Somehow here we are halfway through September, and I never finished this travelogue, so here is what I started writing a couple months ago:
If our first day in Paris was full, our second, our only whole day, was equally a barrage to the senses. This day was a walking tour of architectural highlights culminating in our visit to the Louvre at 2 pm. The morning began with breakfast at a different patisserie, one with a Japanese influence, before walking up to the Arc de Triomphe, passing by the Trocadero, the church of St. Pierre de Chaillot, and Balzac's home on the way. Then we strolled down the Champs Elysee and enjoyed a rest in gardens along the way. We admired the Place Concorde and bemoaned the charges to use the restrooms. We passed the Tuileries and admired more gardens, but did not stop for lunch there, although perhaps we should have. Instead, we headed into the "basement" of the Louvre to find restrooms, and our younger son couldn't resist the lure of the golden arches of McDonalds in their food court. My daughter and I had more coffee and pastries from the food court and resolved to get a better meal after our museum visit.
We nearly didn't get tickets to the Louvre because I neglected to make reservations until we were at the airport. This was partly because the school year had been so busy and partly because I wasn't sure what our itinerary would look like until we landed. We had to do a sort of back door reservation through Booking.com that I was nervous about because I had read about the museum turning away people because of overbooking, but luckily the afternoon was not as crowded as the morning apparently. We later heard that some museum workers then went on strike because of the crowds of tourists.
We noticed on our circuit of the food court under the Louvre that there seemed to be an entrance and had we done more homework, we would have realized we could have entered from below - instead we went back outside and waited in line for our timed entry! Silly!
The Louvre is magnificent, even with the crowds, and honestly, at 2 pm, they weren't awful. After comparing notes with friends, we were glad we went in the afternoon because apparently mornings are packed. The first floor was crowded, especially by Nike and then in the gallery where the Mona Lisa is located. In 1994, she was just in a hallway, and we thought it amusing to see the crowd bunched around her then when there were so many other spectacular masterpieces in the same hallway. Now the gallery is packed with people holding aloft their phones to snap a photo (I admit I did the same). I didn't wait to get close but instead took the route that leads to the side. On the wall facing the Mona Lisa is an enormous painting of the Wedding Feast at Cana by Paolo Veronese, which is worth studying, but it barely got a glance from the crowd.
Had we been more seasoned visitors, I think we should have started with the third floor, home to more European masters, and ended with the Mona Lisa and Nike, when perhaps crowds would be smaller. The third floor is home to a tiny Vermeer and Rembrandts and other beautiful paintings in front of which only a few people were wandering slowly, gazing at works that caught their eye without jostling from other patrons. And no lines for the WCs!
After a few hours of admiring the masterpieces and the majesty of the building itself, we were weary and hungry. Our late lunch/early dinner meal was at another cafe with outdoor dining, Cafe Josephine. This time I had French onion soup, the kids had croque messieurs, and my husband had a charcuterie board. The meal was especially delicious because we were all famished. We walked back to the Ile de la Cite to try to visit Sainte Chapelle, but we arrived too late to get in the line for people without reservations. The chapel is now only a museum, so we could not sneak into a Mass line for this one.
But more to come! Revivified by our meal, we headed to Montmartre by metro to see Sacre Coeur and take in a view of Paris from above. Montmartre has a more colorful and authentic feel with lots of ethnic restaurants and markets. The steps in front of the church were crowded with visitors listening to the buskers serenade - one did a rough version of John Denver's Rocky Mountain High, an interesting choice. The cathedral was beautiful, another impressive anthem to human creativity and heavenly inspiration. A pilgrimage walk for the jubilee of Hope was marked with signs throughout the church, so we prayed and meditated our way through the cathedral, another opportunity to mark our trip as a pilgrimage (and an opportunity for an indulgence), and not just a tourist vacation.
Sacre Coeur may be one of my favorite spots of our Paris visit. It was a breathtaking hike up the hill, literally and figuratively, and the church itself was amazing. The Lady chapel in the back of the basilica was full of people reverently praying. Although there was a crowd of visitors within the church and outside on the steps, these visitors seemed more engaged, less like they were there to check a list of sites to see. I have to check my own tendency to do that, and the sanctuary of the Basilica provided a peaceful place to sit and pray for a moment for the people near our hearts, especially our son about to get married.
After the prayerful time within the church, we made our way down the hill, with a stop to ride the carousel and another to get ice cream and Nutela crepes, the perfect late afternoon snack. Everything we ate was delicious and consumed with gusto since we were so hungry. Additionally, outside the Basilica we paused a moment and watched more buskers singing American songs. We opted to pass on paying the 8 euros to go up to the dome, partly because of the line and because the view just from the steps of the basilica is a sweeping panorama of the city. Though Montmartre felt a little less touristy than the center of the city, plenty of tourist tchotchkes shops were offering their wares. Here they were a little less expensive, so the girls bought some canvas bags with "I Love Paris" for their friends, and we picked up a magnet for our collection (although we no longer have a magnetic refrigerator...).
