Paris Landscapes

Does your phone have a "landscape mode"?

Here are 3 landscapes I took in Paris.

Final Days in Paris

Sunday was an eventful (and exhausting) day for us! 

In the morning we did another walking tour from our "Paris Walking Tours" book.  This one started at the Paris Natural History Museum and the neighbouring Jardin de Plantes.  We didn't go into the museum but I think if we visit Paris again we'll make an effort to.  There are actually 3 or 4 separate museums including the famous Grande Galerie de l'évolution (in the distant background in the photo below) and some massive tropical rainforest greenhouses.  The garden itself is spectacular enough, here is Sonya coveting all the plants.

Later we visited the Pantheon and the neighbouring Church of Saint-Étienne-du-Mont.

The pantheon houses the remains of many famous Frenchies, and you can climb up the dome and get a spectacular view of Paris, however by this time in our trip we're pretty much burned out on climbing stairs.

Here is the view of the Eiffel Tower from the square in front of the Pantheon.

We aborted our walk when it started to downpour, and ducked into a covered patio.

This is the third downpour we've experienced on this trip, and the third time we've escaped into a nearby restaurant.  This was Tour de France day, however, so the consequences were a bit more serious!  Fortunately it cleared up and by the time the cyclists arrived the roads were dry.

We watched the Caravan again (our third caravan).  For some reason there was no swag in the Paris version of the Caravan, which kind of bummed me out, but Sonya was glad because there would be more room in our luggage for shoes on our return trip to Canada.

We went downtown to watch the final tour - they do a big loop at the end of the course (actually 9 loops of the loop) so we figured we could see the cyclists for more than the 20 seconds we saw them on each of the previous 2 stages.  By the time we got downtown it was packed!!! and the police had shut down access to many areas for crowd control.  So this was our view:

Can you spot the yellow jersey?  We watched 2 laps and then had to leave to go to our concert - Vivaldi 4 seasons at the Sainte-Chapelle - spectacular!!!

The next day (Monday) - another walking tour!!!  This one started at the Louvre.

At the start of the tour - the Gothic church - Saint-Germain-l'Auxerrois.

The Louvre, crowded as ever.  I can't imagine standing in these kinds of lineups (although it was by total fluke that we ended up with our "skip-the-line" tickets).

The Place de la Concorde, at one end of the Av. des Champs-Élysées, with its Egyptian obelisk.

And at the other end, L'Arc de Triomphe de l'Etoile (it is MUCH MUCH bigger than you expect).  You can climb to the top for a spectacular view of Paris, but by this time we're pretty much burned out on climbing stairs.

Later on we were doing some shopping, and when we turned the corner ...  the Finger!!!

A nice way to finish off our day!!!  (You can climb to the top for a spectacular view of Paris ...  etc.)

Tuesday was our last day in Paris!!!  We were flying home Wednesday so had booked a room at an airport hotel Tuesday night.)  So of course we decided to finish off with yet another walking tour!

We walked past the National Assembly, patrolled by a bunch more machine guns.

This is the Hôtel des Invalides, built for the veterans of France's wars.  The rules were very strict - the veterans had to attend mass twice daily - and they had to work sewing uniforms and probably making souvenirs for tourists, so I feel it really should be called the Sweatshop des Invalides.

Have you ever been concerned that your courtyard contains insufficient cannons?

Next on our itinerary, some other landmark, I can't remember what it's called ...

... however it has 1872 stairs, and you can get a spectacular view of Paris!

Here is George Washington, shouting at windmills.

Finally the Freedom Flame, a gift from the USA, but it has become a tribute to Princess Diana, who died in Paris in the tunnel underneath where Sonya is standing in this picture.

Before we took the train to the airport, we took one final walk through the Luxemburg Garden, our favourite garden in Paris, and featured in the latest John Wick movie!  (I watched the beginning of this movie on the flight home, my recommendation is don't bother.)  Here is one of the modern (or contemporary) statues in the garden.

As I write this final blog entry, we are home in Canada, dealing with jet lag, laundry, and a vastly overgrown garden!

Wandering about Paris

For the past couple of days we've mostly wandered about Paris.

(Friday) We took the metro to the Sacré Coeur (Sacred Heart) and climbed the 300 steps to the viewpoint in the dome.  (The cathedral is already on the top of a hill - the highest point in Paris - so we had already climbed 300 steps even before we entered the church!)

Here is Sonya trolling an influencer with Sacré Coeur in the background.

