First day in Paris -- checking into the hotel
Our favorite bakery, two blocks from the hotel. The best cafe au lait around in decent-sized cups. Most places served coffee in something slightly bigger than an eggcup. And no free refills.
Our hotel was 5 minutes' walk from the Eiffel Tower. Very cool. It made up for the tiny room. One small double bed and about 2 feet of clearance on the sides and base of the bed. And a shower you couldn't turn around in without whacking an elbow on the wall.
Saturday April 1. A group of students were putting out dozens of helium fish balloons all over the greenspaces around the tower. I never figured out why but it was an amazing sight. Don poses with a fish.
First thing in the morning, the streets were deserted. I gather than Parisians sleep in weekend mornings. I love these buildings! This city is a maze, even with a streetmap. I brought along a tiny compass and it was frequently consulted.
Having fast food coffee on the Champs-Elysees. Occasional drizzle so the streets remained mostly deserted.
A McDonalds on the Champs-Elysees. You gotta love it!
The oldest monument in Paris -- 2000+ years old, stolen from Luxor, Egypt in the mid 1800s.
Under the Louvre is a small mall with a nice food court. We stopped for a snack. I took this photo of the glass pyramid inverted over the concrete one. Then I found out later that this spot is a major player in the Dan Brown Da Vinci Code book. They even put on tours of landmarks from this very annoying book. It's fiction, people! Louvre docents are not impressed at being insulted by tourists who think the book is a sacred relic.
Place de la Concorde. The horses and statues on the top were stolen from Venice.
At night, on the hour, strobe lights all over the Eiffel Tower flash for 10 minutes. It's an amazing sight. People in the vicinity of the base cheer and applaud. The festive atmosphere is a lot like that of watching the laser and fireworks show at Disneyworld.
You really can't take a bad photo of the Eiffel Tower.
Monday -- our tour guide took us to the Saint Chapelle church. It has unbelievable amounts of stained glass.
Outside the church I found this angel thoroughly tied up. I guess she kept trying to leave.
Some of the 24 members of our tour group, listening to our guide, Patrick (in red coat) entertaining us with juicy details about Notre Dame.
I found Notre Dame fairly hideous in a wonderful kind of way.
I climbed just under 400 steps up and 400 down to reach the balcony where most of the gargoyles hang out. This caged walkway is about 18 inches wide in places.
The Cluny Museum has a terrific exhibit on stained glass with samples that are at eye level instead of 20 feet up the wall.
Tuesday -- visit to Montmartre, a hilltop village within Paris. At the base of the hill is Moulin Rouge and blocks of rather seedy bars.
Near the top is a minivillage of local artists. Sitting on the ground consulting my map, I overheard two artists with strong British accents chatting. Then a small tour bus arrived bearing a group of very well-dressed middle-aged women tourists. The two Brits immediately switched to the most preposterous French accent imaginable as they solicited these women for portrait painting. "Aaaaaah, Madame, eeet would be an 'onorrrr to pant [sic] your peek-chur." After that I noticed that many of the "artists" standing near groups of original paintings and drawings all over Paris, typically in high tourist areas, had no raw materials with them so there was no evidence that they were in fact the artist.
At the top of the hill is the amazing Sacre Coeur church.
Our tour
group arrived exactly at noon to find that the church was filled with
the sound of singing nuns. Regardless of religious convictions, many of
us were moved to tears by the beauty of their voices. I went back a
couple of days later, found a nun who could understand my appalling
French, and bought a CD recorded in the church. It's not called Top 10
Hits of the Sacre Coeur Nuns, but it ought to be.
The Palace at Versailles. Okay, this is a model of the grounds in the foyer of the Palace.
Massive murals, busy ceilings, and gold leaf everywhere. I found it all rather tacky.
But the grounds were gorgeous, even when it was too early for spring flowers and buds.
Don and I explored two of the largest city parks, both around the same size as Central Park in NYC. Across this lake is a very snooty restaurant on an island. You have to take a ferry to get there.
By the end of the week, it had warmed enough that the bulb fields were beginning to show color. I took loads of photos of these gardens.
One of the gardens contained a playground. Here's the minigolf section. I wonder how the Pope feels about miniatures of Paris's most sacred Catholic churches and cathedrals being used to decorate a minigolf course.
This Eiffel Tower reproduction is made of rope. It is clearly a big hit with youngsters and teens. The top is a good 20-25 feet off the ground. I guess any kids who lose their footing learn a harsh life lesson when they hit the gravel bed underneath.
I gave the ropes a try and quickly discovered that all the ropes are interconnected, so a child on the far side bouncing up and down on the ropes affects your balance. I wasn't on there long before I got quite alarmed and climbed down.
Miscellaneous Paris Photos
A classic Paris shot... the balloon vendor outside the park.
We had some coffee in a Louvre patio coffee shop overlooking the pyramid.
This cracked me up. They changed the name of the street, but they keep up the old street sign.
View from the 8th floor of a department store.
A block from the department store was a river of demonstrators. They were very orderly, walking and chanting and following their police escorts. I took one photo and then headed the other way.
Outside the modern art museum is a pool full of weird fountains. I liked the snake that spat water. I also liked that there was a single mallard duck in the pool, next to the snake.
One afternoon when I went back to the Eiffel Tower, 3 mallard ducks landed and wandered over to check out the sights themselves. It struck me as pretty funny.
The Thinker and The Duck
One of my favorite moments all week. At the Rodin museum, seeing the Thinker, a little girl -- maybe 10 -- runs up with this soft toy duck, poses it on the Thinker plinth, and carefully takes a photo of the two together. I imagine the duck is in every vacation photo. Most of my tour group were in stitches. Hand in the photo is of our tour guide gesturing. But the story gets better. Later in the Rodin gardens, I find a rather boring statue of some mythical creature carrying a big cubic rock. It clearly would benefit from a toy duck. Fortunately, I see the family of the girl close by, so I walk over and ask the parents, "May I borrow your duck?" The dad answers in a stern British accent "I beg your pardon!" Oh, great, I have the wrong family. So I try to explain my mistake and they nod politely. Later inside the Rodin museum, the family comes up a flight of stairs, the parents see me, and rapidly steer their kids in the other direction. Very funny. I'm sure they are back in England now telling all their friends about the nutcase American asking to borrow their duck.