France Day 5

We started out early today and took the metro to the Louvre (don't forget to pronounce the "r"!). We did a portion of the Denon wing of the Louvre. The whole museum is so big that it would probably take 3-5 days to see everything. We enjoyed it so much that we might go back at the end of the trip (we didn't get a chance to, unfortunately). Since the Louvre used to be a palace, the entire place is really ornate. The art was amazing, but the architecture was just as spectacular. This is a view of the ceiling in one of the rooms:

At times it was difficult to know what to focus on because it was all so amazing. One of the paintings Nick was most excited for was Napoleon's coronation:

This is actually only a small section of the painting. It was so huge!
Josephine at Malmaison:

Venus de Milo:

Mona Lisa:

Da Vinci's 3 generations painting (my favorite):

Lady Liberty:

The Winged Victory of Samothrace:

A good book detailing the tale of Richard III and the story of the princes in the tower is The Sunne in Splendour by Sharon Kay Penman, which is a wonderful piece of historical fiction. Penman does a very thorough job in her research and presents a more historically accurate view of Richard III, who was not a hunchback and did not spend two years in his mother's womb and was not birthed with teeth and long claws, as the Tudors would have you believe. The book is hard to put down and beyond interesting. Read it and learn the truth about Richard III!
Here is the painting of The Princes in the Tower:


There were many, many more paintings that we loved as well. The sheer size of some of these pieces was overwhelming, some over 15 feet tall and covering entire walls. Our guide (I think her name was Nina), was a wonderful older lady who made some of the pieces really come alive. We had headsets, which were great since there were quite a few other groups milling around. There is something really wonderful about seeing so many different cultural groups enjoying the artwork in similar ways. The beauty and history of these pieces bring a commonality between people that we can all appreciate.

By the end of the tour, which took about 2 hours at a very fast clip, I was entranced. We were able to go down into the lower levels of the Louvre to see the original foundations of the structure, which date back to the 12th century. After our tour, Nick and I bought a guide to the Louvre and I fully intend to become an amateur art history buff when we get back the states. The Louvre was far and away my favorite part of the day.

The second part of the day started well with a very good lunch in the Tuileries gardens. I had penne with a roasted red pepper pesto sauce and Nick had a delicious goat cheese and pesto stuffed chicken breast with saffron rice, micro greens, and a balsamic reduction. And café, of course!

Then we decided to walk the Champs-Élysées. It's a few miles from the Louvre to the Arc de Triomphe and my feet are throbbing just thinking about it! This image is a small arc at the Louvre. If you look to the middle of that arc, you can see the Arc de Triomphe all the way down the Champs-Élysées-many miles away.

We started out at the Place de la Concorde, which holds two beautiful fountains.

And an obelisk, which was given to France by the Egyptian government in the 19th century.

The obelisk is covered with hieroglyphics describing the reign of Ramses II. To me, it seemed a little out of place in this country that loves its language so much. The most interesting and historically significant part of the square was the plaque placed on the spot where Marie Antoinette and Louis XVI were beheaded in 1793. It was a little mind-blowing to think that we were standing on the spot where so many people lost their heads and the country and history were forever changed.

After we spent some time at the Place de la Concorde, we walked the Champs, which was a slightly unpleasant experience. Full of high-end, trendy, and designer shops (including the biggest Sephora EVER-did you know that 1 out of every 2 men and 9 out of 10 women in Paris wear perfume?), I felt distinctly poor and even more foreign. But then the gypsies come up to you begging for money. Or they prostrate themselves on the ground in front of you. It was very uncomfortable and proof, even more so, that we stuck out as tourists like a sore thumb. By the time we got to the Arc, I was in a pretty crummy mood.

But the Arc itself was amazing and overwhelming (my word of the trip)-as are most things in Paris. It is HUGE and set in the middle of a giant roundabout in which cars scream by you honking and merging in crazy ways.

Beautiful monument, head-spinning environment. We took a lot of pictures (none of which include the entire monument-it was too big to get in a shot!). Here's one that gives you an idea of the scale. Look at the size of the people in relation to the monument.

Here are some images of the detail:


One of the quietest moments we had all day was in front of the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, which was beautiful.

We were both so tired, but we were leaving Paris the next day and I still didn't have a way to straighten my hair. Jared and Alicia (our favorite couple on the tour) loaned us a book on walking tours of Paris, so we went to a shopping center. It was so big that we couldn't figure out which stores were where, so we gave up! Fortunately, the metro was in the lower floors of the building, so we took it to the BHV (a GIANT Sears/JCPenney/Nordstrom/Macy's), which also conveniently has an opening on the -1 floor in the metro station. 4 floors and many hilarious attempts at explanations to French-speaking clerks later, I had a straightener and we headed back to the hotel.

