Paris, Part Two: The Magic Museum Pass
For the first time in I don’t know how long, I actually slept all the way through the night. I woke up around 8 am feeling well-rested and ready to take on the world. I knew Peter wouldn’t feel that way for at least another two or three hours, so I left him to it and set off on my own.
First, a word about fashion. In short, fashion went right out the door in favour of comfort. I’d planned to not really wear jeans, but I couldn’t wear my runners with my black trousers. Plus, wearing the black trousers with most of my blouses made me look like someone’s grandmother. I had to concede pretty early on that my clothes are just not that fashionable in general, with the exception of my cute little outfits. (More on this later.)
I don’t really speak any French. I know enough to ask for directions, but not enough to be able to follow those directions. The theme of my morning excursion was “I did it myself – in French!” I went to the Metro station and bought two 3-day museum passes. I went to a coffee shop and bought a cookie and an espresso. (Forget about regular filter coffee in Paris – you will drink espresso and you will like it because you will be wired for days on end.) I went into a store and bought 24 postcards. All by myself. All in French.
I stayed in the vicinity of our hotel and returned to get Peter so we could get on with our big adventure of a day. Since we’d had so much fun in Berlin buying our breakfast from a market, we decided to go to a Parisian market. We caught the Metro to the Bastille and were stopped by ticket inspectors. Peter found his ticket easily, but I had a couple of tickets from the night before in my pocket.
I kept pulling out tickets and the inspector kept looking at them carefully and shaking his head. He put one into a little validator machine and it came up invalid. I was starting to get nervous. He was talking to me in French. I had heard all about French Metro inspectors and knew I was going to be in trouble if I couldn’t produce a valid ticket. Peter was about 10 feet away, looking at me the way you’d look at someone whom you thought might be drowning, but you weren’t really sure they were in trouble and you weren’t confident enough in your swimming skills to know that you could save them if there were. Finally, after nearly emptying my pockets and turning them inside out, I found the right ticket and was let through.
The market was great – several long blocks of vendors selling everything from sea urchins to socks. What wasn’t so great was the weather. In my zeal to have a Berlin-like market experience, I’d conveniently forgotten that we went to Berlin in July and we were in Paris in January. It was cold (-1 C or about 29 F) and a bit windy. We ended up buying a scarf each and I got a pair of gloves. My scarf – a nice blue pashmina – didn’t leave my neck the whole time we were in Paris.
We found a café near the market and settled in for lunch. It was a nice enough place and the food was good. I had a delicious goat’s cheese sandwich. Peter had ordered the hamburger but the waiter “I’ve made a big mistake, I’ve ordered you rib eye steak” but Peter found it quite delicious so the mistake was forgiven. (We were not so amused to get charged for the rib eye steak, which was about 3 euro more expensive, but we didn’t complain about it. Peter did eat it and like it after all.)
After lunch, we went to Notre Dame, which Peter loved and I found a bit gloomy and depressing. The inside is enormous, cavernous and although it looks big from the outside, I don’t think anything prepares you for the inside. In addition to the large, traditional church area and alter, the sides and back are lines with small chapels and prayer areas. The choir loft is dominated by an enormous pipe organ. The ceilings are unreachably high. But I found it dark and foreboding. Of course, one girl’s dark and foreboding is another man’s magnificent and amazing.
Our museum passes got us into the top part of the church for free. We walked up a spiral stone staircase to the gift shop, where we waited to be allowed up to the top. After we’d served our time in the shop, we were allowed to walk up more spiral stone stairs until we reached the balcony where all the gargoyles sit. The view was amazing and I could have spent all day up there. (Although you wouldn’t want to be extraordinarily fat since the little archways into the various balcony sections are incredibly narrow.)
We also went into the bell tower and I now want to read The Hunchback of Notre Dame. (Or at least watch the Disney movie.) The entire supporting structure inside the bell tower is wooden and you can definitely appreciate the “No Smoking” sign. The bell is enormous and I’d love to see it swing, although it looks like they just use a striker on the side of it now.
