Paris, Part Trois

 Fri 

Our last day was a two museum plus sightseeing day. We started with a visit to Napoleon's tomb at Les Invalides (full name: Hôtel National des Invalides). One of the things I've found interesting about Paris is the surfeit of incredibly impressive buildings. Thinking about the fact that there was a time when the aristocracy had the money to build all sorts of grand buildings while the populace was living at a subsistence level, it's no wonder that the people ultimately revolted against their rulers. By this point in the trip we'd already visited The Louvre (former palace), the Monet Museum (mansion), and later today we'd be visiting another fancy old building which housed the Rodin Museum.

The Invalides was built by Louis XIV with the noble purpose (in multiple senses of the word) of providing residence and care for military veterans, sort like today's Walter Reed Hospital in Bethesda. It's enormous, and stunning. Today it houses various museums, but the centerpiece is the Tomb of Napoleon. When Napoleon died in exile there was some concern that repatriating his body and giving him a big monumental resting place would fan the flames of revolution, which had finally been tamped down after a rather tumultuous generation. Well, his remains were eventually brought home, and boy, did they give him a monumental resting place. Under the towering dome of L'Invalides there's a giant Russian quartzite sarcophagus, which rests upon a base of green granite, which in turn, upon a slab of black marble. The whole thing is surrounded by plaques documenting Napoleon's accomplishments.

Courtyard at Les Invalides

Our tour guide, Agathe

Interior of the dome above Napoleon's tomb

Yeah, it's fancy!

The Rodin Museum is my favorite abandoned palace story. The museum is housed in a 1732 mansion originally known as the Hôtel Biron (in French, a "Hôtel" is a grand house). Again, after the revolution(s) there was a lot of grand real estate lying dormant in Paris - regular folks had no use for it, and the aristocracy was, well, gone. The Hôtel Biron was such an abandoned building, and impoverished artists were squatting in it. Rodin at some point rented four ground floor rooms to live in and eventually took over the whole building. If you saw the place you'd have trouble imagining it as an East Village style run-down home to squatters, but that's Paris!

Of course, the first thing you see there is Rodin's The Thinker, which is displayed in the courtyard. As you might expect of a museum created by the artist himself, it has a great collection, not just of finished works but of models and intermediate products. Very interesting. The museum also features the work of Camille Claudel, another overlooked female artist, who was Rodin's student, model, and, in the complicated world of French art, his lover.

Les Invalides, seen from the Rodin Museum

The Thinker

Rodin's Gates of Hell

A work by Camille Claudel

Bald guys hanging out together

The Thinker again

We were on our own for lunch. Valerie and I had been seeing "Bagelstein" bagel shops around town and decided we had to try a Parisian bagel, so we got sandwiches, which we ate in the Luxemburg Gardens. Let me say that the French are some great bakers - the baguettes, the croissants, the macarons ... but their bagels suck (as expected). Very light and fluffy, and very unbagel-like in every way except for appearance. Still, it was a fun novelty to try, and the gardens offered a lovely setting for lunch. Parisians have definitely mastered the art of sitting around. The gardens were full of people relaxing, eating lunch, and people-watching. In one area people played pétanque (a game similar to bocce). We strolled and then returned to meet the group. 

At Bagelstein

Honestly, who would buy 500 of their crappy bagels?

Lunch in the gardens

The Statue of Liberty. Whattt?

Luxemburg Gardens

In the afternoon we went to the Musée d'Orsay. I had really been looking forward to this one, both for the collection and the building (surprise! it's an old Beaux Arts style railway station rather than a palace). The Orsay holds works from 1848-1914 and so is home to a large collection of Impressionist and post-Impressionist works. Like the Louvre, the collection is stunning and the crowds are enormous. It receives over 3 million visitors per year, most of whom appeared to have chosen last Friday to visit.

When I was a kid my parents had a
print of this painting in their house

Scenes from the Musée d'Orsay

Our final activity was a farewell dinner. As with other days we had a tiny bit of free time first, not enough to really do anything, but enough to walk around for a bit. Valerie and I spent a ridiculous amount of time in a H&M home goods store, and checked out the exterior of the Opéra Garnier, yet another impossibly ornate building (and the setting for Phantom of the Opera), though Valerie refused to take the guides' suggestion of going up and looking at the view from the top floor of the Galeries Lafayette across the street. Yes, Valerie turned down going into a shopping mall.

Our final dinner was at the Grand Café Capucines, a slightly nicer place than the kind of restaurant where we had taken our other meals. The meal started with French onion soup (Valerie said it wasn't rich enough). We were seated at a table with a vegan couple from Pennsylvania. They were very nice overall, and I welcomed their presence in the group so that I wouldn't be the fussiest eater in the group. There was some confusion in getting them their vegetarian meal (Paris - at least the restaurants we visited) doesn't seem well prepared for vegetarians). I had the familiar white fish with creamy sauce, while Valerie had duck, which she reported was dry. Dessert was a cute trio of little items including crème brûlée, hazelnut chocolate tart, and raspberry tart thing. After dinner it was back to hotel to pack.  

Dessert at Café Capucines

Sat 

Our flight home was delayed, but only by half an hour, because they had to change a tire. International Arrivals at Dulles still uses the old mobile lounges, so I got to ask the pilot, who was standing next to me, how they change tires on an airplane. It turns out it's like a car - while we were all boarding the plane was actually jacked up so they could change the tire.

We didn't upgrade our seats for the flight home, but I had seen a tip online about a couple of seats at the rear of the 777 which offer extra space, and I was able to book them. It turned out to have been a good tip (independently confirmed by one of the flight attendants), but while the seats were comfortable, we did discover a downside. The seats are all the way in the back of the plane - next to the last row - and they serve dinner from the front of the section back, so by the time they got to us they were out of two of the the three meal choices, and we were left with no choice but the lentil stew. That's actually what I would have chosen anyway (unfortunately, it turned out to be inedibly salty), but Valerie was stuck with yet one more unsatisfactory meal on the trip.

Anyway, it was a fun trip overall. Personally, I would have liked a little less structure. I was left feeling that while I had gotten glimpses of the highlights, I hadn't really engaged with the city. Yeah, things like finding your way around and ordering food in a strange language are a hassle, but in doing so I feel I'm actually part of the city rather than just being adjacent to it. I could have foregone the scenic bus and boat tours, which offered little advantage over just looking at Paris on on Google Earth (the Montmartre tram at least served the useful purpose of getting us up the hill). Road Scholar provided top-notch guides, and helped us out of a travel jam up front, but the meals and lodgings were, well, just OK. And an imperfect trip to Paris is still better than no trip at all!