Louvre then Montmarte

My morning walk was short, consisting only of assisting somewhat the translator and guide on her way over to the Metro. She is braver than we (and her bag isn't as heavy) so she is taking the Metro and the RER to the airport. We will be taking a cab but today I did a tiny bit of heavy lifting helping her get her bag to the entrance to the Metro system and then she was on her way. She called from the airport to let us know she had checked in. As of this moment the airplane is still in flight. Bon voyage, Wireless.

So the free tennis player and myself got into the line for the Louvre in the guidebook preferred underground shopping mall a solid 15 minutes before opening and were only about 50 deep in the surge past security. I was allowed out of the queue at that point as I had no bag. The tennis player had to have his "purse" examined again. Ask him.

But we were in early and after some initial confusion arrived at "Winged Victory of Samothrace" well before the massive crowds that were there later in the morning.The free tennis player was castigated by the museum staff for stepping up onto what looked to him (and to me) to be part of the stairway for a photo op. Staff did not agree with our assessment but fortunately it was not an ejection offense.

There was only one person ahead of us when we arrived at "Aphrodite" more commonly known as "Venus de Milo".In a nearby room we came upon "Hercules and his son".Here at the far end of the room is some stuff that isn't even art, it is just part of the building. To be fair, there is a sign down there describing the building (this particular bit was done in 1570) and I suppose that is a concession that it is in fact art and the building sometimes IS art.We wandered through the Etruscan antiquities section next on our way to Roman antiquities. It occurred to us later that we had casually walked past a few hundred of the most spectacular works of art to be found anywhere in the world without much more than a sideways glance.Another example of not even art, just the building, this is the ceiling of one of the nine rooms which were the summer apartment of Anne of Austria when she was queen.Here is a selection from the Roman antiquities section, the "Borghese Gladiator". I am pretty sure that any of these works can be googled if you desire more information. I will get around to it myself eventually but am not going to try to provide links today.This is in the area classified as Italian sculpture. This is "Hercules Fighting the Hydra". It is actually part of a fountain installed at the beginning of the 17th century in the gardens at Rueil, and in the 18th century in the park at Marly. It has been in the Louvre since 1872.These two are by Michelangelo, the Dying Slave and the Rebellious Slave. The one in the middle is the free tennis player.This is the reception room of the apartment of Napoleon III.There is only so much art a person can absorb in one dose and our dose today was large indeed. Very shortly after opening the Louvre begins to lose its identity as a museum, quickly segueing into an exercise in crowd control. At one point three separate large groups of Japanese school girls were led into the rather smallish room where I was standing. The population of the room went from around 15 to around 90 in less time than it took to type this. One group after another had to be led up to the marble statue of a reclining hermorphadite to allow them to marvel at the feminine backside facing the room and the erect penis on the opposite side facing the window.

You could almost actually feel the buses arriving. We looked out the window a time or two and marveled at the line which continued to grow in length even as the museum windows of commerce continued to admit new art lovers as fast as they could pay their €9.50.

We sought the "sortie" and headed back to our apartment. Along the way we got a photo from inside the pyramid entrance.And then we ran into this sassy French lady at a sidewalk cafe.Our afternoon outing was to Montmarte. This landmark was right outside our Metro stop as we prepared to climb the big hill.We went into the Dali Museum where I got this photo of a giant "pust".But after that my shutter refused to release, citing a need for recharging the battery. Life is not a photo opportunity but on the other hand the battery is at this moment in the charger. We have another day, I suspect there will be more photos. We are having a bunch of fun over here. I hope you all are too.

A grey day, a great day in Paris

We are starting to run out of days and we all have at least a couple of things on our want to do lists. We are further concerned about the impending departure of our peerless guide and translator. What, oh what will we do without her?

Get along the best we can.

We rode the Metro out a bit for this morning's walk, then took a perhaps too long walk and then rode the Metro back in time for lunch. Our first stop just a few steps off the Metro was Porte Saint Denis.This was a gate in the Paris wall when Paris was a walled city. It was fairly exclusive as it was the king's entrance to the city. Whenever the king returned from outside the walls he came in through this gate. The gate indicates that it was built in 1673.

