Sunday Morning in Paris
Bonjour!
Between running around trying to see everything, and Mom getting here so I'm not seeing everything by myself, I haven't felt much of an urge to blog. But I want to get at least a brief summary down.
Let's see. I arrived at the Gare du Nord on Wednesday afternoon, and took an RER train down to the Latin Quarter to drop my bag off at the hostel. It turned out to be next to a small grocery store, which continued my love affair with European grocery stores. Grocery stores are peak "Everyday life in Paris" tourism. They should have tours.
They also have mojito as a soda flavor here, it's very tasty. All I really did on Wednesday was walk around. From the Latin Quarter, past the Pantheon, past Notre Dame and the Hotel de Ville, dinner at the gluten-free waffle place, to the Louvre and Jardin des Tuileries, and then past the Musee d'Orsay, where I caught a bus back to the Rue Mouffetard, where my hostel was. That street turned out to be tiny food store heaven, and I had a good timing walking up and down it. I even bought some very tasty chocolate made by a chocolatier with, apparently, the highest possible standing, from Le Mans.
Luckily I was only staying there one night, because, even for me, a jet-lagged person who can sleep through anything, the street noise overnight was kind of a problem. The downside of all the tiny shops on the tiny street is that they all get deliveries from giant trucks really early in the morning. It was pretty loud. And then in the morning, there was a disagreement in the hostel dorm room when a Chilean woman asked this American dude to be quieter while packing his stuff up and he got really mad. Anyway, I was kind of happy to get out of there.
I had an annoyingly sub-par breakfast and took a couple of trains up to Charles de Gaulle airport to meet Mom, where we turned around and took more trains to Versailles, via the Gare Montparnasse. Versailles turned out really well. Our hotel was really nice, and right by the train station. It was further from the Chateau proper, but that was good. There were grocery stores and less touristy cafes between the hotel and the Chateau.
After we checked in to the hotel, we headed up to Versailles. It started sprinkling while we were walking, but it wasn't supposed to rain much so we figured we'd stop and have a snack, then head out onto the grounds. When we got outside, it was raining harder, but we're sturdy Northwesterners with Goretex jackets, so whatever. We bought tickets on the little train that goes around the park and to the Grand and Petit Trianons. As soon as we got on the train, it started pouring rain. Tons of rain. "Probably I would get an alert on my phone if there was a severe thunderstorm warning" rain. The little tram thing is luckily covered and enclosed on one side, so we were mostly out of it.
It was actually a really cool way to see Versailles. Everyone left, for one thing, so everything else we saw was nearly empty. It was also interesting to think about what it would have been like in the rain three or four hundred years ago.
The Grand Trianon was pretty cool, and the Petit Trianon had some neat Marie Antoinette stuff, but the best part was the Queen's Hamlet. I'd read that Marie Antoinette built her own tiny village to hang out in, but I hadn't really realized that it was exactly that, a tiny French village. It was charming and rustic, but it was designed to be charming and rustic. Basically proto-Epcot. Anyway, I liked it a lot.
Walking around the gardens and parkland of the Petit Trianon was more than a little surreal, because it felt just like every training hike at Point Defiance Mom and I have done over the last months. By that point, it was raining but not that bad, and it was in the high 50's, and the trails were well-maintained but pretty muddy. We saw maybe half a dozen people in the whole hour we were out walking around.
My favorite part was just labeled "Rock" on the map. It was a little pool with fake ruins, or possibly a fake natural rock formation. The goal was a little unclear, but someone, presumably directed by Marie Antoinette, had used giant blocks of rock to build a giant, ancient-looking rock formation. It was great, especially since we found it by accident and so weren't prepared at all.
The next morning, we came back to Versailles to see the Chateau, which we had skipped the afternoon before. It was fine. Lots of neat stuff, but it was really crowded, and the never ending royal bedrooms were a lot less personal than the smaller houses the day before. I did like the ceilings though.
