Last Day in Paris

Today was our last full day in Paris and we had not yet been inside an art gallery! When we visited the Louvre on Tuesday we found it closed as it is every Tuesday! It was a toss-up whether to visit the Louvre today or choose one of the other galleries. To be honest we had both found the sheer size of the Louvre a little daunting so today, we decided to visit the Musée D’Orsay, I wanted to see Degas’ Little Dancers. That’s where we headed first. Down towards the Louvre, we walked along the other side of this mammoth building, along the banks of the Seine and got a completely different view of the Ile de la Cité and the buildings that create its skyline, the Conciergerie and the towers of Notre Dame the most memorable.

The Conciergerie, looking like a fairy castle!

When you walk around Paris you discover how big and close everything is, it’s only time that prevents you from walking from one end to the other, having said that, walking is the best way to discover this beautiful city. This morning we took a different route from our flat to the banks of the Seine and discovered a whole new side to our neighbourhood.

We walked along the Right Bank and again marvelled at the size of the Louvre, up ahead the Eiffel Tower loomed further along the River.

The Eiffel Tower from the banks of the Siene near the Louvre.

One of the lovely bridges that cross the river

There are faces watching all over Paris, even on this bridge.

 The buildings are all so beautiful, even those that are a little shabby have a charm about them that captures the eye. The Musée D’Orsay is on the Left Bank and there are many bridges to cross over, some for foot traffic others for all traffic. We crossed at the Pont Neuf and walked the short distance to the Musée, the entrance was ahead and around the corner. There are large bronze animal sculptures in the court at the front of the Musée, you could barely see them for the crowds that thronged there! This crowd was, on closer inspection a queue that snaked across the front of the building, down the street and back on itself several times. This was a queue we just could not face.

The queues snaked back on itself several times outside the Musée D'Orsay.

Under the foot bridge that we crossed to get back to the right bank 

The stairs that lead under the Quai des Tuileries

 Plan B, next on our list of galleries was Musée L’Orangerie, in the Jiardin des Tuileries, back on the Right Bank almost opposite the Musée D’Orsay. We found a foot bridge and crossed there. This bridge was wide and had a ramp in the middle that led down to the river where many boats were moored. once on the Right Bank we had to take an underground passage to cross under the Quai des Tuileries, a very busy thoroughfare.

The entry of Musée L’Orangerie looks out over the Place de la Concorde. The queue here was manageable, probably only 30 or so waiting to be admitted. We joined the queue and after a short wait were admitted into this quite modern gallery, when we tried to pay the entry fee we were told “It’s free today.” Now that explained the huge queue at the other gallery. The first Sunday of the month in most galleries and attractions in Paris are free!

Musée L’Orangerie was showing the photographer Helmut Kuhn, photographs from early last century that looked like black and white impressionist paintings. The exhibition was set up in the lower rooms, it was a bit of a labyrinth and seemed to go on forever. There was also a display of the collection of the gallery benefactor’s collection, complete with small models of his apartment set up to display how the paintings were arranged around his home. There are works by Matisse, Corot, Deloraine, Cezane, Renoir and Picasso and in two dedicated round galleries at the top of the building famous Selphides his huge water lily paintings executed towards the end of his life. This area is treated somewhat like a shrine and signs everywhere ask for quiet. Photography is allowed in here as long as you don’t use a flash, this is the case in many of the places we have visited here.

Musée L'Orangerie

I was surprised that I could freely photograph the paintings, this still life was by Cézanne

We moved down into the Place de la Concorde to explore the many statues and monuments there. At its centre is the third century Egyptian Obelisk from Luxor, carved with hyroglyphs its gold tip reaches high towards the heavens. This monument was a gift from the Egyptian government in the 1800’s and when you stand at this point and look along the Champs Elysees you are looking directly Arc de Triomph, this road runs directly under its arch. From here you can also see the Eiffel Tower and several other impressive buildings, complete with classical columns. The Paris equivalent to the London Eye stands between the Obelisk and the entry to the Jardin Tuileries. There is a carousel and a mini fairground around at its base. There is a lot to gape at in the Concorde, 7 large statue groups that represent the areas of Paris, defend the entrance to the city here. Marley’s great steeds guard the River Siene.  Twin fountains sit one each side of the Obelisk, these stand out from the other sculptures because of the glowing gold that adorns the bronze mythical figures with a nautical theme.

