A museum of “stuff”

Arts et Métiers has their own stop on the Metro, which is one of the most interesting in the entire Paris line.

Musee des Arts et Métiers is not well known but it is one of our off-the-path favorites. It is located near the Marais in a huge building that was once a priory and given over to create this museum in 1794. Its theme is the history of machines and instruments with a focus on the French. We find it fascinating.

One of the original astrolabes, precursor to the sextant, which is precursor to GPS. (No, not really.)

The place is divided into seven themed sections: scientific instruments (starting with ancient maritime navigational astrolabes and primitive sextants); materials; construction; communication (from the earliest telegraphs to contemporary computers); energy; mechanical equipment; and transportation, the most spectacular display of the place.

Remember the Cray Supercomputer? Well, here it is in all its hefty glory.

The last display includes some the earliest French aircraft, including Bleriot’s plane that was the first to cross the English Channel in 1910. The great hall also includes Foucault’s original pendulum, originally installed in the Pantheon until it was replaced by the larger one that swings there today. The original was moved to Arts et Métiers in the 19th century.

Foucault’s pendulum swings like a pendulum do in the foreground, while ancient airplanes hang overhead and vintage automobiles line the great hall of the priory.

Just one of the halls of “stuff” in Its et Métiers.

Also on display are several automobiles from the birth of the car, including a few that have been cut away to reveal their internal operation. You just don’t see that very often.

The place is just chock full of models, explanatory displays, artifacts and interactive screens displaying the history of, well, “stuff.” We find it fascinating and well worth eight euros each for seniors.

Not everything is French–the Apple Lisa, direct ancestor of the Mac.

Two and a half hours later, we emerged, hungry and ready to enjoy a late lunch. Lynn decided that she wanted a good old French pizza, so off we went in search throughout the neighborhood.

What we found was that we were in the middle of a little Parisian Chinatown. Every single restaurant was Chinese for blocks around. No pizza there or anywhere we could find.

So it was back to the Metro, back to our neighborhood for delicious cheeseburgers at Bistro du Marche across the street from Place Monge. It wasn’t pizza but it was almost 3 p.m., so we chose what was convenient. Hamburgers in France are very good, because they use a better cut of meat for the burger. That”s my theory anyway, and I’m sticking to it.

Dinner was most of the last of Lynn’s sausage and peppers. They get better with each eating, as the flavors somehow blend together in the fridge.

Back to the Tuileries and well beyond

Lynn had spied a photography exhibition at a museum in the Tuileries named Jeu de Paume, which is loosely translated to tennis game.

The building is located at the northwest corner of the Tuileries, exactly opposite l’Orangerie. So off we went on a rainy Tuesday morning, taking the M 7 from Place Monge transferring to the M 1 at Palais Royale-Louvre to finish at the Concorde stop and walk right into the museum.

Jeu de Paume is a fairly obscure museum of sorts exactly opposite the much more famous L’Orangerie.

Except the Concorde stop was closed.

So, changing plans on the run, so to speak, we got off the Metro but decided to keep riding the M 1 to the Arc de Triomphe to see the progress in taking down Christo’s wrap, then return to the museum. When we arrived at the Etoile De Gaulle, it was remarkable at how much progress had been made in just two days to remove the thousands of square yards of fabric and rigging from the monument. Auto traffic was back in full force, and the venerable landmark was almost back to its original stone face.

Not even two days later, the wrap is mostly off the Arc de Triomphe. Note the framework that had been erected to protect the friezes from the fabric.

This was no day to stroll down Champs Elysee in the rain and the wind, so we beat a hasty retreat back to the Metro to alight at the rue de Rivoli stop and walk under the arcade down the street to the museum. (Remember, our Concorde stop that let out at the museum’s door was closed for some unspecified reason.)

This part of the rue de Rivoli is a bit more upscale than the section closer to the Louvre. This is where the five-star hotels and high-end shops are located. The “French beanies” along here are more like 27 euros, rather than the tourist selections for 3-5. And the restaurant menus include tastings starting at 250 euros at the Hotel Meurice. We decided not to wander back there for lunch.

When we reached Jeu de Paume, we encountered the customary no line to enter, so we showed our obligatory pass sanitaire and walked in to pay 7.50 euros each for senior tickets. Regrettably something was wrong with the ticket printouts, because the scanner at the exhibition entrance said “Stop.” It always amazes me how often the word “Stop” appears in countries that speak other languages. If there is a universal word in the world, it must be “Stop.”

Clearly, something had gone wrong with our printed tickets, but the person who sold them to us quickly marched up to the exhibition entrance and waved us through, Stop or no Stop on the scanner. In we went.

The exhibit was the collection of Thomas Walther, hundreds of photographs from the early 20th century that are part of the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art in New York. To use a kind expression, they are eclectic. Another word might be experimental, as photography in post WW I years in Europe was just beginning to emerge as an art form. Some were extremely interesting, especially considering their times. Other seemed to be just plain weird experiments in a new medium.

We rolled through, then walked out as the sky cleared to cross the bridge at Place de la Concorde. By now, we were ready for a bit of lunch, as it was well past 2 p.m. So we decided to take the 63 bus down blvd. St. Germaine toward our neighborhood to get the more scenic route rather than hunt for a Metro. We alighted from the bus not too far from rue Monge and now definitely on the hunt for a quick late lunch.

And there we found Cafe El Sur, an Argentine restaurant where the waitresses spoke either French or Spanish but very, very little English. No matter–hunger is the best translator of all. We ordered four empanadas–curry chicken, spicy beef, aubergine and artichoke–to go down with two bottles of Argentine beer. All were delicious. All cost 22 euros total. The empanadas are 6 euros for two, and the beers were 5 a piece.

Cafe El Sur, where the delicious empanadas are 6 euros for two and the delicious Argentine beer is 5.