After Notre Dame, we went to the crypts, which I’d unfortunately confused with the catacombs. Unless you’re really into archeology, the crypt is only interesting for about 5 minutes. Luckily, it was free with our magic museum pass, so we spent about 15 minutes there and then decamped for a café, where we enjoyed crepes and coffee. One thing that was difficult to get used to in Paris – the smoking indoors. The smoking ban in workplaces has been in effect in Dublin for nearly 2 years now and it’s completely spoilt us. We’re just not used to breathing other people’s smoke and going home smelling like smoke. To be fair, the ventilation in the Parisian cafes is hands-down better than that of Dublin pubs, but it’s still a shock to see someone light up indoors.
Our next point of interest was St. Chapelle, a chapel that was built to house the Crown of Thorns and other spoils from the crusades. To get into the church, we had to queue and go through a metal detector because the church is on the grounds of the Courts of Justice or some similarly official sounding French court system. The ground floor of the church is dark, dank and disappointing, probably because the stained glass windows were removed when the floor was used as a storage room for the courts. At first, we thought this was all there was and were feeling distinctly disappointed before we spotted the staircases to the upper floor.
The stained glass windows on the upper floor are outstanding. The information sheet explained that the windows tell the stories from the Bible and that each window is like its own comic strip. The detail in the windows is exquisite and you could easily spend hours getting cricks in your neck, examining each panel. Entry to the St. Chapelle also entitles you to see the Concierge, although we got into both for free because of…all together now…the magic museum pass.
The Concierge was used as a prison back in the French Revolution and we got to see the cell where Marie Antoinette was held before her execution. The prison was interesting in that how you were incarcerated depended on your station in life. If you were poor, you were going to be sharing with lots of other people and sleeping on straw. If you were wealthy, you could buy your way up into private accommodations with a bed and a writing desk.
After the Concierge, we went to our last tourist stop of the day: the Louvre. (And if you’re already thinking to yourself that we got in free because of the magic museum pass, you’re absolutely correct.) We arrived via the Metro so we didn’t get to really see the famous pyramid until we left the museum.
Unless you’re a scholar of Renaissance art, there’s only one reason for going to the Louvre. Sure, it’s a fantastic museum, stocked to the gills with 35,000 works of art and it is, in and of itself, a work of art. But really, everyone who walks through those doors has one thing in mind. Everyone wants to see this lady. The museum is designed to handle this overwhelming desire. Just about every sign in the place has a little picture of the Mona Lisa and an arrow pointing in her direction.
We followed the arrows like everyone else and ended up in front of her. They’ve built what looks like a little altar to keep people back and, since that’s apparently not enough, they also use those ugly bank-queue tensa-barriers to rope the area off. Everyone who sees the Mona Lisa reports that she’s much smaller than they thought. I was expecting something on the size of Van Gogh’s “Starry Night,” which I always thought was going to be the size of an entire wall and it’s not that much bigger than a sheet of paper. Given my expectations of “Starry Night,” I went into the Louvre half-expecting the Mona Lisa to be the size of a post card.
She’s not. She’s respectably sized. Not as big as some, not as small as others. You see, there’s a lot of hype over the Mona Lisa and at the end of our visit, we had to conclude that she’s famous just for being famous. Sort of like being the Kerry Katona of the Renaissance. Yes, it’s a great painting done by one of art’s great Masters, but it’s not the be-all end-all of portraiture. The Mona Lisa has had centuries of great PR and that’s why everyone flocks to see her. You go out of a sense of responsibility, a sense that if you go to Paris and don’t see her, you’ve somehow missed out. In the end, you get what you’ve paid for – you get to tick off a must-do on your great list of must-dos and then you go on to the next thing.
