Bonjour Paris!

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Sept. 30 - Oct. 7

We decided to come to Paris for a week when our plans to go to Turkey changed and we had some time before we met Amy’s parents in Italy. Amy had been to Paris twice - once in high school when she loved it and once while studying in London when she hated it. Being a vocal part of the contingency to change “French fries” to “freedom fries” Roger had never been to Paris and had never had any interest in going. But because we were going to be in Europe we decided to go so we could see some great art museums and visit all of the other famous sights of Paris.

What We Saw and Did

Paris is a well-trodden path and we visited most of the “biggies” including the Eiffel Tower, the Champs Elysee and the Arc de Triomphe, Hotel des Invalides to see Napoleon’s tomb, the Latin Quarter, the Rodin museum, Notre Dame, Opera Garnier, Montmartre and Sacre Coeur. We bought a 4 day museum pass for 45 euros each after we arrived at the Musee d’Orsay and realized we would have to wait in a huge line. The museum pass gets you into over 60 museums and monuments and many times gets you out of the waiting line. Buying the museum pass meant that we needed to see 90 euros worth of museums to get our money’s worth and we did. We were able to use the museum pass at the Pantheon, Napoleon’s tomb, the Rodin museum, the Musee d’Orsay, the Picasso museum, Centre Georges Pompidou and Saint Chappelle. We would have used it to go to the Louvre but we went to the Louvre on the first Sunday of the month when most (if not all) of museums are free.

The museums we most enjoyed were the Musee d’Orsay, the Louvre and the Rodin museum. At the Rodin museum we were able to see the Thinker, the Kiss and the Gates of Hell. We spent about 6-7 hours each at the Musee d’Orsay and the Louvre. We loved the space of the Musee d’Orsay because it is very open and beautiful. We not only saw many famous works - Monet, Degas’ ballerinas, Renoir - but we found several painters that we really liked that we did not know. At the Louvre we did not get an audio guide and most explanations at the Louvre about each individual painting are only in French. We were disappointed to find that signs in the bathrooms were in more languages than on the paintings. Because it’s hard to fully appreciate the art without knowing about it, we made sure to spring for the audio guide at the Musee d’Orsay.

At the Louvre, we decided to tackle the most famous three first - Winged Victory, Mona Lisa and Venus de Milo. The crowds around these three are pretty thick but moving beyond these spaces the crowds improved. We saw most of the painting galleries but by the end we were pretty exhausted. Have you ever noticed that a requirement of Renaissance art is that at least one breast must have fallen out of the women’s dresses?

We discovered some interesting things at the museums but particularly at the Louvre and the Musee d’Orsay:

1. No matter how many symbols or languages you use to announce a prohibition against pictures or pictures with flash people will violate it. And most museum guards don’t stop it. At the Louvre, the only pictures that appear to be protected from pictures is the Mona Lisa and some French paintings. We want to start a museum solely so that we can prohibit people from taking pictures and when they do we’ll take their camera and kick them out. That’s just for a first offense. We haven’t even dreamt up the 2nd offense penalties yet.

2. Many people really like pictures of themselves in front of art. What are you going to do with a picture of yourself in front of the Hammarabi Code? Frame it and keep it on your desk at work next to the picture of yourself with the family at the holidays?

3. People are so focused on taking pictures of art that they get annoyed at the people standing in front of the art actually looking at it. We witnessed people taking pictures asking others having the nerve to look at the art to move.

4. The Da Vinci Code is big business for the Louvre.

We didn’t enjoy the Centre Pompidou or the Picasso museum quite as much but we probably would not have gone to them anyway had it not been for the museum pass. The tickets for the Centre Pompidou were 10 euros each and the Picasso museum was 9.50 euros. At the Centre Pompidou we were never able to find the permanent collection and it may have been closed but we have no idea. What we did find were 2 temporary exhibits. One was a movie put together by art students involving shadows of hands moving an egg back and forth (the same thing you could produce on an overhead projector). The other exhibit was painting and sculptures by Yves Klein who is “famous” for his monochrome works. What this means is that most of his paintings are large canvases painted completely with one color. They looked like blown up paint samples. The best part was that you could buy his monochromatic art on postcards in the gift shop. His other art was produced when he painted naked women and then rubbed them across canvases (a novel way to separate a naïve Parisian from her stockings, but not art). We have heard that Parisiens have come to love the Centre Pompidou but we never did. We think the building itself is quite unattractive and the tacky souvenir vendors surrounding it didn’t add to its beauty. The only part of the Centre Pompidou that we liked was the 90 minutes of free internet (if you have your own laptop) but even that had large restrictions and periodic technical difficulties.

