Paris and Beyond, March April 2011, a serial report
Apr 5th, 2011, 06:43 AM
#42
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What a great TR! We will be heading to Le Marais on 29 April and will surely make use of the excellent suggestions and recommendations made here.
I made particular note of the trip from CDG to Le Marais. That is how I've planned for us to get to our apartment. We will each have only 1 carry on bag and DH will carry a "camera bag" sized bag as well. We are bit younger, but I am still nervous about the logistics of taking the RER with this being our first trip to Paris, in a long long time. I do speak French [rusty, but understandable] so I am hoping that will help with the transit to apt.
Glad to know about the ticket kiosks, had heard that they won't accept US credit cards. We arrive from Stockholm on a Friday at 18:40, so thinking lines might be bad.
Can't wait to read more!
I made particular note of the trip from CDG to Le Marais. That is how I've planned for us to get to our apartment. We will each have only 1 carry on bag and DH will carry a "camera bag" sized bag as well. We are bit younger, but I am still nervous about the logistics of taking the RER with this being our first trip to Paris, in a long long time. I do speak French [rusty, but understandable] so I am hoping that will help with the transit to apt.
Glad to know about the ticket kiosks, had heard that they won't accept US credit cards. We arrive from Stockholm on a Friday at 18:40, so thinking lines might be bad.
Can't wait to read more!
Apr 5th, 2011, 05:12 PM
#44
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Thank you Ackislander. Desperately missing Paris, your wonderful trip report is easing the pain. Less than two months until I return. Jealous about the Opéra - I planned on seeing Cosi Fan Tutti in June but waited too long to buy tickets.
Looking forward to the next installment!
Looking forward to the next installment!
Apr 5th, 2011, 11:48 PM
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Day VI Tuesday, April 5
A tourist day. D started off for the Musee Guimet but got sidetracked to a day in the Orsay, where he had not been for some time.
I had reached the point that comes in every trip where I am ready to go home. By tomorrow, I will be wanting to stay a month or a year, but Tuesday morning was a bit of a low point -- too much food, sore feet, just want to sit still for a while but too much still to see.
So we played tourist in the neighborhood. And the Marais is a great place to do that.
The City of Paris has a number of free museums, and two of them are just around the corner. We started at Victor Hugo's apartment in the Place des Vosges. Nothing is as it was when he lived there but various rooms have been reconstructed from his various residences over the years. The views over the Place are fantastic and the Chinese room is beyond belief -- and good taste. Next door, fronting on the Place des Vosges, is an ecole maternelle, an elementary school, sharing the historic arcade with the rich and corporate. They have a tiny playground in a corner of the Place, and a basketball court and hopscotch layouts in the court behind Hugo's apartment. There is a lot of bad art in the apartment but lots of excellent political cartoons as well.
Our second free museum of the day was the Musee Cognac Jay, an art museum showing the collection of the founder of La Samaritaine in a restored and very early hotel particulier, which the city restored from colllapse.
There are furnished rooms with paneling and art, paneled rooms with art but no furnishings, and rooms with art but neither paneling nor furniture. There is a charming Lawrence painting of a young girl; a bizarre, strangely cleaned Rembrandt; a perhaps great Boucher had it not been damaged in the past; and a lot of charming soft porn of girls surprised by naughty men. We had a long and wonderful conversation with one of the guards, a young Italian, about Canaletto and the English and the way the French and the Italians feel about their art.
We had a late lunch at the apartment, and I added a new layer of moleskin to my blisters before going out to rue St Antoine. We were on the way to Monoprix but decided to pop into the Hotel Sully for the noted architectural bookstore. Well, all thoughts of commerce briefly ceased. The forecourt is heavily restored but very, very attractive.. The bookstore is in the area between the forecourt and the rear court, and it has an amazing ceiling of heavy wooden beams, all apparently with their original Renaissance paint. They are worth some time. The rear court contains a garden with rather silly modern sculputes, but the wall of the main building, behind you as you enter, is in good but relatively unrestored condition. The big and rather famous secret is that if you go through the door on the far right of the garde, what looks like a passage through a complex of buildings turns out to be a door directly into the Place des Vosges! The buildings have one architecture on the front facing the garden, a different architecture on the buildings facing the Place!
So to complete a day of neighborhood touring, I stopped in to the Church of St Louis-St Paul. It was a Jesuit church, modeled on Il Gesu in Rome, but of course on a smaller scale, There were no sculptures on the ceiling to represent Protestants going to Hell while Catholics were taken up to heaven, though there had been a similar painting in one of the house museums today, in which one insistent person was pointing out with great vigor to St Peter where his name was in fact in the Book!