The Egyptian Obelisk in the Place de la Concorde

Looking down the Champs Elysees to the Arc de Triumph

One of two gold adorned fountains that sit in the centre of the Place de la Concorde

Leaving the Place de la Concorde we headed along the other boundary of the JardinTuileries towards the Louvre. Set in the wall here are what appear to be little flower boxes with plaques above them dedicated to the memory of men and women who died a Hero’s death in the name of freedom and their beloved France.

these little flower planters are dedicated to men and women who 'died for France' the plaques above them record their names

We had left our flat just after 9am and had been walking almost non-stop we were now feeling both little tired and hungry, we also need to find a place to use the internet and a phone. We went in the direction we thought we’d spotted internet cafés on an earlier walk, no luck! Ditto the phones, although there were plenty of phones around but none were coin operated and we neither had nor knew how to purchase a phone card!! Desperation was setting in as I struggled along feeling my hips and back groan now as it grew colder. We had to phone the agent to arrange the hand back of our flat keys and the return of our 250 Euro deposit. As a last resort and under protest, we walked to  Rue de Faubourg St Denis where I had used a seedy little internet café on our way to find Gare du Nord. This proved to be a wise decision as I was able to check my email get a number to phone to arrange the hand over and use the phone, all done with a minimum of fuss! The time it took also gave us a bit of a fest and I found it more comfortable  and easier to face the rest of the walk home. By this time it was almost 5pm we hadn’t eaten since breakfast and we had traipsed all over Paris. I thought our mammoth effort deserved cake!

OOPS! I nodded off before finishing the last post and accidently hit the send button!!! just adding some photos

The lion on the other side of Porte St Denis

Porte St.Denis, looking like a miniature Arc de Triumph

Indulging my passion for doors....

and door furniture

Main entrance,Gare du Nord International Rail station.

Moules mariniere, yum!

Michael, tucking in!

Marie Antoinette said "..let them eat cake!" so we did and te Citrone Tart was the lemonst lemon flavour I've ever tasted!!!!

Walk on the Wild Side

New Years Day 2011, we didn’t have a late night last night and were both asleep a little before the clock ticked midnight. We woke late on this first day of 2011 and didn’t really get moving ‘til early afternoon. We just sat around over breakfast lazily discussing the past week’s events and I caught up with yesterday’s blog.

It was one o’clock before we realised it. We decided to go for a walk away from the city centre in a direction we haven’t been yet and out towards Gare du Nord rail station, where we will catch the Eurostar back to London on Monday morning. According to our Mapguide it’s roughly about 1.5K from our flat and Michael thinks we could walk it even with our luggage. We decided on a trial run. From our flat in Rue du Mulhouse we turned left into Rue de Clery we passed many fabric merchants and sellers of dress trims along this road, their windows were mostly covered with roller doors which is the way they shut up shop in Paris. But a few had no cover on the windows and we were able to peer inside.

Peering through a window on Rue de Clery

Giant Scissors over a shuttered shop in Rue de Clery, I'm not sure whether it is a dressmaker's shop or a barbers.

sewing bits and pieces in a shop near home

We could hear someone playing a saxophone in one of the apartments above, I felt like I was in a movie set! We followed Rue de Clery to Rue du Faubourg St Denis, as we approached it we could see a large Arch in  a sandstone yellow colour, it was like a miniature Arc De Triomphe, we couldn’t believe it, so close to our little flat and we didn’t even know it existed. Our map tells us that it is Porte St Denis (1672) It is covered in sculptures, of course and I got some lovely photos of the lions that look down at the passers-by. On an adjacent building, there is a statue inscribed Au Grande St Antoine, the building below was shuttered and there was tagging scribbled on the metal shutters. 

