The Eiffel Tower by Night

We went out for supper at a neighborhood restaurant. It's quite popular and we were sandwiched in among many others. Not wanting to be rude we stole a quick shot to give the feel of supper along Rue Mouff'.

It was a lovely evening — sunny and clear, almost balmy at 7:30. So after dining, we took the metro back to Bir Hakeim bridge from where we got the fine portrait of the Eiffel Tower, arriving just after sundown as the Tower was beginning to light up.

You will enjoy clicking through on all these.

We walked toward the base of the tower and got a closer shot,

And this shot which seems to convey the simultaneous strength and grace of the design.

Shortly after, on the hour, the Tower began to sparkle all over with strobe lights. We made several tries at capturing this with still photos and then made a brief video instead.

You can hear a lot of excited French (mostly, may be other languages too) tourists, and you can hear David directing himself ("sloooow pan"). Cinema verité.

We hung around a while, not sure when the sparkles would come back. Waiting we noticed that there is a rotating searchlight beam.

The sparkles didn't come back at 10:20 or 10:30 so we walked to a different metro station and headed home.

Oh! While waiting to see if the sparkles would repeat we got another English-speaking couple to take our picture. See it above, below the heading.

D'Orsay Day

Today is our last full day in Paris. We've hit a good share of the places we wanted to see but one remained, the Musée D'Orsay, which has the major paintings from 1848, the cut-off year for the Louvre, to 1910 or so, including all the big names and many famous paintings. It was also said to be a great building, a re-purposed railroad station of 1900, and so it proved.

Grabbed a #7 Metro to start. Shortly a musician/beggar came on.

Catch the lady in the lower left...

We've seen this done by an accordionist, a violinist, and today, a trumpeter. They haul a boombox with a backing track and solo over it, loud enough to be quite audible over the noise of the train, and at the end of a number, walk quickly through the car holding out a can or a cup hoping for donations. Then jump off as the doors open at the next stop.

There are also guys who jump on and give a loud spiel, real oratory, about (apparently) their bad luck and lack of money, and pass a cup and jump off. Hardly anybody gives anything.

Anyway, we had a pleasant walk across the width of the Louvre courtyard, over a bridge, to the D'Orsay building.

Not a great picture, but it's not an easy subject.

As a memento of its railroading days, it has a big clock.

The same clock is accessible from inside on the 5th floor.

Could this have been an inspiration for Scorses's 2011 movie Hugo?

Here's an overview of the interior space.

In remodeling they have kept the big cast-iron bones of the original depot.

And kept a massive inside clock as well.

The silhouettes are people crossing from one gallery to another. Brilliant architectural detail!

This museum, alone among all we've visited, has a no-photography policy. People were taking pictures with their phones all over the place. At three points, guards cautioned us not to take pictures. We did anyway. These were a few of the pictures that grabbed us enough to want a copy.

"Essai de figure en plein-air : Femme à l'ombrelle tournée vers la gauche", 1886, Claude Monet

"Chemin montant dans les haute herbes" (Path leading up through tall grass), 1876, Pierre-August Renoir

The very famous "Bal du moulin de la Galette", 1876, Pierre-Auguste Renoir

And in sculpture,

"La Douleur" (Pain), 1890, Jean Escoula

"Hercules Killing the Birds of Lake Stymphalis", 1910, by Émile-Antoine Bourdelle

Lots more happened today, but it's late, and we'll make a separate blog entry about the evening tomorrow.

On to Rouen!

Versailles Day

Caught the #27 bus up to the Place St Michel, which we have done so often it feels like a commute to work. But today, rather than walking or taking the metro from there, we descended into the RER (suburban railway) station. A double-track train line with stations is basically hidden inside the left bank of the Seine, under the riverside street above. The station was cramped and crowded. The train to Versailles made many stops on its run out to the suburbs; we joked it was the TGL, train de grande lentement. OK, that's feeble.

Quite a mass of people emerged from the train at the end of its line, Versailles, and crowded out of the station. Where do we go? We wondered. And then decided, heck, just follow this crowd. And shortly we turned a corner and saw where we were going.

The immensity of the palace grows on you as you continue across a vast fore-court. Also the immensity of the horde that has preceded you here.

Louis XIV says "Howdy, come on in!"

We came to understand, after a short period of denial, that the queue to enter the palace snaked up and down the width of the courtyard four times, probably a thousand people. We spoke to a guard who opined it was at least an hour's wait to get in. Could we instead go and look at the gardens behind before going in to see the State Apartments? Why yes, M'sieur, that would be a good idea. Just through there, when you have seen the gardens, come back perhaps 1pm, the line will be shorter. So we did that.

Turns out you can enter the gardens of Versailles with no ticket at all, and this would be worth doing, if you were in the area long enough to return multiple times, as they are huge, occupying about 3 by 2 kilometers, all landscaped in beds, waterways, walks, and forests of square-cropped trees. A kilometer's walk (literally) out into the manicured forests are also the smaller palaces of the Grand and Petit Trianon. If you have a Versailles ticket you can enter these as well.

First view of the grounds from behind the main palace.

Walking down the grand central drive you note topiary'd bushes.

There are a couple hundred of these.

There were several large fountains that would have been impressive, had the water been turned on, but it wasn't today.

Apollo's chariot of the sun arising from the sea.

We went through the two Trianons fairly fast. We are such cognoscenti of stately homes and palaces that they struck us as pretty thin stuff.

Main hall of the Grande Trianon. Not exactly Motel 6, but we've seen better.

They did offer some art, including a lovely bust of the last (of four) queens to live here, Marie Antoinette.

