Paris Part Quatre: Au Revoir

After a couple days of rain I was so happy to see sunshine the next day on Wednesday for our trip to Versailles. We hadn’t bought tickets for the train as we were able to get in the doors with our metro passes, but on our way there I was getting nervous that we would get stopped at the train station (they have these electric doors that you have to enter your ticket to open to get off the platform) but we lucked out and the electric doors weren’t working and we went right through saving a few bucks. Once we got to the village of Versailles instead of heading straight in we took a detour and went food shopping at Les Halles du Marché Notre Dame which doesn’t have anything to do with Notre Dame Cathedral, but is a large food market. 

It took us a while to decide what to buy, but I was set on packing food for a picnic in the gardens of Versailles. I had read online they say it’s not allowed but don’t enforce the rule. It was worth all of the trouble because later in the day we ended up eating soft cheeses, baguette, the ripest raspberries, and some really good Portuguese wine (strange I know, but it was a steal).

Back in Versailles we toured some of the inside of the palace first. Do you remember that Sofia Coppola movie Marie Antoinette from 2006? Well they had gotten special permission to film most of the movie at the actual place, so I kept imagining Kirsten as Marie Antoinette and Jason Schwartzman as the awkward Dauphin would come around the corner any minute.

The rooms were jam packed with tourists so we didn’t spend as much time inside (I don’t love being elbowed) but the Hall of Mirrors was really breathtaking in real life and there was plenty of room to enjoy it.

When we got out to the gardens I was disappointed as I’d read you can rent bicycles to ride around, but really it is only in a small area. Most of the gardens you are not allowed to bike in, but we walked around and  rented the bikes for a little while to go visit the Hamlet, which is a very adorable old-fashioned farm Marie Antoinette had built to live a more simple life than the lavish palace. We walked around the Hamlet visiting the animals and looking for rabbits (didn’t find any) and got a little lost but we found our way back. Overall, Versailles was definitely one of the most fun sights to see as they have restored it to really feel like you’re stepping back in time.

We headed back to the city to use the boat-tour tickets that I had bought before the trip. I love a good boat tour since you can see the sights while taking a rest. We were sitting on the top deck when it started raining so we popped up the umbrella and opened the second bottle of wine. The lady in front of us was getting up to go sit underneath for cover and said “you two know how to do the boat tour right!”

this bird was a pro, he came right up to us and ate baguette out of our hands

That night on the way back we walked around the outside of the Louvre and had a really late dinner at a pizza and sandwich shop near our hotel, but my three cheese panini  was still really good. It was next door to this strange reggae/punk/indie club. We had a drink there one night and it was definitely a dive but had lots of couches and Bob Marley playing. It seemed to always be packed really late at night. We thought it was really funny they were playing Bob Marley but the girl tending bar had to have her friend translate our request for Rum & Coke.

The next day was Thursday and it was crazy to realize that was our last day of the trip. I still had so much to do! I was supposed to meet up with my co-worker Emily, visit the Musée de Orsay, Musée Rodin, visit Deyrolle (the crazy taxidermy shop), and a million other things! But that’s how vacations go, they fly by. We knew we had to see the Louvre, both having art degrees, so that’s where we spent most of the day. I will be honest, we got lost walking around a few times, I had trouble working the crazy Nintendo 3DS audio guide, and the crowds were noisy, but I’m still glad we went. There was so much art there, we were only able to take in a little, but we hit some of the highlights and spent a lot of time in the French painting rooms.

After spending most of the day there we ventured across the street to a little outdoor market and bought macaroons and some jewelry.

Then, all of a sudden it started pouring rain and this was the one day I didn’t bring the umbrella. We hurried down a couple of blocks and were lucky to find a nice place to eat dinner under the outdoor heaters.

The rain let up so we walked around the hip shops on rue Saint-Honoré like Colette and found a few more Invader tags.

The next morning we got two lovely parting gifts from Paris. One, when I was checking out our hotel somehow had an extra credit of €198 over what we had paid beforehand for the 7 nights.  I asked him to double-check (since I am pretty careful with my credit card records) but he said we had overpaid. He used the credit to pay for the breakfasts & dinners we had and then refunded us €77. Basically it was like free food and $100, but I wasn’t going to complain! Then our taxi was quick and we got to our flight on time (long story but there have been many an instance of a missed or almost-missed flight in our travels). Unfortunately the way home was not so joyous, we spent probably 25 hours straight in airports and planes and our luggage was lost by the time we arrived in Phoenix. But it is much better for your luggage to get lost on the way home, as I spent the next day in pajamas anyways and they delivered it the next night. Since I’ve been home everyone keeps asking how the trip was and it’s hard to explain. I like to say we vacation hard-it doesn’t matter if I’m sick or my feet hurt I will keep going, but we had an amazing time. Je pense que je pourrais y vivre, c'est vraiment magnifique.

