SubscribeWhew. What an interesting city Paris is!
I started off the day by going downstairs to find croissants and coffee waiting in the hotel. The croissant… was fantastic. Nothing in America has ever compared (and I love croissants). The coffee was strong and black, except for my Splenda, and in addition to the croissant was a small 1/4 of a baguette. So. Tasty.
After breakfast I trotted off to find my way from my hotel to the Madeleine, then down to the Place de la Concorde. In the mist of early morning I again could see the Eiffel Tower peeking through to the southwest behind the square’s famous Obelisque. I headed to the Seine this time, instead of into the Tuileries, and walked alongside the river until I arrived at Pont Royal, near the entrance to the Louvre. I walked down to stand between the Arc du Triomphe du Carrousel.
I walked through the pyramid entrance to the Louvre itself at about 9 o’clock, and with my bag through the security scanner, I was in the main entranceway and moving immediately to the Denon Wing to see La Jaconde, the Mona Lisa, first. Past Winged Victory and through rooms of statuaries and Renaissance art, I finally found her, sealed in her case of glass with a modest number of onlookers. I wasn’t expecting her to be so small, I suppose, but I stood there for a good few minutes and stared. Opposite the Mona Lisa was another of my favorite paintings of the renaissance, one that I’ve seen a few times in my history textbooks, The Wedding Feast at Cana, by Paolo CALIARI, dit VÉRONÈSE. (Yeah Google for providing that!) I caught the Madonna of the Rocks by Da Vinci (I’d wanted to look at it since The Da Vinci Code, which was huge in the Louvre! They were selling merchandise and “The Da Vinci Code Audio-tours” everywhere.) I tackled the main galleries and I went at a relatively quick pace, knowing that the Louvre is terrifically huge. I am pretty happy with what I saw, though I definitely got lost more than once in the tangle of rooms. The best had to be seeing Louis XIV’s old bedchamber. So much of that building is so fantastically ornate (not including the French crown jewels) that I was just standing, staring at the ceiling or the walls as often as I was looking at the art itself. A fantastic place.
After I decided I’d done enough touring of the museum to satisfy myself, I headed back to the Seine to walk to Ile de la Cité, the larger of the two islands in the Seine. I crossed Pont Neuf and headed east toward Notre Dame, stopping on the way to get a crepe. I walked up to the guy, asked for “un crepe complete” and got a crepe with jambon (ham), gruyère, et oeuf (egg). It was fantastic. He handed it to me in a little wrapper and I walked to Notre Dame eating it. After I finished I took pictures of Notre Dame and wandered inside. They were having services in English and French as I entered, and many tourists stopped to join in, but more still walked around the exterior taking lots of pictures. It was pretty intense. All of my photos of Notre Dame (except for the one someone took with me in it) are blurry like crazy. I’ll have to take a book back with me and sit in the back garden and relax a bit tomorrow. Anyway, Notre Dame was surprisingly small. Not that I wasn’t shocked with its height and grandeur, but the outside didn’t seem nearly as large as I imagined it. (Possibly due to the fact that in the time when the story of The Hunchback of Notre Dame supposedly took place, it was one of the tallest structures in the whole of Paris, so that Disney movie has forever made it seem large to me.) Inside it felt almost exactly like St. Patrick’s in New York, except for all of the paintings—and the windows. Wow were there windows.
After Notre Dame I wandered down to the Crypt Museum underneath, where they showcased the ruins of the ancient city settled by the Parisii and later conquered by the Romans. It wasn’t nearly as interesting as the admission fee seemed to hint it’d be, but it was cool anyway. I emerged and attempted to go to St. Chapelle, but it was closed. I’ll have to go back anyway… I might want another crepe.