Only a couple of blocks away is Porte Saint Martin. This is the nearby gate that was used by everyone who wanted to enter the city in that area who wasn't the king.Both of these gates are located on one of the Grand Boulevards. Space for building the Grand Boulevards in the late 1800s was made by tearing down the city walls. The Grand Boulevards are a tourist destination themselves and we continued walking along the boulevard we were on until we arrived at Place de Republique.It was a very grey day and the photos are not always the greatest. I will try to run them through some photo shopping of some kind when I get home but for right now these are the images that I have. I am sorry but this is what it looked like in Paris this morning.

We cut into the Marais to arrive at Place des Vosges. This is one of the first examples of a planned community, identical housing on all four sides of the square. Victor Hugo lived here. I was able to get a photo which included two tourist tour groups, both (I think) German. The bicycle group on the left is definitely German, the downtubes of the bicycles say www.parisbicycletour.net or something similar. The people with the orange hats and chartreuse backpacks on the right might possibly be Dutch as they all have "Amstel" hats. I listened briefly to both tour group leaders and was not able to differentiate clearly if they were German or Dutch.This is the Colonne de Juillet at Place de la Bastille.The Bastille was torn down by the revolutionary mob. This column is dedicated to the heroes of 27, 28 and 29 July, 1830.

There was a political demonstration going on on the steps of Bastille Opera House. I had the French speaker translate the signs. The demonstration is by people who have documentation to work legally opposing workers "sans documents". She concluded it is more or less an anti-illegal immigrant demonstration. The Tea Party if you will.We walked along the Passage Plantee south of the Opera. It is an abandoned railroad viaduct which has been converted to a pedestrian way. It is about 4 kilometers long (we didn't walk the whole distance) and on a Sunday morning it is dominated by joggers. The other half of our traveling party was at the Jardin des Plantes so I wanted to be sure to get at least a tiny bit of horticultural content. The flowers are orange.Our afternoon excursion was to Musee Rodin. They have a big bronze at the nearest subway stop just to make sure you know that you are at the right place.The Thinker. I have several other shots, I think this is an example of a photo which will improve greatly with a little back light but I don't have time to do it right now.La Porte d'Enfer, the Gates of Hell, in bronze, featured earlier in the week in plaster from Musee D'Orsay.Ugolino, in the pool at the end of the garden.Orpheus, hidden in the bushes on one side of the greenway back to the pool.Balzac, next to the Thinker.Time grows short, we still have a couple of must do items left on the schedule. We shall see.

Another round of walking in the morning and museum in the afternoon

This is the Jardin du Palais Royal. I have visited this garden before but this time there is construction going on at one end of the garden and a construction barrier has been erected. It took until today for me to remember to go in the other entrance and see if the rest of the garden is affected by the construction. The answer turned out to be "no".The Palais Royal was the early 17th century home of Cardinal Richelieu. It passed on his death to the crown and was the childhood home of the infant king, Louis XIV. Louis became king at the age of 5 but government was in the hands of a regent. Louis lived here until he was 14 when he returned to Versailles.

Our morning walk took us towards the Marais and past Eglise Saint Eustache, the church with head and hand sculpture. The sculpture is interesting but the church also is quite impressive. The church is nearly as large as Notre Dame and includes some of the same building techniques such as the flying buttresses.Saint Eustache is next to Les Halles, the traditional site of the Paris Farmers Market. The Market was moved to the suburbs in the 1970s and the area was converted into a surface park and an underground shopping mall. The green arch is one of the major entryways into the park and is meant to remind the viewer of the great halls which were present on the site when the area was a market.This is the Fontaine des Innocents. There was a cemetery on this site, the Cimetiere des Innocents, a cemetery primarily for children. The bones were moved to the Catacombs in the 18th century and this fountain, originally constructed in 1549, was moved to the site as a memorial.The fountain is located just around the corner from the National Museum of Modern Art, usually known as the Pompidou Centre. There are two museums of modern art in Paris, the National Museum and a City museum. The recent art theft which coincided with our arrival here occurred at the city museum.The Pompidou Centre is often described as a building turned inside out. The escalators, elevators, air and water ducts have all been placed on the exterior of the building.