We were able to peruse the Picasso Museum rather quickly. We thought that there was some really good stuff at the museum but there was also a good number of pieces that were pretty crappy in our humble opinions. Picasso seems to be an artist that gets the benefit of the doubt a lot and so anything he produced is regarded as art even if he was having a bad day (and a bad day for Picasso looks like a good day of pre-schoolers gluing popsicle sticks to cardboard). Not everything someone produces can be good. Compared to the other museums, the crowd at this museum was more pretentious which isn’t surprising because people that come to a specific artist museum are theoretically more knowledgeable (or maybe just a more specialized sort or pretentious?). In addition the museum is fairly small and it was very crowded and the layout calls for a good amount of backtracking.

Many of the sights we saw during our week in Paris were sights that Amy had previously seen. One sight that we both enjoyed that was new to Amy was Sainte-Chappelle. Although our museum pass got us in for “free” we still had to wait in line and the line is quite long because they limit the number of people inside at one time and you have to go through the same door and security system as the people going to the courthouse. The first time we tried to go to Sainte-Chappelle the line was long so we took the opportunity to go nearby and grab some ice cream from Berthillon which was excellent and unique. We ended up lining up to get into Saint-Chappelle about 45 minutes before it re-opened in the afternoon which seems like a pretty good time to sneak in. The second floor at the church contains over 6,000 square feet of stained glass (the most ancient stained glass windows in Paris) and they take your breath away.

We went to the Pantheon to see various tombs in the catacombs including Victor Hugo’s. There was an exhibit on Pierre Curie, who we’d never heard of but who was actually more accomplished than his wife (and student), Marie. The Pantheon is a beautiful building but when we visited there was an unfortunate installation which looked like someone sneezed all over the building. When we left the Pantheon, we sat outside to collect our bearings for our next stop but we were kicked off the steps at 5:30 because they were preparing for the 6:00 pm closing time. All across Paris we noticed that the closing time is set in stone (people usually end up closing a couple of minutes early - even if you want to spend money).

We went to see Little Miss Sunshine at Les Halles while we were there because we were able to see it in English. The theatre said it started at 8:40 but what this meant was that everyone “lined up” and at 8:40 the doors were opened and people flooded in. We could not believe the number of people that were seeing a movie on a Wednesday night - people were sitting in the aisles because there were not enough seats.

Although we didn’t actually buy anything in Paris, we did spend some time looking.
We went to the Galleria Lafayette which was a fun department store. We wish American department stores would catch on to what happens around the world and put food halls in their stores. The food hall here was great but overwhelming. There were so many choices and each vendor had a counter where you could sit down to eat. The café also looked amazing and they had wine on tap. And if you’re not as obsessed with food as we are they also have a perfume department with a beautiful glass dome and a top floor with a free view over Paris. And if you’ve got money to burn there’s an adorable kids department where you can pick crazy expensive baby clothes in designer names.

What We Ate and Drank

Based on our inability to speak French well and, more importantly, our budget, our food choices in Paris were not particularly exciting. For breakfast, we usually ate pain au chocolate and croissants which ensure that we can never eat another croissant in America. One morning we even went to Starbuck’s because Amy was craving American coffee and boy are their prices are high. For lunch and some dinners, we had sandwiches including a ham and butter sandwich (thankfully not a widely used condiment in American sandwiches) and a croque monsieur (i.e. heart attack in bread). We also had steak and frites a couple of times for dinner. One night we ate at Hippopotamus which Amy had eaten at during her visit to Paris in high school. Although Amy remembered a very grand restaurant it is actually a chain which is a cross between Chilis and a chic but dated hotel lounge. They do have real table clothes - no paper on the table here. For drinks, Amy usually had red wine while Roger tried to splash out and try different drinks each night. He had a couple of licorice aperitifs (Ricard)

We ate sandwiches on benches and steps a lot not wanting to pay for a sitdown meal (prices tend to climb is a patron wants to sit). Usually we just purchased whatever we could find and sat nearby. The exception was Be, a bakery episerie near the Opera Garnier that was opened by Eric Kayser (famous Parisien baker) and Alain Ducasse (superchef). After we started walking there and passed up many other eating opportunities (including 2 other places owned by Eric Kayser), we realized the bakery was 2 km from Opera Garnier which is a pretty good distance to walk for a sandwich. The woman working behind the counter at Be was less than friendly but their sandwiches were pretty good although expensive. As good as Roger’s ham and cheese sandwich and Amy’s sardine sandwiches was, we probably would not recommend this detour for others just looking for a sandwich.