And wouldn’t you know–it started raining again.

The shower thankfully did not last too long so we finished our late lunch and walked out into diminishing raindrops. Nonetheless, it was a wet walk up rue Monge to our ‘hood. But we were motivated–it was time for large afternoon naps before dinner at La Forge.

We entered La Forge precisely at our reservation time of 7:30 p.m. to find ourselves the only people in the restaurant. It was Tuesday, it was rainy and it was early by French standards. But just a few minutes after we arrived, Jeff and Wendy, a couple we had met much earlier, walked in.

Lynn enjoys a glass of Bordeaux from the pichet that I had ordered. We later ordered one more glass and the owner poured two. They are very generous.

They had remembered our recommendation of La Forge and decided to go there on their second to last night in Paris. This was the third time we had run into them, and it turned out for a good reason–they had spent the last three weeks in the Christopher Hotel just down the street from our apartment. They have been getting their coffee and croissants from the patisserie on the opposite corner, just as we have.

We enjoyed conversing in English, and three of us ordered the delicious, warming cassoulet. Lynn had the beef cheeks that had been cooked seven hours in a rich, thick sauce. We spent the evening comparing notes on Paris, our respective homes in Napa and New Orleans and European travel in general.

We walked back home together, then exchanged contact information via iPhones. For us, we are nearing the end of Paris; for them, Wednesday is their last day. By now, the rain had finally ended for good. ‘Bout time.

Up to Sacre Coeur at last but not quite Pere Lachaise

We had tried to get up to Montmartre and Sacre Coeur the week before with the Harrisons before they left for Normandy, but rain and wind kept us from completing the last climb up the hill. But this Monday was beautiful, so our ambition was to head up that way again, reach the funicular and go up into the famous church.

We emerged from the Anvers Metro stop as we had before and started up the butte. Unfortunately for us, we were on the opposite side of the hill from the funicular without realizing it, so we had to climb 150 stairs (Lynn counted every last one of them) to get to the top of the hill where Sacre Coeur stands.

Up 150 stairs because we came in on the wrong side of the hill. Lynn counted every last one of them.

Once once you reach that summit, there are still more stairs to climb to get into the church itself. At that point, Lynn had had enough of stairs, so I trudged up the last fews for a walk through the church.

Once again, my personal opinion of Sacre Coeur was confirmed–it is an impressive, vast space, but there are at least 10-20 other churches in Paris that are more awe-inspiring. It’s the highest point in the city and the second most visited monument in Paris. As Parisian churches go, it’s a relative newcomer, celebrating the centennial of it consecration just a couple of years ago.

Sort of Byzantine, sort of classical, sort of a mishmash to my eye.

Sacre Coeur’s architecture (to me, anyway) is sort of a mishmash of Byzantine and classical elements that are piled up on top of each other to create something of a wedding cake look. The interior is beautiful though vast and mostly empty. The mosaic inside the main dome is one of the largest in the world and truly beautiful. But the total effect does nothing to me.

Sacre Coeur actually began in 1875 as national penance for the defeat of France in the 1870 for France’s humiliating loss in the Franco-Prussian War and for the actions of the subsequent Paris Commune in 1871 that destroyed a number of landmarks, including the Tuileries Palace. For the rest of the century and well into the new 20th century, legislation was passed, canceled and passed again to stop construction, but by 1914, the structure was essentially completed. World War I delayed consecration until 1919.

I walked through while Lynn waited below, not willing to take any more stairs. The guard at the entrance of the church instructed me to don my mask, when I thought he would ask for my pass sanitaire. He didn’t care about the latter, only the former.

One of the stations of the Cross along the sides with a view of the huge mosaic in the dome above.

I walked the circuit through the basilica, then emerged to locate Lynn and take the funicular down. No more stairs for her or for us.

Plenty of souvenirs for sale along the street. Sacred Coeur is the second most visited landmark in Paris.

The funicular deposited us back down to the main street and the Metro stop. We decided to have lunch in the same place as we had the week before, Marcel & Clementine, just off the main street where the Metro station is located. Our lunch included a mammoth Caesar salad with chicken tenders for Lynn and duck magret over sweet potatoes for me, with a huge brownie for dessert. And this is considered a normal lunch in Europe.

Marcel & Clementine is a fine restaurant just off the beaten path near Sacre Coeur.

Since the day was so nice and we were on that side of town, we decided to light out for Pere Lachaise, perhaps the greatest cemetery in the world. This is not Lynn’s favorite, but she agreed to go. This may have something to do with previous visits in rain and cold, when I traipsed around seeking the grave sites of Edith Piaf and Oscar Wilde while Lynn waited patiently on a bench.

We arose from the Metro stop right at the corner entrance to the cemetery and walked all the way down the block to find the main entrance blocked off for construction. So back we went. It’s a long block, flanked by a huge panel of names of the French victims of WW I.

I have mentioned this on many occasions, but the Great War is very immediate in France because most of what we know of the Western Front was fought on these grounds. The Eastern Front near Austria and Italy where Hemingway served is not as well known or was not as bloody. France was a killing field, and the French have not forgotten.

The huge panel lines the entire block filled with names by year of those who died in the Great War, including those who died after the Armistice in 1918. It’s pretty sobering in the same way that the Viet Nam wall is in Washington DC.

But as we walked through the small corner entrance, we could see a dark cloud gathering, and the wind changed. It would have been a fairly long, uncovered walk and we were just no longer in the mood to be caught in the rain without an umbrella or two. So we beat a hasty retreat back to the Metro and on to home to run a couple of errands and buy extra socks at the dry goods store across from Place Monge.

Dinner was Lynn’s excellent sautéed dorade with salad and fresh mushrooms from the market. Dorade is a medium sized, very flavorful, almost meaty, fish that comes from the Mediterranean and is often farmed now due to overfishing the wild stock. Lynn’s preparation was as delicious as any restaurant meal.