After our visit to Montmartre, which is in the northern edge of Paris, we began the long trek back to our arrondissement. We took a metro that let us out near Trocadero again, so we took some photos there of the Eiffel Tower as the sun was setting. With energy waning, we stopped at a little trattoria near our apartment and picked up some pizzas and a bottle of wine to go and carried it back to the park behind the Eiffel Tower to watch the sun finish setting and the tower light up. Although it was a simple supper, we all starving again after all the walking (over 25000 steps). Watching the picnickers in the park was entertaining, also - families, couples, bridal parties, other groups of friends, and lots of immigrants selling keychains and light up towers and beer and wine. It was a relaxing way to end the day; the kids later said it was one of their favorite memories from Paris. The crowd let out a collective ah of appreciation as the lights illuminated and twinkled from the Tower, and we lingered to admire them until they finally shimmered off several minutes later before returning to the apartment for well earned rest. When the sun was down and the light show ended, the sellers of mementoes all bundled their wares into their canvas tarps and walked off together - presumably toward some central distributor? I wonder about this subculture of mostly immigrant men trying to make a bit of money pushing all the same overpriced plastic junk on tourists. It is a desperate sort of life, I imagine.
When we finally returned to our apartment, we were all too exhausted to stay up much later. While everyone cycled through the one bathroom, we visited a bit and planned for the next day before crashing for the night. The beds were comfortable, and even the son who slept on the futon couch seemed to sleep well.
On Tuesday, we had a half day before our train to Lourdes, Our middle son left in the morning to take a train to Venice to meet up with friends. I would have loved for him to join us, but he's 25 and making his own plans.
This was the day we would have visited the Musee D'Orsay or made a morning trip to Giverny or Versailles, but since I didn't plan out any of those destinations which require reservations, instead we visited some free spots in Paris. First was the Modern Art Museum at Trocadero, which had some beautiful pieces, most notably a mural of the history of electricity in Paris, "La Fee Electricite" by Raoul Dufy, and some busts by Picasso, but also some provocative, darker works that we didn't linger by.
Then we made our way to the Petit Palais, which was a guest home for some royalty, but now houses a rather large collection of New Raphaelite works. It's a hidden gem. Although we didn't get to see the Impressionists at D'Orsay, we did see a Monet, a Renoir, and a couple Mary Cassatt works here. In addition the much reprinted William-Adolphe Bouguereau of the Virgin with Angels - Mary holding Jesus with his arms out in a prefiguring of the Crucifixion, is also here. It was quite impressive in person. Perhaps the hidden benefit of not planning well was being able to visit this museum.
Now, after this visit is when our biggest travel snafu occurred. We had plenty of time to get from the Palais to the luggage locker where our bags were waiting and then to le Gare Montparnasse, where we were to catch a regional train first to Bordeaux and then on to Lourdes. But somehow in between stopping for sandwiches, then stopping at a pharmacy for medicine for our daughter's face that had a rather large sore growing (probably impetigo, according to the pharmacist, who prescribed some antibiotic cream), and then barely missing a metro train to the big station and having to wait another 6 minutes, we arrived at Montparnasse with only minutes to get to our gate.
We dashed through the station - a trek from the Metro level to the upper regional train level. Hurrah! Our train was still there, but, alas!, the gate was closed. We were too late by a only minute or 90 seconds, but they wouldn't let us board. Unfortunately, these were budget tickets and nontransferable. I went to the ticket office to see what we could do. Tickets for the five of us to Lourdes were going to cost close to $1000. As the ticket clerk was looking at options, a beggar came up. She got up to get security. When she sat down, she typed a few more things, and then handed us a pass to get on another train for free, and this time a direct train. I don't know what happened in her heart, but we thanked and blessed her and then bought her some macarons while we were waiting.
Since we had another 4 hours to wait for this later train, the girls and I set out to visit Saint Suplice and Shakespeare and Company, which we had skipped over after everyone was so tired from the Louvre visit. Perhaps we should have visited the Pantheon or some other landmark, rather than trekking to this bookstore famous for its connection with modernist writers, but I had felt sorry that we skipped passing by it the day before our tour of the city.
Much to my chagrin, this is another Instagram spot. There was a huge line to go in that snaked through the door and then into the cafe next door. We didn't have time to stand in line to shop, so we just snapped a photo also, like all these influencers ourselves, and walked back a slightly different way to pass through the Luxembourg Gardens again.
My husband, determined not to miss another train, and son who didn't want to fast walk to a bookstore waited at the station for the afternoon, although they left to get hot sandwiches at a shop nearby. We ate in the waiting area what was probably our lowest meal of the trip, although that wasn't the fault of the shop. We also picked up some sad crepes that didn't measure up to the delicious ones in Montmartre. We didn't even have any good coffee. However, we did not miss the next train. It was so crowded we didn't have seats - perhaps the reason we got a free ride - so we were strap hangers for what seemed hours, until the train eventually emptied out along the way. It was a long trip. And once we finally arrived in Lourdes, we had a longer walk than anticipated to our hotel. It was dusk at this point. But at least our appartement hotel on the River Gare was accommodating and clean and had comfortable beds. In fact, I was a little sad we only stayed there one night.
These photos are out of order but enjoy:
