Anyone who knows me knows that I don’t have a natural sense of direction. I’m also not really a map person. Ask my mom about the time we were driving to Daly City and ended up an hour out of our way because “it wasn’t on the map,” when it was actually under my thumb. True story.
But since I hate being lost and like to be in control of my life as much as possible, I spent time getting familiar with the Paris Metro map and made sure I knew which monuments and museums were at particular stops and which color line to take before we set out each day. Some people like to wander — that’s not me, unless it’s intentional wandering and then I still like to have preplanned “escape routes.”
The page from my guidebook. The bottom circle is where we stayed and 2 stops up, Invalides, is where we were exiting so we could walk along the Seine to visit the Musee d’Orsay.
I had also already figured out that from there we needed to hop on the dark green line (Assemblee Nationale) and head north (not true North, just “up” on my map) to Pigalle (at the very top) and change to the blue line getting off at Anvers to visit the Sacre Coeur. From there we go back the way we came, but get off at the Madeline stop for our evening concert.
The fun thing about Paris is you don’t have to go anywhere to see the sights — everywhere you look it’s all, “Hey! Huge gold statue! Wait, that’s the Eiffel Tower in the distance!”
“And the river Seine! And cute joggers are running along the banks. It’s like a picture book — where’s Madeline?”
Sunday morning Parisians out for a stroll with their very well behaved dogs. Every dog I saw was off leash, but walking right by its owner, not running into traffic or chasing pedestrians. Even their dogs are dignified.
It was a perfect morning for walking. We finally tore ourselves away from the photo ops along the river and made it to the d’Orsay, known for its collection of Impressionists.
Including Degas’ famous ballerina
I didn’t take many photos because it’s kind of weird to take photos of pantings when I could look at them in an art book or online and see them in much better resolution, but I did snap one of Monet’s churches because I remembered we spent a lot of time on them in Art History class and I loved that they had them all side by side.
This was my favorite museum of the trip. The d’Orsay is not too large, the building is modern and beautiful in its own right, and it was much more peaceful than the Louve. Not just in numbers, but there isn’t the feel of “I have to hurry up because there’s so much to see and I’m going to miss something if I don’t.”
I spent all of Paris looking for cats for Caleb. They don’t have street cats anymore (didn’t even see one), but they had an exhibit with the artist of this famous cat.
Here is where I met up with a friend and neighbor from 29 Palms (also named Robin). She is living in Kiev, but had just been evacuated because of the conflict there so we had fun swapping evacuation stories.
After lunch at the museum we took the metro outside of downtown and up the hill to the Montmartre area to visit the Sacre Coeur.
A view of the entire city
Below the church is a bunch of trinkety shops where you can buy anything: magnets, t-shirts, keychains, purses, dishes . . . if you can slap an Eiffel Tower on it, they’re selling it. (Yes, even condoms.)
In with all the trinket shops was a fabulous chocolate shop that tempted everyone with a dual chocolate fountain (both dark and milk). She fills one side of the container with chocolate, the other with lightly sweetened whipped cream and it is eaten with a spoon or a cookie.
It was the best dark chocolate I’ve ever had — smooth, warm, lots of depth and bitterness. Mixed with the airy whipped cream it tasted like warm chocolate mousse. I really wish I could have taken some of that home with me.
Inside the shop was a gigantic dark chocolate sculpture of the Notre Dame.
Our last stop of the day was la Madeleine, the church where we were attending a concert of Vivaldi’s Four Seasons. It looks like a government building on the outside, but a church on the inside. I can’t remember why it was designed that way — I read about it in the program and promptly forgot.
I was not super excited about going to a classical music concert, but everyone else wanted to go and it seemed like a proper grownup thing to do so I went along with it. It was performed by a quartet and a violin soloist. I only have this photo because I wasn’t going to be one of those people holding up their camera and videoing or snapping away to the annoyance of everyone behind them (yes, there were people doing that here too).
We were about four numbers into the program (they performed a variety of well known classical numbers before starting on the Four Seasons) when I silently pointed out to my seat-mate that they had skipped Ave Maria. She drew my finger up to the top of the page where the first selection had four tiny little Italian words printed beneath it. Those four rounds of applause had only been for the first piece. Oh boy.
After that long bit, the rest of it went pretty quickly and they even played Pachelbel’s Canon which was my wedding song (along with everyone else who got married in the 90s) and had me contemplating how I couldn’t have imagined 17 years ago that I would end up being who I am, living where I’m living, having created 4 other humans, and celebrating with a trip to Paris. Surreal.
After the concert was over we headed back to our neighborhood (using the purple line, thank you very much) and had a late dinner before heading to bed to get some rest before our last day of sightseeing.