Paris: the Basics

We left Bayeux on Monday, October 12th at about 3:00 p.m. and arrived at Paris St. Lazare station at around 5:00. There are many train stations in Paris and each has special arrivals and departures. To get from train station to train station you have to take a taxi, a bus or the Metro.

Our hotel, Eber Mars, was located within easy walking distance of the Eiffel Tower and the Rue Cler, a famous if somewhat anglicized, shopping and dining street. Our room was small and very similar to the one in the center bottom picture of the "rooms" link on the hotel's webpage. Our bath was the 2nd smallest of the whole trip, but it worked just fine. We had two big casement windows that opened on to the street right next to the awning for the hotel. We were on the 2nd floor (European 1st floor).

We used public transportation the whole time we were in Paris. We bought a "carnet" of 10 tickets that could be used on busses, the Metro and some river boats. The lavendar colored #8 line was our route home from wherever we went. We got off at the Ecole Militaire stop.

We found travel on Paris mass transit easy, efficient and fast, even if we did have to go through many tunnels and up and down many sets of stairs to get to the right platforms going the right directions. Although it's common, we saw no evidence of pickpocketing going on. The time I was in Paris in the early 80's, I saw it happening right in front of my nose.

We got settled into our hotel room, unpacked what we needed to and headed out into the neighborhood for dinner, using Rick Steves' recommendations as a guide. We had a lovely dinner at Le Bosquet.

To walk off the calories, we walked over to the Champs de Mars and the Eiffel Tower. Neither of us had any interest in going up to any of the levels in the tower, but standing inside the legs was amazing. Trout called one of his friends, Wally, from there.

Can you see Trout's little bald spot rimmed by gray hair in the bottom left of this picture?

Here he is reading about Monsieur Eiffel.

We were there on a good night at a good time. It wasn't crowded.

This turned out a little blurry, but I love this detail.

The next day after a generous petit dejeuner (for me anyway), we took off on foot toward the Musee d'Orsay. En route we walked past this picture-worthy vehicle. It's not your Bellevue BMW, but it probably cost just about as much.

We walked around the Place des Invalides. The link I have is to the French Wikipedia page because the first image shows an aerial view. We walked around the front (or was it the back?) and it was truly a grand vista across the Seine. In the bottom right of that aerial photo you can see the gardens of the Musee Rodin. If you click on the English version, the pictures are different.

I hadn't been very interested in going to the Musee Rodin, but Trout really likes his work, so we stopped by there on the way to the Musee d'Orsay. There were lots of lovely works in the villa, but I only took a couple of pictures in the gardens. To see more, go to the linked website.

I'd never seen this piece before.

This scupture of Balzac is one I like.

Of course, everyone recognizes the Thinker and most have to take copycat posed pictures of their friends with it. Trout just stared up.

My all time favorite Rodin is the Burghers of Calais. This is bronze work and more than one copy was made. We saw one in London as well.

The Musee d'Orsay is in an old train station. It has one of the best collections of impressionist painting anywhere in the world. That's what I went to see. Trout and I split up to wander the place and he also saw an excellent collection of furniture in the decorative arts section.

I could single out any number of paintings to link from the painting page. You might want to page through the list and thumbnails yourself. Even if you haven't studied the impressionist art of this period, you will probably recognize some of the images. I finally picked a Renoir to link you to here.

I didn't really intend to look at sculpture, but I was delighted to find this very famous Degas dancer in a case in a room with some of his two-dimensional work.

I only took these two pictures inside.

From the d'Orsay we took the bus to and up the Champs Elysees to the Arc de Triomphe. I will have separate pictures of and links to some the sites we saw there in the next blog entry.

After we got home, late of course, we again headed out for dinner. We ended up at a different restaurant. This time we went to a funky bistro. The food was just as good only simpler. It was also a younger, hipper crowd. I can't remember the name of it and I didn't recognize it in the area when I walked along Rue Cler via Google.

Besides 3 dinners, we also ate 2 lunches in the Rue Cler area where we stayed. Trout couldn't manage to get up in time for breakfast the first morning, so as soon as he was ready, we went to lunch at a place called Ulysse. It's known for its grab and go crepes and for Greek food. It was quite good.

The next day he managed to get downstairs in time to eat, but we lollygagged (no surprise there) and so we went ahead and had lunch at a place called Tribeca. It was Italian mostly and it was also good.

I took these two pictures along Rue Cler just to show a little of what it was like.

A Google image search for the area produces more and better pictures.

Au revoir jusqu'a la prochaine affectation.