So Mom and Dad went to Paris! Dad took more than 580 photos, a very limited selection of which is included for your pleasure. Mom and Dad don't figure in the photos because Dad was the photographer and Mom wasn't in Paris to be photographed. Here's what Mom has to say about the trip.
After traveling overnight and getting into the Charles DeGaulle Airport and finding our way first to the bathrooms (very few and hard to find as well) and to the RER train station, we were helped by very friendly Parisiens to first buy tickets and next make the right connections to arrive within a few blocks of our hotel. We traveled light so the luggage was not a problem. Even with a map, however, we wandered a bit before finally successfully crashing for a few hours of much needed rest at the Hotel Madeleine Opera. When we got up we went adventuring out on foot and started to orient ourselves in the area by seeing La Madeleine (an enormous church), La Place de la Concorde with its Egyptian obelisk, and the Tuilerie Gardens that end at the Louvre. A light bite to eat in the gardens convinced us that eating out would be a rarity, though we enjoyed sitting in the garden and eating in the evening air.
Palise Garnier - Paris Opera House
Next day saw us shopping in the local Monoprix for groceries, plastic utensils and dishes, and water to keep us going for a few days. We then began our daily ritual of eating breakfast, preparing a lunch and going out on foot for the day. Each day upon returning we planned the next day's adventures. We really enjoyed seeing the city and felt we got a much better feel for it by walking rather than taking the metro. This delightful arrangement was possible because our hotel was ideally centrally located to the areas we planned to visit. Our days were usually 10-12 hours, ending in the hotel room for a modest evening repast and a chance for our feet and legs to recover before the next outing.
Daumier Figure
Our first full day we walked to the Musee D'Orsay where we bought a Museum Pass for 4 days that was good for 60 different museums and places of interest. We spent time in the Museum and the, knowing that this Museum was open until 9 p.m., we went to the Rodin Museum with the plan to return later to the Musee D'Orsay, a wonderful art museum with work from 18th-early 20th century with emphasis on work by French artists. The Rodin Museum is housed in Rodin's home and has a wonderful sculpture garden in the French style surrounding the house. From here we went to Les Envalides, built as a hospital for army veterans by Louis XIV himself. The church there, which is s
pectacular, has been made into Napolean's tomb, the size of which is a testament to the esteem in which he has held by the French. There are still veterns living and being treated here in the private portions of Les Invalides- probably the first VA hospital, and it still is in use. From here we traveled to the Church of the Miraculous Medal recommended to us by Charlie's Mom, enjoying the courtyard and the church. We walked back to the Musee D'Orsay and spent till closing
time there. As we walked home there were spectacular clouds over the Seine and Dad got some terrific photos of them.
Rodin Museum and Garden
Louvre from Musee D'Orsay
Our second day was spent largely at the Louvre (7 hours worth) and we discovered the breadth of french painting through the 1800's, many of heroic size and subject matter. The collection of Italian renaissance paintings was also very impressive. Dad discovered a Rubens he did not know existed- a small shared self portrait by Rubens and VanDyke. Each artist painted his own portrait and their styles
meld together perfectly. Dad found the portraits of the master and his student very telling and filled with humor. Rubens' series of enormous paintings for Catherine de Medici are housed in an enormous gallery and we couldn't help feeling that Rubens deserved a more interesting story to tell as we read the various titles of the paintings all celebrating the life of Catherine de Medici, queen and regent of France, a woman whose looks and life, even as glorified by Rubens, were rather mundane. From the Louvre we walked to the museum at The Orangerie on the other side of the Tuilerie Gardens to see Monet's Water Lilies (his final paintings, which are enormous and were housed in two circular rooms) and a wonderful collection donated by Paul Guillaume of wonderful work by Picasso, Derain, Soutine, Utrillo, and a few others.
St Chapelle
Day three saw us off to explore Ile de la Cite (an island in the middle of
the Seine where Paris began. We went to see the unbelievable windows at St. Chapelle, a small private chapel built for the king. From there we saw Notre Dame Cathedral and then went on to Ile St. Louis, another small island next to Ile de la cite. Everything is connected by bridges and on the bridge to Ile St. Louis a good jazz band was playing trying to earn some money and sell CDs. We loved this little island full of shops and restaurants. We sampled sorbet at Le Berthillon, the best ice cream shop in Paris (not an idle assessment), and had a crepe from a local shop with a take out window. Next we hit the Picasso Museum, also housed in his final home in Paris, and enjoyed this collection of pieces kept by the artist and displayed in chronological order along with drawings, studies, photos and videos that showed the artist's development over his lifetime. It was very interesting and inspiring to come to a be
tter appreciation of the fertility of Picasso's creative mind. There was no plastic art form he did not practice with facility and power. Not far from the Picasso Museum was the Pompidou, Paris' museum of modern art. The building itself was remarkable, remarkable ugly on the exterior and a remarkable good space for showing art on the interior. We enjoyed the view from the escalator that climbs the building in a tube outside the structure. Here Dad finally found work by Georges Roualt, a formidable figure in French art whose work had been entirely absent in the Musee D'Orsay. On the way back to the hotel we walked through a shopping area 
called Les Halles, stopped in a small local church called St. Merri while we looked unsuccessfully for the LDS church that was located nearby, and stopped into St. Eustace, a lovely church on the way. We stopped at the gardens of the Palais Royal and rested a while. Paris is full of beautiful public gardens where people come to enjoy the outdoors, read, chat, and let their children play. On the way out of this garden we saw a little pastry shop that looked good and good ourselves some treats to add to our dinner. They were really good!
