the crowds in the Garden, we headed back to the Hostel, stopping for crepes at a place on the way. These weren't as good as the ones we had previously from Chez Nicos, but they weren't bad.
Sunday, October 7, 2007
We headed to the Eiffel Tower early in the morning, hoping to beat the crowds. Unfortunately, there was already quite a line, even though we arrived before they opened. We had been waiting about half an hour or so when a guy came over from the front of the line and told us all that there was a problem and they were closing the cash register for our line. Since there was already a huge crowd, we decided to skip the ride to the top for now (we never did make it back this trip), and head over to the Arc de Triomphe. It was a beautiful day, much clearer than it had been previously, though there was still some haze, so it was a good day for looking out over Paris from the top of the Arc de Triomphe.
After this we headed over to the Rue Poncelet to see the Fromagerie Alleose, recommended by our Lonely Planet guidebook as a 'temple to cheese.' While I wouldn't go quite that far, there was certainly a wide variety. We picked up a couple small soft cheeses here, then a couple of baguettes at a stand outside to have for our dinner. We also stopped in a little chocolate shop and picked up a small bag of their very delicious dark chocolate toffee almonds.
From here we wandered over to the Saint Chapelle (photos below), a small church near Notre Dame with a pretty painted interior and very colorful stained glass windows to go with it. Next was the Notre Dame Archaeological Crypt where we read about the history of the area directly under Notre Dame. This was quite interesting, especially since you could see examples of the old Roman and other stone architecture right there in front of you that they had excavated.
Then it was off to Chez Nicos for a lunch of crepes, followed up with some Italian gelati from across the street. The lady there made a beautiful 'rose' of ice cream on the cone, which was quite yummy. Since we were in the area, we headed over to the Catacombs, then to the Panthèon. Here I saw the crypt where Marie and Pierre Curie are now entombed, as well as Victor Hugo and a number of other famous French people. From there we walked over to the gardens outside the Musèe du Luxembourg and relaxed for a while to enjoy the sunset, then ended the evening with a cruise along the Seine on one of the Bateaux Mouches tour boats.
Monday, October 8, 2007
Today we returned to the Louvre and 'shuffled' through much of the exhibits for the Egyptian, Greek, and Roman antiquities, and the 11th - 15th century Italian sculptures. We also went back to the Denon wing to view the Crown Jewels, though I think that there are a number of other objects on display in that same room that are just as impressive, and not quite so crowded around. Then we went back to the paintings and went through the galleries for 15-16th century Netherlands and Germany, and 17th century Flanders and Holland, with the exquisitely detailed still life paintings of flowers with tiny water droplets and insects and other little critters. These are so amazingly painted that they look like you could reach out and shake the water off the flowers.
For lunch we went to Le Roi du Pot au Feu where we had a huge lunch/dinner of beef stew. It was beef, cooked almost like my mom cooks corned beef, with cabbage, potato and carrot, and they also added turnips and green onions and a bone with the marrow in, which I'd never had before. We dug it out and spread it on the toasted baguette that came with the meal. It wasn't too bad, it really didn't have much flavor, and the rest of the meal was delicious. We didn't feel at all hungry for the rest of that day and into the next!
After that we went to the Maison du Miele which was in the same area, where we picked up a couple jars of different flavors of honey and some honey pastilles. Then we headed to the Galleries Lafayette to see the stained glass dome that our guide book described, and perhaps shop a bit. The stained glass was very impressive, and so were the prices! No shopping there except window shopping, unfortunately. Then we headed over to the Montmartre area, to another department store called Tati, which was a total mess, and very unimpressive. We did not do any shopping there either.
