Paris Diary: Views from the Eiffel Tower

Looking upriver along the Seine. All the pictures I'm posting here are 640x480 reductions of stuff taken with the 7-mpixel Canon SD800IS ("Img" in the name) or the 6-mpixel Nikon D-40 digital SLR ("DSC" in the name). I haven't done any processing other than some cropping here and there and the down-convert to the reduced size.

In the distance is La Défence. You can see just a bit of the big square Grand Arche.

Looking down the Champs de Mars at the École Militaire (Miliary School, Napoleon was a graduate).

Les Invalides. The dome is the church where Napoleon's tomb is now. The green space just beyond the dome is the Musée Rodin sculpture garden.

Green space that starts at the left edge and goes up and right is Jardin des Tuileries. At the end of that is the Louvre.

The Grand Palais.

Extreme zoom on Sacré-Cœur.

Late afternoon view. Just like the colors on this one.

Paris Diary: Thursday, here and there.

For some unknown reason, the transit strike didn't happen. I never saw any mention on the news but my limited French skills might have caused me to miss it. Great! Let the sightseeing continue!

First order of business for today was to check email. We thought we'd hear the gender of our first grandchild today but not yet.

Alice needed a bit of extra rest so I ended up doing lunch on my own. Just another café on Kleber. There are a half dozen or more within a couple of blocks of the hotel. A nice leisurely lunch with a carafe of wine, then finish up with a little espresso. Ah... what a life! :)

Sightseeing today started out with the Musée Rodin, next to Les Invalides. Rodin's works are amazing. Everybody knows The Thinker and most know The Kiss. The Gates of Hell is ... disturbing. Lots of other works displayed here.

After the sculpture garden and museum, Alice needed a quick bite then we took the subway to Pont de l'Alma, famous now as the place where Princess Diana died.

There we took a Bateaux Mouches sightseeing ride on the Seine. It's a great way to spend a couple of hours or so.


From Pont de l'Alma down the Seine past the Grand and Petit Palais, Place de la Concorde, Jardin des Tuileries, Louvre and Orsay museums, Notre Dame, a loop around Ile de la Cité and Ile St Louis. Then back past the same stuff and on to the Tour Eiffel and on to the miniature Statue of Liberty.

Got a huge number of good pictures on this little float.

Final sightseeing item for the day was to go up the Eiffel Tower. Alice doesn't do heights very well so I was a little surprised that she'd do it. Yes, she is gritting her teeth in that picture!

We took a cab from there to the Champs Elysée to find dinner. I had a half memory of an Asian place recommended in one of the guide books we had along but didn't have the guide book or a good enough memory. We ended up in a place that had good food but I think we were the only people over 30 in the place. Then a nightcap of ice cream and espresso at one of the cafés by the hotel.

Paris Diary: Le Marais

Wednesday of our week we visited Le Marais district to the east of the Louvre.

We started out at the place where the Bastille used to be. Nothing there now but an obelisk in the middle of a traffic circle. From there it was a museum death
march.

• Victor Hugo home in Place des Vosges
  
• Musée Carnavalet (history of Paris)
  
• Musée Picasso
  
• Centre Georges Pompidou (modern art)
  

The Victor Hugo home is part of a square of 1600s era buildings called Place des Vosges. There was a very long line when we first arrived but it was all 20-something young women. We figured out that it was not the line for the Victor Hugo home. No line there. All I learned in the Victor Hugo home is that I haven't read much written by Hugo. After touring through the home we tried to get a wine and cheese break at a cafe in the square. But it was lunch time and they wouldn't serve us unless we ordered a meal.

From Place des Vosges we walked to Musée Carnavalet. Lots of interesting paintings of Paris over the centuries. And a nice formal garden in the center. We only made it thru the 16th century before deciding to move on.

We picked out a random cafe in a small square for lunch. Cafe food such as salads and sandwiches and house wines have all been excellent.

Final museum stop was the Centre Georges Pompidou with it's external plumbing and modern art exhibit.

About the coolest thing was the giant spider sculpture in the entry space. Modern art is sometimes interesting but very often weird. We both think that a lot of the pieces are scams being perpetrated by the artists and critics. Like three identical gray canvases, each with its own identifying plaque. Or the life size red fiberglass rhinoceros.

While I was dropping my backpack off at the "cloak room", Alice struck up a conversation with a couple from Chicago (they took the pic of the two of us). As we were about to part, they asked if we had heard about the transit strike. Um... no. Seems there was to be a general transit strike beginning this evening or at midnight. Could be bad. Very bad. We and the whole city gets around on Le Métro, the buses, and the trains. If those were down we'd be fighting with the entire population for the cabs.