Fresh dorade sliced from the whole fish, along with fresh mushrooms and salad. Dorade is a wonderful fish, but it does have bones.

A rainy but not lazy Sunday

We woke to light rain Sunday, when I was scheduled to meet with Viviane Launer, owner of another apartment in the Fifth Arrondisement . I had found her apartment on VRBO and contacted her because we were seriously considering moving.

This was no trivial matter. The reason was that Phanette, our current owner, nearly doubled the rate on us from two years ago, and never told us until we were already here. I faulted myself for not asking, but I certainly did not expect an 80% increase in the rent.

She is charging more than the hotel down the street. If she had gone up 20 or even 30%, I would have understood, but 80% is nothing less than greedy.

So I tracked down Viviane’s apartment, contacted her, and we agreed to meet at the St. Medard church down near the end of rue Monge, just a few blocks away.

Viviane turned out to be delightful, while we had coffee and discussed our common love for Paris and how long we plan to stay next time we visit. Incredibly, she also has an apartment near Barcelona. She is both Spanish and French, and was born in Montevideo, Uruguay. As she said, she has many nationalities, loves both cities, so splits time between Paris and Barcelona.

The entrance to Viviane’s two apartments. One is on the right on the ground level, the one she lives in is on the first floor just through the passage.

She has no fewer than two apartments here in Paris, one she lives in while she renovates it (alas, no WiFi yet!) and another on the ground level that is currently rented for another few days. She toured me through her apartment, which is fully contemporary, including a natural gas stove, the first I have ever seen in Europe. She also has a washer-dryer combination for clothes, which is also pretty rare in these parts. That would mean no more drying racks in the living room.

We could move into her ground level unit, when it becomes available later in the week. But after some discussion, Lynn and I decided that the price differential for less than a week was not worth the hassle of packing up, moving and unpacking.

Phanette wins this time, but there won’t be another. And I will let her know that. In the meantime, I have to hit up ATMs heavily to pay nearly twice as much cash as I had planned. We won’t go broke, but it’s a pretty big hit to the budget. And Big Brother is likely watching my large cash withdrawals wondering if I am laundering money.

Viviane and I walked back up rue Monge to the Censier-Daubeton Metro stop, where she crossed over to head to Madeleine on the Right Bank. We agreed we will stay in touch and plan to rent her place next spring. We exchanged contact information, and if anyone is looking for an apartment in Paris, I can refer them to Viviane. I plan to do exactly that, so if any if you dear readers might be looking for a nice, fully equipped apartment in a wonderful neighborhood in Paris, let me know.

Lynn had stayed behind in the apartment, so I walked back to meet her to head to the Sunday Monge market for fish, chicken and vegetables to cook at home. By now the rain was coming down harder, sometimes in short downpour bursts, then lighter.

A wet, drippy Monge market on a rainy Sunday.

But the effect was a soggy, drippy, wet market. By the time we arrived, the two fish stalls were out of dorado.

Oysters are remarkably reasonable at the Monge market. And for an extra two euros, they will shuck them for you.

So we walked down a block to the permanent poissonerie, where they filleted a whole fish into two beautiful pieces for about 87 cents more than the market was charging for pre-cut slices. The rain kept falling but began to slack right as we walked back to the apartment.

Whole dorado at the fixed fish market. They filleted them for us for 87 cents.

By midday, as forecast, the rain moved off and the sky began to clear, so we ventured forth in search of a late Sunday Bloody Mary. Near the end of rue Monge not far from Viviane’s apartment, we found Malena, an Argentine bistro that advertises cocktails for 5 euros. I eagerly ordered one.

Home of the worst Bloody Mary I have ever tasted.

It was perhaps one of the worst I have ever consumed. Lynn blessed her good fortune for ordering a glass of white wine.

Our big event of the day was to watch the Saints game from Pomme d’Eve. Our South African friend and proprietor George had told Lynn via e-mail that he would have the game on. So we ate an early dinner and walked up the hill to spend an evening with a honeymooning couple from Modesto who were there to watch the late 49ers game and a group of young French guys who spent their time laughing loudly but not watching American football.

We all know that the Saints game sucked. The Saints choked it away to a team that had not not won a game yet this season. Nevertheless we enjoyed the Pomme d’Eve atmosphere and George’s hospitality. We’ll plan to return next Sunday. Maybe the game outcome will be better.

Finally, a large crowd for a very special exhibit

Paris’s famed Arc de Triomphe exhibited a very special display, just while we were here. The entire monument has been wrapped in silver cloth with blue highlights bound by red ropes, the last of the late artist Christo’s monumental works. The wrap consists of 25,000 square meters of recyclable polypropylene fabric and 3,000 meters of red rope. 

A once in a lifetime experience, just for us.

Christo died before the exhibit could be erected, but the French government insisted on doing it anyway in his honor. We caught it just in time, as the wrap will start to come down on Monday October 4.

It’s pretty amazing. And it drew big crowds on a cool, cloudy Saturday.

But the crowds were not so big that we couldn’t walk right up and join them. Security was tight (pass sanitaire required, even though it was outdoors), but we walked through without appreciable delay and joined the throngs surrounding the monument.

Crowds swell around the historic Arc to view and photograph the posthumous Christo wrapping.
Wrapped or not, the Arc still holds memorials to unknown solider of its wars, especially WW I.

The Arc was fully open to the public, so we could walk up to the walls, touch the fabric, walk through the interior, and if you bought a ticket, you could go all the way to the top. Our Museum Passes normally would have given us access, but because of the special occasion, a separate ticket was required. We passed on the opportunity.

The Arc from the inside.