P.S. The BHV had 8 floors. It was huge! I was very proud of us for finding the straightener, and in less than half an hour. Impressive! I wish we could have spent a little time shopping in the store too; it really seemed to have a little bit of everything.

After a 3-hour nap, we went out to dinner. Some of our tour buddies recommended a restaurant called The Nectarine in the Place de Vosges, but when we got there, they were closing up. It was about 9:30. We went to a place around the corner with decent food (Nick had an odd Caesar salad and I had a cheesy risotto with prawns), but the service stunk and they rushed us out the door. No tip for you!

Before dinner we tried a laundromat, but it didn't sell detergent. I decided to wash a few things in the sink at 11:30. Big mistake. The tee and socks were still soaked in the morning and my bra is a little damp too. Eh, it was an experience. And it was one of those things that made Nick and me laugh so hard we cried. Nick walked in the bathroom the next morning to take a shower and immediately said, "Steph, um, I think we have a problem." And out he came holding his tee, still wet and with a horribly stretched-out collar. And then the laughter started!

Writing this now, I realize this was something of a fiasco of a day. One of our big mistakes was trying to cram too much into our time in Paris, instead of telling ourselves that we will be back. And we will. I don't think we ever need to walk the Champs again, but we will go up in the Arc next time. We will also spend more time exploring the Louvre, which I wish we would have done on this day. Overall, as our last day in Paris, it reflected the tone of our entire time in Paris: busy and full. The next section of our trip was more to our liking in terms of the pace. I finished writing much of this entry while we were on the bus to Bourges, which I will write about tomorrow.

France Day 4

The day of Sainte-Chappelle:

Notre Dame:

And the Orsay Museum.

This day was a long one. By the time I wrote this, it was midnight and I'd just taken a 4-hour nap. Because of the amount of stuff we covered this day, I did this entry in my journal in sections.

1. Breakfast at the hotel. Laughing cow cheese and baguettes are awesome! We didn't sleep well last night, so coffee was a must too.

2. Arnaud taught us to use the metro. We already knew that. The old people needed a lot of explanation.

3. Hotel DeVille.

The mayor was dragged out and ripped apart by the bare hands of a crowd during the French Revolution. People have been drawn and quartered here over the centuries and it is the site of public executions. The last one was in the 70s and then the death penalty was abolished. Essentially, it is a beautiful square of death. The building itself also still has visible holes from bullets shot in World War II.

4. Sainte-Chappelle.
This church contains the most beautiful stained glass I've ever seen.


Somewhere in the church are holy relics from the Passion, which are brought out at Easter for the public and faithful to view. The rest of the time they are safely stored away. One of the relics is a crown of thorns, however, the thorns were taken off one at a time and given to visiting dignitaries. Apparently, there are enough thorns to make 30+ crowns, so the authenticity of those are in question. The funny thing that happened at Sainte-Chappelle: Arnaud had a conniption fit at another tour guide for cutting in line. And then couldn't let it go. Haha!

5. Notre Dame de Paris.

There aren't adequate words to describe this beautiful cathedral with its breathtaking architectural detail.

However, it felt wrong to be "touristy" in such a holy and breathtaking place. The girl walking around in a midriff top inside the cathedral made me very angry. There were also lots of armed military people because of a bomb threat at the Eiffel Tower the day before. (Side note: we knew about the travel warnings in France through CNN, but it didn't affect us in any way. We felt very safe, especially with the very visible police and military presence everywhere, which is not unusual in France.)

One of the most interesting things about Notre Dame were the carvings. Each told a story. This one shows the day of judgment with Christ and the top, the saved below him on his right, and the damned on the left. These carvings helped to solidify the stories heard in church in people's minds. Medieval visual aids, if you will.

And of course there are the famed stained glass windows.

The rose window.

The rose window from the opposite end of the cathedral.

We bought a beautiful rosary in the cathedral as well and then went outside to enjoy the gardens and fountain.

Here are the gargoyles, used to ward against evil spirits and as rain spouts.

It was a beautiful day.

6. Feet hurt.

7. Lunch in the Latin Quarter.

It is called the Latin Quarter because it was the neighborhood of students years ago. These students spoke Latin, hence the name: the Latin Quarter. It was our favorite part of Paris at that point, and it felt very medieval. For our lunch Nick had a croque madame which is basically toast with Canadian bacon, cheese, and a fried egg. I had scrambled eggs with potatoes and blue cheese. There was a lot of blue cheese and the eggs were slightly raw, but it was still good. And, of course, we had more café.

