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Published: October 2nd 2010
Tower in the Puddle
The Eiffel tower rising boldly from the puddleJAC- Just another church
1* - worth a look
2* - Good Times
3* - Unmissable
+ - emphasis on the rating
Having been to Paris three times before we haven't budgeted too much of our France trip 2010 in Paris; just 3 full days.
We had a decent hotel in a reasonable location and metro'd and walked our way around as you do 'When in Paris'.
First sight was the art of the Musee D'Orsay 2*. We left the D'Orsay after only a few hours a little disappointed as we'd looked forward to it for years and it had less than we'd thought; partially due to some renovations closing some wings and all the Monet stuff being out on loan.
Within the D'Orsay Nick suffered immediate disappoint seeing the 'No Photo' rule was in place which SUCKED in such a premium museum.
Nonetheless he loved the great sculpture; particularly that of Rodin and had to sneak a few cheeky shots of one particularly amazing piece by Rodin titled the 'Gates of Hell' which includes a lot of Rodins own work all worked in around a doorway; it was wonderful.
Other memorables in the museum
Rock carvings in the Catacombs
There were a few very good carvings in stone in the catacombs. The chap who did them died tragically trying to dig a tunnel from his carvings up to daylight to give the public easier access to come see them included a room and furniture with delightful, inspiring, curved interior design. We don't much like Impressionist or Post-impressionist art so much of the paintings weren't our cup of tea.
Our next location was a fairly unusual one the Paris Catacombs (2*). The Catacombs is where all of the skeletons of long buried Parisians where stored. Paris you see had run out of places to bury the dead many years ago and so within the last couple of centuries they made use of old quarries under the city to store the bones.
At first it was apparently just vast piles of bones but then one supervisor had the idea to stack them a little more creatively and so today there are portions of the Catacombs you can walk through where the bones are piled up in orderly and interesting fashion. Most of the piles consisted of a few rows of skulls and major bones like thigh/ arm bones piled up straight. Some of the piles had been arranged into patterns; so some skulls formed a heart, or a man shape for example. They also had some few nice stone carvings down there.
Even though we only walked through a small
Bones & Skulls
Huge piles of long bones e.g. thigh/ arm stacked with skulls amongst them portion of the area no more than say 500m we saw vast piles of bones and skulls. Nick said “extraordinary” Alicia says “extraordinarily disturbing”!
Looking to indulge a little bit we decided to eat out in Paris and had dinner at Perraudin, 157 Rue St Jacques the first night. We shared a bottle of Bordeaux red and Nick had a huge entrecote, garlic butter and chips (it's amazing how often the French serve up chips!!) and Roast Lamb for Alicia with a creamy potato dish, both were very nice and filling and we went home bursting full.
Our next day in Paris was a “Day apart day”, the second of our trip.
Nick went to 'Invalides' to the Army museum and learned about WWI, Charles de Gaul, and saw Napoleon's tomb there which is stunning. Alicia walked tirelessly, did a little shopping, watched men playing Boules in the park and had a good time.
As the writer you can only get details on Nick's day which had the following highlights:
I learned many interesting things about WWI including:
That about 300,000 Allies were lost in the Gallipolli (Dardanelles) campaign to no effect or success whatsoever.
The Germans
Memorial amongst the bones
Note the lines and patterns of skulls in amongst all the bones! came damn close to getting to Paris in their opening drive
During the defence of Paris 600 Paris city taxis moved French troops up to the front in what is still remembered fondly: for the imagery if not the efficacy.
I saw the stunning tomb of Napoleon under the great golden Invalides dome. The interior was very impressive and had 4 sub- domes around the corners where some of the great generals of France were buried. Under the main dome which was beautifully decorated Napoleons tomb sat in pride of place. All the domes were elaborately and beautifully painted, the whole interior space was light and beautifully decorated and a large Jesus on cross chapel was very lavish with decorative columns and lots of gilt decoration; it's just my kind of place with it's gorgeous decoration. The enormous, monumental coffin of Napoleon as the centrepiece was impressive too, the French certainly loved Napoleon!
