Last days in France

Place Concorde

Petit Palais

Pretty Sculpture and you can see it is autumn

Tomb of the Unknown Soldier at Arc D'Triumph

Garden at the Tulleries

Monet's Waterlillies in L'Orangerie

Sue at Tulleries

The Bear's Den

Final days in France – Paris
Monday
Sue and I have been enjoying Paris to maximum. We’ve yet to take the Metro as we have been walking everywhere. Since our hotel is so central to everything (one block from the Seine near Chatellet metro stop) it is pretty easy to do. We’ve put quite a few miles, or should I say kilometers, on our feet.

We wanted to hear some local music so we checked out the web and guidebooks. To our happy surprised we discovered that the best place in all of Paris to hear music is right here in our neighborhood – who knew? We went to a small club, Le Sunside, just a few blocks away. The street it is on has lots of cafes, bars, clubs, and local color. It obviously has a substantial gay contingent – see the pic of Bear’s lair above.

Le Sunside was packed and we managed to get seats two rows back from the stage. I didn’t get the group’s name but it consisted of an awesome piano player, bass player, drums, and an excellent female singer named Melodie. They were really good and did mostly French jazz with quite a few Brazilian style numbers thrown in. The crowd was mainly locals. We stayed for two sets and left at midnight. We hadn’t had a chance to have any dinner so after checking out the fast food possibilities we got French crepes (mushroom and cheese) at a corner stand cooked by Pakistanis. Headed home around 1 am and there were still lots of people on the streets.

Sunday morning it was cloudy and there were very light rain showers. We headed out to walk down the Seine to the Tulleries Jardin. It looked a lot different than it had when I was there in mid-summer. The children’s rides were gone and so was the ferris wheel that MaryAnn Wolcott and I had ridden in terror. Instead the garden was still in full bloom but very quiet with just a few folks strolling about. We sat down in a quiet café in the middle of the garden and had coffee. A man who had been strolling by with some teenagers (his grandchildren?) came over and asked if he could take our picture. We said sure but were somewhat bewildered as to why he would want to. He appeared to be a professional photographer. He took a few pictures of us and left. Perhaps we’ll be on the cover of the Paris Match???

We went to the L’Orangerie museum. We decided that it is probably the very best one in Paris as it is small enough not to be exhausting and contains so many of our favorites – Monet, Renoir, Modigliani, Picasso, etc. The upper gallery is limited to only two large rooms with Monet’s huge canvases of the Giverney waterlillies – so beautiful. Downstairs is made up of the entire collection of an art dealer, Paul Guillaume, whose widow donated it after his death. The collection is amazing. We particularly loved one painter who we weren’t previously familiar with, Chaim Soutine. We decided he was the precursor to abstract art.

After the museum we headed to toward the Champes Elysee and then walked all the way to Arc d’Triumph. It was fun and good sighseeing but we really prefer the neighborhood where we are staying. The Champs Elysee is too houighty touity without anything really all that interesting. We passed up the fancy shops but did buy a few things (warm ones) in the Gap.

Our feet were really tired by the time we headed back to the hotel and we had to stop quite few times to rest our feet. Along the Seine we watched the Batou Mouches loaded with the tourists and also observed the many, apparent, house boats docked along the Quay.
Sunday night we decided we were too tired for a major evening of entertainment or fancy food. We had a simple meal at a little Thai restaurant (a great change from what we’ve been eating). Afterwards we had decided to take in an English language movie at a cinema in the neighborhood – Take Me to the Greek. Getting there wasn’t easy. The theater was in Les Halles Forum. Looked pretty easy on the map and on Sue’s Iphone. However when we got to where it was supposed to be there was no signage for it. We walked all around the large square and all we could were closed shops and a Metro stop. We even stopped and asked a cop who was busy talking on his cell phone. He said just go around to the right. We did – no cinema. Finally in desperation we went down into the Metro. The underground Metro had a huge, very tacky shopping center in side and we did find a movie theater way down at the opposite end from where we had entered. Unfortunately our movie wasn’t playing there. We asked the ticket seller if he knew where our theater was. He said it was inside the same mall. We walked around for awhile and found an art film place – we were pretty sure Take me to the Greek wouldn’t be playing there but asked a staff person anyway. She was very nice and said, “Yes the theater you want is here in the mall. You must go down the corridor to the left all the way to the end and then down, down, down.” We followed her directions and at the end of the mall in the metro went down four levels and there miraculously was a movie theater – like a bomb shelter far underground. We looked for Take Me to the Greek and it wasn’t listed. However, “An American Trip” was listed with the same cast. For some reason they had changed the name.

We sat through the movie and it was bad, bad, very bad. Quite an experience locating the theater followed by the movie itself which was incredibly sick and not even funny.

Our last day (today – Monday) was a Jewish day. We went to the Jewish History Museum in the Marai (very close to where we are staying), to a Jewish deli for matzo ball soup, and then to the Holocaust Memorial. All was very heavy but good – including the soup.

Tonight we are going to have “appertifs” at Marielle’s apartment near Notre Dame. She is Roger and Suzette’s daughter. Afterwards we will have dinner on Isle Saint Louis and then home to bed early as we leave pretty early tomorrow.