Paris passport control and customs seemed a formality at best, almost humorous in its inconsequential nature. Our only unsettling moments came as we tried to hookup with our Paris transport. The instructions of where to meet were unclear, but Debby's French saved the day.
The first day in Paris was coldish and wet, but then we had 16 days of near-continuous sunshine. Who knew? It made our trip a great bargain at its off-season price. Debby's fluent mastery of French and Italian are amazing after so many years. Meeting her cousin in Paris and her life-long friends in the Venice area made the experience all the more personal. Debby also is responsible for most of the pictures that illustrate this report.
Our Paris hotel was 4-star and located south of the Eiffel Tower in the 15th arrondissement municipal, close to the river and a Metro station. We had a nice view of the river, and also the roof of a new mall. Malls seem to be unusual in the part of France we toured, so this one seems almost a novelty. As someone who avoids malls usually, France offered a refreshing change from home. Debby, on the other hand, visited the new mall ;).
We took a bus tour of Paris the next morning, to set our bearings with a good overview and to practice our tourist act.
Debby is a fan of Paris residential architecture, with their tall windows and wrought-iron railings. These apartment buildings are typically over 200 years old. I commented on the shuttered windows as reminding me of abandoned buildings at home, but Debby informed me that it is the Parisian custom to shutter windows when going away for a while.
Paris traffic is no joke. We appreciated our big bus and experienced driver.
The Seine is a working river, with constant commercial traffic and tourist traffic skillfully avoiding each other (but nowhere near as chaotic as the Venice canals).
Once we had done the tours, we were good to go exploring on our own. We didn't finish the morning tour, but asked to get off at the Orsay. We planned to meet Debby's cousin there the next day, so wanted to check out the area. Then we went back to the 5th just south of Notre Dame to find a lunch spot.
We had been advised not to use the RER, a second underground train system that connects Paris with its suburbs. I don't know if this was just to keep tourists out of commuting traffic, or if there truly were a greater crime problem on the RER than the Metro. In any case, the RER was our best bet, so we took it with no incident, getting off at a stop near Notre Dame.
The left bank by Notre Dame is lined with bookseller kiosks, quaint commercial enterprises for a modern city.
A current fad in Paris, which is spreading to other cities, is to line the rails of foot bridges with old brass padlocks. The keys are then tossed into the river. It signifies undying love of the adolescent variety. This adds a weight burden that could become troublesome in extremes, so some day they may have the task of removing them. My advice: don't do it one at a time. (Actually, we understand they regularly replace the bridge panels in their entirety, locks and all.)
We took the Metro back to our hotel, but failed to write down the hotel address or phone number. Doh. So we got off two stops too soon. We went to a creperie for Crepes Suzette and coffee, and to give Debby a chance to practice her French. A waitress there used her cell phone to call our tour guide and leave a message that two tourists 'of a certain age' had stumbled into their shop lost and dazed (I'm jazzing this up a little for effect).
The waitress and owner finally figured out where we were supposed to be and told us to go two more stops. We arrived back at the hotel to our guide's refrain 'Oh, you are the ones!'. (I suspected she would like to add 'I expected as much.'). It was our first misstep that would contribute to our elevated recognition status on the trip. This was not a guide one wanted to get off on the wrong foot with.
The next morning we set out to learn about the Metro, to hit a couple of museums, and to hook up with Jenny for lunch. We would meet at the rhinoceros (Parisians will know where this is.) We had visited a Miro exhibit in Seattle just a month before the trip, which peaked our interest in modern art. So we planned to orient our brief Paris stay toward more modern art at the Orangerie (Monet and his lilypads) and the Orsay (Van Gogh exhibit and other expressionists). We skipped the Louvre and Versailles.
The Metro is simple and fast. For every route, one only needs to memorize the route end points and which end point you want to travel towards. Then you follow the Metro signs for that name until you see a train with that name on its front engine. Get on and then get off when your stop arrives, or when a transfer point to another line is reached (here one needs to switch to a new set of endpoints).
Musicians, mostly playing jazz standards, would often accompany us, playing sweetly for a few coins. We liked this practice. By the time we completed our first transfer we were convinced we were Metro experts. As we approached our stop and prepared to get off, the train slowed as expected, then sped up and breezed through our station. Whaaat? We began to offer hypotheses to each other as the train blew through the next stop also. Then Debby, through her French antennae, determined that a Mr. Big was on a state visit from China and several Metro stops were being boycotted for security reasons. This had been mentioned briefly on the prior day's tour, to explain all the Chinese flags on the major boulevards. We would later encounter soldiers with automatic weapons on the streets. It must have been The Mr. BIG.
No harm was done, although this was a nasty slider to throw at novice Metro visitors. If Debby hadn't understood a little of the Parisian chatter, we would have been totally perplexed. Our new stop was next to the Orangerie, so we reversed the planned order of visits and did the Monet exhibit first. Then we walked across the river to the Orsay. By buying both tickets at the Orangerie, we avoided a big line at the Orsay. Thank you, Mr. BIG.
The Orsay is housed in the former Paris train station. The Van Gogh exhibit was on the first floor and other impressionist artists on the second floor. The lines were so long and the exhibit so extensive that we only had time for the Van Gogh and will have to come back some day.
The rhinoceros did indeed produce Jenny, although she was a little late, also thanks to Mr. BIG. We walked to one of her favored restaurants in her neighborhood (6th I think), and had a nice visit where she and Debby caught up on details of her situation and family.
After we said our good-byes, we hopped on the Metro and headed for Le Marais, the 18th century home of Parisian aristocracy that would in the late 19th Century became the Paris Jewish Quarter. Le Marais was later the scene of the July 1942 Operation Spring Breeze, the roundup of Parisian Jews by the Paris police, who were at the time Vichy puppets of the Gestapo. Some 13 thousand Jews were collected in a Paris velodrome, then were sent to Auschwitz. After several decades passed, the French apologized. There is still a notable Jewish presence in Le Marais, as other Jews were attracted there after the war. We had a snack in a restaurant there.
We took the Metro back to the hotel without a hitch, arriving in time to go out with the entire group to a nearby restaurant. Group meals are almost always not great and this was ungreater than most - meat overcooked, service abominable. On the positive side, buffet breakfasts in the hotel restaurant were high quality and in an enjoyable setting. The next day after a nice breakfast, we all lined up, waved goodbye to Paris, and boarded the bus to Beaune.
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