In the evening we walked to Ste Chapelle for a concert, eating a decent jarret aux lentilles on the way. Ste Chapelle is a great place to go to a concert since there are no lines and you can look around and photograph with almost no people, but it is a lousy place to hear music. We heard Mozart and Weber clarinet quintets, and the poor clarinetist had to contend with about five levels of reverberation. Am I sorry I didn't go? Absolutely not!
We walked back to the apartment -- I now have multiple layers of moleskin -- stopping at Bistro l'Oulette to make a reservation for dinner on Wednesday (and scaring the hell out of them by making them think we wanted to eat at 11 PM). And so, home to bed!
A tourist day. D started off for the Musee Guimet but got sidetracked to a day in the Orsay, where he had not been for some time.
I had reached the point that comes in every trip where I am ready to go home. By tomorrow, I will be wanting to stay a month or a year, but Tuesday morning was a bit of a low point -- too much food, sore feet, just want to sit still for a while but too much still to see.
So we played tourist in the neighborhood. And the Marais is a great place to do that.
The City of Paris has a number of free museums, and two of them are just around the corner. We started at Victor Hugo's apartment in the Place des Vosges. Nothing is as it was when he lived there but various rooms have been reconstructed from his various residences over the years. The views over the Place are fantastic and the Chinese room is beyond belief -- and good taste. Next door, fronting on the Place des Vosges, is an ecole maternelle, an elementary school, sharing the historic arcade with the rich and corporate. They have a tiny playground in a corner of the Place, and a basketball court and hopscotch layouts in the court behind Hugo's apartment. There is a lot of bad art in the apartment but lots of excellent political cartoons as well.
Our second free museum of the day was the Musee Cognac Jay, an art museum showing the collection of the founder of La Samaritaine in a restored and very early hotel particulier, which the city restored from colllapse.
There are furnished rooms with paneling and art, paneled rooms with art but no furnishings, and rooms with art but neither paneling nor furniture. There is a charming Lawrence painting of a young girl; a bizarre, strangely cleaned Rembrandt; a perhaps great Boucher had it not been damaged in the past; and a lot of charming soft porn of girls surprised by naughty men. We had a long and wonderful conversation with one of the guards, a young Italian, about Canaletto and the English and the way the French and the Italians feel about their art.
We had a late lunch at the apartment, and I added a new layer of moleskin to my blisters before going out to rue St Antoine. We were on the way to Monoprix but decided to pop into the Hotel Sully for the noted architectural bookstore. Well, all thoughts of commerce briefly ceased. The forecourt is heavily restored but very, very attractive.. The bookstore is in the area between the forecourt and the rear court, and it has an amazing ceiling of heavy wooden beams, all apparently with their original Renaissance paint. They are worth some time. The rear court contains a garden with rather silly modern sculputes, but the wall of the main building, behind you as you enter, is in good but relatively unrestored condition. The big and rather famous secret is that if you go through the door on the far right of the garde, what looks like a passage through a complex of buildings turns out to be a door directly into the Place des Vosges! The buildings have one architecture on the front facing the garden, a different architecture on the buildings facing the Place!
So to complete a day of neighborhood touring, I stopped in to the Church of St Louis-St Paul. It was a Jesuit church, modeled on Il Gesu in Rome, but of course on a smaller scale, There were no sculptures on the ceiling to represent Protestants going to Hell while Catholics were taken up to heaven, though there had been a similar painting in one of the house museums today, in which one insistent person was pointing out with great vigor to St Peter where his name was in fact in the Book!
In the evening we walked to Ste Chapelle for a concert, eating a decent jarret aux lentilles on the way. Ste Chapelle is a great place to go to a concert since there are no lines and you can look around and photograph with almost no people, but it is a lousy place to hear music. We heard Mozart and Weber clarinet quintets, and the poor clarinetist had to contend with about five levels of reverberation. Am I sorry I didn't go? Absolutely not!
We walked back to the apartment -- I now have multiple layers of moleskin -- stopping at Bistro l'Oulette to make a reservation for dinner on Wednesday (and scaring the hell out of them by making them think we wanted to eat at 11 PM). And so, home to bed!
