Photos: The gargoyles on Notre Dame, stained glass window in ND, the main part of the chapel
Tuesday July 13, 2010
Woke up this morning all of us a little tired—we had some extra curricular entertainment during the night. Had a breakfast of eggs, fruit, croissants, coffee in our wee apartment. We set out together to Notre Dame, and as the crowd was small at this early hour we took the free walk through the cathedral. It is an awe-inspiring place. It is still an active church, and we walked among worshipers and tourists. The stained glass windows and the stone masonry are hard to describe. It is easy to see how some protestants felt that Catholics had an advantage with their church buildings.
Explanation of Extra curricular entertainment: The apartment is located on the 2nd floor (3rd American) of a building with a very small center courtyard. Pete and Neil were considering if they could throw an M & M into the apartment across from ours. There is no air conditioning. This means that the windows were open because Paris was having a heat wave. There was a young couple (we think American) also renting an apartment who were quite loud when they came back from partying at 2 in the morning.....obnoxious.
After the tour we parted from Pete and Jess and headed for the tour bus on our way to the Musee’ de Orsay, where the early modern period painters are exhibited. The Musee de Orsay is an old train station that has been renovated into a museum. It was going to be torn down when some people of Paris decided that a better use would be as a museum. The station itself is beautiful. The only sad thing is that there was absolutely no photography allowed. Sorry no pictures of even the inside of the train staion. We saw Manet, Monet, Gaugain, Degas, Latrec, and others in abundance. It is almost too much to see these paintings in person after seeing them so often in history books and art books. We were really interested in seeing a series of works by Monet featuring trains and train stations, but a guard informed us that the gallery was being renovated and the paintings were on loan to San Francisco. Those and most of the Degas ballerinas were not to be viewed—a few were there, but they have more that were not to be seen. We checked the cafeteria, and it was very crowded, so we went to the bus for more explorations.
After a very warm and very crowded bus ride with so many people on it that the aisles were filled, we got off on the Champs-Elyses. We walked up the famous avenue looking at people and stores and a place for lunch. We saw a beacon from home--McDonalds. We had not eaten at McD’s since before we left the states, so we did. Big Mac, Fries and a Coke at a sidewalk table on one of the world’s most famous streets. That McDonalds is making more money than you can imagine. It was so crowded that they had employees with palm computers taking the orders and giving customers numbers. We watched some young French people jump line and try to get served without their little numbers….the employees did not given in and made them go to the back of the line…. Four unhappy McDonald’s customers but many others who enjoyed the justice and fairness.
From there we walked to the Arc de Triomphe. This is a very imposing structure which most people all over the work recognize. It is also a French memorial to their war dead and the Tomb of the French Unknown Soldier. There is a twelve lane roundabout around the Arc without lane markers and complete with drivers who would just as soon gain points for getting a pedestrian as letting them cross alive. Thus, that method of dodging traffic was not really considered a viable option. Instead like law-abiding people we used the pedestrian underpass and made our way to the Arc. It is an imposing structure. The only really bad thing was that people really didn’t treat it with the solemn behavior that such a memorial should inspire. We crossed the second part of the underpass to reach the on and off bus stop. We even got to watch twelve lanes of traffic come to a sudden halt when the two motorcycle gendarmes with their white gloves held up to traffic came through leading two diplomatic cars from Niger.
Before we got off the bus at the Champ de Elysees we had seen a ton of diplomatic cars and drivers parked alongside the street. Did we mention that Wednesday is Bastille Day?
We rode the bus to the Eiffel Tower and got off. The Eiffel Tower is gigantic, and up close it proves to be an amazing structure. However, it was a very crowded structure. We walked around it, under it and so on, but chose not to stand in line (around three hours) (the line here made the one at the Louve look positively short) for the length of time it would take and then climb the stairs to the first level. We sat in the park at the base of the museum and contemplated what we wanted to do. We watched the three young soldiers patrolling the area with automatic weapons at the ready….a scary sight. There are thousands and thousands of French people in Paris for Bastille celebrations which start tonight.
So disappointed, we decided to cross the Seine and climb the hill to the Marine Museum and the Architecture Museum. We managed this, but we had to go the long way around since the short way was affected by the fireworks launching site for Bastille Day. We walked up the hill and around a block of apartment buildings to the square in front of the Museums—unfortunately, the museums were both closed on Tuesday. We knew it was a risk. Rather than walk down we rode the tour bus around the Eiffel Tower and got off where we had begun. However, there was method in our madness. We crossed the road and got on the Seine River cruise. The boat ride took us past the museums and Notre Dame and then back down stream. We got out and made our way back to the apartment to check in. After a short break, we went on a walk on the Rue de Rivoli, looking at shops and so on. When it came time, we made our way back to the apartment to meet Peter and Jess. They went to the grocery store, and we had a great home cooked pasta dinner. After dinner we did some packing and cleaning out in preparation for a move to a new room tomorrow morning.
20,084 steps today—much of it uphill
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