8. More walking and standing. Someone should find the edit button on Arnaud. I would have liked a quicker pace at this point, meaning less lecture and more time at the monuments.

9. The Orsay Museum, which was formerly a train station.

The Impressionists including Monet, Manet, Van Gogh, and a slew of others are housed here. Check out the beautiful and ornate clock:

Here's one of our favorites, Manet's Olympia. She's a prostitute. Check out the hand on her leg; it's like a clamp. She stares out defiantly, ignoring the flowers her servants brings from her last customer, while seeming to say, "Who's next?"

Here are a couple of Van Gogh's pieces we saw, including a self portrait:


No photos were allowed in the museum, and I'm sorry to say, we were too out of it and exhausted at this point to get as much out of the art as we should have. We saw paintings of prostitutes, saints and Christ, many sculptures, and a graphic painting of a vagina. It felt dirty to stand in front of that piece with the other tourists. "Hi! I'm looking at old porn. Care to join me creepy stranger?" There were a lot of naked women in this museum. Realism is still my favorite.

10. We took the metro back to the hotel. After walking all day, it felt great to just sit for a moment. We also experienced the R&R, which is another underground train. Getting around in Paris is the easiest thing in the world. It would be great if Seattle was set up like it. There would be no real need for cars in the city. Anyway, we slept for 4 hours once we got back to the hotel. Our feet still hurt, but we hadn't had dinner yet, so we went out for crepes at one of the stands in the Bastille square. We also bought cheese and crackers from a small market after neither Nick or I could eat the crepe fromage (with cheese), which had probably a 1/2 pound of cheese on it. The Nutella crepe was much better.

*We also walked through the Tuileries garden that afternoon.

The beauty of the place was a little lost on us because of exhaustion and foot pain.

Overall, in case you can't already tell, this was a hell day for us. So much to see and do and cram in that your head spins a little bit.

**Funny story: I made a friend in the women's bathroom at the Orsay Museum when another woman opened a stall with someone in it and then panicked. We both laughed.

***A lady named Sandy on our tour is an older version of my Aunt Kathy! She looks and acts just like her! This makes me like her a lot.

Nick's Notes (I take zero credit for the cryptic nature of the notes that spring from Nick's head):
-The Hotel DeVille is surprisingly cool
-Stained glass-wow-never seen anything like that before
-Surreal and hard to picture the historical events that occurred in these places
-Standing in a private chapel of the French kings-whoa
-Notre Dame-huge! Cobblestones coming up to it and the Point Zero where all roads lead to Paris
-Latin Quarter-smelled amazing from all directions (there were many restaurants)
-Ditches in the Latin Quarter running down the middle of the streets-the old sewer system (gare de l'eau!)
-Orsay Museum would have been awesome if my back didn't hurt so bad, but I really liked the art-especially Van Gogh
-It's amazing what people can make with a chisel and hammer (sculptures from the Orsay)

And then we went to bed. This was our longest day, but one of the shortest in terms of journal entries. Again, the head-spinning effect. When we go back to Paris, we'll be visiting these monuments again so we can enjoy them at our pace.

France Day 3

The day of Les Invalides.

But first, breakfast: An amazing bakery.

Nick's quote of the day in regards to the bakery: "This is so much better than I ever thought it could be."

What he's talking about: The creme and chocolate filled fried doughnut deliciousnesses. Oh. My. Gosh. They were heaven in a greasy pastry. But greasy sounds gross. These were anything but gross.

After breakfast and me realizing that my power converter, and therefore curling iron, wasn't going to work, we hopped a bus to West Bank to visit Les Invalides. Here's our first image of the gilded dome:

P.S. bus drivers in in Paris are SCARY! Holy crap. Anyway, Invalides also includes a church, which is where Napoleon is interred. This is the altar in the church:

Our primary reason for visiting Invalides was to see Napoleon's tomb, which was huge and completely overwhelming. The casket is made of red porphry and it's about 15 feet tall on a marble pedestal. Inside the shiny red coffin are 6 more coffins made of different materials and then there is Napoleon himself. He lies in a recessed area under the main floor of a church with a tall domed ceiling above him.

Nick was in the presence of his idol and he was glowing.