Apr 5th, 2011, 11:55 PM
#48
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A couple of notes.
ellen75005, taking the RER beyond Chatelet would be fine. We are thinking of taking the bus to the Ile de la Cite on the way back and getting the RER from Notre Dame. Or we may go to Invalides and take the Air France bus.
dlejhunt, our friend D bought the Opera tickets online, a truly strange but ultimately successful experience. It was an especially bad experience for him because he is a major, major computer guru, so he excpected things to work better. The file to print the tickets should have been a pdf but had a different file extension. He corresponded with the site administrators, who told hime just to change the file extension but with no apology or explanation. It worked.
I bought our concert tickets from Classictiks, a German web site, and it worked like a well-oiled machine.
Only two more days of this as we are going tomorrow to visit friends and relatives in Scotland and England.
ellen75005, taking the RER beyond Chatelet would be fine. We are thinking of taking the bus to the Ile de la Cite on the way back and getting the RER from Notre Dame. Or we may go to Invalides and take the Air France bus.
dlejhunt, our friend D bought the Opera tickets online, a truly strange but ultimately successful experience. It was an especially bad experience for him because he is a major, major computer guru, so he excpected things to work better. The file to print the tickets should have been a pdf but had a different file extension. He corresponded with the site administrators, who told hime just to change the file extension but with no apology or explanation. It worked.
I bought our concert tickets from Classictiks, a German web site, and it worked like a well-oiled machine.
Only two more days of this as we are going tomorrow to visit friends and relatives in Scotland and England.
Apr 6th, 2011, 05:45 AM
#51
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I am really enjoying this report. We always choose to stay in the Marais and have done the majority of the things that you are writing about. I agree with everyone above; have just visited and want to go back again asap.
Apr 6th, 2011, 10:21 PM
#52
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Day VII Wednesday, April 6
The last full day of Paris. Il fait tres, tres beau. 76F by midafternoon, never a hint of a shower, a pleasant breeze but no wind.
D headed off on a mission to find dried mushrooms in bulk. Naturally the place where his wife bought them in October, 2009, didn't have as many as she wanted, so he began a search that lead him -- and D does not have much French -- from well up toward Montmarte to Izrael, on Francois Miron near us. Still only got one big bag, though lots of little bags were available at high prices. Trader Joe's has stopped selling their bags. Is there a world-wide morel plague? He also went to a celebrated affineur on the I'le St Louis but decided that the prices for the cheeses he wanted were too expensive if the famous Logan airport beagle found them and they were confiscated. Tant pis! So he went to the same museums that we went to yesterday.
We had a most interesting day, mostly in the northeastern part of the city. We took the increasingly packed 96 bus out rue Oberkampf through Menilmontant and Belleville, finally climbing the great hill that I suppose is the origin of the "montant" part of the name..
This is a very diverse area, with our fellow passengers of many colors and shades of colors and many modes of dress. I think the most colorful and attractive were probably Tunisians, but that isn't based on anything in particular. The shops were also very diverse, and we were interested to see that "oriental" shops dealt mostly in Greek, Turkish, Lebanese, and Egyptian goods, while shops that had Chinese and Vietnamese items had "Asie" on their signs. But there were some shops that dealt in everything.
At Rue des Pyrenees, we abandoned the 96 and took the 26 to Stalingrad-Jaures. We just missed a bus, but another came along within minutes that was practically empty. This was useful because it had grown pretty warm. The bus skirts the bottom of the Parc des Buttes Chaumont, and it was full of young people "laying out", as Southerners say. I asked a stall holder for directions to the Canal St Martin, and he was able to understand me and I him.
We walked half the canal from the northern, unfashionable end to the place where it makes a turn to the left. There was a packed cafe just as we got on the path, not an American or guidebook in sight, and the banks were lined all the way with young people on their lunch breaks catching the amazing temperatures. Malheuresement, all the young women remained decently clad. Well, almost. The footpath is rough cobblestones and you have to detour onto the road to get around the locks, but this is a very, very rewarding walk, and I strongly recommend you take it before it is gentrified out of existence.
We went into the garden, Jardin Villemin on the right bank just before the turn. What was blooming? What was not is a better question. Everything from daffodils to things we won't have on Nantucket until the first week in June: daffodils, forget me nots, pansies and other bedding plants, poppies, anemonies, the remains of tulips, fritillaria imperalis, rosemary, lilac, oleander, mock orange, and ornamental cherries in great profusion. No roses, no lavender.
We had delicious Thai salads and a huge bottle of Badoit at Madame Shangs at the bend. My wife could watch the garder (one young woman rolled in her own wooden bench)
and I could watch the street and the cafe across the corner.
