Day 7: Orsay, Rodin, Invalides

La Vérité, by Jules Joseph
Lefebvre, on display in the
Musée d'Orsay

We spent all morning at the Musée d'Orsay, looking at Classicist, Impressionist, and post-Impressionist paintings.

For lunch we went to Cinq Mars, a restaurant just a couple blocks from the museum. When we walked in, they asked if we had a reservation. No we didn't, but it was early enough in the lunch hour that they gave us a table anyway—and after that, there was never any pressure for us to hurry up and leave. The food was delicious. Also, everyone in the restaurant besides us conversed in French, so it was clearly not a place for tourists. Go there, if you get a chance. 

Then we walked to the Musée Rodin. We strolled through the gardens and the ground floor. I walked upstairs as well, but Marie did not join me.

Then we walked to the Invalides, where we visited the tomb of Napoleon. There was some kind of delegation of NATO brass visiting at the same time, and we tried to stay out of their way (while also checking all the international uniforms and trying to guess their provenance).

When we got back "home" to the Quartier Latin, we spent ten minutes in the Jardin du Luxembourg before closing time rolled around and the police pushed everyone out. So we walked up a random street about a block or so, to a bistro where we got drinks and then dinner. Once again, the food was wonderful; once again, the clientele spoke French and not English. (The waitress tried to speak English to us to be polite; but when I asked her to tell us about one of the desserts, she had to begin with "Vous parlez français?")  

          

Day 6: Orangerie and Louvre

Monday should have been easy, because we visited only two places … right? Hah! Those two places were the Orangerie and the Louvre, with a pleasant stroll through the Tuileries in-between. By dinner time we were exhausted and our feet hurt. But by golly we sure did see a lot of amazing art!

I'll post no photos for this day. All the photos I took have Marie in them (which would ruin my efforts at anonymization). And you can look up online a better image of the Mona Lisa than I got with my crappy phone-camera. (My picture shows Marie standing next to the painting, but the Mona Lisa itself is blurry.) 

Day 5: Eiffel Tower, Seine, rainstorms, and Bach

The Olympic clock, on the pier where we met our boat tour.

We planned Sunday as a light day. For breakfast we picked up croissants at La Maison d’Isabelle and coffee at the café next door. Then we tried to take the Metro to the Eiffel Tower, but that exit was blocked. We got off at the next exit, walked back, and found our way blocked by a marathon or relay race. We later learned that this was the Ekiden race, a relay marathon for people of multiple abilities. I'd had no idea there would be such a thing, so it was fun to discover and then pick our way around it.

Our next stop was the Eiffel Tower. We walked around the base and took some pictures, but neither of us was too interested in taking the elevator up high. So from there we walked down to the piers along the Seine, and picked up a boat tour up and down the river. The tour was fun, if a little cheesy. From there we strolled down the Champ de Mars. Our plan was to visit the Hôtel des Invalides, but a sudden downpour changed our minds., We ducked inside a convenience store to buy lunch, and then made our way back to the Quartier Latin in time for a performance of Bach by candlelight at the Église Saint-Éphrem-le-Syriaque. Marie cried during this performance, too. Afterwards we walked one block to a restaurant where we had dinner, and then another couple of blocks back to our hotel where we planned our itinerary for Monday.

            

Day 4: Montmartre—coffee and art, vineyards and wine

Our fourth day may take a little longer to describe, though again I will postpone any account of our conversations till later. Today we visited the neighborhood of Montmartre.

First stop was Café Lomi, a coffee shop one of us had read about in one of our travel books. We took the Metro to Montmartre, and then walked several blocks through some neighborhoods that looked very different from the ones we'd seen till now. All the restaurants advertised either that their food was halal, or else that it was African and Antillean. When we got to Café Lomi, we could tell right away that everyone there was young and cool … except us, of course. We ordered coffee and scones.