I just had to include this photo, I'm obssessed with the doors of Paris!

At the end of Rue de Clery, this is what we found!!

on a building opposite the Porte St Denis

One of the lions looking down from

 I got the feeling we were entering the seedier side of town, it certainly had a more down at heel feel to it. We found an internet café in a side street and went in to check our emails. Yep this was the seedy side of town all right, a walk on the wild side!  There were a lot of Turkish shops around as well as cafés and bars, Boucheries and Fruits et legumes and a few Patisseries, these were a little cheaper than the ones closer to our flat. Down one of the side streets I spied a church, probably just the local parish church but still pretty impressive, marked as St Laurent on our map. The doors in this part of Paris are as impressive as anywhere else in the city and made the walk longer than it should have been!! We came to an intersection of roads and were a little unsure which way to go and while consulting the map, a young man in his 30’s stopped to help put us right he then walked along with us to where we should go and told us to follow this road two blocks and turn left. He was shivering and we chatted about the weather he asked could we give him some money to pay for his hotel, it was so cold. We gave him 10 Euros and he said “My room is 20 Euros, please it is so cold, I haven’t slept for two nights. I have no work” I expect he was hustling us but I really felt sorry for him, so we gave him another 10 Euros. He had given us good directions and within 5 minutes walk we were at Gare du Nord International rail station. The front of this building is so big and impressive, like everything else in Paris it is embellished with huge statues, doesn’t really look like your normal rail station. We went in to check out precisely where we had to go on Monday morning so we would not have to panic. By this time it was around three so we looked for somewhere to have lunch. There were lots of cafés and restaurants across from the station, we chose one with a little help from the bloke who was touting out the front and went in. We decided on something we wouldn’t usually eat at home, something that sounded French, escargots were not on the menu but Moules Marinieres  were and ended up with the biggest bowl of mussels you can imagine. I reckon we had about 40 each, they were not large but very tasty. Cremé Caremel was my choice for desert and Michael finished his meal with Emmental cheese served with a wedge of tomato, a little lettuce with dressing and some French bread. We went back the way we had come, stopping at the Patissiers for some bread and cake for tea. Seeing as we’d had such a late lunch, we decided on the Marie Antoinette Special for tea, cake and nothing else!

We think if it’s not raining on Monday morning we can probably walk to the station with luggage in tow in about half an hour.

Hitting the Tourist Track in Paris

Today we’d planned to really hit the tourist track. Using the metro, Michael had worked out the changes we’d need to make to get to the different destinations. Now the way the metro works, it seems, is that it costs 1.70 Euros for a one way ticket to anywhere within the city boundaries. You can change trains or directions as many times as you like as long as you don’t leave the underground.

Our first stop for the day was the Bastille. We entered the underground at Sentier, which is very close to where we are staying. We bought return tickets from the bloke at the Information/ticket counter, there was not long to wait for the train, which was not very full.  Two changes; at Reaumur Sebastopol and at Les Halles and we were there. Now, the Bastille no longer exists, in its place is a very tall monument, Colonne de Juillet (July Column) it is 52metres tall with the golden winged figure of the Angel of Liberty at its top, in his right hand he holds a flaming torch in his left he clutches a length of chain, there is a star on his head. This monument is dedicated to the memory of those who died in the revolutions of 1830 and 1848. It stands in the centre of a busy intersection where 6 roads meet.

Metro station

Colonne de Juillet marks the spot where the Bastille once stood.

The Angel of Liberty crowns the Colonne de Bastille.

 On one of these roads, Rue de Lyon, overlooking the Colonne de Julliet, is the Opera de Paris Bastille. We decided to explore a little further as Michael had read in one of the guide books that there are some charming little passages running off the Rue Saint Antoine and with our trusty Paris Mapguide at the ready we set out to find them. Many artisans have their ateliers in these passages. We passed a church on our left, which I later discovered is called the Temple Sainte Marie and almost opposite this in the Rue de Birague we saw a red and cream bricked building straddling the street, with an open archway at street level to allow access.