That was Friday, if I'm counting back properly. We took the train back into Paris in the afternoon, and checked into our hotel near the Madeleine neighborhood. (Yes, I'm very excited.) The Louvre is open late on Fridays, so we went by Helmut Newcake (awesome gluten-free patissere) and yet another grocery store and took bread, cheese, wine and jamon serrano to the Jardin des Tuileries. We lounged on the grass in the sun, with a lot of, as far as we could tell, Parisian twenty-somethings and ate our food.
Then we headed into the Louvre. It wasn't super crowded, by Louvre standards. I found it very difficult to keep track of where we were on the map, but it worked out okay. We stumbled upon some very cool performance art. There were these college-age looking kids in dirty white clothes, and they were singing and walking around and posing in different places. It was actually really neat. They were in one of the glassed in sculpture plaza rooms, and the singing was beautiful and sounded great in that space. We saw yet more royal bedrooms, and many, many antiquities, and the Mona Lisa, and this very cool modern piece that was maybe my favorite.
Saturday, we got up early and left the hotel around 8, which was apparently too early for Paris, as we didn't find an open cafe until we'd walked to the Eiffel tower. But it was nice to see it not surrounded by people. It was only surrounded by kind of a lot of fences. Some had to do with construction, and some may have been security related, and at least one had a confusing sign about rats.
After coffee, we checked out the NoGlu bakery nearby, which was decent but not as good as Helmut Newcake. Then we went to the Rodin museum, which was pretty great, both the sculptures and the unexpected room with paintings by van Gogh and Renoir.
From there, we headed back across the Seine and down the Champs Elysee. Mom got a crepe from a street vendor that she said was really good. Mom wanted mint tea, so we went to the Starbucks in the Louvre mall, though it turned out they don't have mint tea here. What they do have is a gluten-free chicken pesto hot sandwich, that you can get as part of a drink and hot sandwich combo for eight euro. It was giant and tasty and, particularly given it's location at the Louvre, a very good deal.
After that we went back to the hotel to rest for a bit. At that point, it was like two o'clock in the afternoon and we'd already walked eight miles. My goal for the rest of our time in Paris is to remember to take public transit instead of walking everywhere. My feet are pretty sore, which doesn't bode well for the Camino, but I think the standing at museums is a good chunk of the problem. I think more miles/less time on my feet will be an improvement.
That afternoon, we went the Musee des Arts Decoretifs, which was very cool. I didn't understand a lot of the technical fashion stuff, but the temporary exhibits on Hermes and jewelry designed by artists were really interesting. Unfortunately, the permanent exhibits on the last 100 years or so that I would have most liked to see were closed for renovation, but the older stuff was neat too.
We had dinner at the gluten-free waffle place (seriously they're so good), and then went to Notre Dame. I'd thought that the tower was open late on Saturdays, but that doesn't start until later in the year. But we happened to get there mid-Mass, so we sat through the rest of that, which I think has got to be the best way to see Notre Dame. It was really nice to sit and look at the vaulted ceiling and stained glass for a while. We couldn't find someone to tell us how to get our Camino credentials stamped, so we'll probably go back on Monday.
That takes us up to now, chronologically at least.
I was kind of unimpressed with Paris when I first got here, but it's growing on me. I can read more than I expected to be able to, which is nice, though my pronunciation remains atrocious. The French have only themselves to blame for that, though, since they made one of the most common words so hard to pronounce. ("Merci." I'll get it perfectly eventually.)
The public transit is great. I bought a carnet of tickets, which is when you buy ten and get like 20% off, so we can just get on buses or the metro whenever without having to stop at the ticket machine. I love subways, everywhere should have one. They're like magic. I don't understand people who don't love subways, actually.
The weather has been a little wet and gray, but it's been clearing up in the evenings, and consistently warmer than home, so it's pretty nice. In general, Paris isn't as good at gluten-free as London was, but there are good options, both in restaurants and stores.
I am more than a little burned out on royal bedrooms and antiquities, but we still have a few high priority art musems left to see, and hopefully we're going to go up to Montmartre today. Going to get some food now, au revoir.
