Paris, take 3

day 25 – jour vingt-cinq

This morning we actually stayed in bed till after 8! India has been very helpful with making plans and pointed out a few different places to get some breakfast. We still didn’t have a concrete plan of what we were doing for the day so we did a lot more vacillating before finally deciding to just go find one of India’s suggestions, a little market called Les Enfants Rouge. Turns out it wasn’t too easy to find so we had to turn around and go back to the apartment to double check directions. Turned out we’d been just a few doors away… It was pretty quiet (and almost noon) when we finally found the little market and we were the only ones at the restaurant. We got a simple brunch, cappuccinos and croissants. Delicious. This market wasn’t near as pretty as the one in Annecy, but did have cheeses, vegetables, flowers… We ended up buying some snacks to get us through til dinner.

Over our “breakfast”, we finally decided on a plan for the day. First stop would be the Arc de Triomphe. Then we’d gawk our way down the Champs-Élysées to the Louvre! To finish out the day, we’d take a river cruise on the Seine. I was really happy with this plan and was definitely feeling less stressed with a concrete timeline. After exploring the market a bit, we headed back to the apartment to make the necessary reservations. While the Paris Museum Pass gained us entry to the Louvre, we still had to reserve a time to enter. It was close to 2 pm by the time we got back, so we decided 4 pm for the Louvre and a 730 pm boat ride to catch the evening light shift.

We took the metro to the Arc de Triomphe station – can’t miss it! – and followed signs to the Arc. Thankfully, someone was thinking ahead and created tunnel access to it under the road. It was also included in our museum pass but no skip-the-line benefits. I’d seen the Arc last time I was in Paris but we didn’t climb it. There was a bit of a line, but it moved along and eventually it was our turn to start climbing. A spiral staircase took us up inside the Arc, ending on a floor inside the Arc! Who knew?! There’s a souvenir store and bathrooms way up there! From that interior floor, another couple flights of stairs took us the rest of the way up to the top of the Arc. The views were well worth it. From there we could see the high points of Paris, the Eiffel Tower and Sacre Coeur, and tried to orient ourselves to where ish our ‘home’ was. After a couple circuits of the roof, we made our way back down through the Arc.

Back on street level, we crossed under the roundabout again and came out onto the Champs-Élysées. We had exactly an hour to walk the ~2 1/4 miles to the Louvre. And we made it in the nick of time. I’m not a shopper so I didn’t really feel any need to go in any stores along the Champs-Élysées, but Mom wanted to check some out. We probably picked the cheapest indoor strip mall there was, but it was an inviting entrance. I’d become used to seeing all the fancy, expensive, brand-name stores all over Italy, so this wasn’t much different. It was actually funny to see the same stores with the EXACT same window displays.

Once we hit the Place de la Concorde roundabout, we crossed the road (around all the confusing construction), and found an entrance to the Tuileries Gardens that led the rest of the way to the Louvre. It was a good thing we’d admired them a few times already because today we didn’t have time to dawdle. We got to the street level entrance of the Louvre a couple minutes after 4, cutting it close! Of course that’s only where you enter the pyramid. Then we had to take the stairs down and get in the actual entry line. I really hoped they weren’t super stringent on the time!

Luckily there was no problem getting in, except in my rush we didn’t grab a map of the Louvre/maze. This made following Rick Steves audio tour a bit challenging, but I think we managed to find all the highlights, with a little help from other art admirers.

Just like Rick Steves says, the predominant comment surrounding the Mona Lisa was “it’s smaller than I thought…”. When I’d seen her on my last visit, there was just a boundary line with a mob of people with cameras. Now they’ve got it a little more orderly with a queue to get close and museum employees keeping people moving along after an adequate viewing time. She is a masterpiece no doubt, but I felt somewhat sorry for all of the other art packed in that huge room that was mostly being ignored.

Given that we had a Seine cruise reservation at 7:45 pm, we didn’t exactly rush through the Louvre, but we didn’t take our time to look at every single piece of art in there either. I think it was actual good that we had a time constraint cause it made us use our time wisely. I’m still unsure exactly how the Louvre is laid out, but I guess we really only saw a third (the Denon wing) of the museum, which was plenty. I was happy to see a few of my favorite sculptures again but bummed that we were just a few days too early to see the da Vinci exhibit.

