Tuesday 20241015
We had no plans premade for today, and elected to start by doing a little laundry. But we also booked a walking tour of the Latin Quarter for Eileen, Cheryl, and I, while Felix took off on his own to explore Pere Lachaise, the famous cemetery where so many celebrities are buried. While we were doing the laundry, I got a call that they could not find a tour guide for our 1:00 tour. Then a little later I got a call that they found someone who could do it at 2:00, and we said heck yes. We did our shopping and then purchased our Navigo cards for the Metro. These plastic cards are good for 10 rides, and can be refilled over and over. And they only cost 17 Euros! With our cards we used the Metro to get to our pickup point, and this time made sure to get there early.
Our guide, Laleh, was fantastic, and it was just for the three of us. We started in Saint Germain, then into the Latin Quarter. We entered the grounds of the Luxembourg Palace, and walked through the Luxembourg Gardens. I wish I could remember all the details Laleh gave us, as it seemed that every building had some history. Writers, artists, philosophers, etc. all hung out in the Latin Quarter. She talked about the Bullions, cafes where at one time you could get an inexpensive cup of soup and a little bread, which fed the many people who lived in quarters without a kitchen. And we saw old cafes where Hemingway would sit and write, our where Sartre sat drinking coffee. It was quite wonderful. At one church we heard about how there were nearby brothels just for the clergy, where the speciality was Dominating. I was not at all surprised by this, in fact I expected it. We finished up with a walk to Notre Dame. It is not open yet, so we could only see the external facade, but it is one of those things you have to do in Paris.
By now we were all pretty tired and footsore, so we took the Metro back to the apartment for dinner and relaxing. We are liking the Metro, but there are quirks we had to get used to. The first is that when the doors close, they close. If it takes your arm off in the process they really don’t care. Another is that the doors don’t automatically open, you have to open them, sometimes by pressing a button, other times by lifting a lever, and that is just the two types we have seen so far, there may be more. I have ridden subways in a lot of cities: Boston, San Francisco, London, Washington D.C., Amsterdam, Budapest, and now Paris. They are pretty much similar everywhere, but you have to learn the little differences in each place.
Wednesday 20241016
Today was our visit to the Louvre. We found that the #7 Metro line was a direct shot, so we took it down and met our guide John. He proved to be a marvelous guide who was clearly very knowledgeable about art and art history, and we had him all to ourselves. He noted that the Louvre was originally a fortress and had a moat, and we walked through a section of that which was inside the current structure. We started with an Egyptian Sphinx, and he noted that in Egyptian art there was no attempt made at realism because that was not what the Egyptians cared about. We then went into the classical world of Greek and Roman sculpture, where realism became important, and the Louvre had a large number of classical sculptures, but many of the “Greek” statues were actually Roman copies. But two of the more famous ones, the Venus de Milo, and the Winged Victory of Samothrace, are in fact genuinely Greek in origin. When we went to the Medieval painting we saw the paintings were not very realistic, but one by Giotto was in the transition to Renaissance humanism. We saw a very interesting Da Vinci of a Madonna with Child in a grotto, but there was also another woman and child in the same painting. We passed by the Mona Lisa, which was mobbed as always, but opposite is the largest painting in the Louvre collection: The Wedding Feast at Cana, by Paolo Veronese, which was stolen by Napoleon and brought to France. You can see the mark across the middle of the painting where his agents cut it in half to transport it. We then saw a painting called The Wreck of the Medusa, by Theodore Gericault, which is about a true story of a shipwreck off the coast of Africa that killed most of the people on board.
All told, we spent about 3 hours there, and loved every minute, but Cheryl and I had all we could take and left Eileen and Felix to their own devices and returned to the apartment. One thing a day is really my limit.
Thursday 20241017
Today is Versailles! When we were planning this trip Eileen mentioned that she had heard of bike tours for Versailles, and we all thought that would be fun. And it was. I booked the 4 of us with Fat Tire Bike Tours. We met our guide downtown next to the train station which would take us to Versailles. This was the RER, so we added to our experience of transportation options in Paris. The train trip was relatively short, about 20-25 minutes, and when we arrived at the end of the line we all got our bikes. From there we went to the market to obtain the makings of a picnic lunch. Each party was responsible for their own provisions, and Cheryl and I did not need anything so we got a coffee instead. Then it was off to the grounds.
At this point it began to rain, which we all anticipated, as the weather reports had all said to expect it, and this was a rain-or-shine booking I made months ago. Everyone had rain gear of one kind or other, but by the end of the day we were all soaked. Nonetheless, I wouldn’t have missed this for anything. The reason for riding bikes is that the grounds of Versailles are HUGE! I would never be able to walk all of what we covered by bike. We entered the grounds, and made our first stop at a place where we saw a statue of Apollo, who was a Greek god of the sun, and of course Louis XIV, the Sun King, had to make the reference. We rode around a large man-made lake in the shape of a cross, where the long axis was about a mile, and cross piece about a kilometer. At the far end there were still stands set up for the Olympics because some Equestrian events were held here.
Then we visited the Grand Trianon, which is where Louis XIV liked to hang out when he got tired of the palace. It was still fairly grand, but much smaller in scale. Just down the street a bit was the Petite Trianon, which the Queen favored. This was much more rustic, with plain stone walls and wood floors, and rather had the feel of a hunting lodge. From there we left the bikes and went walking to a fake “Peasant Village” that had been erected on the grounds as part of a back-to-nature fad at the time. Of course, no actual peasants ever lived there. Coming back from there to the Petite Trianon we stopped at the Temple of Love, with a nice statue of Cupid. And then we rode our bikes back to the storage area, and the rain turned into a downpour. While the guide put bikes away, we had a coffee, and then he took us to the entrance to the Palace of Versailles. He did not go in with us, it was a self-guided tour from this point.
We went through room after room, each lavishly decorated, and the walls covered with paintings. In one area we found an exhibition about royal persons and the horses they love, which made for a nice side trip. Then we went through the royal apartments. We saw three bedrooms, one of the king, another for the queen, and maybe the third was a guest room? The whole thing was overwhelming, and at a certain point it gets fatiguing looking at yes another rich room full of paintings. There were even more works there at one point, a lot of stuff got moved to the Louvre. But now the palace is a museum itself.
Then we went into the Hall of Mirrors, which is just as grand as you would expect. The mirrors are only on the inside wall of the room, the outer wall is windows overlooking the garden. And there is a large painting of a horse with a mane so large Cheryl joked it was a hair extension. Then we went into the Gallery of Great Battles, which had large-scale paintings of famous battles in French history, from Saint Louis up to Napoleon. Then it was off to the gift shop where Felix bought some jewelry, and then back to the train station to head for the apartment. By the time we got back we were exhausted and thoroughly soaked, but it was still a fantastic day.
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