To celebrate the anniversary of our Elvis wedding, we splashed out to eat at Au Pied de Cochon (www.pieddecochon.com), recommended in our guidebook and close to our hotel. We couldn’t afford much and we weren’t interested in the various pig parts which are their speciality so we stuck to the set menu - onion soup to start, steak & frites for dinner and a rose ice cream parfait with strawberry sauce for dessert. The onion soup was over the top rich and delicious but we weren’t impressed with the steak & frites. We also discovered the pitfalls of blindly ordering water. Our litre of bottled water was 6 euros while the coffee was a real bargain at 5 euros.

The waiter was ok by American standards which means exceptionally friendly in Paris. The tables at Au Pied de Cochon are so close together that they have to move them for you to get in and out. If you don’t whisper it’s like you’re having dinner with eight of your closest friends. We sat next to some Germans, Chinese and French. We found out later (when they gave us the dessert menu) that they had a menu in English but the Chinese couple was not given one and neither were we. The Chinese couple was actually being helped by the German men rather than the waiter. There were no waiters going out of their way to help non-French speakers (actually we didn’t meet anyone in the country who did that) and our sincere attempts at using French were greeted with impatience. Thanks to the proximity of the tables we were able to have a nice conversation with the German man sitting next to us that continued after the meal outside. (Amy is being diplomatic, Roger is working on another post called “I Went to Paris to Spend Money and All I Got Was Treated Like Crap.”)

Where We Slept

We stayed at the Hotel de Rouen (www.hotelderouen.net) which is very cheap - 52 euros/night for a double room with shower and toilet. If you’re willing to put up with a few annoyances in order to save money we would recommend it. If money is not an issue we’d probably recommend going somewhere else for a little more luxury. The hotel has a nice location about 5 minutes from the Louvre and it was close to a number of restaurants and cafes. Our room was on the 4th floor and there was no elevator and our window overlooking the Banque of France meant there was a breeze but also some street noise.

Some of the annoyances included being kicked out of the room one morning so that the housekeeper could clean. The staff (except for the staff working on the weekend) is not very friendly. Also, they mistakenly thought we were checking out a day earlier than we were so we were forced to change rooms the last day and our new room was right off the front desk and dining room. We were glad we only had to stay in this room once because the street noise (including drunk people coming back from bars until the wee hours) was much worse than on the fourth floor, the night staff was very loud until after midnight and the breakfast traffic started up early. This new room was a bit cheaper than our previous room but did not include a toilet so at night we had to squeeze past the night staff asleep right outside our room, unlock the entrance to the hotel and go up one flight of stairs to use the toilet.

What We Think

It’s been said before but we thought the people in the restaurants were unfriendly and somewhat condescending. We did attempt to speak French (what little Amy could remember from high school) but there is no humor when you make a mistake with their language. We don’t need to feel bad about ourselves when all we want is a sandwich. . As unfriendly as you can feel people are at times, we did notice how friendly and gracious they are with to each other. For example, everyone says hello and goodbye when entering or exiting shops. We think there is a real difference with how they treat each other and how they treat non-French speakers. Truly the hallmark of a welcoming culture for tourists.

We were entranced by the 35 hour work week in France. The metro is crowded at 3 pm. The movie theatre was packed in the middle of the week. Cafes are always crowded. We could get into the minute work week - of course at this point 35 hours of work a week might kill us.

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Photos

Gezhundheit
We weren't overly impressed with the installation at the Pantheon

Our room
Perfect for a romantic weekend in Paris

Arc de Triomphe
Roger wants to rename it the Arc de Failure to reflect the success of France at war. In any event, it is beautiful.

Moulin Rouge
Minus Ewan and Nicole

Venus de Milo
and her many admirers at the Louvre