Vive Paris

Caught the 12:00 noon train to Paris Saturday, the 30th.  Arrived at Monparnarsse about 2:15pm, checked into a nice little hotel just down from the station and headed out.

It was too late for anything "organized" so I thought a little walk around the Latin Quarter would be in order.  Before I reach the Metro entrance I see my first interesting sight, a memorial march honoring French troops who had fallen in combat in Afghanistan.

Took the subway down to Saint Michel and began walking south down Rue Saint-Jacques toward the Sorbonne.

A short way down the street I pass this enclosed property.  I don't know what's going on, i.e., is it being prepared for restitution, or what, but it's obviously extremely old. 

This is one of those times when you wish that buildings could talk.  What stories have to lie silent, never to be heard within these walls?  What wishes, history, lives?  It just drives me crazy not to know.

A little further down the street, The Sorbonne.

A little note:  It's not called the Latin Quarter because a bunch of Spaniards and Italians, or even Blanche DuBois and Stanley Kowalski, lived here.  It's called that because it has been a center of learning for hundreds of years, and hundreds of years ago the language of education was Latin.

A little further down the street the entrance to the Jardin Du Luxembourg.  Man, these French folks sure know how to do luxury homes and gardens.

Palais Du Luxembourg
Today the home of the president of the French Senate, it has had a quite a history.
Built (1615-1625) by Marie de Médici, mother to King Louis XIII, it was passed between members of the royal family for years.  At various times a museum and a prison (during the Revolution), it was home to Napoleon (1799) as First Council to the Third Republic, later appropriated by Hermann Goering as headquarters of the Luftwaffe in France during the German occupation during WWII.

For the ladies.

For the guys.

A walk back toward Saint Michel and there, across the river, Notre Dame

For my friend Yves.  Yes, Bretagne is everywhere.

I took the tram back to Montparnasse, read a little, and got a good night's rest.

The next morning I was off.  First stop was for fried eggs at a restaurant I found on my last visit here, Cafe Pont Neuf.  But, that was not to be because, you see, I'm stupid.  I get off the train at Pont Neuf, cross the bridge back to the Left Bank and turn towards, I am sure, my restaurant.  But, the horror, it wasn't there.  Where the hell does a restaurant go?  I look around, making sure I'm where I thought I was.  And I was.  It's just that the restaurant wasn't.

Determining I was just mixed up on how far from the bridge it was, I began walking back toward Saint Chapel.  But I never found it.  Thinking I was wrong on the direction, and knowing I was headed, after eating, to Des Invalides, I turned around and charged back east toward the Quay d'Orsay eagerly looking forward to my breakfast.   But, alas, it was not to be.  My restaurant never showed up, so I stopped at a little restaurant near the Musée d'Orsay for a nice little $9.75 croissant and cup of café.

Afterward, I continued my walk toward a rendezvous with Napoleon.

Scenes of the Seine

(alliteration is everywhere here)

Assemblée Nationale

Couldn't resist some bright berries on some plants just outside the Musée d'Orsay

As always, when walking around Paris, you see magnificent buildings covered with art.

Across the Seine, Le Grand Palais

Figures on the bridge at Pont des Invalides

Walking up the grand concourse toward Les Invalides I took this shot.  But my picture isn't of the Eiffel Tower.  It's of what I consider probably one of the most expensive apartment buildings on the planet.  Notice the gardens at the top?  I suspect there are no paupers in that building.
Half a block to the right, the Seine (in view), to the left Les Invalides, in front a wonderful lawn and park area, and overlooked by the Eiffel Tower.  Boy, that poverty sure is depressing, isn't it?

The concourse toward Les Invalides.

Napoleon's Last Stand

His current view - upward

Floor above.  Stairs to the left and right lead down to Le Emperor

To Sleep, Perchance to Dream...of Empire?

Sharing the large building with Napoleon, some other French "heroes."
(Quotation marks are mine...some are, at least to me, somewhat dubious, at best.)


Hubert Lyautey (1854-1934) - French Marshall generally credited, with Gallieni, for the counterinsurgency policy of "tache d'huile"; what we, today, would call "nation building."
(In his latter years a wholehearted supporter of Fascism.)

Joseph Bonaparte Napoleon (1768-1844)
Lawyer, rabble-rouser, Napoleon's elder brother.  Primary claim to fame, made King of Spain by his brother, he "escaped" to the U.S. (1817-32) taking the Spanish crown jewels with him.

Ferdinand Foch (1851-1929)
Last Supreme Commander, Allied Forces, WWI.

Credited with prophetically stating after the Treaty of Versailles, "This is not a peace.  It is an armistice for twenty years."

Probably deserves to be here.  But, then, one can look at much Napoleon did and ask the question, "Does he?"   I think, yes.   Agree or disagree, he mattered.


After visiting Napoleon and his luminaries, I entered the Musée de l'Armée.  A museum covering something like two thousand years of warfare.  How can you tell France is a wonderful place?  Easy, everyone, and I mean, damn near everyone has, at one time or the other, tried to take it by force.

WWI armored vehicle








Cannon

Mortars                  

Early Dark Ages helmets.

Given the size of these fellows, I don't know how they wielded such formidable weapons.

Nasty, nasty things here.

They were actually winched up onto their mounts.  Fall off your horse?  Lay there on your back until an enemy comes up and slits your throat.  They couldn't get up by themselves. 

These probably best exhibit the money spent by these warriors on their "tools of trade."  No butter here.  All guns.