From the Louvre, all we had to do was go a couple blocks and then cross the Seine to get to the Vedettes du Pont Neuf docking point. I could see the boat from the bridge but it took a bit to find the tiny, dark, hidden stairway that led down to the riverside paths. The city lights were coming on and the sky was just starting to darken as we boarded the boat, exactly as I’d hoped. We were in the first handful of people to get on and everyone headed straight up to the top of the boat, though there was seating on the lower level too. It wouldn’t have been near as enjoyable if we’d had to sit down there. We’d gotten extremely lucky with the weather today too. It wasn’t t-shirt temperatures by any means, but I was comfortable in just my thin jacket on the boat.

Everyone got boarded and we set off down the river towards the Eiffel Tower with our (quite handsome) guide pointing out the sights and explaining a bit of history along the way. My stomach was starting to growl, so I snacked on what we had left, carrots. Go figure, I’ve probably eaten thousands of carrots since I had braces and had permanent retainers put in my mouth, but I had to bite weird on THIS carrot in PARIS and bend my retainer wire! UGH. I suppose I’m really lucky I only bent it and didn’t break it. It’s putting pressure on my teeth and is definitely uncomfortable but not causing a huge deal of pain. Put a bit of a damper on this otherwise pretty great day.

We arrived at the Eiffel Tower just as it began its 8 pm light show, a fairly recently added spectacle which apparently the locals don’t really appreciate. It was beautiful to see the Tower glittering with its thousands? of lights but definitely a little over the top. We oohed and ahhed and after the 5 minutes of glittering was done, we pulled a u-ey and headed back upriver.

At some point, we crossed under the bridge that was closed by demonstrators and someone dropped a little stick off the bridge which landed near the couple in front of us. The guide rushed over to make sure we were alright, but it hadn’t done any damage, just surprised us. I wondered how the demonstrators felt about tour boats going up and down the river a million times a day, using fuel and probably somewhat polluting the water…

We continued past the docking point and did a loop around the islands, île Saint-Louis and île de la Cité. It still baffles me how this river has been contained by concrete walls and has islands. We arrived back at Pont Neuf after an hour on the water and I’d say I was feeling very happy with how the day went (other than my sore mouth).

This was the second point in the day when it went from a good day to an extremely horrible day… in about a span of 10 seconds.

As we were disembarking the boat, Mom did her mom thing. “Do you have everything? Sunglasses, purse, phone?” Me, feeling pockets, etc. Oh Shit. I couldn’t find my phone. I rewound the boat ride in my mind. I’d been using my phone to take pictures until it had gotten too dark and borrowed Mom’s phone. Where had I put mine? I probably just put it on my lap. The perfect height for it to have slid right off and, splash, right into the river. There’d been a ‘thunk’ when the guy dropped the stick off the bridge and Mom couldn’t help but wonder if that had been when my phone had taken its dive. Suffice to say, I felt like shit. Stupid for not being more careful, pissed that I’d just lost not only the monetary value of my phone but a fair amount of un-backed up pictures from the last few days and the main way we’d been navigating recently.

On the verge of tears and Mom trying to comfort me a bit, we walked back ‘home’. We were both starving, despite the emotions pulling me down, so we made it as easy as possible and went back to the little restaurant around the corner. The friendly waitress from the other night was there again, and we both ordered a fish soup. Waiting for our meal, Mom reached in her purse to find something and what does she come out with?!? MY PHONE.

I can’t even explain the relief. I’m not one of those people who are practically physically attached to their phone, but it was such a weight off to know I still had it. A little nagging in the back of my mind had been confused because I’d known that the ‘thunk’ on the boat was the stick and I thought (really hoped) that I’d be more careful with my phone than to just leave it on my lap. I must have stuck it in Mom’s purse when she had me hold it so she could stand up and take a picture. Holy cow.

The soup was delicious after a long day (it was almost 10 pm) and soft enough to not hurt to eat. The bread was a little difficult though. India was home when we got back so Mom’s hanging out with her while I blog a bit. I’m so pooped from today though, talk about an emotional rollercoaster (a very short one at least!). Bonne nuit!