The picturesque footbridges across the canal were closed, so we crossed at the next road bridge. On our left was the Hotel du Nord, the famous location in the movie of the same name. We rounded the corner on our way to Hopital St Louis, a building by the same architect as the Place des Vosges. It was build 1607-10 as a plague hospital, and it is vast and confusing to get around since it is still in use as a hospital. But persistance is worth it because you eventually find yourself in and inner courtyard about the size of the green part of the Place des Vosges. This was, of course, full of families, friends, school groups, and medical staff enjoying the weather. We saw two women doctors in white coats, one with a beautiful scarf knotted jauntily around her throat.
In the meantime, our plans had changed. My wife was yearning on a day like this for the Tuileries, about as great a contrast as you could imagine, so we abandoned the second part of the canal, found our way with some difficulty out of the hospital, and caught a 75 toward Pont Neuf. On the way, the driver pulled up to a stop between Republique and Beaubourg and made us all get off the bus so he could go on break! Ten or twelve mostly elderly passengers stood at the shelter until the next bus arrived, ten minutes or so later.
The new bus rejected our tickets because you can't use a tranfer on the same bus, but I spoke to the driver, "Normalement . . . ." Fortunately he spoke pretty good English because this was beyond my French, and we continued on to the Louvre. We walked thtrough the courtyards from the east end, then out past Pei's pyramid and on into the Tuileries. It was of course packed with more people, young and old, enjoying the sun, and the beds were bedded with bedding plants. We sat under the trees having cold drinks and watching the crowds until 6ish. We had a lovely conversation with a couple from Newfoundland on their first visit to Paris. They appreciated the weather even more than we did.
The Metro was packed after some problem at La Defense, and we let a couple of trains go by before packing ourselves into the last car, experiencing minor intimacy with our fellow passengers, though lots of people got out at Chatelet and the Hotel de Ville. WE stopped at the G20 supermarket in St Paul (more wine than food) for coffee and were soon home with our feet up.
That night we ate a good meal but proved to me that you shouldn't eat twice at the same place on the same trip. Our wonderful waiter (he looked like the bald villain in Diva") was not there, the kitchen helper had not shown up, and it just wasn't fun.
On todsy to Scotland and England to visit family and friends, all boring to others.
Next year, more of the 19th, 20th, and outer 10th!
I will be home in a week and will answer questions and make a few summary points in another post. Thanks to all of you who have been so very kind.
Au revoir! Bonne journee a tous!
The last full day of Paris. Il fait tres, tres beau. 76F by midafternoon, never a hint of a shower, a pleasant breeze but no wind.
D headed off on a mission to find dried mushrooms in bulk. Naturally the place where his wife bought them in October, 2009, didn't have as many as she wanted, so he began a search that lead him -- and D does not have much French -- from well up toward Montmarte to Izrael, on Francois Miron near us. Still only got one big bag, though lots of little bags were available at high prices. Trader Joe's has stopped selling their bags. Is there a world-wide morel plague? He also went to a celebrated affineur on the I'le St Louis but decided that the prices for the cheeses he wanted were too expensive if the famous Logan airport beagle found them and they were confiscated. Tant pis! So he went to the same museums that we went to yesterday.
We had a most interesting day, mostly in the northeastern part of the city. We took the increasingly packed 96 bus out rue Oberkampf through Menilmontant and Belleville, finally climbing the great hill that I suppose is the origin of the "montant" part of the name..
This is a very diverse area, with our fellow passengers of many colors and shades of colors and many modes of dress. I think the most colorful and attractive were probably Tunisians, but that isn't based on anything in particular. The shops were also very diverse, and we were interested to see that "oriental" shops dealt mostly in Greek, Turkish, Lebanese, and Egyptian goods, while shops that had Chinese and Vietnamese items had "Asie" on their signs. But there were some shops that dealt in everything.
At Rue des Pyrenees, we abandoned the 96 and took the 26 to Stalingrad-Jaures. We just missed a bus, but another came along within minutes that was practically empty. This was useful because it had grown pretty warm. The bus skirts the bottom of the Parc des Buttes Chaumont, and it was full of young people "laying out", as Southerners say. I asked a stall holder for directions to the Canal St Martin, and he was able to understand me and I him.