Next to the Pompidou Centre is the Place Igor Stravinsky. The Place is dominated by the first contemporary Parisian fountain.The church there in the background is Eglise Saint Merry. The site of the church dates to the 7th century but the building of the church was not completed until 1552. The northwest turret of the church contains the oldest bell in Paris, from 1331.

I would recommend against any raspberry croissants unless they come in a bag like this one. I had it translated for me earlier and have forgotten a bunch but there is stuff on the bag saying that those who raise good grain harvest good bread.We weren't even going for fancy pastries, just a little something for second breakfast, or maybe it was elevensies, but from left to right a chevre and tomate tart (goat cheese and tomato egg pie, a tiny quiche if you will), pain au chocolat amandes (a croissant like pastry with a line of chocolate down the middle and in this case almond paste), and a champignon tart (mushroom egg pie).Here is our peerless guide and translator at our "home" metro stop, the one closest to our apartment.The two of us were on our way to my personal major pilgrimage of this trip. I realize that this is a bicycle blog and that this whole travel thing seems to have risen up and swallowed the bicycle content whole. Well, not so fast, buster. Today I went to Cycles Laurent. The shop was founded by Marcel Laurent, two time winner (1938 and 1939) of what was at the time one of the major races on the cycle calendar, Bordeaux-Paris.The shop boasts of three generations of service and is a very, very serious bicycle shop. A very pleasant French lady assisted us. It felt like she was having almost as much fun as we were.

So here it is, my personal top reason for coming to France.The jersey is a replica of the Team France jersey from 1958. The nice lady suggested I try it on to assure proper fit and I had another one of those uniquely French moments. The nice lady led me over to a corner of the shop behind where the mechanic was working on a bicycle and hung the jersey up for me on a set of hooks on the back side of a post. She went back to the main part of the shop and it was obvious to me that there wasn't a dressing "room". There was a try on "area" and I was in it. So the mechanic, three other customers and I shared that corner of the shop while I tried on the jersey. It was a very, very French moment. That's just the way they do things, they didn't think it was odd or unusual so I went ahead and acted as if it wasn't odd and unusual for me.

The jersey fit is parfait.

Later on we went to the Orangerie Musee. Monet, Renoir, Gaugain, Cezanne, Picasso, Klee, a few other I cannot recall at this moment. Monet produced paintings specifically for two large spaces on the upper floor of the museum. Here is Mrs. Smith and Wireless in front of one the mural size works.The two of them are off finishing up their day at something called the Virgin Super Store. We are watching a little tennis.

The Chateau and Gardens of Versailles

Even though she chose not to accompany the main party on today's tour, the experience and language skills of our guide were of great use to us today. Even without her, we were able because of her suggestions to get ourselves onto the correct RER (suburban train) and ride out to the suburbs. Our destination was the Palace at Versailles.That's Louis XIV on his horse in front of the chateau. This next one is the palace gate. Nice use of gold, we thought.This is in one of the reception rooms, the bust is, again, Louis XIV, the Sun King.The Hall of Mirrors.The King's bedroom, specifically his bed.On out to the garden, that's the Grand Canal in the background, Mrs. Smith for scale.The gardens are divided into many "groves". This is the King's Grove.This is the Colonnade Grove.This swan is at the Apollo Fountain, Grand Canal in the background.Here's Mrs. Smith again, along the Green Carpet, next to one of literally hundreds of pieces of sculpture and one of the dozens of topiary bushes.And finally, here is an example of having done the research paying off. We learned from the guide book that entry tickets were for sale at the City of Versailles Office of Tourism. This is the Office and the line we had to wait in to buy our tickets.Here is the line at the Chateau, the line we didn't have to wait in. It is probably worth noting that the line is actually doubled at this point, leading all the way from the right edge of the photo down to the left edge and then behind the people you can actually see all the way back up to the yellow sign with the big "i" indicating tickets for sale.We tried to go to the Musée de l'Orangerie after getting back to Paris this afternoon but the museum closed earlier than the guide books said. Instead we took a walking tour of Place Vendome.