Nice little scene looking toward Napoleon's final resting place.

Ya got me!  I guess they're for shooting downhill, or around corners.  I have absolutely no idea how one would aim the bloody things.

Napoleon, about 24 years of age, 1793.  At the time of his famous actions to drive the British from the port of Toulon.

Ten Years later - Emperor of France

Another Ten Years - "Heavy is the head that wears the crown."

Maybe this is the source of the misquotation.   Shakespeare's Henry IV actually said, "Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown.")

Having seen enough war stuff, and walking my tail off, both to get here and while here, I determined I needed a nice easy lunch and a couple of relaxing beers.  Off to Montmartre.  Looking at my iPad metro map I decide to take the tram to Abbesses, a stop appearing to be close to one of my desired destinations, the Basilique du Sacré-Coeur.

Exiting the train I turn toward the sorté and notice an elevator with most of the people crowding around it.  If I've failed to report my "stone" problem lately, suffice it to say it has found a very restful and, practically, friendly spot to lounge in, and causes me little trouble.  I can tell it's still there, but I have none of the problems I had on my previous two trips to Paris.  So...thinking I'm tough, I eschew the elevator and head up the stairs.

This was before I read the entry (Abbesses) in Wikipedia.  "Abbesses is one of the few deep stations of Paris métro, at 36 metres (118 feet)^[1] below ground, as it is located on western side of the butte (hill) of Montmartre. Access to the platforms is usually by elevators, but they can be accessed by decorated stairs."  This is true.  And the stairs are quite pretty.  And they go on...and on....and on.  Virtually straight up, spiraling around that elevator I mentioned.  A couple of rest stops later I find myself back in nice sunshine and really in need of that beer.  Exiting the subway and, after a brief stop to rest in a park bench just feet from the exit, I head into the heart of Montmartre and find a great little Italian restaurant with an ample supply of Heineken.  A little later, sated, relaxed, and surprisingly mobile, I head up (did I say UP?) to Sacré-Coeur.  A short tram ride up (yeah, I said up) and I'm there high above the city and watching the people show going on everywhere.

There were street performers everywhere.  One kid who could handle a basketball better than any Harlem Globetrotter I've ever seen.  Several musicians, and this guy.  He has two sticks with some narrow-gauge rope tied onto them and forming a small, triangle approximately 1 foot on a side at the bottom.  In the pail is soapy water into which he'd dip the rope then pull it toward himself, creating some of the largest and most beautiful bubbles you've ever seen.
(Do yourself a favor.  Click on the above picture to enlarge it, then click on that one to enlarge it even further, and look at the looks on the childrens' faces.  It's worth it.)

Leaving Montmartre I catch a train back to Monparnasse where I go to my favorite Turkish/Kurdish grotto-like restaurant for the best lamb in Paris.











Remember me mentioning I'm stupid?  Well, maybe that wasn't entirely correct.  Perhaps I just wasn't awake.  Yeah, let's agree on that.  I wasn't awake.  Monday morning I'm up fairly early, and awake, this time.  Yeah, I like that.  I'm awake this time.

I decided restaurants such as my favorite breakfast restaurant in Paris just don't disappear.  Even in times of significant world economic recession, given the prices on the banks of the Seine, you'd have to be a lot more stupid (I mean asleep) than I to go out of business here.  So, how does one figure this out?

If one is awake, as (did I mention?) I was this time, one takes his iPad, you know, the same one he had with him yesterday when he couldn't find the for-cocka-mammy restaurant on the banks of the Seine with a search warrant and two helpers.  Yeah, that one.  And he looks at the picture he took when he was in Paris last and, now knowing that the name of the bloody restaurant is "Cafe Pont Neuf," he googles it using his neat little wireless enabled iPad.  And he sees that he's on the WRONG SIDE OF THE *(*#&^ING river.  Could it possibly be that simple?  You betcha Red Rider!  It is that stupidly simple.

In fact, it's more embarrassing than that.  You see, the No. 7 tram, you know, the one that he took from Chatolet to Pont Neuf station yesterday exited onto that side of the river.   But no, smart boy was so damn sure the restaurant was on the southeast corner of the bridge, on the left bank, that when he exited the tram station he looked directly across the Seine and walked hurriedly in that direction where he was absolutely sure the fried eggs were located.  Had this mental giant looked over his left shoulder upon exiting the tram station he would have seen the restaurant.  Yep, he'd have seen it.  About oh, I don't know, fifty meters up the street toward the Louve.  I mentioned I'm stupid, didn't I?  Good.  Il est vrai!

 The tram station is left across the street behind you in this view.  The corner toward which we  look is where I was sure the restaurant was.

This, of course, is the restaurant.  If you look at the end of the building you see the street that crosses the bridge.  To the right of this picture, adjacent to that corner, is the station from which I exited.

But, I bet I know where it is next trip.  A nice breakfast, a short walk after a relaxing tram ride, and I'm on the train headed back to Nantes.  Another great weekend in Paris. 


I write this a week later, still exasperated with my failure to think at all on that Sunday morning.  It's thinking (or not, as the case may be) such as this that causes pilots to fly into mountains, and I'm still a little pissed at myself for doing it.  But, what the hey, feces occurs.  Right?

Today, I'm relaxing at home watching a great Rugby match, reminded how a friend here described the difference between the two main sports here.  Rugby is a hoodlum's game played by gentlemen, and football (soccer) is a gentleman's game played by hoodlums.