Our first stop on our last tourism visit to Paris was the Musee d’Orsee. This museum has an impressive collection of Impressionist masterpieces, and an enormous collection of sculptures.
I was amazed at how close we could get to some of the most famous paintings in the world, and that we were allowed to photograph them, which we were forbidden to do in most parts of the Louvre.
This particular museum seems obsessed with clocks. There are few places where you cannot see at least one enormous clock. The one shown below is in the museum café. It's almost as though the museum designers want to emphasize the passage of time for the visitors, while attempting to stop it completely for the artifacts contained within the walls. |  |
I was completely charmed by this Monet painting of a lemon, which is approximately life size. I wondered what compelled him to invest the time to paint this image. Also, who is the person at the museum responsible for the selection of frames? The one on this lemon picture is far too ornate and bulky for such a tiny, simple image. It’s almost as though the curator wanted to emphasize the importance of the artist, ignoring the fact that it’s a goddamn picture of a lemon.
Here I am standing in front of one of Monet’s famous haystack paintings. He did a whole series of these, and they’re quite lovely. I was suffering from a nagging, phlegmatic cough the entire time, so I’m afraid I left a fine spray of bronchial mucus on some of the great Impressionist works of the early 20th century. Some poor conservator will have to clean it off someday.
My daughter reached art saturation fairly quickly, and found a place to sit where she could read a book, surrounded by beauty she was unable to appreciate. Note the large clock on the far end of the sculpture hall.
After the museum, we went out for coffee. In Paris, you can order coffee in many forms. We had café noisette, café Viennois, and cappuccino. 
Later, we strolled through the city, and I pointed out a Boucherie Chevaline (a butcher specializing in horsemeat) to my daughter, who was totally grossed out. We visited a Fromagere, a shop selling nothing but cheeses. My daughter was in heaven, and bought a giant lump of Mimolette to bring home.
Well, that about sums it up for this trip to France. I would like to thank the French people, who were unfailingly gracious hosts. In particular, I would like to thank the proprietor of Les Princes café, which was located near the parking garage. We used the bathroom there every day on arrival and every evening on departure from the city. Merci, mon ami. I would also like to thank the mayor of the city of Paris for installing the cool space toilets in high-tourism areas. These little pods would open at the press of a button, enabling you to do your business, then they would clean and sanitize themselves before admitting another desperate tourist. Formidable!
On our second visit to Paris, we took the Metro to Ile de Cite, where Notre Dame is located. Notre Dame is not the oldest or largest cathedral in France, but thanks to Victor Hugo it is certainly the most famous. There’s a massive restoration project underway, and the front façade of the cathedral has been returned to its original grandeur.
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The square outside is bustling with tourists, students and artists. By now, my daughter had adopted a very French style, purchasing a beret and a foulard. She told me that she had been watching French women very closely to see exactly how they knotted their scarves so that she could do it just right.
Inside the cathedral, I tried to explain to my daughter how these buildings were constructed entirely of stone, how the stained glass windows are structural units, how the flying buttresses keep the walls from falling outward, but I think it went over her head. In one of the side chapels, there is a nice model of the cathedral, showing the buttresses. I took my daughter outside and showed her the real thing.The stained glass is quite impressive, especially in terms of scale. Some of the rose windows are so huge that I am unable to imagine how they were created.
We went outside to a little park behind the cathedral and ate some lunch. My daughter had way too much fun feeding the sparrows, which annoyed my wife and I because we have sparrows in the United States. The street that runs alongside the cathedral is full of souvenir shops, and we noticed that the shop nearest the entrance to Notre Dame has the highest prices. The prices are lower at the one next door, and so on. The one furthest from the entrance is the cheapest. It’s fascinating that you only had to walk a block to save as much as 50% on this stuff.Later, we took a walk across the Seine and headed over to the Louvre. I had forgotten how massive the Louvre is. It’s an enormous building, and we walked forever along its outer walls looking for the entrance. It’s so big, the cops wear roller blades.
Eventually, we found the entrance. We had purchased tickets online before we left, so getting in was a breeze. We quickly visited the major attractions: Winged Victory, the Venus de Milo and the Mona Lisa, which is displayed behind a sheet of glass that could stop a bazooka shell. I was able to walk completely around the Venus de Milo, and discovered something I never knew about this famous statue: You can see her butt crack.
Once we left the Louvre, we wandered around in Paris for awhile, admiring the architecture.
We wound up in the Les Halles district, and decided to have a nice meal. Unfortunately, there are lots of tourist restaurants in Les Halles, and it’s hard to distinguish between a good restaurant and a bad one.
We picked one at random and were seated immediately. We noticed that the restaurant was only about 1/4 full, even though it was 6:00 pm. We didn’t know if this meant that the restaurant sucked, or if Parisians eat late.
Years ago, my daughter had tried escargot and claimed to like it. So she ordered it again as an appetizer and took a bite. As it turned out, her tastes had changed, so I wound up eating the other 5 and a half snails.