Our visit complete (what else can you do around the Arc if you don’t go up?), we joined the crowds of Parisians in a quintessentially Parisian practice, a stroll down Champs Elysee all the way to Place de La Concorde. Everyone should experience this at least once. For us, we try to do it every time we visit Paris. There is always something to see.

Speaking of wraps, Dior’s entire store is wrapped for the occasion.
Here is a storefront you’ll never see in the U.S.

By the time we made it down to the Metro station at Place de la Concorde, we were getting hungry for lunch. After debating the alternatives among eating leftovers at home, picking up something to go and actually sitting down in a restaurant, we chose to pop into El Picaflor, the Peruvian restaurant virtually next door to our apartment that during the week sells empanadas for 5 euros.

El Picaflor, just a few feet from our front door. Quite good.

The place was full of diners enjoying a late Saturday lunch, but they squeezed us into a tiny table in the middle of the tiny dining room. We ordered a empanada triple sampler and a plate of sizzling beef, sort of fajita style, washed down with some excellent Peruvian beer. It was plenty, and we were thankful not having to walk more than 50 feet to our apartment, where late afternoon naps awaited.

The chefs at Terronia. What a fun place.

For dinner, we made late (for us) reservations at Terronia, the fine and tiny Italian restaurant that had been the topic of our discussions a few nights ago. Our 8 p.m., reservation hit right at their peak time between the early diners who arrived at 7:30 and the later ones (i.e. Europeans) who show up at 9 p.m. or later.

How busy was Terronia? Our chef, the one on the right in the multi-colored toque, was also our waiter. Between our shared broken English, Italian and French, we ordered a pichet of delicious Primitivo and two plates of pasta. Lynn had the veal bolognese and I had the amatriciana, both excellent and both filling.

All in all, a fine Saturday, as we transition from tourists to residents.

More favorite places, more private viewings

We had put off St. Chapelle earlier when we discovered timed tickets were required. The magnificent, though relatively small, church is situated in the middle of the working French Justice Department, so security is tight and plenty of it.

On Friday, with Museum Passes and a timed reservation in hand, we walked through the first security gate just past the flower market, then crossed the street to the huge ornate gates of the Palais de Justice and into the queue for St. Chapelle. Which on this day had virtually no visitors in the line.

Did I say virtually no one in line for St. Chappelle?

The initial queue leads to more security then into the church itself, where the arrows send visitors upstairs first via a narrow, steep circular staircase, just the kind Lynn hates. But it’s a small price to pay for what is on the upper floor.

The church was built in the mid-13th century to house the relics of the passion of Christ, including the crown of thorns. This was both a political and religious effort, as ownership of the relics gave the king of France and the entire country added prestige in Europe.

The skimpy entrance lines gave us plenty of opportunity to read the displays about the renovation of the church..

After suffering a great deal of damage in successive French revolutions of the late 18th and early 19th centuries, the church was extensively restored starting in 1846 to recreate its current appearance. In its early centuries, the upper chapel was reserved for the king and his family, while the lower chapel was used by the palace staff.

The upper chapel is the reason to see this place. It is all stained glass, five huge windows on either side and five around the altar. The effect is to bathe the interior with polychromed light.

And that is just the apse behind the altar. The entire walls are stained glass too.

The windows depict 1,113 biblical scenes that tell the story of mankind from Genesis to the Resurrection. Statues of the apostles line the floor level spaces between the monumental windows.

Normally the upper chapel is so full of visitors that you can’t move, as everyone points their phones and cameras upwards to capture photos of the windows. This day, there were not more than 100 people in the upper chapel, and that included one group tour. Once the group worked their way downstairs, the upper chapel was pretty much left to us.

A normal crowd would fill the upper chapel wall to wall.

Just for once, we stayed, sat, gazed at the wonder of stained glass before us. We even watched the video describing the restoration of the stained glass windows after centuries of dirt, pollution and even plaster had obscured the colors. Restored now, the windows glow, even on a cloudy day.

The lower chapel is not too shabby either, and the crowds were small enough to easily access the shop.

When you don’t fight crowds, you get through the place easily and quickly. Satiated with Gothic color, it was on to the next stop in our museum orgy.

Musee d’Orsay was next on our list of visits. As art museums go, it holds perhaps the world’s largest treasure trove of Impressionist paintings and sculptures, but the building is on a more human scale than the Louvre, since Musee d’Orsay was a train station in its original incarnation.

We took the RER train (regional) to the station that opens up right into the museum’s courtyard and walked into a nearly empty queue. Normally the courtyard in front of the museum would be teeming with people lining up to enter through three different portals–A for single ticket holders, B for groups and C for Museum Pass holders. That’s when the Museum Pass is worth whatever you pay, because you simply show your pass, walk past the long lines to the side and enter through portal C, which usually has a small line.

The courtyard queues to Musee D’Orsay were all but empty. Normally, we would go through the C entrance on the far right with our Museum Passes. With no crowds, they used only one door.

On this day, however, there was no C, there was no B, just the A and virtually no one in that line. We showed our pass sanitaire, walked through the door and into security, scanned our Museum passes and entered Musee d’Orsay in less than five minutes.

In addition to the difference in scale, the Louvre and Musee D’Orsay also contrast in one important measure. As large as the Louvre is, there is a lot to ignore if you aren’t interested in Etruscan relics or medieval armor. The Louvre is a repository of hundreds of thousands of art and artifacts from ancient history around the world, but the truth is most people go there to see the rock stars, the Mona Lisa and the Winged Victory of Samothrace.

Musee D’Orsay, on the other hand, is more to human scale as a building, but every single, solitary work in the place is a masterpiece. The effect is overwhelming. The central hallway forms an open sculpture display, with the paintings assembled by artist and period in galleries that line both sides. Our approach was to go through the galleries on one side, then circle back and do the same, before ascending to the second level and more galleries organized the same way.