For us, the next thing was back to the hotel for a nap. Or at least a nap for Peter. I wandered around the area near our hotel and stopped into a café for an espresso. We had dinner at a Japanese place where Peter had reasonably priced sushi that later didn’t agree with him so well.
First, a word about fashion. In short, fashion went right out the door in favour of comfort. I’d planned to not really wear jeans, but I couldn’t wear my runners with my black trousers. Plus, wearing the black trousers with most of my blouses made me look like someone’s grandmother. I had to concede pretty early on that my clothes are just not that fashionable in general, with the exception of my cute little outfits. (More on this later.)
I don’t really speak any French. I know enough to ask for directions, but not enough to be able to follow those directions. The theme of my morning excursion was “I did it myself – in French!” I went to the Metro station and bought two 3-day museum passes. I went to a coffee shop and bought a cookie and an espresso. (Forget about regular filter coffee in Paris – you will drink espresso and you will like it because you will be wired for days on end.) I went into a store and bought 24 postcards. All by myself. All in French.
I stayed in the vicinity of our hotel and returned to get Peter so we could get on with our big adventure of a day. Since we’d had so much fun in Berlin buying our breakfast from a market, we decided to go to a Parisian market. We caught the Metro to the Bastille and were stopped by ticket inspectors. Peter found his ticket easily, but I had a couple of tickets from the night before in my pocket.
I kept pulling out tickets and the inspector kept looking at them carefully and shaking his head. He put one into a little validator machine and it came up invalid. I was starting to get nervous. He was talking to me in French. I had heard all about French Metro inspectors and knew I was going to be in trouble if I couldn’t produce a valid ticket. Peter was about 10 feet away, looking at me the way you’d look at someone whom you thought might be drowning, but you weren’t really sure they were in trouble and you weren’t confident enough in your swimming skills to know that you could save them if there were. Finally, after nearly emptying my pockets and turning them inside out, I found the right ticket and was let through.
The market was great – several long blocks of vendors selling everything from sea urchins to socks. What wasn’t so great was the weather. In my zeal to have a Berlin-like market experience, I’d conveniently forgotten that we went to Berlin in July and we were in Paris in January. It was cold (-1 C or about 29 F) and a bit windy. We ended up buying a scarf each and I got a pair of gloves. My scarf – a nice blue pashmina – didn’t leave my neck the whole time we were in Paris.
We found a café near the market and settled in for lunch. It was a nice enough place and the food was good. I had a delicious goat’s cheese sandwich. Peter had ordered the hamburger but the waiter “I’ve made a big mistake, I’ve ordered you rib eye steak” but Peter found it quite delicious so the mistake was forgiven. (We were not so amused to get charged for the rib eye steak, which was about 3 euro more expensive, but we didn’t complain about it. Peter did eat it and like it after all.)
After lunch, we went to Notre Dame, which Peter loved and I found a bit gloomy and depressing. The inside is enormous, cavernous and although it looks big from the outside, I don’t think anything prepares you for the inside. In addition to the large, traditional church area and alter, the sides and back are lines with small chapels and prayer areas. The choir loft is dominated by an enormous pipe organ. The ceilings are unreachably high. But I found it dark and foreboding. Of course, one girl’s dark and foreboding is another man’s magnificent and amazing.
Our museum passes got us into the top part of the church for free. We walked up a spiral stone staircase to the gift shop, where we waited to be allowed up to the top. After we’d served our time in the shop, we were allowed to walk up more spiral stone stairs until we reached the balcony where all the gargoyles sit. The view was amazing and I could have spent all day up there. (Although you wouldn’t want to be extraordinarily fat since the little archways into the various balcony sections are incredibly narrow.)
We also went into the bell tower and I now want to read The Hunchback of Notre Dame. (Or at least watch the Disney movie.) The entire supporting structure inside the bell tower is wooden and you can definitely appreciate the “No Smoking” sign. The bell is enormous and I’d love to see it swing, although it looks like they just use a striker on the side of it now.