Temple Sainte Marie

this building caught our eye and we went to investigate.

There was a sign reading Maisson de Victor Hugo so we went to investigate. The shops lining this street were delightful, we stopped to help a little lady who was struggling to lift the grate that protects her front window at night. Her shop sold the most delightful children’s clothes. All made in France, she told us, by her niece, from French materials. There were some lovely little felted jackets and hats, skirts and pants. A few doors away a little jewellers caught my eye. I had decided to shout myself a pair of earrings or a brooch and it was in this shop, Ubu Paris, that I was to find the earrings that I had been searching for.

Sipetit, selling childrens clothes

the hat, scarf and jacket are made of felted wool.

We walked to the red and cream building and passing through the archway found ourselves facing a quadrangle of buildings built of the same materials. In the centre was a fenced park set out in a formal structured design. This was the Place des Vosges, at its centre is a statue of Louis XIII on a horse, at each corner is a fountain set in the centre of a grassed area, each bounded by 2 rows of parallel small tree plantations with seating between them. It had a semi-formal feel to it that was just delightful and very French.

Louis XIII, in the Place des Voges 

Trees planted in the Place des Voges

One of four fountains set in each corner of the square.

 Leaving the garden and walking back across to the buildings, the ground floor was cloistered and we entered and walked along this covered area, where there were some galleries, shops and restaurants, all very smart. In one of these galleries we watched a little dog on a white bench rolling around having a wonderful time, by the time I got my camera out he had stopped and stood looking out the window at us!

"Hey! You, oui you Aussies, what are you looking at? Haven't you ever seen a dog in a gallery before?"

In another gallery, this mesh sculpture cast a photo-like image onto the wall.

Under the cloisters the key stone reads 28 Avril 1764

 We lingered here for a while and found in one corner a door that led into another little garden area around which is built a town manor which belongs to the state and is now The Hotel Sully.  The Hotel has the obligatory sculptures and carved doors, and as we went through an archway and out the other side there was a set of stairs guarded at the top by to female sphinx, this led into a little courtyard where you could also access the street. We had spent about 2 hours exploring this area and it was now time to move on, after all I must have snapped at least a dozen portraits of the intriguing doors of the area!!

This doorway led through to the Hotel Sully

This is what greeted us as we stepped through the doorway

A corner of the garden in the Hotel Sully

Through a small passage in the building and this carved door led out to another section of the hotel.

One of two sphinx who guarded the stairs that led down into this second court yard of the Hotel Sully

The buildings were adorned with statues.

We used our return ticket to take us back as far as Châtelet, within a short walk to our friendly internet café for our daily check with home. Then a quick lunch at a sandwich bar in Les Halles shopping centre and we hit the Metro again, this time bound for The Arc de Triomphe.

Boarding the train at Les Halles, we travelled one stop to Châtelet and changed for Charles De Gaulle/Etoile.  As soon as you reach the top of the stairs from the Metro the Arc de Triomphe looms overhead, another jaw dropping moment. It is sat in the middle of a rond –point in the centre of a 12 road intersection, it is HUGE, the intersection, that is. The Arc itself is also a mighty big structure. There were people underneath it and we couldn’t work out how you would get to it, as the traffic circles it non-stop from one road or another and it would be absolute suicide to mess with these guys. We crossed one of the roads before it entered the rond-point and there was a sign that indicated a set of stairs that takes you under the road to the other side. Half way across this underground passage is the entrance to the Arc de Triomphe and the queues waiting to get in. You can access the Arc via the 284 steps to the top or, there is an elevator up, but you still have to walk the last 40 steps to the observation point, 150 feet above ground level, at the top. Yeah, that wasn’t going to happen! We followed the tunnel to the other side of the rond-point for more  photos, then made our way back to the Metro for our next venture, The Tour Eiffel or as we call it the Eye Full Tower.

The Arc de Triumph looms large and is continuously surounded by traffic from the roads that feed into it.

The  statue  groups on the front and back of the Arc are huge. 

