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.
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