After Notre Dame, we went to the crypts, which I’d unfortunately confused with the catacombs. Unless you’re really into archeology, the crypt is only interesting for about 5 minutes. Luckily, it was free with our magic museum pass, so we spent about 15 minutes there and then decamped for a café, where we enjoyed crepes and coffee. One thing that was difficult to get used to in Paris – the smoking indoors. The smoking ban in workplaces has been in effect in Dublin for nearly 2 years now and it’s completely spoilt us. We’re just not used to breathing other people’s smoke and going home smelling like smoke. To be fair, the ventilation in the Parisian cafes is hands-down better than that of Dublin pubs, but it’s still a shock to see someone light up indoors.
Our next point of interest was St. Chapelle, a chapel that was built to house the Crown of Thorns and other spoils from the crusades. To get into the church, we had to queue and go through a metal detector because the church is on the grounds of the Courts of Justice or some similarly official sounding French court system. The ground floor of the church is dark, dank and disappointing, probably because the stained glass windows were removed when the floor was used as a storage room for the courts. At first, we thought this was all there was and were feeling distinctly disappointed before we spotted the staircases to the upper floor.
The stained glass windows on the upper floor are outstanding. The information sheet explained that the windows tell the stories from the Bible and that each window is like its own comic strip. The detail in the windows is exquisite and you could easily spend hours getting cricks in your neck, examining each panel. Entry to the St. Chapelle also entitles you to see the Concierge, although we got into both for free because of…all together now…the magic museum pass.
The Concierge was used as a prison back in the French Revolution and we got to see the cell where Marie Antoinette was held before her execution. The prison was interesting in that how you were incarcerated depended on your station in life. If you were poor, you were going to be sharing with lots of other people and sleeping on straw. If you were wealthy, you could buy your way up into private accommodations with a bed and a writing desk.
After the Concierge, we went to our last tourist stop of the day: the Louvre. (And if you’re already thinking to yourself that we got in free because of the magic museum pass, you’re absolutely correct.) We arrived via the Metro so we didn’t get to really see the famous pyramid until we left the museum.
Unless you’re a scholar of Renaissance art, there’s only one reason for going to the Louvre. Sure, it’s a fantastic museum, stocked to the gills with 35,000 works of art and it is, in and of itself, a work of art. But really, everyone who walks through those doors has one thing in mind. Everyone wants to see this lady. The museum is designed to handle this overwhelming desire. Just about every sign in the place has a little picture of the Mona Lisa and an arrow pointing in her direction.
We followed the arrows like everyone else and ended up in front of her. They’ve built what looks like a little altar to keep people back and, since that’s apparently not enough, they also use those ugly bank-queue tensa-barriers to rope the area off. Everyone who sees the Mona Lisa reports that she’s much smaller than they thought. I was expecting something on the size of Van Gogh’s “Starry Night,” which I always thought was going to be the size of an entire wall and it’s not that much bigger than a sheet of paper. Given my expectations of “Starry Night,” I went into the Louvre half-expecting the Mona Lisa to be the size of a post card.
She’s not. She’s respectably sized. Not as big as some, not as small as others. You see, there’s a lot of hype over the Mona Lisa and at the end of our visit, we had to conclude that she’s famous just for being famous. Sort of like being the Kerry Katona of the Renaissance. Yes, it’s a great painting done by one of art’s great Masters, but it’s not the be-all end-all of portraiture. The Mona Lisa has had centuries of great PR and that’s why everyone flocks to see her. You go out of a sense of responsibility, a sense that if you go to Paris and don’t see her, you’ve somehow missed out. In the end, you get what you’ve paid for – you get to tick off a must-do on your great list of must-dos and then you go on to the next thing.
For us, the next thing was back to the hotel for a nap. Or at least a nap for Peter. I wandered around the area near our hotel and stopped into a café for an espresso. We had dinner at a Japanese place where Peter had reasonably priced sushi that later didn’t agree with him so well.
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