Since that shopping foray was unsuccessful, we headed off to explore the English bookstores listed in our little guidebook. The Red Wheelbarrow, owned by a Canadian expat, was very small, and had nothing of interest. The Abbey Bookstore, also owned by a Canadian expat, is one of those fun book stores where there are piles everywhere, and the shelves even slid back and forth to reveal a second layer of bookshelves. It was fun to explore, and he had both new and used books. The owner was very nice and we chatted a bit, but we ended up buying a few less books than we had hoped because his credit card machine was out of tape so he couldn't use it. Probably a good thing for our pocketbooks, but I hated putting the books back - it is much harder to find good books in English over here, especially because we both have such eclectic tastes.
Tuesday, October 9, 2007
We spent the morning enjoying the Rodin Museum and its peaceful garden. This museum, as you might guess, houses a very impressive selection of Rodin's works. He was one of the greatest sculptors ever, I think. He could do very classical work, and the examples we saw were very beautiful and skillfully executed. I had not realized that he had produced work like this, as I am most familiar with the rougher style he adopted a bit later in his career. The Thinker (Le Penseur), The Gates of Hell, and The Burgers of Calais, are some of his more famous pieces.
From the gardens at the Rodin Museum we could see the dome for the Église du Dôme, part of the complex of the Hôtel des Invalides, which the French government had built in the 1670s to house 4000 infirm veterans (info. from the Lonely Planet guidebook). The tomb of Napoleon lies underneath the Église, and the Musée de l'Armée is there as well. The Army Museum houses an impressive collection of arms and armor from the 13th through the 17th centuries. Most of the collection is European, but there are a few pieces from Japan, and the Ottoman, Persian, Mongol, and Chinese civilizations that were mostly given as diplomatic gifts over the years. It gave an impressive overview of the development of firearms during that period, though the labels were sadly lacking. They listed the names of the items, but there was no key to tell which item went with which name. If you didn't know much about the subject, the labels were almost useless - a pity for such a great collection.
We went back to the Orsay museum for a late lunch, and another dose of that tasty spicy hot chocolate. Then we walked through the Tuleries Gardens again, and considered riding the Ferris Wheel, but it was too expensive, so we continued to wander. We walked over to the Grand Palace, which looks like a very impressive building outside, though it was closed so we weren't able to explore inside. Across the street from that is the Petite Palace, which was also closed. Then we walked across the Alexander III bridge, which has very gaudy gold statuary - not real gold, of course, just painted, otherwise they would have been long gone, and returned to the Shakespeare and Co. bookstore, where we found some decently priced used books. We hadn't realized they had used books on our previous visit, as they had them all outside. While we were there it started to rain, so we decided to turn in for the night, since it was getting pretty late. That was the only time it rained during our whole trip.
Wednesday, October 10, 2007
This was our last day in Paris, and we decided to take a walk along the Viaduc des Arts, then return along the top, which is the Promenade Plantée. The Viaduc des Arts has shops and craft and artisan studios along it, though once again, everything looked rather pricey. The Promenade Plantée was very nice, but I think it would be much better in the spring and summer when more of the plants are flowering. One of the buildings along this stretch had huge statues ringing the top of Michelangelo's "Dying Slave" sculpture, a very odd adornment for a building.
After this we went on a hunt for La Maison du Truffe, which we never found, and then went to Harry's Bar, where they invented the Bloody Mary. MrB wanted to sample their Bloody Mary, so we went in and he enjoyed his very well-made drink. Then we stopped at the Café Capucine, where we did not end up getting lunch (see previous post), and continued on to discover Café Dada just at the corner of the Rue Poncelet. We were returning there to get more chocolate almonds, and to pick up a treat for MrB's coworkers. We obtained an amazingly dense flat chocolate cake, which I believe was a flourless chocolate cake, if you've ever had one of those. It was delicious, but you could only eat a small bit because it was so rich. We also picked up a couple of small chocolate delicacies to eat on the train ride home which were a tasty dark chocolate mousse concoction in a pastry shell. The train ride home was once again uneventful, except that we missed the last tram to our neighbourhood because the Swiss border guards stopped us as we were hurrying through the train station from the French part to the Swiss part and out to catch our tram.
All in all a very fun and interesting first trip to Paris! We've already got things in mind to do when we go back...
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