Sunday morning was downright indolent. We slept in, sipped
on allongees, and put our sore feet up as we read on our kindles. By now our
apartment was looking a little lived-in. There was spare change on the table
and a little pile of receipts, a row of empty wine bottles along the wall, and
laundered clothes hanging from every available chair, rod, and hook. (We had a
washing machine in our apartment, but not a dryer.)
Having laundry was huge. We were able to pack five outfits
instead of ten, and we ended up using it even more than we thought. Between
sometimes going through two outfits a day (you got sweaty when you were hiking
all over a major city in the middle of August) and J needing to wear socks more
often than she had planned (once she bought the sneakers) we ended up washing
some sort of laundry most days.
We eventually got hungry enough that we had to go out
looking for some sort of brunch. The flying market was just outside our
apartment again, and we took our time looking through every stall. Plans to
find some salmon didn’t quite work out, but we did bring more fresh vegetables
and some wonderful looking pastries back with us.
We stayed at home long enough to say good morning to the
kids (who got up around 2 PM our time) and then started out for Notre Dame. We
were planning to go to church and to start using our Museum Passes, and then to
do our Seine Cruise at 9 PM that night.
The Museum Pass is a great idea, theoretically. Not only
does it get you access to most of the major museums and monuments in Paris, but
you’re supposed to be able to hop the line at most of the locations.
(Apparently the equivalent of the fast pass at Disney, which I’ve never done.)
It didn’t work out for us that way.
As soon as we arrived at Notre Dame to do the tour of the
Towers we saw a big sign stating that all entries to the bell towers had to
make an online queue through a special app, and that included the Museum Pass.
And, of course, the queue was full through the rest of the day. We abandoned
the Notre Dame tour, then, and headed for the crypt. The Crypt is a museum
underneath Notre Dame which shows off some ancient ruins of the city, lots of
coinage and inscriptions from various points in French history, and some
information about the construction of the cathedral.
I am entering here for the record that when we first walked
into the excavation area where some of the old building foundations were
displayed we passed a sign that said something about a settlement from
pre-Roman times. I remarked to Julie that the foundations we were looking at
were definitely not pre-Roman, and that they looked like they were from much
later in the imperial period, based on how the stones were cut and the passages
were laid out. And then we walked past another sign at that said the remains in
front of us were from the 4th century A.D.
One of us was very impressed with myself. (It wasn’t Julie)
After we came out of the crypt we tried to get into
Sainte-Chappelle, but there was another big sign denying Museum Pass holders
any special expedited entry there. Since the chapel was closing in a half hour,
we were just out of luck. The best thing we did in our first day of Museum
Passing was the thing that required no special entry or admission at all—going into
Notre Dame to see a service.
We went to the 5:45 Vespers service, a half-hour of
continuous organ music led by two cantors with just a couple of breaks for some
readings from the front. The cathedral itself is unbelievable. Any “chronological
snobbery” you might think yourself entitled to just because we have decent
dentistry and iPhones and take showers every day in the modern world gets
flattened by the grandeur and symmetries and detail of this incredible space
that was put up without the aid of a single power tool or motor vehicle, and
yet somehow makes every other church you’ve been in seem like a straw hut.
It was packed in the church, and most of the crowd was
passing through the various displays and tourist areas that surrounded the
still massive but slightly smaller congregational area. Every few minutes an
announcement came on asking people in French and English to please remain quiet
and respectful. (There were lots of overcooked kids who’d seen one too many
grown-up tourist attractions by this point in the day.) It didn’t feel like it
mattered. There was actually something really powerful about seeing “the
nations” pouring into this sacred space while we listened to the psalms being
sung, and answered back in the same spots where Christians before us had stood
and sung these words back for almost a thousand years. The final hymn was the
Magnificat, and we sang in Latin about “just as he has spoken to our fathers,
Abraham and his seed forever…glory to the Father and the Son and to the Holy
Ghost, as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be forever, Amen.”
Dazed and a little overwhelmed, we crossed over to the Left
Bank to pass a few hours before our cruise. Having both read Jurassic Park
within the last month and knowing how incredibly impressive it would be to show
a picture of it to our boys, we decided to see if we could get into the Jardin
des Plantes, where there was a big T-Rex skeleton on display. We found out
afterwards that it would have cost a fortune to get in, but it was closed by
the time we arrived anyway. We found a bench to read in the Botanical Gardens
for a bit, and then crossed back over towards the Bastille for wifi and
bathrooms. (This was our most American stop, as we went to a Starbucks and got
iced coffees.)
At 8:30 we went down to the Port de L’Arsenal for our
cruise. Out of all the things we did in Paris, this was Julie’s favorite without
contest. We recommend it heartily. (We took the Canauxrama tour.) We sat on the
upper deck of the boat and exchanged cameras with some of the couples sitting
around us so that we could get photographed together.