Here's a large statue of the man himself from the courtyard:

The rest of Invalides, which used to be a sprawling military hospital, is now the largest military museum in the world. It covers everything from medieval weapons and armor to all things World War II. Some of my favorite parts included Catherine de Medici's crossbow:

The armor, some from just after the reign of Richard III (one of my historical obsessions):

The prop from the Wright brothers' plane:

The hall of standards (flags taken during battles):

I also enjoyed seeing Napoleon's stuffed horse and uniforms, and the cuirass (metal breastplate) of one of Napoleon's heavy cavalry, which was pierced through both sides with a cannonball. That guy died fast, and they probably had a very hard time extricating him from that armor. We didn't take a lot of pictures at Invalides because we didn't know at the time how to check how many pictures we had left on our memory card. We learned later we had a LOT, so this lack of pictures is one of our regrets about the trip. We console ourselves with the fact that we will be going back one day in the near future, so we'll just have to do Invalides again. Even though we spent almost 5 hours there the first time . . .

Nick's perspective: Seeing Napoleon's tomb gave me a feeling of insignificance. It made me feel very small. Also, Louis XIII's massive amount of armor leads me to believe that he had some kind of fetish. The other part I thought was cool was the jacket from World War I that was still caked with the mud from the trenches. What a miserable existence that was for those men. The Greek armor from 800 B.C. to the current weaponry just goes to show that there has never been and will never be a time without war. People will never be peaceful.

Nick thought the museum would take us about 2 hours. It was HUGE and would have taken all day if we could have read all the information (most of the plaques were in French) The sheer volume of "stuff" was overwhelming. In the middle of our 5 hour tour of the museum, I almost kicked Nick when starvation hit. We ate in the cafeteria of the place. I had the quiche Lorraine, which was pretty good. It had leeks in it-my first experience with them-and they were pretty tasty. When we finally finished at the museum, we walked out to the Champs-Élysées and down to the metro to go back to the Bastille neighborhood. At this point, I'm exhausted and my feet are hot and painful. It took us a little while to figure out the metro, but we eventually got our tickets and then got to experience the cattle car, I mean metro, and the cocaine addict with a tick who talked to herself. Culture, ladies and gentlemen! Haha!

Nap time. Then we met our tour companions at a restaurant across from our hotel and we are the youngest people on the tour by about 20 years. Our companions are teachers, RNs, engineers, digital designers, and a prosecuting attorney and come from everywhere, literally. They hail from places in Hawaii to Staten Island. Most are retired with grandchildren, but all seem nice and many are fun. Our tour guide, Arnaud, is in an episode with Rick Steves in which they sit and eat a huge meal for a few hours in Paris. He has a dry sense of humor and Nick says he has the strangest colored eyes he's ever seen. We like him a lot so far. He explained some things about the French that were ah-has for us, such as:
1. French people are very closed off-they don't mix business and their personal lives.
2. They are very formal-when you walk in a store, say bonjour madame or monsieur .
3. They are proud to speak French-that's why everything is in French, including the information in museums.
4. You'll get better service if you ask if they speak English in French (parlez-vous Anglais?).
5. They dress formally all the time.
6. They have a different mentality than Americans-don't smile when you greet a French person. If you're a woman and you smile at a man, he'll probably think that you find him attractive!
And, etc.

The light clicked on in a few ways for us. We had a potty break after introductions and then did a quick tour of our neighborhood. We found out that the park we visited the night before, the Place de Vosages, was the location of Henri II's fatal jousting accident, in which he took a large splinter through the eye and into his brain. He lived for a few days after, and in trying to determine whether he could be saved, his doctors jammed splinters into the eyes of criminals and then took them out to find out if they could live. None did. When Henri died, his wife, Catherine de Medici, promptly took away a chateau from his mistress, Diane de Poitiers. This chateau was Chenonceau, which we will visit later in our trip. This is a story I've very familiar with, so it was fun to hear. Although the part about the criminal guinea pigs was one I hadn't heard before.

Dinner was very good that night. We ate with the group (one of the many amazing meals included in our trip) and had great conversation with a fellow teacher, a former school superintendent, an environmental engineer, and an early childhood education specialist with an autistic daughter who is now in college. It was so interesting to hear about the accommodations they are making for her.

Dinner started with a salmon and avocado tartare, which Nick LOVED. Texture-wise it was a killer for me, but the flavor was okay. The main course was roasted lamb shoulder and couscous. Yummy, even with all the fat on the meat. Finally, dessert was a flourless chocolate cake with crystallized orange slices and a cream sauce. Oh wow. So decadent! We were completely exhausted after all that and went back to the hotel room ready for bed. At 10:30 Nick was already out. Next up: Breakfast at 7:15 and then it's Sainte-Chapelle and Notre Dame followed by the Orsay Museum.