I took the subway to the Eiffel Tower next. The most amazing thing is every time I’ve seen the Eiffel Tower, it pops out of nowhere, and I literally gape. I don’t realize my mouth is hanging open. It happened again when I got off the Métro right near it, and got even worse as I got closer and closer. It was incredible. So I was walking around at the base, looking at the pillars and thought, Interesting. I wonder if there’s a short way to do this. The guidebook recommended the best idea was to take the stairs to the deuxième étage, and I decided it might in fact be worth the Euro. I got over to the only pillar that said “Escaliers seulement” and I got on line behind a few American girls and in front of two French guys. Everyone on this line, I noticed, must be under 30. Then a family came up and I heard the mother’s loud voice proclaim, “Escalator? That’s a good idea, I didn’t know there was one!” The French guys behind me snorted with repressed laughter. I looked at the two American girls and they looked hopelessly embarrassed for the woman. Escaliers = stairs, not escalator. I got my ticket and then started. Approximately 680 stairs later, I nearly wanted to collapse. Halfway I thought, My inhaler would have been a good idea. Three-quarters, I thought, Maybe I don’t need to go all the way to the second tier. Seriously. Then I was there. Oh, man. So much better than the first floor. The panorama was intense. I could see what could only be Sacre Coeur in the northern distance, then started identifying the landmarks. The only bad thing was the lack of benches. Where were they!?
When I got to the bottom again, I was tired, hot, and my legs were twingy. The muscles shuddered every few steps and I thought I’d surely seize up any second. I found a cart with “glace” (ice cream) and walked over to see a man and his two kids disagreeing behind a woman who ordered two cones. I walked up to the woman in the truck while she was getting the kids’ order and said, “Citron,” in a perfect French accent, whacking noise included (I know, because she repeated it and it sounded the same!). She nodded and dispensed it, then noticed the kids babbling happily in French and said something to me to the effect of, “Children and ice cream, they’re so funny…” something. I grinned and nodded, paying her and bobbing my head. “Merci!” I said, and she grinned back, as if we’d shared a conspiratorial moment. Yay for being confused for someone who can actually speak French! Woo-hoo!
After Le Tour Eiffel, I was about ready to die. I walked across the street to the Jardins du Trocadero, with their huge fountain pool. It was hot and humid with bright sun, and there were kids and adults fully clothed, splashing around, along with people in pieces of bathing suits. Most were just sitting around it, however, dangling their feet in the cold water. I joined them for a good twenty minutes, thoroughly enjoying the numbing cold on my aching, Eiffel Tower-climbing feet. That’s exactly what they need to have more of in major cities—huge fountains you can swim in! What a world that would be… Anyway, after I was thoroughly relaxed, I headed over to the Métro and made my aching way back to the hotel, grabbing a baguette and some fruit tarts en route. So awesome!
I’ve now gotten more of a taste of Paris and I think it’s such an interesting city. Language-wise it’s diverse, but so far not so much as I thought. Near the major tourist attractions I was at today (the Louvre, Notre Dame, the Eiffel Tower) nearly everyone around me spoke English or were carrying books/maps in English. It was surprising, I guess, to not see more obviously non-English speaking tourists. There are plenty of French people, clearly, but I’ve only heard one German speaking family and passed a handful of Asian tourist groups from Japan or China, with their guides speaking rapidly and the group half-running to keep up. A few Spanish speakers were in the Louvre, and I overheard some Italian on the street. I saw a few school tours, both from France and from the Americas (there was a Canadian group near Notre Dame), and it’s funny to try to play the guess-the-tourist’s-nationality game, which I usually get right. Hehe. Are we Americans this blatant in every country? I literally stuck out like a sore thumb yesterday (partially from what I was wearing, partially my complete lack of lingual confidence) and so today I made sure I was dressed and attempting to act as much like a Parisian as I could. I wore a skirt and sandals with one purse (ha, yes, I wore a skirt climbing the stairs to the Eiffel Tower… as were almost all the obviously non-American women—some in heels! I’m not crazy). I think I fooled three people into thinking I was French or at least European today, so no disdainful looks at all today, yay! Blending in, blending in… such an important skill for a city like this, where the signs above the ascenseurs (elevators) in the Eiffel Tower said, “Watch for pick-pockets!” Hopefully they’ll go for the Hawaiian shirt-wearing guy with the fanny pack instead of me…
Lots of PDAs, too. (Public displays of affection.) I normally never have seen people making out on the streets, literally tackling each other horizontally on benches or on the grass like I’ve seen here. And not just teenager types. Oh, no. C’est Paris, n’est-ce pas?
Now, for the requisite pictures:
Clicky (Album style, for better quality but you’ve got to click each one individually)
(They’re in chronological order, so just keep up with my yammerings above and you’ll see what I saw in the order I saw it. And I apologize for some of the pictures’ quality… my camera has issues with its focus feature most times I turn it on.)
Enjoy!
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