Next we made our way by subway and bus to Sacré-Cœur. There was a long line to get into the basilica, and it was raining. But this was the plan, so we stood in line. When we finally got in, services were in progress. We circumambulated the chapels around the perimeter as quietly as we could—just us and the million other tourists who had been let in at the same time—and then discussed whether to climb the steps to the top. There were 292 steps with no bannister; also we had an appointment in the early afternoon, and it was raining. Marie was plainly not about to chance it. (I'll write later about the role of stairs on this trip.) I did the math and decided there was no way to make the time work. So we passed on the steps to the top.

Day 3: The heart of Paris

The next day is quickly told, though we had some long conversations that I'll take up again later, after finishing the travelogue. We started by visiting the Musée de Cluny-Musée National du Moyen Âge, which was only a couple of blocks from our hotel. Marie spent close to an hour in the room with The Lady and the Unicorn tapestries. A group of young students was visiting the exhibit at the same time, so partly Marie was listening to the teacher explain the tapestries: how they were made, and what they symbolized. Marie told me later that part of the time she was in tears, though she tried to hide it from me. She never said quite what it was that made her cry, but I believe part of it was that all her life she had read about these places and studied these artifacts—and now she was actually here, and the artifacts were actually there right in front of her.

Day 2: Avenue des Champs-Élysées

Our first full day in Paris, I had planned for us to stroll along the Champs-Élysées, but first Marie wanted to see something called a "Boomforest." From the maps it looked like there was something of the sort just a little farther on, so I routed us out on the Metro to Porte Maillot with the idea of coming into town from there. We wandered around for an hour, seeing lots of neighborhoods but nothing that looked like a forest. Finally Marie described in a little more detail what we were looking for, and we found it on an embankment of the Boulevard Péripherique. Marie admired the planting, and we decided to move in towards the heart of town.

We didn't get far before deciding it was time for lunch, so we ducked into a place on the main road that didn't look too touristy. It was a good choice, too: the rest of the clientele were clearly locals (many seemed to be construction workers) and the food was very good. (In general we ate well on this trip.) What's more, there was a television on inside the restaurant which told us about the weather. We had already noticed strong winds while walking around; what we learned from the television report is that we were experiencing the fringe edges of Tempête Ciarán, which was at that moment devastating spots along the Atlantic Coast. 

Day 1: Arrival

Where do I start? In some ways the run-up to this trip was very similar to the run-up to my trip to Scotland earlier this year. I spent a lot of time making lists and buying supplies. Also—unlike the trip to Scotland—I spent time planning our schedule and buying tickets in advance for all the sights we wanted to see. Many of these venues now require not only a ticket but a reservation for a specific date and time. So I worked out a schedule with Marie, and then spent several hours booking us into one after another.

On the other hand, when the day of my departing flight came (October 31), I don't remember anything like the levels of anxiety that I felt before my flight to Glasgow. Maybe that's because I had just finished an international trip a few months before, while my last international trip before Scotland was in 2019. Maybe it's because Scotland was brand-new to me, while this was my fourth trip to Paris. Whatever the reason, I got myself to the airport without too much tsuris, and clambered aboard my flight. It was a nonstop to Paris, so I didn't even have to worry about changing planes.

Marie and I had scheduled our flights so that they landed within half an hour of each other, and they were allocated to the same terminal. We figured this would make it easy to meet up. But Terminal 2 at Charles de Gaulle Airport is enormous, and the gates are widely separated. What's more, my flight was allocated to the international gates since I was flying directly from the United States. Marie had to change planes in Amsterdam, so her flight was treated as somehow more like a domestic flight. We collected our bags and cleared Customs, and were still in different places. Fortunately we were in touch by cell phone, and realized this. Marie asked at an Information desk how to find me, and I made sure to stand still so that she wasn't hunting a moving target. After a little while we found each other. The next step was to buy Navigo passes so that we could hop on and off busses and subways; this meant standing in line for well over an hour, but it was an essential step. And then finally we could take the train into town, to the Quartier Latin.

From there, in a sense, the day was remarkable only for how well it went according to plan. We got off the train at our stop, found our hotel, and checked in. We walked around the neighborhood for a little while, then got some dinner and went to bed. Even so, Marie was pinching herself every so often to remind herself, "I'm really in Paris!" It was sweet.