We are becoming a dab hand at navigating the Metro and can even use the ticket buying machine successfully, without causing a queue to form behind us. By the end of this day we were not even bothering to set the machine to the English version!!! Five Metro stops from Etoile to Bir-Hakeim and we were at the Eiffel Tower. The train leaves the underground just after Passy and crosses the Seine River where it looks like the river is divided and in fact it is, by a man made structure called the Allée  De Cygnes, at one end of this is the Statue de la Liberté (1886) a smaller version of America’s famous Lady. The station here is elevated and you have to descend to ground level to leave it.

We had just rounded a curve in the street and there it was!

It is difficult to fit the whole structure in one photo frame

The curved legs of the Eiffel Tower are unmistakable

Like so many other sights in Paris, the tower is not immediately visible. You follow the signs and the crowds along the street and round a bend and there it is towering above the rooftops ahead. Along the path to the tower there were vendors every few feet flogging everything Eiffel, from multi-coloured key rings and metal towers from key ring size to about two foot tall and towers embedded in glass to flashing light towers. The merchandise and prices were the same with every seller. Some sellers were quite aggressive others looked a little embarrassed by it all. Most appeared to be immigrants of either Indian or African descent, all were men, between about 16 and late 30’s.

As we approached the tower we noticed a very obvious police presence, there were a lot of people and the crowd was getting larger by the minute despite the cold and the fact that it was late afternoon. The gardens down below the tower were also starting to fill with people and it suddenly hit us that the crowds were gathering to celebrate New Year’s Eve. While Michael queued at the only working self-cleaning toilet we have found in Paris,(there are a few around but most don’t work!!) I headed across the road to see if I could get a shot of the tower and fit it all in the frame, I couldn’t! There was a little carnival on the corner here with a carousel and some carnival statues.

Michael queued for the self cleaning toilets, it was one of the first we'd seen that actually worked!!!!

even from across the wide boulevard this was as much of the tower that I could fit into one shot!

One of the carnival statues, with the medieaval tent structures visible across the river, at thbottom centre of the photo.

the other carnival statue beside the carousel

 It also looked like a medieval tent city was set up across the river. By the time I got back Michael was just leaving the toilet. We had a look around and decided to head for home before the crowds got too big to navigate. Walking back past the vendors, there was a sort of slight ripple. I noticed a couple of the sellers starting to gather the fabric they had their merchandise on, they were bundling it up very quickly, tossing pieces to the centre as they went. Ah I thought, these blokes shouldn’t be here! Then the ripple broke into a panic and traders scattered in all directions  as a police car reversed at full speed past us just about taking out a couple of the fleeing villains, who, en masse had bundled their wares and dashed across the busy boulevard paying no heed to the traffic that was whizzing by. I don’t know how nobody was killed! Once on the other side they stopped fleeing to check where the gendarmes were. They looked just like Meercats stretching their necks to see their pursuers. I don’t know how they could escape as the other side of the road was the River Seine separated from the road by a short wall topped by a dense hedge, and this is where the escapees were perched, spread out along the bushes. They must have spotted more police as all of a sudden they disappeared. It was full on entertainment for the crowds as we all stopped to watch. I reckon the vendors would all be back amongst the legitimate stall holders once the police presence got busy with the crowds.

The vendors dashed across this road dodging the traffic and made for the hedge topped wall on the other side of the road.

Apartment buildings behind this wall are on the other side of the river.

Back in our own neighbourhood, our nightly shopping spree for provisions had to last us two days as the shops are closed on New Years Day. We decide to buy some nice cakes to celebrate the end of 2010. We also had our first foray into a Boucherie, buying some very nice sausages and some potted meat (Jambon ???) and some vegies. We also bought some quiches for dinner tomorrow night. So ends 2010, in our little Paris flat, which it seems is located right in the very centre of Paris, walking distance to almost everything. How lucky we have been.

Some of the tasty potted meat we bought on the way home.

Dinner: sausages, mushrooms, broccoli carrots and potatoes.

We also had cakes for desert!!!!