Our next day, Sunday, found us with our map obtained online out early to try and find the Paris Ward meeting house before 9:00 a.m. We were able to find the big blue doors and the little sign in the window telling us t
o push the button and push on the doors for admittance. The church is in an old building with the traditional courtyard in the center. We enjoyed our meetings there very much. The spirit was strong and the people were friendly and gracious. We walked past Hotel de Ville (basically Paris's City Hall), over the Seine and to Jardin des Plantes, a really gorgeous botanical Garden that is part of the University of Paris and also is the location of the Natural History Museum which we did not see. From there we walked to the Luxemburg Gardens via an ancient Roman Arena that supposedly housed 10,000 people for gladiator games and dramatic productions back in the day. Also on the way we stopped at the Pantheon, a truly remarkable building that is now a Mausoleum for the famous and important men in French history. The French really honor their men of Arts, Letters, and Scie
nce. Victor Hugo, Voltaire, Rousseau and many others are buried there and the crypt below the building is a rather confusing, seemingly endless series of stone corridors and rooms with stone caskets inside. The Luxemburg Gardens are enormous. There was a band playing when we arrived and quite a crowd gathered to enjoy the pop selections they were playing. We saw the gardens, the palace and the Maria de Medici fountains there. From the Gardens we decided to see the ruins of the ancient Roman baths that were not too far away. We saw that an abby (Hotel Cluny) had been built on top of the baths and that it housed the Musee des Moyen Ages (Middle Ages Museum).
This was a really cool place with carvings (wood and stone), tapestries, furnishings, books, illustrated manuscripts, etc. from the middle ages. Outside the Museum was a beautiful garden area that had been made into a number of small individual gardens, each of which was a prototype of a different type of medieval garden. On the way back to the hotel we crossed the Seine again onto Ile de la Cite, this time walking along the walk next to the river up to a little park on the tip of the island created originally by the Dauphin for his pleasure. We enjoyed sitting and resting our sore feet in the cool of the evening, enjoying the sky and the river and the breeze.
Our last day in Paris was a dash to fit in the final things we wanted to see before we left. We were up early a
nd walked to the Montmartre Cemetery where we had fun hunting down the graves of famous people on maps that didn't agree with each other. Needless to say we did not find them all. We then walked on the shortest route to Sacre Coeur Basilica- a route that it became apparent went through the red light district of Paris and gave us a view of the Moulin Rouge. After passing through this large and tawdry area we began climbing the hill up to Sacre Coeur in earnest. When I say hill I am not kidding. The park area in front of Sacre Coeur, which is large, is almost vertical, necessitating an approach via staircase after staircase. Dad joked that the Basilica was so placed so that you had to
do your penance before you got into it. The Basilica was made of white limestone and was beautiful, but the way down was a little easier than the way up (classic understatement). We stopped in one of the shops in the area to pick up souvenirs for the folks at home. We went back to the hotel for lunch and a rest (to repair some blistered feet before pressing on) and then sallied forth to visit the Delacroix Museum in
Sacre Coeur
the Latin Quarter. Also housed in Delacroix's final home, we also saw the studio he had built onto the home and the courtyard in the center. His home is right next to the oldest church in Paris, St. Germain des Pres so we stopped in and really enjoyed this churc
h. It was one of our favorites. Lots of famous people who lived in the Latin Quarter are buried there too, including Delacroix. We walked home via the shop at the Middle Ages Museum (more souvenirs), the book sellers on the Seine (you guessed it, more souvenirs), Le Chatelet, the Place De la Vendome where Napolean's pillar fashioned out of the cannons he captured from the defeated enemy in battle stands. This Place also is surrounded by National Government offices (in palaces) and very expensive shops. We stopped at a Monoprix to pick up some dinner and went home exhausted but thrilled with our visit.
We got up at 4:30 a.m. to be ready for the taxi that took us to the airport. On the flight from London to Philadelphia we were given first class seats (for reasons unknown to us) and were able to rest well and were treated like royalty. What a fun finish to an unbelievable opportunity and experience. Our seven days together were treasured and unforgettable. We were filled with gratitude for those who made this experience possible, not the least of whom were Mimi, Doug, and Lizzy who held down the home fort.
Pont Neuf - Au Revoir Paris!
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o go see the circus. It was a 4:30 show so it wasn't as packed and perhaps not as thrilling, but we all had a good time together. The food was a fortune, but Dad got some anyway for the experience. Lizzy suggested that next time we just smuggle our own. Mom didn't like that idea too much, even after paying $5 for a tiny thing of popcorn..JPG)
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