A little sculpture porn: the very first sculpture in the main hall is titled “Woman Bitten by a Serpent.” But there is no snake to be seen, and most critics agree that this depicts the sculptor’s mistress in the throes of sexual ecstasy.

Nearly three hours later, we were thoroughly saturated with masterpieces. We even skipped the Art Nouveau section, where furniture by Gaudi is on display. We figured we can see plenty of that in Barcelona in a couple of weeks.

One of the two great clocks in the old railroad station. The other is on the wall of the second floor restaurant where we enjoyed lunch.

Dinner was at home in the evening, as Lynn outdid herself preparing two pieces of dorade (dorado) she had picked out in the morning from the Monge market a block down the street. She sautéed the fish without flour in butter, so it came out crispy on one side but moist and extremely flavorful on the inside. Most restaurants in Paris want to merely steam fish, which doesn’t do much for flavor. New Orleanians know better.

The Louvre like we will never, ever see it again

We reserved a timed ticket for 10:30 a.m. at the Louvre, because they tell you to do so in order to control the usual hordes of crowds. The Metro ran quickly, so we actually arrived at 10:00 a.m. and were allowed in without so much as a single minute of wait.

Normally the courtyard outside IM Pei’s pyramid, which is now the main entrance to the Louvre, would look like Mardi Gras on Bourbon Street.
The vast crowds of 2021 pour into the Louvre. That’s a school group in pink descending the stairs. Otherwise, we would have been virtually alone.

Pass sanitaire passed, we walked right through security and into the vast vestibule of the Louvre, whereupon I walked us in the wrong direction. We wanted the Denon wing but went up the Richelieu wing, which would eventually require us to walk all the way around the huge palace to get to the prime display–the Mona Lisa.

By Louvre standards, there was no crowd. In fact, by any standards, there was no crowd. The Louvre was as empty as we have ever seen.

Maybe 30 people were in the queue to see the Mona Lisa.

We worked our way around from the Richelieu wing to the Denon wing for everyone’s must-see, the Mona Lisa. The gallery where the Mona Lisa hangs now has a long queue installed to control the hordes of visitors. It was virtually empty. I counted no more than 30 people ahead of us, including the ones gazing and photographing the painting at the head of the line.

Her room includes two kiosks that explain the features of the Mona Lisa, including who she was and noting the unfinished parts of the painting. Leonardo carried it around with him for years from Florence to Milan to Amboise, France where he died, as legend has it, in the arms of King Francois I. Which is how the French government came to own the Florentine master’s work.

But Mona Lisa is not the only painting in its gallery. Far from it. The walls are lined with dozens of works by the Venetian greats–Veronese, Titian and Tintoretto. I spent as much time gazing at them as their most famous roommate. Very few others bothered.

The Veroneses, the Titians, the TIntorettos go largely ignored in the Mona Lisa room.

We spent more time in more galleries, concentrating on the European Renaissance masters. To give you the scale of the Louvre, we covered only one wing of one floor of one side of the main building. After nearly three hours just in that wing (including some time spent trying to get elsewhere), we repaired for a quick but tasty baguette lunch, a short opportunity to doff our masks and breathe fresh air. The seats in the little lunch counter are slanted, so customers can’t get comfortable and sit around; you slide right out. That’s their way of making sure you eat expeditiously, get your mask back on and get back to viewing art.

The Louvre has hit the big time: there is a full mall in the basement underneath!

After a morning of old masters, we were ready to take the walk through the Tuileries once again down to Place de la Concorde and my second-favorite museum in Paris, Monet’s Musee L’Orangerie. But first a stop for a beer at one of the four restaurants in the royal park. Then on to L’Orangerie.

The origin of L’Orangerie is rooted in love of country and history. Monet dedicated a series of paintings for a special museum to the French government, which then dedicated Napoleoin III’s 1852 Orangerie building intended to house orange trees (duh, hence the name) growing in the Tuileries.

Each of the two elliptical rooms in the museum contains four huge canvases of Monet’s masterpieces. Skylights above each room create just the perfect lighting to view the paintings, so L’Orangerie will never open at night. Here’s a bit of trivia: the building’s east-west orientation exactly parallels the path of the sun that transits from the Arc de Triomphe to the Louvre.

This gives you the idea of the scale of Monet’s genius at L’Orangerie. This is just one of eight paintings in two rooms. This photo was actually taken in 2018. Nothing has changed since then.

Inaugurated in 1927 a few months after Monet’s death, the museum was incorporated into the Louvre in 1930. In the 50s and 60s, the museum acquired a number of works by major Impressionists from private collectors. The result is that the lower floor under Monet showcases a fairly compact but most significant series of masterpieces by Renoir, Picasso, Degas, Manet, Matisse, Derain, Cezanne, Utrillo, Rousseau and Modigliani.

On this day of our visit, a large part of the lower floor had been closed off for some construction, so the Impressionist collection was squeezed into fewer rooms, which made for quicker viewing. Not that there were that many people anyway. The part of the lower floor that was closed off usually showcases a very interesting wooded model of the building with sections cut away to illustrate the design and construction. Perhaps it will return next time we return.

As beautiful and brilliant as L’Orangerie is, it is actually pretty small, so we needed only a hour to get through the entire place, including the De Kooning temporary exhibit, which was not at all to Lynn’s liking. But it would not be hard to spend most of a day seated in the two rooms contemplating Monet’s Nympheas (the technically correct name) from Giverny, marveling at not only the scale but the exquisite beauty of his gift to France.

But now it was time for a rest and to get ready for dinner tonight. More than five hours of walking through museums and parks takes it out of our poor aging legs and hips. We took the Metro back for a nap before dinner.

Our afternoon interlude turned out to be quite the adventure. The battery in my phone was dying and fast. It couldn’t last more than the morning before discharging to dangerously low levels. That would jeopardize my ability to produce my pass sanitaire when obligated.