And here are some views from the dome.

Note both the Eiffel Tower and the Finger dominating the view.

Afterwards, lunch!  This is a few blocks from the throngs of tourists around the Sacré Coeur.

We did a bunch of walking and shopping in the afternoon, and we had dinner in the courtyard of the famous Odeon theatre.

The next day (Saturday) we started with a walking tour of our very own neighbourhood.  Who knew it was so famous!  In fact this was our very first view of Paris, emerging from the metro at the Vavin station (our apartment is on Rue Vavin) last Wednesday.  Le Dôme Café and  La Rotonde are very famous cafe's in the history of Paris art and intellectualism, frequented by artists, writers and philosophers too numerous to mention.

We visited the Square Yves Klein, dedicated to Yves Klein who apparently invented the colour Blue.

The Fontaine des Quatre-Parties-du-Monde in the Jardin des Grands-Explorateurs (near the Luxemburg Gardens).

We visited the Church of Saint Sulpice, which starred in The Da Vinci Code, so now we have to watch the movie.

Inside it's quite spectacular, possibly one of my favourite churches.

In the afternoon I visited the catacombs, and Sonya went shoe shopping.

The catacombs were originally limestone quarries under the city - the limestone was used to build the buildings of Paris.  Back in the day it was a free-for-all, and no one really knew the extent of the mines.  Once they started collapsing the King ordered an inquest and they filled in the quarries, leaving most of the tunnels.  The tour started with a fairly length walk through these tunnels, about 20 metres underground.

When the cemeteries in Paris started to become a health hazard (beer would spoil in 20 minutes in the proximity of a cemetery) they were empties of bodies and the bones moved to the catacombs.  Over 6 million bodies were moved, and the bones stacked in the tunnels.

One the way home we walked through the Montparnasse Cemetery - guess that is dominating the skyline!

Impression Paris

We weren't sure what to expect of Paris, because we've alternately read (and heard) that Paris is one of the most interesting cities to visit, at the same time it's also one of the most over-rated.  And I've read many articles that Europe is currently overrun with many more tourists than usual and France is even considering limiting tourism!

For the most part we haven't experienced that.  Other than a few sites - the Louvre, Sainte-Chapelle and Sacré-Cœur, where the air was so thick with tourists you could hardly breathe - Paris has been great.  There are lots of tourists for sure, but not more than you would expect, and certainly not more than the city can handle.  We haven't been to the Eiffel Tower yet, or the Arc de Triomphe (we're going to cover those in a walking tour on Monday), and I expect the Tour de France finale will be a gong show, but so far the level of tourism in Paris has been a pleasant surprise.

I've also read that the garbage strike is still on and the city is overrun with garbage!  Something we also haven't seen.  According to our guide from our walking tour a couple of days ago, there are two types of garbage service in Paris - municipal and private - and it's the municipal service that's on strike.  I guess our area (and every area we've walked so far) is covered by the private service, because we've seen no issues with garbage at all.

On the topic of garbage, the service doesn't come house-to-house like in North America, rather you drop off your garbage and recycling at communal neighbourhood bins, and then the trucks just pickup from these common bins.

Here is Sonya in Bonneville sorting glass from the rest of our recycling.

Each bin sits on top of a giant cube which is underground, and the truck lifts up the whole contraption by the little metal connectors protruding out the top of the bin.  Fascinating to watch!  (I thought so Sonya wasn't so interested.)

Two other things we haven't experienced are the riots (I haven't read anything in the news recently so they may have dies down for awhile, and I think they never made it into any of the tourist districts anyways) and the famous European Heat Wave.  We had one day in Bonneville where the temp was up to 36C, and many days where it is hot (but not HOT), but here in Paris it is very pleasant.  16 or 17C in the mornings and evenings, and it gets up to the high 20's during the day.

This afternoon (Saturday) I'm going to see the Catacombs (most useful google review - "Have you ever been concerned that your underground visit will have insufficient bones?") and Sonya is going shoe shopping.

Bonneville to Paris

 On Tuesday we cleaned up our house, packed, and our neighbour Claire dropped us at the Bonneville train station.

The board didn't list a platform for our train, so we waited on Platform B (the only platform) for the first leg of our trip (Bonneville to Bellegarde, where we would transfer to a Paris train).  Waited in vain ... 11:30 came and went and no sign of our train.  When it disappeared from the board we panicked a bit, but we managed to book tickets for a bit later in the day (4 legs instead of 2, and arriving in Paris 2 hours later), and we also managed to get a partial refund for the second leg of our original trip.  During this process we found that our Bellegarde tickets we actually for the BUS not the TRAIN, d'oh!  Sonya says she will start checking our tickets from now on!

