Stacy created this page the night we returned from Paris and promptly failed to tell the tale. It's understandable. Who really remembers Paris anyway? Actually at the time I was going into the hospital at 5am, Stacy was going into work at 6, and it was the middle of the winter in Ohio so we didn't ever see the sun and consequently our batteries went uncharged, and then Stacy got pregnant and things just sort of spiraled out of control from there. I digress.
So Paris. Stacy was a good sport and let me ski with my dad on our honeymoon so I felt a little obligated to do something good for our first anniversary. I spent awhile looking into cruises and trips to the caribbean, but couldn't get excited about anything. One day I heard that the US Dollar was at it's highest value against the Euro since the invasion of Iraq, so I decided Paris would be nice. Note to anyone making travel arrangements based on currency value: Buy travelers cheques immediately if this is your plan, because come December your green money will be worthless in the land of colorful multinational currency. Anyway, knowing the city well enough I went ahead and booked us flights and rooms and got Stacy a passport and away we went.
I was nervous about how rusty my French had gotten when we arrived, and then the funniest thing happened. We got off the plane and by the time we reached baggage claim I was slipping into French whenever I spoke to Stacy. It's like some sort of switch flipped and it was on like Donkey Kong. It was nice.
Our hotel was a nice place in the 7th located a few hundred feet from a Metro stop, a block from Les Invalides (A former military hospital which houses Napoleon's remains), not terribly far from the tower everyone likes so much, and around the corner from two bakeries, a Chinese takeout place, and two grocery stores. Translation: Jackpot. We had a roof level room so we could even store, yogurt and bottles of soda outside our window in the rain gutter and have chilly beverages at our leisure.
We did all the things you do in Paris. We walked the Champs-Elysees (not worth your time, especially in winter), the Louvre (almost always worth it espcially if you skip the Italian wing and get over to the Dutch and Flemish painters), the Musee D'Orsay (always worth your time), Notre Dame (beautiful, more so in summer than winter), Sacre Coeur (magnificent any time of year), the Bastille (not worth anyone's time), the Arc de Triomphe (impressive in all seasons), the Centre Pompidou (worth it for the view of the rest of the city, although it did have much better works on display than the last time I was there), La Defense (not worth your time), and Versailles (definitely better in summer). One thing we did that I'd not done previously was take a Bateaux Mouches trip at sunset. DO THIS.
An interesting thing I noticed, actually Adam Gopnik noticed it for me in Paris To The Moon, is the placement of the impressionist paintings at the Musee D'Orsay. The Orsay is a train station that was, as far as I know, sitting around not being used and so they did the most natural thing possible: turned it into a large art museum. It's spectacular. The open spaces, windows and natural light make it an ideal and obvious spot to house almost every impressionist painting you've ever seen in any textbook. You'd think the powers that be would put the paintings everyone from around the world comes to see in the cavernous, well lit main hall so the millions of visitors per year could ejoy these priceless works in a magnificent space right? Nope. The've crammed them into a few rooms up on something like the 6th floor. It's silly. Adam Gopnik thinks it's because the French art world still rejects impressionism, and wants to give Monet, Degas, Van Gogh and the likes the old posthumous 'screw you'. He's probably right. It could also be that the Orsay has a lot of other beautiful works to offer and nobody would see them if they were tucked away on the 6th floor.
We were lucky and stumbled upon a slew of excellent bakeries and kabob shops. Let me say here being married to a girl who openly admits her love of the Turkish Kabob immediately after her first bite and suggests walking halfway across the city to get another kabob instead of stopping at one of the anonymous, ubiquitous, cafes is definitely a keeper. We ate excellent bread daily, I had the pleasure of introducing Stacy to real yogurt and actualy French cheeses, and we generally had a great time doing things on the cheap. We went the week after Christmas and I thought we'd miss out on a lot of crowds, and we certainly didn't have anything like the summer crowds, but I was still impressed with the number of German and Russians who had the same idea as us. I guess that like Ohio, those places are colder than France, so even a chilly, rainy Paris beats winter in Moscow, Berlin, or Columbus.
My favorite moment happened when we went to the the Moulin Rouge. I warned Stacy she'd be disappointed, but she wanted to go anyway. When we got there she remarked on the general ugliness of the neighborhood. I took great joy in reminding her of what the Moulin Rouge is and asking her what did she really expect?
All in all we really enjoyed ourselves. I'll see if I can get some pictures posted.
Also, my bread is now done and it looks and smells awesome.
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