So I walked around the corner of rue Monge to Mr. Phony, a single door phone repair shop run by a Middle Eastern proprietor who spoke English probably as his first language. He replaced the dying battery with a new one for 69.90 euros, probably more than I wold have spent in the U.S. But can you say any port in a storm?

As we planned dinner, Lynn suggested an Italian restaurant near our old apartment. I suggested the same near our old apartment. Only trouble was, over the years in Paris we had rented more than one old apartment. I was referring to our very first apartment, because we wanted to go “around the corner” to Pomme d’Eve, our old late night bar. Lynn was referring to Terronia, an excellent Italian restaurant across the street from a different old apartment.

Our miscommunication lasted unknowingly until we walked out to our reservation, when Lynn wanted to walk down the hill and I wanted to walk up. From that point own, hell broke loose involving discussions of communications between people who have been married for 42 years. Luckily the escalope de Milanese at La Capannina was excellent, right around the corner from Pomme d’Eve. We will get to Terronia in a couple of days.

Still there in the 14th century cellar of the original church of St Genevieve, patron of Paris, George hangs on during Covid and assorted shutdowns.

Luckily, after dinner Pomme d’Eve was open, uncharacteristically early. We reacquainted with George, met his current staff and shared pandemic stories. His experience was pretty bad–no, actually dreadful–but typical of most bars in Europe and the U.S. Yet Pomme d’Eve is still there, open sometimes at 2 a.m. but still kicking. We plan to return for NFL football on Sunday, assuming he opens before 10 p.m. You just can’t keep a good South African down, but you can’t keep two old Americans up too late.

Vincennes, abandoned by Louis XIV but guarded one time by a relative

My cousin Irene planned to visit Vincennes, the castle of French kings until it was abandoned by Louis XIV for Versailles. Her genealogy research discovered that our ninth great grandfather had served as a king’s guard at Vincennes, so we were visiting family turf.

Today Vincennes is on the Paris Museum Pass, so we chose to initiate our passes there. It was a fairly quick Metro ride out the end of the M 1 line east of central Paris. We met up with the Harrisons, along with two Kathy’s, other relatives on their first trip to Paris, plus a couple of their friends who were not actually related.

The entry to Vincennes is pretty awesome. Visitors walk the plank to the left to enter.

Vincennes is a big place, although visitors can only enter two of the buildings, the large keep, which looks just like what it is–a medieval castle built for a king. It was constructed quickly by ancient standards from 1361 to 1369 and at 50 meters high is the tallest of its kind in France.

The keep, the tallest dungeon in France.

The adjacent chapel, known as St. Chapelle (not to be confused with the much more elaborate one in the middle of Paris, which formed the model for this one), was built some ten years later by Charles V.

The site has served as a royal residence since Louis VII in 1178. Kings used to enjoy hunting in the royal forest that surrounded the fortified area and eventually came to live there full-time after the keep was completed. Once Louis XIV abandoned Vincennes for Versailles, the old compound was used as a factory, a military base and a prison. Some of its more famous prisoners included the Marquis de Sade and much later, Mata Hari, who was executed as a spy in 1917 in the area where the old moat had been.

Today the keep and the chapel are the only buildings open to visitors. We could not discern what the old king’s and queen’s pavilions are being used for, but it seems like some are perhaps military offices, which would be consistent with the complex’s past.

We had to show our pass sanitaire no fewer than three times to gain full entry, first at the front gate, then at the ticket office, then again just past the ticket office in the shop before we walked out into the vast courtyard.

Nice bit of Gothic architecture, but not the real St. Chapelle.

The keep or dungeon is quite a walk up a winding stairway that leads to mostly empty rooms that are devoid of ornamentation, furniture or any sort of decoration. Some helpful kiosks offer historical explanation of the function of many of the rooms, including a latrine, an old well and the king’s treasury room where he kept his gold. But for the most part, the keep consists of a lot of bare stone walls with scratched graffiti and large unadorned spaces waiting for a major restoration to create a more engaging, interactive visitor experience.

Not too shabby stained glass windows, but no comparison to big sister in Ile de la Cite

The chapel likewise is basically an empty space, obviously no longer functional as a church. The stained glass windows surrounding what used to be the altar are very attractive but very few, compared to the real St. Chapelle on Ile de la Cite.

After climbing around the keep and visiting the chapel, our group split up, and we joined the Harrisons to go off to Montmartre for a visit to the church up the funicular and a lunch. The latter goal was successful, because it started to rain while we enjoyed a huge meal in an excellent restaurant operated by an expatriate Cuban. Mel speaks fluent Spanish, so he was able to communicate for our foursome. He and I had the lunch special of roasted veal over mashed potatoes, while Lynn enjoyed the fish in a mild curry sauce and Irene had a flattened grilled chicken breast. Three of the four in our group ordered desserts that were way too rich for the middle of the day.

The rain had come, gone and come back as we left the restaurant, so we all agreed to leave the Montmartre funicular for another day. Lynn and I ducked into the Metro for the ride home and found blue sky a half hour later when we emerged into Place Monge.

After a short rest, we were back on the monument trail, this time to the nearby Pantheon, perhaps my favorite single site in Paris.

Today’s Pantheon was originally designed and built to be the church of St. Genevieve, patron saint of Paris, but its timing was off–the French Revolution broke out. So it was declared to be non-religious and dedicated as a Pantheon to the great French heroes of the last couple of hundred years. During various times in the 19th century it was converted back to a church more than once, but became the permanent Pantheon in 1881.

One of the Pantheon’s first residents was Victor Hugo, who died in 1885 and was immediately interred there. Voltaire and Rousseau are honored across from each other in the crypt; in fact, Voltaire was the very first French hero to find permanent digs at the Pantheon. He has a statue in front of his tomb. Rousseau does not.

