Paris Part Two

There is so much to see in Paris that a week is way too short a visit to do it any kind of justice. There are museums and churches around every corner as well as magnificent public spaces.

We believe this is where the mayor of Paris carries out the work of the city.
There was a man creating large bubbles for no apparent reason, but they floated into the field of view quite nicely and all of the passing children enjoyed.

And then you get churches like this with apartments pressing close.

The Opera

The Senate, with lots of guards with their versions of AK47's, is set at the head of the Luxembourg gardens.

We went to several markets and they are quite an adventure. In the large one near the Bastille, which operates on Thursdays and Saturdays. We went on Thursday which is mainly meat, fish and vegetable day. There were also quite a few stalls with clothes and household items and several food stalls with coffee and crepes made to order. The fish and meat stalls were a sight to behold, I just wish we had these in Oregon!

This is the general view of the Bastille market with the monument in the distance, which is where the market starts.

The photos above are from another market that we happened across, quite a bit smaller, but we spotted a couple of the same vendors that were at the Bastille market the previous day.

We wanted to take a boat tour on the Seine and this photo shows the boat before it began to fill up. We were advised to get to the dock early to avoid the crowds, so we took the first boat of the day. The boat moved quite quickly, so it was a bit difficult to get any good images.

This was our narrator and he spoke very good English as well as French (of course). The river was very high, so we had a slightly different itinerary from normal.

All of the bridges we passed under had some form of art attached to them, isn't that a nice idea?

Parisians measure the flood stage of the Seine by how far the river comes up the statue. Not long ago a flood came up to his head, so you can see we had a way to go.

On this bridge near where we stayed, there were always photographers out with tripods etc. This was my handheld version, David W, you would be proud.

Tree avenues in the Luxembourg gardens.

Lots of people go to the garden on their lunch break and this day it was quite warm and sunny.

Coffee was always fun and we found a lot of different places and only once did we go to Starbucks. In the last one above, we found some customers also partaking of their morning glass of rose wine, very civilized.

One of the sights we visited was Sainte Chappelle, with its incredible stained glass windows. We were lucky to be there on an overcast morning that made photographing the windows a little bit easier (but not that much!) It is hard to grasp how all of this was accomplished so many years ago.

We also got to visit the Musee d'Orsay when it was open late and the ticket lines were short. The museum is housed in a former railway station built between 1898 and 1900. It is quite a wonderful place with mostly French impressionist artists from the mid 1800's to mid 1900's.

Vincent van Gogh self portrait.

I think I liked this version the best, the brush strokes were fascinating.

We went to visit the area around the Poilane bakery in the Saint-Germain-des-Prés district. It is an amazing place with famously decorated breads as seen in the window above.

This photo is in the courtyard of Saint Sulpice as we near the end of our last full day in Paris. We realized the extend of what we did NOT see on our taxi ride to the Opera area to catch the Roissy Bus to the airport. We kept seeing areas that we had not explored all within short walks of where we stayed. We picked up our car from the Hertz rental place in Charles De Gaulle airport after a very long wait at the service desk and then had to wait again for a car to make it's appearance. I am glad we got to the airport early as we faced about a four plus hour ride to our next stop on the Normandy coast.
More of that later......

Paris Part One

We spent the first week of May in the center of Paris and walked a lot and took an awful lot of photographs. Our apartment was on the Ille St Louis, which was a very convenient and quiet location, busy during the day but very quiet through the night.

This is the doorway to our apartment, conveniently located between a cheese store and a very nice restaurant.

Our daily climb, 65 steps to the third floor apartment.

Quite close to where we stayed was a large hospital, confusingly called Hotel Dieu, the first hospital in Paris, established in 651.

Notre Dame was a short walk for us, it is a tourist destination and is often quite crowded but always worth the visit. The lines to climb up to the tower level were always long, and we know the staircase is narrow and a bazillian steps, (thanks Pat and John)

The view from the Seine.