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My wife had a delicious tureen of French Onion soup, served with a spoon the size of a shovel. When our main course arrived, we were all in fine spirits, laughing and kidding around. My wife had ordered a steak of some kind. It was tough and gristly, and she was horribly disappointed. The mood at our table turned sour and I was amazed at how fragile good times can be. It put a damper on our evening, so instead of hanging around to see Paris at night, we headed home in rush hour traffic.
So my advice is, if you’re ever in Paris, stick with the soup.
We wanted to go into the city of Paris, of course, but I was leery of trying to drive. So I went down to see the desk clerk Jean-Christophe to inquire about train service. He made that disdainful “pfui” noise at which the French excel. “Why don’t you drive?” he asked. “I weel show you zee place to go.”
It seems the train would cost us about 50 Euros for three round-trip tickets, and the service to Val de Reuil didn’t run very late in the evening. However, if we drove, it would cost us about 6 Euros in tolls, and about 15 Euros to park in a parking garage. Add a little gas and the whole adventure would cost less than 25 Euros. Plus, we could come and go as we pleased.
All we had to do was drive down one major highway until it intersected with the “Periferique” (the highway that circles Paris), take the first exit, and pull into a parking garage right at the top of the ramp in the district called Porte de Saint-Cloud. Directly across the street was a Metro station from which we could reach any point in the city. This strategy served us well, because we drove into Paris several times during the week. The biggest problem turned out to be rush-hour traffic, which is very bad in Paris, and is exacerbated by the fact that the 4-lane highway we used compresses to 2 lanes through Versailles, into a tunnel and over the Seine.
I didn’t want to look like a tourist, but as you can see, I’m hopeless. In fact, I’m lucky I didn’t get picked up for vagrancy.
We decided to walk for a while. After getting lost and wandering along the Seine for about half an hour, we decided to grab a cab. This took a bit of hunting, but eventually we found a cab stand. The cabbies in Paris roll down their side windows to determine your destination BEFORE they unlock the doors to let you in. I guess they have some bad neighborhoods in Paris. Once I said, “Tour Eiffel,” we were on our way.
Thirty years ago, I ignored the Eiffel Tower as a destination for shallow tourists, preferring museums, cathedrals and Bohemian cafes. This trip, we had our daughter with us, and it would have been shameful to deny her the experience.
We arrived at the base of the Eiffel Tower and I was immediately struck by its massive enormity. The thing is huge, and the sensation of weight and gravity are almost palpable. You have to remember that it’s made entirely of iron. It’s currently painted a kind of khaki tan color (they change the color and paint it every 7 years), and it’s the tallest structure in Paris. In fact, the entire Left Bank area around it is limited to buildings of 2 – 4 stories, so it looms over the city, and can be seen from almost anywhere.
The ticket line was blessedly short, due to the fact that it was shoulder season, and the weather that day was cool and damp. Elevators in all four legs carry visitors up at an angle to the first and second levels. The second level has a
gift shop and the Jules Verne Restaurant.
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From the second level, you must wait in a much longer line for the elevators that carry visitors to the third, or top level. There are actually two top levels. The lower one is enclosed in glass and has maps that label the view of Paris. Up a flight of stairs is the upper level, which is enclosed in a wire screen, and offers visitors the best view.
The winds were strong that day, and the tower had a distinct sway. My daughter experienced a queasy fear of heights, so of course I teased her with statements like, “What’s that creaking sound?” and “This thing was never meant to last this long.”
After leaving the tower, we caught another cab, which had an interesting display of Matchbox cars glued to the dashboard. A sign proclaimed that it consisted of every car manufactured in France in the year 1960.
We rode to the Champs Elysees and had an overpriced lunch at a café where all of the seats face out to the street, enabling you to watch the parade of tourists. This particular café had an outdoor seating area, and the waiters raced in and out of the building carrying trays of food and drink, somehow failing to collide with the swirling horde of unwary people on the sidewalk, their eyes glued to shop windows or the Arc de Triomphe.
We visited the Arc de Triomphe after lunch, and I tried to imagine the colossal insult to France in 1940 when the Nazi soldiers marched beneath it into Paris. Originally built by Napoleon Bonaparte, today it serves as a memorial to the French Unknown Soldier as well as all French military campaigns. It’s a magnificent structure, covered with elaborate sculptures, and surrounded by one of the most insane traffic circles in the world, where seven major boulevards intersect.
We strolled up the Champs Elysees, past Cartier jewelers and a variety of trendy couture shops. I noticed a long line of
people waiting in a line outside of Louis Vuitton. They had a doorman admitting people in limited numbers, just like
some kind of exclusive nightclub.
The Champs Elysees is full of famous name brand merchandise, and things you don’t see in the United States, but I found myself intrigued by the trees. There are dozens of them, lining the boulevard for long stretches, and they must be 50 feet tall. Somehow, they’ve been trimmed into crisp rectangular shapes. So I had to wonder who does this? When do they do it? Do crews with huge cherry-pickers and gigantic hedge clippers show up once a week in the middle of the night and hack away at them? And how do they paint the Eiffel Tower? Do they shut it down so the paint doesn’t drip on the tourists? Do they have to spread a giant tarp on the ground? These thoughts keep me awake at night.