Between running around trying to see everything, and Mom getting here so I'm not seeing everything by myself, I haven't felt much of an urge to blog. But I want to get at least a brief summary down.
Let's see. I arrived at the Gare du Nord on Wednesday afternoon, and took an RER train down to the Latin Quarter to drop my bag off at the hostel. It turned out to be next to a small grocery store, which continued my love affair with European grocery stores. Grocery stores are peak "Everyday life in Paris" tourism. They should have tours.
They also have mojito as a soda flavor here, it's very tasty. All I really did on Wednesday was walk around. From the Latin Quarter, past the Pantheon, past Notre Dame and the Hotel de Ville, dinner at the gluten-free waffle place, to the Louvre and Jardin des Tuileries, and then past the Musee d'Orsay, where I caught a bus back to the Rue Mouffetard, where my hostel was. That street turned out to be tiny food store heaven, and I had a good timing walking up and down it. I even bought some very tasty chocolate made by a chocolatier with, apparently, the highest possible standing, from Le Mans.
Luckily I was only staying there one night, because, even for me, a jet-lagged person who can sleep through anything, the street noise overnight was kind of a problem. The downside of all the tiny shops on the tiny street is that they all get deliveries from giant trucks really early in the morning. It was pretty loud. And then in the morning, there was a disagreement in the hostel dorm room when a Chilean woman asked this American dude to be quieter while packing his stuff up and he got really mad. Anyway, I was kind of happy to get out of there.
I had an annoyingly sub-par breakfast and took a couple of trains up to Charles de Gaulle airport to meet Mom, where we turned around and took more trains to Versailles, via the Gare Montparnasse. Versailles turned out really well. Our hotel was really nice, and right by the train station. It was further from the Chateau proper, but that was good. There were grocery stores and less touristy cafes between the hotel and the Chateau.
After we checked in to the hotel, we headed up to Versailles. It started sprinkling while we were walking, but it wasn't supposed to rain much so we figured we'd stop and have a snack, then head out onto the grounds. When we got outside, it was raining harder, but we're sturdy Northwesterners with Goretex jackets, so whatever. We bought tickets on the little train that goes around the park and to the Grand and Petit Trianons. As soon as we got on the train, it started pouring rain. Tons of rain. "Probably I would get an alert on my phone if there was a severe thunderstorm warning" rain. The little tram thing is luckily covered and enclosed on one side, so we were mostly out of it.
It was actually a really cool way to see Versailles. Everyone left, for one thing, so everything else we saw was nearly empty. It was also interesting to think about what it would have been like in the rain three or four hundred years ago.
The Grand Trianon was pretty cool, and the Petit Trianon had some neat Marie Antoinette stuff, but the best part was the Queen's Hamlet. I'd read that Marie Antoinette built her own tiny village to hang out in, but I hadn't really realized that it was exactly that, a tiny French village. It was charming and rustic, but it was designed to be charming and rustic. Basically proto-Epcot. Anyway, I liked it a lot.
Walking around the gardens and parkland of the Petit Trianon was more than a little surreal, because it felt just like every training hike at Point Defiance Mom and I have done over the last months. By that point, it was raining but not that bad, and it was in the high 50's, and the trails were well-maintained but pretty muddy. We saw maybe half a dozen people in the whole hour we were out walking around.
My favorite part was just labeled "Rock" on the map. It was a little pool with fake ruins, or possibly a fake natural rock formation. The goal was a little unclear, but someone, presumably directed by Marie Antoinette, had used giant blocks of rock to build a giant, ancient-looking rock formation. It was great, especially since we found it by accident and so weren't prepared at all.
The next morning, we came back to Versailles to see the Chateau, which we had skipped the afternoon before. It was fine. Lots of neat stuff, but it was really crowded, and the never ending royal bedrooms were a lot less personal than the smaller houses the day before. I did like the ceilings though.