I learned some more about Charles de Gaul (CDG) who was indeed a fascinating leader of the French. His influence in France went on for decades after WWII and he was largely responsible for a lot of French institutions (as far as I could gauge) including
Les Invalides
The excellent tomb of Napoleon and Army museum are inside the lovely Hotel des Invalides health care and social security. He pushed France back to the forefront of nations promptly after WWII, and made sure they had a seat on the UN Security Council, and did a lot to restore France's pride and place in the world after their embarrassing ineptitude during WWII.
I watched a good presentation that explained the famous Battle of Waterloo. Napoleon basically made a couple of grave mistakes and Wellington's British troops held fast when needed and thus Napoleon was defeated.
After a long and pleasant day apart pursuing our separate interests we had another good dinner in a nice restaurant 'Cafe Constant, 139 Rue St Dominique'; where we had delicious duck and potato for Alicia, Veal for Nick, it was very nice.
Our next day we saw plenty of evidence of Paris multi culturalism. Heading to Sacre Cour was a very diverse neighbourhood with many people of black and middle eastern appearance; it was a thriving area with plenty going on. From what we could perceive Paris does seem to have a very broad range of all peoples living seemingly happily in the same city.
We climbed the hills to the church of Sacre Cour (2*)
No place like Dome
The beautiful interior of the Hotel Des Invalides main dome, which sits above the tomb of Napoleon. an impressive white, nicely shaped structure from the outside, mounted on very high steep hill, sweeping views over city, the interior had some nice domes and was worth a look. Around Sacre Cour were various Street entertainers playing harp, singing, balancing a football on his head, and dressed as sculpture.
We headed across town to 'La Defense', a modern CBD area that has been cleverly built well outside of the central city area so as not to detract from Paris low skyline and charm with huge glass and steel skyscrapers. Upon exiting the metro station Alicia missed the last step or two and took a huge fall, smashing her knees on the concrete. She's never happy unless she's carrying injuries...... Badly bumped and bruised on her left knee and sorry for herself she limped around the rest of the day; we got her lunch and a milkshake to cheer her up.
La Defense has some excellent, interesting architecture and nice open spaces. The place is quite pleasant and accommodating, we walked around and got photos of architecture, the modern grand arch, fountains, and a colourful rainbow column.
With very little time remaining to sight-see Paris we headed to
Lavish Decorations
The Interior of the Tomb of Napoleon has it's most lavish decorations around the crucifixion the Rodin museum (1*+) to see some more of his fabulous sculpture. We learned a little about Rodin and some of his work including the 'Gates of Hell' his phenomenal work we saw in Musee D'Orsay. In the museum in particular I really liked a piece showing himself in sculpture being dragged away from a figure representing 'youth' by a figure representing 'old age'. It was very, very clever.
We decided to enjoy our last hour in the Paris summer sun at the Jardins du Luxembourg where there are pretty gardens and lots of decent seats throughout for the public to sit on. We sat around in different gardens to enjoy the sunshine and views. We also watched in horror as a heavily pregnant and incompetent mother let her little boy on a tricycle ride out of the Jardins to within a centimetre of a big main road where cars were roaring by! No-one near the kid thought to stop him, and the mother didn't call out for help, thankfully the stupid kid had just enough sense not to roll off the curb onto the road! Everywhere we go in the world we see bad parenting; it's so sad.
Sacre Bleu! It's Sacre Cour!
The lovely Sacre Cour towering above all else on it's steep hill We finished up in Paris with a simple meal of our tried and true club sandwiches for when we're in a rush then at our hotel had our final French luxurious patisseries and the last of our good champagne, the indulgent spree in France is now over..... we've both gained 10kg!!
Next morning we were up at 05:00 to fly out of Paris, via Berlin, to Dubrovnik on the southern Croatian coast for a well earned relax! More in the Croatia entry coming soon, which won't have a lot to say as we didn't do much but relax!
PS sorry no photos of Alicia or us as a couple, heaps in Croatia so relax... they're coming soon.
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Dan
non-member comment
Great photos
Great photos as usual and admirable text. If you want to see irresponsible parenting come to the Central Coast where 5 year olds ride bikes on the road, no parent in sight