Two great French authors share a crypt.

At the center of the huge vaulted ground floor is Foucault’s pendulum, suspended from the top of the dome overhead, rotating clockwise approximately 11.3° per hour at Paris’s latitude of 48 degrees North. It’s a simple device based on some complicated mathematics to demonstrate the Earth’s rotation at any point on the planet. Trust me.

The Foucault pendulum swings in a slow rhythm to demonstrate the rotation of the earth.

Surrounding the mammoth open space on the surrounding walls is a series of paintings depicting great moments in the history of early France, including St. Genevieve calming the residents against the invasion of Attila; Clovis’s victory in battle to unite the Frankish tribes into a single country and of course Joan of Arc.

In the crypt underneath, only 8o people are interred, including the most recent, Josephine Baker, who was added just a year ago. There are plenty of empty spaces for future generations of French heroes. But it literally does take an act of the French congress to be awarded a permanent residence down there.

St. Exupery is honored in the Pantheon but not interred, since his body was never found during WWII.

Following our visit to the past, we crossed the street to a British bar named Le Bombardier so I could have my first Bloody Mary in more than two weeks. This was a major issue for me, as I had missed out on two consecutive Sundays. The Bombardier version is typically European, but with the flair of a bit of stout drawn over the top. The bartender, obviously a native English speaker, helpfully placed Worchestershire sauce, celery salt and Tabasco next to our glasses when he finished the initial mixture. He knew two afficionados when he saw them.

It wasn’t Milk in Barcelona, where we plan to be in a couple of weeks, and it wasn’t 85 Egret Street, but any port in a storm, n’est pas?

Musee Carnavalet, the history of Paris

Lynn had picked out Carnavalet as a target, a major museum that we had never visited. It is conveniently located across the river on the Right Bank, just a couple of stops in the trendy Marais on the Metro 7 from rue Monge.

We had no trouble finding the place, just a few minute walk from the Metro 7 station on rue St. Paul in the Marais (did I mention trendy?). Carnavalet is huge, encompassing two large large buildings, former homes that had been donated to the state. In fact, Carnavalet is considered Paris’s oldest museum, dating back to 1880, even though the Louvre was turned over by royalty to be a museum hundreds of years earlier.

The entrance hall of Carnavalet is festooned with hanging objects representing the history of Paris.

Whatever its age, Carnavalet is a huge museum in two connecting buildings covering the history of Paris from pre-historic times through the Romans right up to the present day. Many rooms are reproduced and furnished in the style of the period featured, from the 15th century up to the 20th.

From more than a century ago–some things don’t change, do they?

After more than three hours of wandering from room to room to room on multiple floors, we learned that Paris (and therefore the rest of France) was ungovernable for most of the post-Napoleon 19th century, much as Italy was for most of the 20th century and the U.S. is currently in the early 21st century. Political chaos feeds on itself.

We took a break for lunch in the spacious courtyard of the building and encountered what is truly one of the weirdest museum restaurants ever. Patrons line up at the food counter to order inside an area that looks like a wedding tent. The menu is fully vegetarian, and the food is served in aluminum pots.

A pretty courtyard, but one of the strangest museum restaurants we have ever encountered. The counter in the foreground is where you pick up your utensils and water.

Two orders are stacked into metal pots one over the other, then sealed to a top with hooks so that you can walk to the table holding the pot. Across the courtyard is the bar, where customers line up to order drinks. But if you want water, you are directed to a counter where the glasses and full tap water bottles are sitting on top for the taking. This is also where you pick up your utensils to eat the veggies in the layered pots.

Lynn ordered the veggies jaune, literally yellow slices of zucchini in some sort of un- identifiable dressing. I had the eggplant with onions in some sort of semi-curry sauce or dressing. Of the two, mine was superior in taste, but both were strange, served in their even stranger implements.

Refreshed if not full, we finished our tour of Carnavalet, then walked out just two blocks to Place des Vosges, another former royal park ordered up by a Medici queen and the former home of Victor Hugo and his porn collection. Place des Vosges is the oldest planned square in Paris and is truly a square. If Baronness Pontalba had been able to get rid of the Cabildo and the Presbytere and build two more apartment buildings, New Orleans would have had its own version. But the one in Paris is magical and worth a visit all by itself. (To the Baronesss’s credit, she was modeling her square after Playa Mayor in Madrid, which is older than Place des Vosges.)

We walked out to find our Metro stop but realized that we had become somewhat (no, totally) lost from where we had alighted hours before. And then it started to rain. So we did the smart thing this time and ducked into the nearest Metro station we could find, just a few yards away. Once inside and safe from the elements, I could figure out how to get back to our apartment.

The solution was to take the M 1 a few stops to the Palais Royal, then take the M 7 back home. Remember, we had taken the M 7 only two stops from our apartment to arrive at Carnavalet. Now we had to take the M 1 back to five stops farther away, then transfer to the M 7 via a nearly mile long passage and ride it seven stops back home. All because we were three blocks away from our original stop that took us there. Lesson learned–remember where you came from.

But no big deal to we intrepid travelers, experts in European metro commuting. We stayed dry, and we enjoyed the ride. The walk through the transfer station just added to our pedi-mileage for the day.

Back in the apartment, we rested. More precisely, we napped.

Then the idea hit me late in the afternoon to walk over to the Pantheon to purchase our Paris Museum Passes. It was the closest place to buy, just a few blocks away, and stayed open until at least 6 p.m. So I marched onward to the Pantheon while Lynn continued resting in preparation for our dinner at Lilane, just a couple of blocks away around Place Monge.

The couple we met while dining with the Harrisons Sunday at Le Petit Pontoise had recommended Lilane highly, so we walked up sans reservation and asked if we could dine. They were most accommodating and seated us right away, the first or second table of North Americans in the place shortly after 7 p.m.