That was Friday, if I'm counting back properly. We took the train back into Paris in the afternoon, and checked into our hotel near the Madeleine neighborhood. (Yes, I'm very excited.) The Louvre is open late on Fridays, so we went by Helmut Newcake (awesome gluten-free patissere) and yet another grocery store and took bread, cheese, wine and jamon serrano to the Jardin des Tuileries. We lounged on the grass in the sun, with a lot of, as far as we could tell, Parisian twenty-somethings and ate our food.
Then we headed into the Louvre. It wasn't super crowded, by Louvre standards. I found it very difficult to keep track of where we were on the map, but it worked out okay. We stumbled upon some very cool performance art. There were these college-age looking kids in dirty white clothes, and they were singing and walking around and posing in different places. It was actually really neat. They were in one of the glassed in sculpture plaza rooms, and the singing was beautiful and sounded great in that space. We saw yet more royal bedrooms, and many, many antiquities, and the Mona Lisa, and this very cool modern piece that was maybe my favorite.
Saturday, we got up early and left the hotel around 8, which was apparently too early for Paris, as we didn't find an open cafe until we'd walked to the Eiffel tower. But it was nice to see it not surrounded by people. It was only surrounded by kind of a lot of fences. Some had to do with construction, and some may have been security related, and at least one had a confusing sign about rats.
After coffee, we checked out the NoGlu bakery nearby, which was decent but not as good as Helmut Newcake. Then we went to the Rodin museum, which was pretty great, both the sculptures and the unexpected room with paintings by van Gogh and Renoir.
From there, we headed back across the Seine and down the Champs Elysee. Mom got a crepe from a street vendor that she said was really good. Mom wanted mint tea, so we went to the Starbucks in the Louvre mall, though it turned out they don't have mint tea here. What they do have is a gluten-free chicken pesto hot sandwich, that you can get as part of a drink and hot sandwich combo for eight euro. It was giant and tasty and, particularly given it's location at the Louvre, a very good deal.
After that we went back to the hotel to rest for a bit. At that point, it was like two o'clock in the afternoon and we'd already walked eight miles. My goal for the rest of our time in Paris is to remember to take public transit instead of walking everywhere. My feet are pretty sore, which doesn't bode well for the Camino, but I think the standing at museums is a good chunk of the problem. I think more miles/less time on my feet will be an improvement.
That afternoon, we went the Musee des Arts Decoretifs, which was very cool. I didn't understand a lot of the technical fashion stuff, but the temporary exhibits on Hermes and jewelry designed by artists were really interesting. Unfortunately, the permanent exhibits on the last 100 years or so that I would have most liked to see were closed for renovation, but the older stuff was neat too.
We had dinner at the gluten-free waffle place (seriously they're so good), and then went to Notre Dame. I'd thought that the tower was open late on Saturdays, but that doesn't start until later in the year. But we happened to get there mid-Mass, so we sat through the rest of that, which I think has got to be the best way to see Notre Dame. It was really nice to sit and look at the vaulted ceiling and stained glass for a while. We couldn't find someone to tell us how to get our Camino credentials stamped, so we'll probably go back on Monday.
That takes us up to now, chronologically at least.
I was kind of unimpressed with Paris when I first got here, but it's growing on me. I can read more than I expected to be able to, which is nice, though my pronunciation remains atrocious. The French have only themselves to blame for that, though, since they made one of the most common words so hard to pronounce. ("Merci." I'll get it perfectly eventually.)
The public transit is great. I bought a carnet of tickets, which is when you buy ten and get like 20% off, so we can just get on buses or the metro whenever without having to stop at the ticket machine. I love subways, everywhere should have one. They're like magic. I don't understand people who don't love subways, actually.
The weather has been a little wet and gray, but it's been clearing up in the evenings, and consistently warmer than home, so it's pretty nice. In general, Paris isn't as good at gluten-free as London was, but there are good options, both in restaurants and stores.
I am more than a little burned out on royal bedrooms and antiquities, but we still have a few high priority art musems left to see, and hopefully we're going to go up to Montmartre today. Going to get some food now, au revoir.
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