Finally, a trip to Paris!

Some time ago, when my wife and I were courting, I told her that one day I would take her to Paris. At the time she probably thought I was just trying to impress her (I was), but it really was something that we both have always wanted to do. Well on the weekend before the forth of July, that dream finally came true. A friend from church graciously volunteered to watch the kids so that we could do our Paris Trip as a couple.

We made reservations for a hotel on the outskirts of Paris. Our plan was to stay on the outskirts of town so that we could have the experience of riding mass transit with the ever friendly and helpful Parisians. Oh, and it was cheaper outside the city than right downtown. We arrived on the evening of 30 June, checked into the hotel, and went out to try to find the local train station.

I don't know the name of the village we stayed in, but it was very nice. We knew for sure we were in France, though, when we noticed a nearby building with a statue of a partially undraped woman over the front entrance. The train station was easy to find and it was simple enough buying our 3 day rail pass. They even gave us a map of the city, which proved to be a very useful tool.

To be honest, I don't remember what we had for supper that night, although I'm sure it wasn't snails or raw beef. After walking around the village a bit, we went back to the hotel room and watched a bit of the World Cup.

1 July was our first full day in Paris. We rose early, had breakfast in the hotel, and hopped on the train for downtown Paris. Our plan for this first day was to visit the Musee d'Orsay, which is across the river from the Louvre, and to see the Eiffel Tower. The Orsay was at the top of Mindy's list of things that she must see, primarily because the Orsay has an extensive collection of Impressionist works. Mindy and I have always loved the Impressionists, so it just made sense to go there first.

The Orsay was magical! There were so many marvelous things to see that the experience bordered on overwhelming. There were lots and lots of pieces that were familiar to us and it was absolutely wonderful to see them. I discovered that I have twofavoritet artists among the Impressionists. I believe that I have seen both of their works before, but I had never associated individual paintings with these specific artists.

The first is Berthe Morisot. She is one of only a handful of female impressionist, and like the others she tends to favor painting women and children in familiar settings. Of special interest to me was a painting by Morisot depicting a woman looking down on a sleeping baby. When my oldest child was born, Mindy's grandmother sent us a card with this picture on the front. I loved the picture back then, but seeing it in person was even better. Perhaps I was influenced by the emotions I recalled of my son's birth, but I don't believe that would be a bad thing.

Another artist that I "discovered" at the Orsay was Alfred Sisley. To be honest, I had never heard his name before this trip. What I saw of his work was primarily landscapes, houses, roads, and such, but it was all stunningly beautiful! Every picture seemed to capture some magical moment in what could have been a mundane location. What a talent!

In addition to those new favorites of mine, we saw works by Monet, Manet, Cassat, Renoir, andCezannee. We walked and walked and looked and looked until about lunchtime. Lunch on this day was on the balcony of the Orsay looking across the river toward the Louvre. There was a vendor there selling bagettes that were tasty and relativelyinexpensivee. Once we had finished lunch and rested up a bit, we spent a bit more time enjoying the Orsay before heading out toward the Eiffel Tower.

By this point we had already done quite a bit of walking, so I'm not sure why we decided to walk to the Eiffel Tower instead of taking the train. My recollection is that we were starting to feel quite tired and sore by the time we arrived. It was quite the thing, though, the first time you see that tower rising above the city. To be honest, I expected to be disappointed in the Eiffel Tower. I supposed that it would be smaller and less grand than the images we are familiar with. I could not have been more wrong.

The Eiffel Tower was nothing short of stunning! It was far larger than I expected and far grander than I expected, and that was only from the ground looking up. After talking it over, we decided that our best approach would be to ride the elevator to the top and then walk down. There are actually different levels you can go to, but we opted to go all the way to the top.

There was quite a queue for tickets for the elevator, although there wasn't a line at all if you wanted to climb the stairs. Waiting in line for 1.5 hours seemed a small price to pay in order to avoid the pain of climbing even part way up the tower. Once we had our tickets, there was another queue to wait for the elevator. Of special interest to me was the sign in the elevator warning people to beware of pickpockets!