We were fortunate to be walking by with the full moon shining through a thin layer of cloud.

Many buildings are lit at night.

The Seine was in flood during our stay making the navigation for the tour boats, a challenge.

Many of the bridges have all of these padlocks attached to them. Couples buy a padlock, attach it to these bridges to signify the "locking" of

their love for each other. In fact we learned that one bridge, the iron bridge, has so many locks attached that it is in some danger of collapse, so adding more locks is now illegal.

Padlocks everywhere,

An innovative solution to the delivery of small items. These folks can really maneuver through the traffic.

Parkng is an issue, just like most big cities, but I am not sure how these cars got "unparked", I just hope these car owners know each other.

Of course, Paris is full of amazing restaurants. This one caught our attention, all of the plating of the large shared seafood plate were prepared "on the street". We would have liked to eat there but were a bit put off by the large share platter that cost about $250. It is probably worth a return visit.

There are all varieties of food available and we found this Tibetan restaurant close by with food we like and prices much more in line with our plans.
More to come soon, Paris Part Two.

Off to London

This is the week we begin our extended trip to London and beyond. We decided that we needed to pack lightly with the expectation of having to haul our luggage over cobbled streets, up escalators, stairs and trains. It was a challenge to decide just what we might need for this three month trip, shoes and rain-gear being the most vexing. In the end we packed what we thought made sense and decided to shop at thrift stores if we needed something extra, remembering, of course,  we would have to ditch something in return.



That,s all the luggage and now to San Francisco airport to London via LA. The flights were good, not too crowded. We managed to get exit row seats on the Boeing 777-300 to London with the comfort of more legroom.
Took the tube from Heathrow, not the express, much to expensive, the Piccadilly line was about $10 each  with no changes to Kings Cross. We had booked a hotel for three days to recover from jet-lag and see a bit of London, room was small but OK, hotel full of travelers from all over Europe.

At least we had a view over the rooftops to St Pancreas rail terminus.

Just had to start the day with an almost full English breakfast.

Kings Cross is a very busy station but with a great facade and this incredible structure inside. It was very interesting to listen to the voices around us, English was not what was most prevalent, many changes in 40 years!

Traveling by tube is always a great experience and easy and convenient.
We needed to get another SIM card for our phone which turned out to be a bit of a challenge, but in the end we were able to figure it out (mostly). It is odd that I can text to European phones, but texting to US phones does not work, maybe has to do with different technologies between US and Europe!
We wandered around the City streets heading towards Oxford street via Soho.

This is a wonderful Hungarian restaurant that I used to visit occasionally in the 1970's, has not changed a bit and the "wild cherry soup" is still on the menu.

Walked through Selfridges and had to take a break and sit in the park surrounding the Marble Arch. We were blessed with lovely weather, sunny but not hot.

Interesting sculpture in the same park.

On to Kensington and museums.

This is the Natural History museum, but we were headed for the V&A.

Great museum and entry is free.

This is just one small gallery as you enter. There are seven miles of hallways in this museum, so it is very difficult to comprehend the scale.

One of the three rooms to have your lunch, or you can eat outside in the garden.

It was a short walk to Harrods, a "must visit" just for fun.

I just love the food halls, just look at this ceiling!

 We just had to have ice cream, very expensive. This is Jenna who took our order and was very nice and friendly.

All packed up again and off to St Pancreas to catch the Eurostar to Paris.

Pretty long lines and passport control and all of that. Train was pretty full as this weekend was a long holiday weekend and many folks were taking advantage of an extra day off.

I guess all entry's to train stations look pretty much the same, even in France. At least the train ride was very smooth and fast.

Negotiated the Metro and emerged on the Ille de France, just a short walk to our rented apartment.

A peak at Notre Dame as we pulled our luggage along.

Over the Seine.

Onto Ille St Louis.

And down the street to our apartment.
Stay tuned as we stumble around Paris.