Loving it in Paris

Mon. Apr. 11: Most of the museums in Paris are either closed Monday or Tuesday so we had to plan our stay accordingly. From our travels yesterday we had a better idea of what to expect with lines and so forth. So after yogurt and a croissant we went straight to Notre Dame to get in line to climb the 430 steps into the towers to look over the city of Paris. After about a ten minute wait we were in the third group to ascend after they opened for the day. It’s a pretty rugged climb but it’s broken up twice with flat places to stand and recover while peering over the edge and it was really thrilling to see nearly 360° from that height. It is also awesome to note how worn the spiraling stone steps have become after so many years of people going up to have a look around. Equally enthralling is to consider the effort it must have taken over two hundred years to build the cathedral with the day’s technologies, and much of it was done with volunteer labor from the people of old Paris. The detailing and sculpture included all to the Glory of God and without consideration that most of it wouldn’t be seen by the common people is breathtaking, right down to the carved “sleigh bells” surrounding the belfry holding the biggest bells and, of course, the iconic gargoyles and chimeras. After plenty of time to look around and take pictures we made our way back down the 430 steps of the south tower and considered what to do with the rest of the day. The Museé de Cluny was just up the street from our hotel so we went back to our neighborhood to visit this display of Medieval relics. The museum is housed in a “hotel” built long ago on top of the nearly 2000 year old baths built there by the Romans when the city was known as Luticia. They have many of the original stained glass windows from St. Chapelle, fantastic tapestries with a lady, a unicorn and a lion, original wooden choir seats from a cathedral, and the original Kings of Israel statues that were from the portico of Notre Dame. Revolutionists, thinking they were French kings, removed and decapitated them. Someone had the forethought to bury them in their yard where they lay forgotten until 1977 when they were discovered! From the Cluny we picked up giant gyros for lunch and then took our first bus to the Louvre to walk in the beautiful Tuillerie Gardens. It was a sunny day in the seventies and there were lots of people out strolling, playing and sailing a few boats in the concrete ponds. We rested in a couple of the green chairs that are everywhere and enjoyed the scene before going into L’orangarie. They have a modest but very nice collection of Impressionist Paintings there including 8 giant canvases of Water Lilies given to Paris by Monet after World War I. As we took pictures outside at the Place de la Concord the battery went dead on the camera. So we took the Metro back to the hotel to get another and rest a bit On the way we picked up a sandwich to take with a bottle of wine we purchased way back at the Bacchus Festival to have a picnic at the Eiffel Tower. Let me say a little bit about the hotel here. We have a very nice and impeccably clean but small room. The hotel is “green” and saves energy in many ways, the most interesting of which is that the hallways have motion detecting lighting so that each time the elevator doors open the hallway is dark until you step out, and the room electricity is turned on by inserting the door key into a holder next to the door every time you enter. They have you leave the key at the desk each time you leave thus insuring that the electricity is off whenever the room is not used. The buffet breakfast they offer is apparently local product and free trade but at 15€ a person per day we didn’t avail ourselves of it! Rested and re-energized (new battery) we took the Metro back to the Champ de Mars to have our picnic supper in the shadow of the Eiffel Tower. Around 6:30 we got in a short line for security and to buy tickets and then rode the elevator up the East Tower (leg) to the second platform (not the summit) of Eiffel’s engineering marvel. We had a marvelous view of all Paris at a level low enough for the landmarks to be recognizable. (That way we also didn’t have to wait in what we heard was a line over an hour long to get to the top.) From there we watched the sun set and the lights of Paris come on. It is a magical sight!! It was also fun to listen to all of the languages on this Tower of Babel! At 9:00 we enjoyed the five minute twinkling light display on the tower. Then we walked down to the first platform to look around some more before taking the elevator to the ground to have a different perspective of the 10:00 display. It was late when the Metro delivered us just down the block from our home away from home for the night.