Paris Part Un

“If you are lucky enough to have lived in Paris as a young man, then wherever you go for the rest of your life, it stays with you, for Paris is a moveable feast.” ― Ernest Hemingway, A Moveable Feast

“That Paris exists and anyone could choose to live anywhere else in the world will always be a mystery to me.” -Marion Cotillard as Adriana in Woody Allen’s Midnight in Paris

“You can’t escape the past in Paris, and yet what’s so wonderful about it is that the past and present intermingle so intangibly that it doesn’t seem to burden. “-Allen Ginsberg

A few years ago we had made some plans (the kind of plans that are like “someday in the future when we have money”) to go to Paris with our friends Chris & Lori. I really wanted to see the city, Tom really wanted to visit Disneyland Paris, and Lori said she could speak French fairly well to help us along. The years went by and Chris & Lori now live in Pennsylvania with two adorable kids so I’m sure going to Europe is not high on their wish list, but with me turning 30 this year I thought it would be a great excuse to take the trip just the two of us. After about six months of planning and one very beginner French course (watch this video to see my level of French) we were off.

We flew Air Canada because a few years back when we went to London we thought the Air Canada leg of the trip was most enjoyable, and it did not disappoint. Free movies, free drinks, lots of meals & snacks, and $90 a person to upgrade to the exit rows for lots of leg room for my 6’4” husband.

With all of the time difference we got to Paris in the morning on Friday. It took a bit of walking, confusion at the RNCF ticket machines, a train, and a bus to get to the hotel. I was pretty proud though as it was about €22 total to get there versus the €40-70 a taxi costs. We got to our hotel early but they were kind enough to speed clean our corner room and let us check in early. This was just one of the many things I loved about our hotel the Mama Shelter. Seriously, I probably posted so much love about the hotel on InstaGram and FaceBook everyone probably thinks I work for them (my trip advisor review can be read here).

After some unpacking and a quick nap we headed out to try and check out the modern art museum the Centre Pompidou because they were supposed to be open late. Notice I said “try?” Well, turns out the museum is open late but the ticket booths and even the ticket machines close at 8pm. Why? I have no idea. But we still had fun checking out the gift shop, walking around the neighborhood, eating dinner an outdoor café call Le Parvis, and watching a crazy street performer levitating. Dinner was pretty good and I was very relieved to see it wasn’t as hard to order as everyone had been telling us. All of the cafes we went to had English or pictures on the carte [menu] and the waiters were very fast. It was also nice to not have to worry about a tip (it’s included there) but we ended up leaving a euro everywhere we ate just to be nice.

The next morning I woke up at 5am, this seems to be a pattern as whenever I travel my body wakes up super early. It’s the weirdest form of jet lag, but I won’t complain since it’s better than being tired. I took a couple hours to get ready, unpack some more, wander around the hotel, but eventually I had to wake Tom up because I wanted to get out and about! We had breakfast at the hotel and were the first ones there (I told you I was up early!). The dining room there is really cool, the whole hotel was designed by Philippe Starck. Breakfast definitely lived up to French standards with crepes, a long counter full of croissants, pain au chocolat, a make-your-own softboiled egg station, teeny tiny coffee cups (the Parisians all like the strong but only 4 oz cups it seems), and tons more.

After breakfast the first spot we headed to was the Catacombs, we had quite a few friends who recommended it and I’d heard the line to get in can get crazy. We were lucky and got there right as it opened so the wait was just about an hour.  I highly recommend the audio guide as it was nice to have a British professor explain why in the world millions of bones are just piled up under the city streets like that. It was a little creepy though when they had whispery sound effects and organ music playing.

 

Next stop was to go and see the Eiffel Tower. A little side note, I am highly entertained by the Parisian street performers I guess because on the way there a guy on the metro was singing Dust in the Wind for tips and another guy we saw had a rabbit dressed up with a French flag collar eating carrots. We saw more than one homeless person with a rabbit, but Tom was reluctant to tip them because it’s probably not very safe for the rabbits to be in busy metros and streets (which I have to agree with, but they are so CUTE).  We lounged around the Eiffel Tower and walked around the parks and over the bridge but didn’t go up. The line was hours long and I thought I’d rather see a view that included the landmark rather than one from it. I would have liked to see the museum they have up there though. 

By that point we had picked up some Paris Museum passes good for 6 days so we walked over to check out the Musée du quai Branly. We learned much too late that we didn’t really need the 6 day passes. Everywhere we went we just flashed them and no one scanned or marked them at all till the next to the last day. We probably could have gotten away with the 2 day pass but we’ll hope the money goes to preserving the museums. The MQB had really beautiful gardens and architecture, but the exhibits seemed a bit small. Upstairs was a fun exhibit on art centering on hair and hairstyles. 

After walking the museum for a while we were pretty tired, we had known all the walking would be tough on us lazy kids, but man were my feet not prepared! We decided to go back to the hotel and eat at the pizzeria there which was a good choice. Part of the pizzeria has vintage school desks that were set together so dinner was casual but the wood fired pizza was tasty.  You can see our table with the checkerboard desks in the left corner:

Later that night it turned out it was Nuit des Musées, the one night a year that most of the museums are free and open past midnight. We figured this time we would definitely get in to the Centre Pompidou and we wandered around there. My favorite part of the museum may be the crazy escalator tubes where you can see the night view of the city.