The view from the mid-level was very impressive. Plus there was a gift shop there perfect for buying souvenirs. Oh, and there was also another queue to board a second elevator to the very top.

The view from the very top of the Eiffel Tower was spectacular! Paris is a sprawling city, but it's amazing h0w much of it you can see from up there. I thought I would be more bothered by the hight, but it felt very safe and secure up there. We walked around and took it all in and relished in the idea that we had finally made it to Paris.

Once we had seen enough from the top, we rode the elevator back to the mid-level. From there, though, we decided to walk down the stairs to the bottom. Now this may sound kind of silly, since we had been walking all day, but it actually turned out to be a lot of fun. The walk down the stairs is much slower than the elevator ride, but that means you have more time to look around and enjoy the views. You also get to see a bit of how the darn thing was put together, which is actually quite impressive. It was also fun reading about famous events in the life of the tower, which were reported on placards at almost every landing.

So far, our experience with Paris had been top-notch. The Orsay was all we hoped for and more and the Eiffel Tower exceeded our expectations at every step.

Dinner that night was at a small cafe not too far from the Eiffel tower. There were several good reasons for choosing that cafe, none of which had anything to do with food. First of all, we were tired and not in a mood for searching dilligently for world class cuisine. Second of all, we wanted to stay close to the Eiffel Tower since they light it up each night at 10:00p. Third of all, they seemed to speak a bit of English.

The food at the cafe was good, and it was nice also because another American couple came in and dined right next to us. The best part, though, was that the cafe had a TV and when the World Cup game came on we got to watch a bit of it. Better yet, France was playing that night. We didn't watch the entire game, but we later learned that France won! More on that in a while.

After dinner we headed back to the park that lies at the feet of the Eiffel Tower in order to wait for the lighting. Sure enough, at 10:00p exactly the lights on the tower began to flash. I suppose that this is supposed to make it look like the tower is sparkling, and it did to some extent. We took some pictures, but they don't adequately capture what it looked like. The little white dots you see in those pictures are the strobe lights going off.

By the time we got on the train, France had won their World Cup match. It was easy to tell that France had one because it sounded like the entire city was celebrating. It was funny, because every time the train stopped and the doors opened, you could hear the cacaphony of the jubilent French! Then when the doors closed, things got rather quiet again.

Back at the village where we were staying, the celebration continued. People were honking their horns and shouting out their windows. It was a madhouse! We even saw one guy sitting in the passenger side window of a car and banging a pot with a spoon. I wonder if his wife was mad when he came home with her good pan all banged up.

When we got back to the hotel, there were to young kids standing at the entrance. They couldn't have been older than 4 or 5. As we were walking toward the entrance, we watched as they ran toward the street, raised their arms and screamed like miniture banshees. Better yet was the tremendous response given by the passing traffic! People honked and screamed and waved at the little kids. It was an amazing spectacle! And yes, it was also very entertaining.

On our second full day in Paris, 2 July, we planned to visit both the Musee d'Marmotan and Notra Dame Cathederal. An agressive plan, to say the least, especially since we were a bit sore from all of the walking the day before. We started out again with breakfast in the hotel and a train ride into downtown. Finding the Marmotan took a bit of doing. The train got us into the area, but we left the underground rail station so disoriented as to not know which way to turn. In an act of supreme boldness, we finally stopped a fellow pedestrian and asked for guidance. The guidance we got was excellent (and English) and we soon found ourselves at the Marmotan.

The Marmotan is famous, like the Orsay, for it's collection of impressionist paintings. In particular, the Marmotan has a large collection of Monet's works including the famous painting "Impression: Sunrise," which is the Monte painting from which the moniker "Impressionist" is taken. This museum was considerably smaller and more intimate than the Orsay. The Orsay is housed in an old train station. The Marmotan, however, is housed in an old house. It rather felt like we had invaded someone's home in order to enjoy their art collection, which I suppose isn't very far removed from fact. I suppose that's OK, though, since we did pay to get in.