Back at the hotel, the desk clerk had not heard of any transit strike. We arranged dinner for 10pm and took a bit of time off our feet, recharging our batteries and those of the cameras.

Dinner was at Le Sheffer, a neighborhood bistro. It was close enough that we could walk back to the hotel if there was indeed a strike. It was really excellent! And it felt like a little neighborhood hole in the wall. Le Métro was still running when we headed for "home". But there was a was a sign I couldn't read up in one station and at the hotel the clerk had posted a sign stating "General Transit strike tomorrow!".

If so, we've still got the Eiffel Tower and Arc de Triomphe in walking distance. And plenty of cafés with wine!

Paris Diary: Day 2, Montmartre and Basilique du Sacré-Cœur

After returning from Versailles we had a nap and then hit the subway to Montmartre. The area is my favorite in spite of being totally packed with tourists at all times. And the Basilique du Sacré-Cœur is, for me, much more moving than Notre Dame. I think that's largely because they don't allow photos and reasonably well enforce quiet. There was a huge black man just inside the door suspiciously eying everyone who came in and periodically saying in a very deep voice: "No photos!".

The views of Paris from the steps of the Basilica are very cool (see the Wikipedia page linked above for a panorama).

We walked around the Montmartre area a bit. Mostly too tired to go far after Versailles. We were up there too late to visit any of the galleries or famous artists' hangouts. I tried to remember the name of a particular restaurant that was recommended as not being totally a tourist trap. I saw La Crémaillère in Place Tertre, thought that was the one so we ate there. Not sure it was the one I was looking for. We ate outside. It was good fun watching all the people go by but it was really too early in the season to be outside at 10:30pm. Even with the heaters they had, we got very cold.

Paris Diary: First full day, Versailles

Off not too early, it is vacation after all, and up to the Arc de Triomphe to buy Museum passes. This little gem costs about the same as admission to three museums but gets you into as many as you can stand to visit in four days. And the extra bonus is you get to skip the lines, there's always a shorter line or separate entrance for pass holders.

Then subway and train out to the Château de Versailles. The lines were immense... but we had the Museum pass! Woo hoo! Skipped ahead of hundreds of people!

Versailles was pretty ... stunning. One of the first things we saw was the royal chapel. In the royal chapel, the king sat above the main floor and in the back of the room. But the members of the court sat facing the king with their backs to the altar. The artwork and decoration work all through the place is non-stop. There's no such thing as a plain ceiling or wall, everything is gilt and paintings and tapestries.

The gardens are immense, literally miles from the palace to the end of the cruciform lake. It's hard to imagine how much of the country's wealth went into building and upkeep of the place.

One of the things we took along were some free audio tours from Rick Steves' website. We had some difficulty with the Versailles one. One reason was that it was a little hard to follow, the other reason was that Alice had her player on shuffle!

Paris Diary: Arrival and a little jet lag

Nice, uneventful flight to Paris. Luggage all OK, quick pass thru customs and a cab ride to the hotel by about 2pm. All good. Hotel is about half way between the Trocadéro and the Arc de Triomphe.

We bought a two-day pass on one of the open top double-decker bus lines. Rode down to the Île de la Cité area to visit Notre Dame. Notre Dame is impressive but has no feeling of being a church. The tourists (yeah, that's us) run pretty much free. Loud talking, photo flashes, and very crowded.

We walked over to Sainte-Chapelle and got in line. But about 5 minutes later they closed.

Rode around a bit more on the bus. Got off near Invalides for some pictures and a bit of a walk about. Then back to the hotel.

Alice picked a restaurant out of our "Top 10" guidebook called La Butte Chaillot (annoying flash web page). The desk clerk at our hotel got us reservations. The food was excellent. It's a "baby bistro", kind of a third-tier restaurant for a famous chef in Paris. The same chef's main restaurant would have needed reservations months in advance and would have cost us three times as much.

Trying to get with the Paris schedule, we ate dinner about 9pm. Practically bed time if we had been back home!

Off to Paris for vacation

Today all the travel I did last year pays off. Vacation in Paris with Alice!

We got to the airport early. Since we were checking luggage I wanted it to have plenty of time to find the airplane. Killed time at the Continental President's club.

I learned a new trick this flight. I booked us into an aisle and window seat leaving the middle open between us. My thought/hope was that a single middle would be low desirability and might not fill at all. And it worked! So we had extra space for legs and the overhead to ourselves as well.

Note:This series of posts is being done after the fact from entries I wrote in a journal. But I'm dating them as of the day they were written.