Part 2 – 40th Anniversary Adventure

July 4, 2009

OK! The vacation begins today. From reading all the guidebooks and watching the Rick Steves videos we knew that we needed to arrive at all our tourist destinations as soon as the doors opened in the morning. One of the major reasons for our our vacation was to see art, and especially sculpture. So, for the five days we were going to be in Paris we decided to see major museums on four of the days. We left the last day open in case something went wrong or in case we just wanted to hang out and soak in the sights.

So in keeping with our plan we got up first thing in the morning, six o’clock. We showered and got ready and went down to the breakfast room for our petit déjeuner, or breakfast as we say in English. Breakfast was provided in the cost of our hotel room and we decided to take advantage of it. It was a handy thing because we could have something to eat before we left and we didn’t have to mess around with finding a place or paying a bill or anything like that. The hotel put on a pretty good spread. They had three or four kinds of croissants, many kinds of cheese, ham, fruit, cereal, various kinds of jams and spreads, orange juice, and of course coffee. We left the hotel happy and full. Usually it meant that we could buy just one meal a day to save on costs.

The first order of business was our transportation needs. We walked the block to the closest Metro station, Maubert Mutualité. Finding the ticket office, we bought a 3-zone, 5-day Paris Visite transit pass each. Paris is divided into six zones roughly forming concentric circles around the center of town. Practically anything you would want to see in Paris is in the middle three zones. Only Charles de Gaulle airport, Versailles, and Euro Disney are outside that. For those destinations it is cheaper just to buy a single ticket. To enter the Metro you insert your ticket into the front end of the mechanical gate which processes the ticket and spits it out again about half way along. When you take the ticket out of the machine it releases the doors into the subway platforms. We became Metro experts by the time we left Paris.

We were going to the Musée d’Orsay so we took the train to the Gare Austerlitz then transferred to the RER for the trip to the Orsay. It took less than a half an hour all told. The Musée d’Orsay opened at 9:30 and we were ready when it did. We bought a 4-day Paris museum pass which we would use at all the other museums during our stay in Paris. We ended up staying at the museum for four hours.

The three major museums in Paris; the Louvre, the Musée d’Orsay, and the Pompidou have divided the art collections into three time periods. The Louvre has artwork up to about 1840. The Musée d’Orsay has art from 1840 to about World War I. And the Pompidou has modern art from about 1914 to the present. I think the Musée d’Orsay is my favorite art museum in Paris. It has all the Impressionist art from that time and a whole lot of sculpture, what I was interested in. We saw many famous paintings; van Goghs, Dégas , Monets, you know, those guys. But I was particularly interested in the sculpture. One of the people I had my eye out for was Maillol and he was there in spades. Also, Dégas was well represented both in sculptures and paintings. While the Impressionist painters had left the traditional art scene of this time, the sculptors continued with a fairly realistic approach for some time longer. The art nouveau furniture section was amazing. There was a bedroom suite that was particularly beautiful and one place had a whole room of furniture with fancy woodwork as well.

We had a fancy dessert at the museum, looked out over the city from the balcony, and had a thoroughly wonderful time.

Instead of taking the Metro back to our next activity Karen suggested we ride the Batobus, the boat that runs up and down the Seine just like a bus does on land. You have to buy a daily pass so we figured we’d use it again later in the afternoon. We took it up the river to the Notre Dame stop. Then we crossed the bridge and went to the Isle Saint Louis. This is a smaller island just up the river from the Isle de Cité, the island that Notre Dame and other government buildings are built on. Isle Saint Louis is primarily a shopping district. There is one major street that runs along the centerline of the island and it is populated with many art galleries, high-end ice cream shops, street musicians, and other fancy places of business. It also had places where a person could quench their thirst Parisienne style.

We got back on the Batobus and decided to ride its full circuit. We left Notre Dame and headed upriver to the Jardin des Plantes. This is a big park and it had many sculptures along the riverbank. Sadly, we never got a chance to go back there and have a look. The boat made a U-turn and started back down the river along the other side, that is, The Right Bank. We just sat there and watched Paris go by and when it got to the Eiffel Tower it made a U-turn again and headed back upstream along The Left Bank. We got off again at the Notre Dame stop then walked back to our hotel.

There were quite a number of restaurants in our neighborhood. And while it may seem crazy to have a pizza in France, we did just that. We ate at a place called Pescatore and after the pizza had a yummy dessert. Our waiter looked a bit like a very young Brad Pitt. He was very nice and helpful with our pitiful French.

It was still fairly early so we went to another brasserie and had a nightcap, gin and tonic for me and more wine for Karen!