After spending the morning in the Marmotan, we found a nice sidewalk cafe and had lunch. So far we had enjoyed excellent luck in finding English speakers and in the case of this cafe we even found the menu in English. After lunch we headed toward Notre Dame.

At Notre Dame, we began by standing in the queue to enter the cathederal. This is not the queue to go to the top of the cathederal and see the gargoyles, this one was just to see the inside of this most famous of European churches. The cathederal was amazing, although our pictures don't do it justice. The stained glass work was exquisite and the stone carving was amazing.

Having seen the inside, we then had to decide if we wanted to stand in line to go to the top of the facade (the front part of the cathederal). The line looked long, plus there was a fee. Upon consideration we decided to go for it! We took our place in the queue and commenced the waiting. There were two good things about waiting in that line. It was nice because there was a ledge along the fence where we were lined up that allowed for sitting. It wasn't the most confortable, but it certainly was better than standing. It was also quite a bit of fun looking at the interesting people walking by.

It took us about 2 hours to work our way through the queue, but when we finally got to the top of the facade we decided that the view was well worth the wait. From the top of the facade it is easy to see why Notre Dame is so well known. The craftsmanship is amazing. There were gargoyles of course, but equally impressive was the stone finishing work. The detail was amazing. It's hard to imagine how much effort and money went into building such an edifice.

We were also allowed to go to the top of one of the bell towers at Notre Dame, which sit at the very top of the facade. At the bell tower it was explained to us that the facade and bell tower were built separate from the main cathederal, since it was feared that the ringing of the bells might otherwise cause damage. The bells were large and impressive, but then again everything at Notre Dame was large and impressive. The view from the top of the bell tower was not quite as impressive as from the Eiffel tower, but we enjoyed it regardless.

After walking through Marmotan and climbing up Notre Dame, we were once again tired and sore. We hopped a train back to the village where we were staying and enjoyed a very nice Chinese dinner near our hotel. We retired early that night because we wanted to get an early start the next day.

On our 3rd day in Paris we planned to see the Arc d'Triumph, the Champs Elisse, and our home. Yep, it was almost time to return to reality! We started once again with breakfast in the hotel, although this time when we were done we also checked out. The hotel agreed to allow us to leave our car parked there while we went out and enjoyed one more morning in Paris.

We arrived at the Arc d'Triumph while the sun was still low in the sky. It was an impressive sight, but it would have been more impressive if it wasn't the center of a monstrous traffic circle. I fully expected to watch a life threatening accident while standing there. This experience reinforced for me the value of riding the train into Paris instead of trying to drive around in Paris. I was very happy not to be driving that morning!

The Champs Ellise was a bit of a disapointment. Maybe we would have enjoyed it more if we had planned on spending thousands of dollars on outrageously overpriced merchandise. For windowshopping, I would have been just as happy at any other shopping center in the world. One thing that was impressive, though, were the flowers towards the end of the Champs Ellise. The flowers were BEAUTIFUL!

After checking both the Arc d'Triumph and the Champs Ellise off our "must see" list, we rode the train one last time back to our hotel, jumped in the car, and headed for home. Lunch that day was purchased at a gas station on our way out of Paris. We bought these baguette sandwiches that were really yummy. We also bought some chicken flavored potato chips. So if anyone would like to know what potato chips taste like in France, all I can say is "they taste like chicken!"

If you would like to see all of our pictures (all 209 of them), then please click on the link below (or copy this web address and paste it into your browser address window):

http://pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/rtillett247/album?.dir=/45e3re2&.src=ph&.tok=phAYFpFBfckTpTBv

Oh, and in case you are curious why there are no pictures of Mindy and I together, it's because we were told that a favorite method of stealing digital cameras from tourists is to simply ask if the tourist couple of family if they would like a picture together. The would be thief then simply runs off with the camera.