Paris

day 23 – jour vingt-trois

Au mon dieu. My energy seems to be more and more zapped at the end of the day. Doesn’t help that I’m feeling congested and there’s so much sensory overload. Gotta say it like it is, I’m not a city gal.

Today was our walking day. We walked from our Airbnb to Notre Dame. On the way, we were getting pretty hungry, so we found a little cafe and snagged their last croissant and other chocolate pastry. While we ate, I watched a city employee cleaning the street edges of leaves and garbage. There was a stream of water coming from somewhere, so he was sweeping the leaves, etc along with the water. Quite the endeavor to clean the city up that way.

We wandered on, over the Seine and around the blocked off Notre Dame. It’s so sad to see that beautiful monument walled off and partially destroyed. I’m glad I had the opportunity to see it whole last time I was in Paris (like 15 years ago). As we walked by, a crane was lifting a pallet of wood up to the top. No pressure, just watch out for the super old spires and gargoyles… I might be sweating a tad if I was that crane operator. All of the gargantuan arches on the exterior of the building had wooden supports added beneath them. We got to the right starting point and let Rick Steves guide us around with his historic walk audio tour.

After Notre Dame, we saw/experienced the Deportation Memorial, dedicated to all the French victims of the Holocaust. From a beautiful landscaped park on the point of the island, we descended into a lower area where all we could see was a tiny bit of the river and the sky; a memorial meant to make visitors feel imprisoned in a way. We then went underground into a room with the approx. 200,000 names of those victims. I’m not a hugely emotional person, but there’s been a few places on this trip that really choked me up. This and the American Memorial outside Florence have done it so far. A quote from the wall of the memorial, “They went to the end of the Earth and did not return”. And above the exit, “Forgive, but never forget”. Hard thing to do.

From the memorial, we crossed the other half of the Seine and headed for the famous Shakespeare & Co bookstore, via an old church and attached garden. It was nice to have Rick Steves’ audio guide, but I definitely found myself paying a lot more attention to my surroundings than what he was saying in my ear. Good thing there’s a “go back 30 sec” button.

Mom stopped to smell the roses. Everyone together… “aahhh”.

Shakespeare & Co was a very Parisian shop. One small room led to another, and another; tons of books packed in a very small space with a Mary Poppins-esque feel. Every vertical surface that had room for a shelf of books, did, even the side of the stairs. They had postcards of a kitty laying in one of their chairs with a sign nearby saying something like “let me sleep, I’ve been up all night reading”. I could use a sign like that on occasion.

After the bookstore, our tour took us through the Latin quarter.

The skinniest house in Paris…

Place St. Michel, quite the ‘stand up for yourself’ community historically.

Then it was on to the Sainte-Chapelle church, the church built to house the supposed Crown of Thorns. The church was located in a courtyard surrounded by government buildings still in use. For this reason, we had to get in a line to enter and go through a security check on the way in. My tummy was starting to growl while we were standing in line, so we dug into our snacks while we waited: cheese and pears from the market in Annecy. Once we got into the courtyard, we had to get in another line to purchase our entry ticket. This being our first official museum of Paris, we picked up our 4 day Paris Museum Pass to save us time in the future. From outside, the church looked pretty unimpressive (relatively, of course). It wasn’t overly ornate or crazily striped like many of the churches we’ve seen.

We entered the church’s ground floor, but it felt like a basement, dark with a relatively low ceiling. It occurred to me later, but this is the first church we’ve been in that had multiple floors. I’m still not sure as to the purpose of the lower floor. It was beautiful room, but flat boring when compared to the upstairs chamber. Up(very small spiral)stairs the walls were more stained glass than stone. They depicted the major stories of the old and new testament, though it was hard to imagine that anyone could really see them clearly more than a few panels up. I was bummed it wasn’t a more sunny day, as the sunlight through the windows would have made it that much more magical.

Sainte-Chapelle was beautiful, like being in a life sized kaleidoscope. But we had to move on, we had a limited amount of time in Paris after all. We exited Sainte-Chapelle, walked a block down the street, and entered the Conciergerie, famous as the prison where many people, including Marie Antoinette, spent their last days before they went to the guillotine. We entered into the huge main room where guards would hang out. This was one of four massive fireplaces. Then we took a turn in the prison kitchen, with more massive fireplaces in each corner of the room.