Something we didn't do and probably should have, was visit the Queen's Hamlet, Marie Antoinette's fake farm where she would go to play at being a simple person. But anyway we bought a delicious lunch of stuffed baked potatoes (and who'd'a guessed there'd be a vendor of hot stuffed baked potatoes next to the Petit Trianon?) and caught a mini-train ride back to the main palace about 2pm.

Here the line was indeed almost gone, a five minute wait and we were in—just as the rain that had threatened all day finally began. Such timing! The ticket included an audio guide, another simple one that worked well and had plenty of helpful info.

The State Apartments at Versailles are the real payoff, the attraction that draws constant streams of tour coaches. And, speaking as long-time visitors to castles and palaces, we agree they really are stunning. Some of the German palaces we saw had more gold leaf and twiddles and furbelows, but the Apartments at Versailles are bigger in every way. They are actually worth the pain of fighting through the crowds to see. Here's some pics.

A school group and a tour group create a temporary rugby scrum viewing the chapel.

What they were fighting to see.

When Louis wanted a bust done, he got Bernini to do it.

The city of Venice gave Louis XIV a really big painting by Tiepolo, and he remodeled a room to display it. So why are all these people not looking at the incredibly rare Italian painting on the wall?

Because this was the ceiling the old one-upper put above it!

You want to click through on this one.

The big splash is the Hall of Mirrors, a 70-meter-long ballroom lined with mirrors.

For more pictures of the Hall of Mirrors, the Queen's Bedchamber, and other fine things, go to The Gallery, jump to the end, and work backwards.

So about 4:00 we headed out, part of a heavy stream of people heading for the station, somewhat bushed from 6 hours of walking and standing. Marian had the great idea of stopping for a drink first, but where? Hah! David spotted a hotel on the street to the train. A nice hotel whose hotel bar was almost empty, so like proper flaneurs we stopped for a drink. Marian had a Kir (Cassis and white wine) and pronounced it very good. The train back was jammed and the station at Place St Michel was actually frighteningly crowded as homebound commuters collided with town-bound tourists. But we were home and dry by 6:30.

May Day

Notre Dame Interior

Pursuing our resolution of the prior day, to see the inside of Notre Dame when it opened at 7:45, and avoid the hordes, throngs and armies of other tourists, we got up and out of the house at 7:30. Got to the location in good time and indeed, were nearly alone.

Success!

Obligatory detail shot.

Inside there were maybe 25 people hearing mass in the choir, and about as many tourists tiptoeing around with cameras in the nave.

Whole massive interior.

Mass in the choir.

Detail of apse.

Galleries

South, or perhaps North, Rose Window. They're about the same.

Every picture tells a story.

National Holiday

So then we went and had petit dejeuner at a café and congratulating ourselves on beating the crowds, when it occurred to us that there was really strangely little traffic in the streets for a weekday 9am. And then the penny dropped: it's 1 May. A national holiday! And absolutely everything is closed, including the museum we meant to go to next. So that's off. Now what?

We went home, stopping for a short walk in the Luxembourg gardens on the way. (Taking advantage of the rule that you can re-use a bus ticket within 90 minutes of its first use.) Consulting our lists and guidebook, we decided to take a walk in a park on what was quickly turning into a beautiful spring day. We selected Auteuil (roughly, oh-toy), a western suburb where the guidebook pointed to a couple of parks and some streets with Art Deco architecture.

The architecture walk didn't really pan out, but we found a street market and bought a hunk of cheese and some strawberries for lunch, and went into the Jardin des Poetes to eat and relax. This is a park where all the French poets are memorialized with little plaques with their names and a sample verse. Mainly a pretty, underused park.

French families enjoying a day off.

Most parks have beds of tulips just now, but backlit red ones are special.

Arc de Triomphe

So we had come out to Auteuil in the Metro, underground all the way. But there was a bus stop near the park entry and we went to look. Where does this #52 bus go? Each bus kiosk has a map of the route, and #52 pulled up just as we figured out it went into the center of town. So we hopped on and got a surface ride through Western and Northwestern Paris until it hit a stop at the Arc de Triomphe and more or less on a whim, we hopped out.

There is only one place to photograph the Arc so that it is square-on. That place is...

...the center-line of the Champs Elysée with four lanes of traffic on each side.

So there's that picture taken, at least.

The Arc stands on the crest of a little hill. In order to see the Grande Arche at La Defénse through it, one has to be right at the Arc. But there it is.

The Arc has more of the romantically heroic sculpture that is so prevalent in Paris.

All right, who left the door open so the bull could get in?

Come ON you guys!

So once more home again. Tomorrow, Versailles!

An Evening Out

Sunday, 29 April

Marian had spotted posters for concerts being held in Sainte-Chapelle, the private gothic chapel of the French kings. And Thursday or Friday (the days are running together) we found where to get tickets and bought two, for 8:30, excuse us, 20:30 Sunday night.

We left home in good time planning to find supper somewhere near the place. This brought us to strolling across the Seine in late afternoon.

We found an adequate supper at a tourist-oriented café and at the appointed time joined the queue to get in. Saint-Chapelle is a small building with one side up against a big administrative building. The exposed side is covered in scaffolding so we don't know what it looks like. But inside it is very pointy-gothic and almost all stained glass.

Looking up above the altar area.

Looking up on the West side.

The music was Vivaldi's Four Seasons. The musicians included a lead violinist, who played with a great deal of bravura and showmanship, three second violins, a harpsichord, viola, and bass viol. The acoustics of the place were such that the bass came through very well, and a lot of the music seemed like a duet between the lead violin and the bass. The harpsichord was almost inaudible, perhaps because it was at the back of the stage under an overhang. Anyway, it's a pleasant piece and they performed it well.

Lead violin and two, uh, rhythm violins? Under Gothic altar canopy.

Band takes a bow at the end. Better view of altar gingerbread.

Afterward we had dessert at a cafe before taking the bus home.