We walked half the canal from the northern, unfashionable end to the place where it makes a turn to the left. There was a packed cafe just as we got on the path, not an American or guidebook in sight, and the banks were lined all the way with young people on their lunch breaks catching the amazing temperatures. Malheuresement, all the young women remained decently clad. Well, almost. The footpath is rough cobblestones and you have to detour onto the road to get around the locks, but this is a very, very rewarding walk, and I strongly recommend you take it before it is gentrified out of existence.
We went into the garden, Jardin Villemin on the right bank just before the turn. What was blooming? What was not is a better question. Everything from daffodils to things we won't have on Nantucket until the first week in June: daffodils, forget me nots, pansies and other bedding plants, poppies, anemonies, the remains of tulips, fritillaria imperalis, rosemary, lilac, oleander, mock orange, and ornamental cherries in great profusion. No roses, no lavender.
We had delicious Thai salads and a huge bottle of Badoit at Madame Shangs at the bend. My wife could watch the garder (one young woman rolled in her own wooden bench)
and I could watch the street and the cafe across the corner.
The picturesque footbridges across the canal were closed, so we crossed at the next road bridge. On our left was the Hotel du Nord, the famous location in the movie of the same name. We rounded the corner on our way to Hopital St Louis, a building by the same architect as the Place des Vosges. It was build 1607-10 as a plague hospital, and it is vast and confusing to get around since it is still in use as a hospital. But persistance is worth it because you eventually find yourself in and inner courtyard about the size of the green part of the Place des Vosges. This was, of course, full of families, friends, school groups, and medical staff enjoying the weather. We saw two women doctors in white coats, one with a beautiful scarf knotted jauntily around her throat.
In the meantime, our plans had changed. My wife was yearning on a day like this for the Tuileries, about as great a contrast as you could imagine, so we abandoned the second part of the canal, found our way with some difficulty out of the hospital, and caught a 75 toward Pont Neuf. On the way, the driver pulled up to a stop between Republique and Beaubourg and made us all get off the bus so he could go on break! Ten or twelve mostly elderly passengers stood at the shelter until the next bus arrived, ten minutes or so later.
The new bus rejected our tickets because you can't use a tranfer on the same bus, but I spoke to the driver, "Normalement . . . ." Fortunately he spoke pretty good English because this was beyond my French, and we continued on to the Louvre. We walked thtrough the courtyards from the east end, then out past Pei's pyramid and on into the Tuileries. It was of course packed with more people, young and old, enjoying the sun, and the beds were bedded with bedding plants. We sat under the trees having cold drinks and watching the crowds until 6ish. We had a lovely conversation with a couple from Newfoundland on their first visit to Paris. They appreciated the weather even more than we did.
The Metro was packed after some problem at La Defense, and we let a couple of trains go by before packing ourselves into the last car, experiencing minor intimacy with our fellow passengers, though lots of people got out at Chatelet and the Hotel de Ville. WE stopped at the G20 supermarket in St Paul (more wine than food) for coffee and were soon home with our feet up.
That night we ate a good meal but proved to me that you shouldn't eat twice at the same place on the same trip. Our wonderful waiter (he looked like the bald villain in Diva") was not there, the kitchen helper had not shown up, and it just wasn't fun.
On todsy to Scotland and England to visit family and friends, all boring to others.
Next year, more of the 19th, 20th, and outer 10th!
I will be home in a week and will answer questions and make a few summary points in another post. Thanks to all of you who have been so very kind.
Au revoir! Bonne journee a tous!
Apr 7th, 2011, 03:06 AM
#54
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Great stuff, brother dear! I stumbled on you by accident--what you can't email this great stuff to your sister? Sounds like you had almost as much fun as I did in Phila! ;-))
Hope you had/will have a nice trip home.
Hope you had/will have a nice trip home.
Apr 7th, 2011, 08:17 PM
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Thank you Ackislander, I've really enjoyed this report. And thanks for the tip on the ticket website. I was unable to find the Opéra tickets that I wanted but did find tickets for the same night to a Vivaldi concert at St. Chapelle. Though I love Vivaldi I passed because my daughter had little interest and I was hesitant after your less-than-glowing review of the acoustics. In any case, I'll hopefully catch some classical the next evening at one of the venues of the Fête de la musique.
Looking forward to your NEXT review! I have always stayed in the 7th but am going to visit the Marais next year (although I will have one night this trip near Gare Bercy, I'm not expecting much!).
Looking forward to your NEXT review! I have always stayed in the 7th but am going to visit the Marais next year (although I will have one night this trip near Gare Bercy, I'm not expecting much!).