Once we got into Paris I punched in the wrong address into google maps, so it took a bit longer than necessary to get into our apartment, but after a day of mis-adventure we settled in to a lovely but quirky Paris apartment!

We are close to the Jardin du Luxembourg, a lovely garden next to the senate (? we think ? - the building is surrounded by police with machine guns ...).  On Wednesday we walked through the garden on the way to a walking tour.

Off in the distance, the Cathédrale Notre-Dame under construction.  (Fun fact - we asked our guide (the walking tour guide) about this and she said the Parisians don't really care about the Notre-Dame fire, "There are too many churches already!")

The start of our walking tour - it's a "foodie" tour with many stops to eat and drink, here is Sonya learning the finer points about French tomatoes.

Breakfast - snails (NOT escargots) with a carafe of wine, two kinds of cheese, and a baguette.  Home-made mayo for dipping, and seaweed for cleansing the palette.  (And a tomato of course.)

Walking the Paris version of the NYC HighLine.

After the walking tour (we did a LOT of walking, eating and drinking) we ended up at the Centre Pompidou, pictured below.

Among other things this contained the Modern Art Museum, which included a special retrospective of the architect Norman Foster.  So we decided to give it a go!

Here is the view from the top of the Centre Pompidou.

Paris is very flat, and most buildings are 5-story apartments.  There are just a very few buildings that stick up.  The tall skinny building on the left, next to the tower (the tower is close by so looks taller than it is) is some butt-ugly building nicknamed "The Finger".  Apparently there is some famous Parisian (maybe the president?) who has has his coffee there every morning because that's the only place in Paris where he can't see "The Finger"!  The other skinny building is of course the Eiffel Tower.

The Norman Foster exhibit was very interesting!  (So interesting I forgot to take any pictures!)  There were 2 floors of art - "Modern" and "Contemporary" (you explain to me the difference).  We took a look through the "Modern" but skipped the "Contemporary", by this time we had been doing a LOT of walking already.

Is this Modern or Contemporary?

Heading home, a view of the typical Paris architecture.

Apparently Paris is designed with tall buildings (these 5 story apartments are everywhere) and long, open wide streets in order to help crush the next rebellion.  No narrow little back alleys for the rebels to hide.

Paris sure loves it's statues!  Most are fairly traditional, but this one is more modern (or contemporary).

Day 2 (Thursday) is the Louvre visit!  We had "skip the line" tickets to get in.  (This is the line, the photo doesn't do it justice but it's the longest line I've ever seen!  And once this line gets inside, you just join an equally long line INSIDE to buy tickets.)  Officially we had a "30 minute tour" but the entire tour was skipping the line and walking into the museum.  That's our group on the left.

Once inside we joined jet another line!

We didn't get that close due to the crowds, but luckily I'm tall enough to see over the crowds, and I have a pretty good zoom on my camera.

The Louvre is HUGE, we spent maybe 2.5 hours total and saw maybe 20% of the museum.  As wella s all the art, the museum itself is incredible.  This is the room where they house the crown jewels.

A couple of shout outs - Lady Liberty leading the revoluion:

And the Wreck of the Medusa:

Too many paintings, including five Da Vinci's!  Afterwards we wandered over to the Jardin du Palais-Royal and put our feet up.

(Note for Louvre visitors - once you exit the museum to actually end up in a huge underground mall that it's almost impossible to escape.  We spent maybe 20 minutes walking through the mall before we found the exit.)

There are lots of gardens in Paris, and they are all well used by locals!

We found a nice restaurant for lunch, highly recommended if you are in Paris - on the Île Saint-Louis and abut a 30 minute walk from the Louvre - https://anysetiersduroy.com/

Another view of the Notre-Dame.

Next we visited the Sainte-Chapelle - built in only 7 years apparently!

15 towering stained glass windows telling the stories from Genesis to Armageddon.  On Sunday we are going to see a Vivaldi concert here (4 Seasons) - how incredible is that!  (After we watch the Tour de France finale of course.)

One the way home - a view of "The Finger" from our local park.

Friday we are going to see the Sacré-Cœur Basilica and climb the 300 steps to the roof of its dome!