Marie-Antoinette had a private quarters during her stay, including a private chapel. I’m not a history buff, but it was very interesting to hear (from Rick Steves) and read (the posters) about this tumultuous period of Parisian history.

The prison’s courtyard, where female prisoners were allowed some fresh air. The iron spikes two stories up are original. Fun fact of the day: France used the guillotine until 1977. 😯

From the Conciergerie, we continued our walk, although Rick Steves’ tour ended shortly. Our “Paris Historic Walk” completed, we took off on our own to see a few more sights. From the small park where the tour ended, we walked along the Seine and crossed over towards the Louvre.

Of course there were quite a few people at the entrance to the Louvre, but the traffic was extra horrible because there were a few roads closed off nearby. I was so glad we weren’t trying to drive around Paris. Today we were just doing a walk-by of the Louvre on our way to Musée de l’Orangerie. I feel like I should read The DaVinci Code again. Mom still isn’t convinced that we should go to the Louvre. I agree that it will probably be crowded, but it is Oct, and it’s the LOUVRE. How can we not go?

We continued towards the l’Orangerie, through the Tuileries Garden. I was pleasantly surprised how much of the gardens were still in bloom. Lots of dahlias! Paris is a very similar latitude to NW Washington so Mom and I were having fun identifying plants that we have at home.

Look who they employ to keep the garden drainage ditches trimmed!

Our destination was at the far end of the gardens, the Musée de l’Orangerie, which is so named because it used to be where the royal orange trees were kept. Now it is home to some of Monet’s best known works, the Water Lily paintings. We learned that Monet actually designed the way his paintings would be displayed, but didn’t want them to be seen by the public until after his death. The eight paintings were in two large oval rooms with an inadequately sized seating area in the middle of each. While most people who see the Mona Lisa are surprised at how small she is, it was the opposite for the Water Lilies. They were huge; the larger ones were over 40 feet long. I can’t imagine even visualizing how to paint something that large. The scale makes the viewer really appreciate the impressionist painting style though. Even sitting in the middle of the room, I had to squint and let the colors blend to see what Monet saw in his garden. Getting up close and seeing his individual brush strokes was amazing too. While Mom walked around and got up close to all of them, I sat and soaked it in, and watched everyone trying to take pictures, selfies, other people getting in the way of their pictures…

We spent quite a while admiring the Water Lilies. Mom told me that Monet had painted them towards the end of his life and because his eyesight was failing, the images became larger and darker. I could see that in the paintings, but I also saw my own interpretation; all the paintings were of different times of day.

When we left Musée de l’Orangerie, we were greeted by blue skies and big puddles! It had been a super blustery day and was threatening rain, so apparently we’d gone inside at just the right time to avoid the downpour. After l’Orangerie, we felt like we’d accomplished enough for our first day in Paris, so we headed for home. We walked back through the Tuileries Gardens and then I attempted to navigate us back to our Airbnb. We might have ended up going a bit out of our way, but we saw another church, a whimsical park, and huge outdoor multi-level shopping center (Forum les Halles I found out later). Aside from not having internet to have Google Maps navigate for us, I was tired of looking at my phone so often and looking lost. So we winged it and ended up doing a little extra sightseeing.

The clouds had rolled back in by the time we made it home. Thanks to our step-counting phones, we clocked over 10 miles today! Mom says, “tomorrow we’re using the metro”. No wonder I’m so tired. That and my brain is getting a serious workout with all the navigating. It was around 7 pm when we got back, so we started trying to figure out where we should go for food. While I was searching and getting more tired by the minute, Mom was doing some shuffling of stuff and in the process, managed to unplug the WiFi router. Mom!! Luckily we had just been in touch with our host (Juliana) and knew how to ring her from the entry. We went down and buzzed her and a minute later she was down from her apartment helping us get reconnected. One thing led to another and we ended up chatting for quite a while, most importantly about how to identify a quality bottle of wine. I guess the one that Mom picked out last night was a winner. It was interesting to chat with Juliana, but by the time she left, I was so exhausted I didn’t even want to get up off the bed, let alone go back out to find somewhere to eat. So for dinner, we finished off the fruit and cheese we’d brought from Annecy and the bottle of wine we’d gotten last night at the grocery store. Super splurge night. Now I’m ready to sleep like a rock and hopefully tomorrow I’ll have more energy.