We had to pass through a fumy-smelling lock to get out of
the initial canal, and then we were on the Seine. All around us people were
sitting on riverbank with picnic blankets and bottles of wine. It was just
starting to get dark, and we passed a couple of large crowds where DJs were
playing music and people were dancing together. (The tour guide told us that
there are free dancing lessons along the river every Sunday evening.) The guide
gave information in French and English, and most of her commentary took place
during the first hour of the tour, so that we could just watch and wonder for
the second hour.
As we passed under one of the first bridges leading to the
Ile-St.-Louis, everything suddenly started to light up. The streetlights came
on, the bridges were illuminated, and the whole city began to twinkle as a cool
summer night set in. We hadn’t yet seen the city at night, and it was worth the
wait.
We passed under all the faces of the Pont Neuf and watched
some landmarks go by that we hadn’t seen yet—the Palais Bourbon, the Musee d’Orsay,
the Place de la Concorde, and the Grand Palais.
Then, just around corner from
us, was the Eiffel Tower.
It’s hard to put into words just how impressive the Eiffel
Tower is in person. Paris isn’t a particularly tall city in most places, and
the Tower completely dominates the entire surrounding area. It’s impressive by
daylight, and in any light it wows you with its symmetry and power. But at
night, glowing with lights throwing everything you can see into its visual
orbit, it’s magical. The whole boat hushed as it came into view, and we all
watched as we glided by. There were still people milling about at the base, and
you could see the elevators moving up and down.
We passed into one of the more modern-looking areas of the
city as we went beyond the Tower, past the Radio France building and some
proper skyscrapers before turning around in front of the French Statue of
Liberty. (Just like the American one, except a bit shorter.) Our boat timed the
moment we passed the Eiffel Tower on the return for 10 PM perfectly, and
without warning the Tower lit up like a sparkler.
Applause broke out and everyone gawked as twinkles and
bursts and flashes of light raced up and down the structure. This went on for
almost five minutes, and then we were drifting back under bridges again. I went
below just long enough to bring back some champagne, and more revelers waved to
us from bridges overhead and the banks on each side as they danced and drank.
That cruise was the most overtly touristy thing we did. It
was maybe the best thing we did. The final adventure came after we had come
into dock again in the Port de L’Arsenal, and found that the entrance back to
the street had been gated and locked. We had to hop a fence to get back to the
road!
Monday was our Louvre day, and the day for doing whatever
else we might require our Museum Pass. We hiked up to the Louvre in the morning
and went down into the bowels of the museum under the big glass pyramid. (This
time we actually did get to jump a line.)
We were in the museum for close to three hours, and by the
time we left we were both museum-ed out. It was crowded, hot, and smelly. I did
get to see some wonderful antiquities—artifacts from the Parthenon and from the
Temple of Jupiter, coins, all manner of vases and urns, and a wonderful
(largely empty) room of inscriptions.
Any moderately “famous,” piece, however, was completely
mobbed by crushes of people with cellphones out. We did get reasonably close to
the Venus de Milo and Nike of Samothrace, but it was hard to appreciate either
of them while you were getting jostled and worried about getting separated. We
did brave the crowds long enough to get to the room with the Mona Lisa and
could kind of see her from the very back as we edged our way along the mass.
(Yes, her eyes followed you the entire time.)
It would have been an amazing experience if you had the
museum to yourself. I’d attempt to Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler the place if I
weren’t certain I’d be immediately shot by French military guards carrying
automatic weapons. (You saw these strolling about in groups of four near all
the major tourist destinations.)
We limped towards home and found coffee along the way, then
got falafel again (this time with the hot harissa sauce) at L’As du Falaffel
and ate it at a little park near the Place des Vosges.
Julie was done with adventuring for the rest of the day, but
I left by myself in the evening to see what I could see and squeeze a little
more utility out of the Museum Pass. I went to the Pompidou museum first (which
was largely empty and comfortably air-conditioned) and looked through corridors
of Picasso, Matisse, and Dali. It was just getting dark when I left the museum,
and the view from the top floor of the Pompidou was one of the best in Paris.
You could see Sacre-Coeur perched up on Montmartre to your right, you could see
the Eiffel Tower in front of you, and Notre Dame to your left.
I wandered down the Seine as it got dark out and sat for a
few minutes in front of Notre Dame, where a busker set up in the square with a
guitar and played some Albeniz. He was a wonderful player, but was driven away
by a noisy band that brought amplification and started playing about 20 minutes
after he had begun down by the cathedral.
And just like that, there were only two full days left.
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