Within a half an hour, our side of the dining room filled with Americans. We chatted with the couple next to us who were here from Napa. They were just happy to be somewhere not burning up.

Lilane is not your average Parisian bistro. In fact, it is not really a bistro at all. The decor is quite contemporary, and the menu is quite the same. They use the same ingredients as bistros but prepared in different ways,

I ordered the beef chuck, which turned out to be chunks of roast beef (chuck, right?) picked apart, packed into a form, then lightly seared to create a crusty edge. Lynn chose the roasted duck breast accompanied by an equally sized and shaped slice of eggplant. Both were over the top.

Accompanied by a delicious bottle of Languedoc-Roussillon, our dinner was memorable enough to send a review to Trip Advisor. The wine was about $36 US. The total bill was 98 euros. We waddled home, thankfully only a few blocks away.

Lunch with the cousins

On Saturday, we received a surprise text from our cousin Irene Harrison and her husband Mel, informing us that they were in Paris and inviting us to join them for lunch Sunday at Le Petit Pontoise, a bistro near the Seine. We eagerly accepted.

As we walked in front of the restaurant, Lynn recognized it and noted we had eaten there before, likely on the recommendation of Mel and Irene. We were a few minutes early, so we killed time down by the river until the stroke of noon, when we ambled back to the Pontoise to meet our cousins.

Lunch was a delicious roasted lamb (for me) and an equally tasty but skinny roasted quail for Lynn. The four of us caught up, as the Harrisons explained the purpose and itinerary of their trip, which will eventually take them across Normandy in search of our ancestors, then down to Provence and Nice before returning home to The Villages in Florida.

As we chatted, a distinguished looking couple at the table right next to us leaned over to ask about our stay. They too were Americans, and they spend two months a year in Paris–in an apartment right in our own neighborhood. We traded restaurant recommendations and Mel gave them his card to order his books about Alex Boyd, his fictional diplomatic service character based on his own actual career.

At lunch at Le Petit Pontoise with Irene and Mel Harrison. My lamb was outstanding, as was the Morgon Gamay in my glass.

Mel and Irene had just arrived in Paris the day before to spend a week here in advance of taking off on their ancestor discovery trip to Normandy, sponsored by Stephen Ambrose T. Irene has been researching family genealogy for years, and has discovered some fascinating ancestors. One of them came to Louisiana about the time of the founding of New Orleans, shipped there by her father for being too “loose.” Essentially, she was abandoned. She eventually married three husbands and died in late 18th century in Point Coupee Parish.

As French Gothic churches go, St. Germain–l’Auxerrois is relatively modest but impressive in its own right.

We planned to walk over to Eglise St. Germain–l’Auxerrois, where our great-great-great-great-great grandmother had been baptized. The church is located across the street from the back door of the Louvre.

Incredibly, we had been to the church before, waiting on a tour bus at the French Tourism Office next door. The church is not huge by Gothic standards, but impressive nonetheless. Knowing we had family there some 300 years ago, gave us a measure of connection to the ghosts of this church, which dates back to 524.

As we departed the front door of the church, a light rain started to fall. No problem for us, we figured, even though our apartment was a long way off. We have been in Paris rain before, and it’s generally light, not the downpours we are accustomed to on the Gulf Coast. We popped into the huge newly renovated and re-opened La Samaritaine department store for a pit stop. As the weather turned out, we should have stayed longer in pit row gazing at LVMH’s wares.

An elaborate triptych stands on display along the side of the choir of St. Germain -l’Auxerrois.

We no sooner walked out the store when the rain started to fall more heavily, then really pouring. Retreat was too late. We were soaked. There was no real choice but to keep putting one foot in front of the other for more than a mile in the driving rain to get back to our apartment. Every Metro station we tried to enter was locked off, closed for the weekend. We trudged home, Lynn glaring darts as if I had caused the skies to fall on us.

Back in the apartment, we shed our soaked clothes and started to dry out. One little problem I had was that I had only packed one pair of shoes, planning to buy another either in Paris or Barcelona. Clearly, now was the time to to do so.

Using a hair dryer, I was able to get my one wet pair of shoes functional wearing socks to soak up most of the moisture, so by the evening, we ere ready to head back out. Our goal this Sunday evening was Pomme d’Eve, the South African bar at the end of the street where our first apartment was located.

Pomme d’Eve is owned and run by George, a South African himself who came to Paris for his MBA, until he stumbled into the opportunity to open a bar in what had used to be the 13th century wine cellar of one of the oldest churches in Paris just behind the Pantheon. St. Genevieve de Montagne church is still there (she is the patron saint of Paris), and so is George and his bar. In fact, he told us the last time we visited that he was planning to buy the floor beneath the main bar. So we were excited to catch up on his progress.

George’s bar normally opens at 9 p.m. and closes at 5 a.m. That’s a bit late for us “mature folks,” but on Sundays, he used to open at 7 p.m. because he had a subscription to the Red Zone, the NFL compendium of scoring plays. Remember, 7 p.m. in Paris is noon at home for us, so we could walk over to Pomme d’Eve and watch a bunch of NFL football, including our Saints.

But not tonight. Pomme d’Eve was most certainly closed at 7 p.m. George explained to Lynn later by e-mail that he had delayed opening until 2 a.m. because he had the Sunday night NFL game on live. A bit late for us.

So we walked over to Le Petit restaurant on the opposite corner, where the entire crowd of young people was sitting outside, maskless and smoking. We chose the lone interior table and had a quick dinner of French onion soup for Lynn and a massive Italian salad for me.

We called it an early evening and walked back in my squishy shoes so I could disassemble them and perch them on the drying rack until I could buy another pair Monday. Luckily, they are boat shoes so are meant to get wet if not soaked. And they dry out fairly quickly.