The Mezgers: Pareeeee

*This post is all over the place. It's a quasi-organized mess of our trip. Just be glad I took out our day-trips, the big museums and churches! This is just the other stuff!

Off to Paris! We enjoyed our time in the Loire Valley but its time for the City of Lights and Love! Luckily this drive we could use the internet periodically to check our map status. I guess we left later than we intended because we were a little bit freaking out about making our scheduled tour of the Eiffel Tower - we ended up dropping our stuff off at our hotel in the Saint-Germain-des-Pres neighborhood on Rue Jacob. FYI for any future travelers - we LOVED the neighborhood we stayed in - very lively but not all tourists - lots of cafes and shops, felt very Parisian, close walk to literally everything.

Okay, we dropped our stuff in our TINY hotel room and are now in search of parking to make it to our tour - which we did...see the ET post - now on to pics from the tops of things. :)

VIEWS FROM UP TOPS OF THINGS

First, from the top of the Eiffel Tower.
South-facing: that's the Champ de Mars (park) down below and the only ugly building in Paris off in the distance - the Montparnasse Tower. (There were supposed to be two of those but Parisians through such a fit about how ugly it was they only built one.)

People gathered on the grass to watch the French Open on that giant screen.

The Seine (I'm directionally challenged if you didn't already know).

Golden dome of Les Invalides - built by Louis XIV and where Napoleon is buried.

Facing north: The curved "arcade" of the Trocadero. Behind it the skyscrapers of the La Defense neighborhood.

Over the Seine - not sure what direction

Northeastist- the white towers in the distance are the Basilica Sacre-Coeur on top of Montmarte.

Southeast - you can still see the dome on the right bank.

Okay, now we're up on the 3rd and final platform so we're just looking down down down!

Nice rooftop terrace, right?

From the top of la Basilic de Sacre Coeur (in Montmarte) - the tallest point in Paris at 420 feet.

Great view of the lady - but the not the best one we'll have.

My favorite views of the city actually came from on top of the Arc de Triomphe

Twelve streets fan out out from here!

southeastish (ugly montparnasse building)

pretty much due south towards the ET

One of these streets is Avenue Foch - the fanciest address in Paris - home to the Shah of Iran and Aristotle Onanis and other insanely rich people.

Northeastish - you can see the Invalides and Montmarte

Another sweet rooftop patio.

RANDOM SITES
Welcome to our neighborhood. We recommend it.
Our guide book said Albert Camus and Jean-Paul Sartre were big fans as well.
Also Paris's oldest church (St. Germain-des-Pres) which dates back to the 11th century, but on the plot which has had a Christian church since the fall of Rome, is in our hood though I didn't get a photo - locals meet up on its steps before hitting the cafes.

Welcome to our hotelroom. We do not recommend it.

(Can you blame us after being spoiled in our Loire Valley chateau??? No, you can't.)

Stuff we sorta saw in passing..okay this is getting random.
That's the Trocadero from the ground on our way to the ET.

Lots and lots of river houseboats. Lots of interesting characters on board - sometimes it was hard to tell if these folks were quasi-homeless/vagrants or billionaires? Maybe a hybrid of some type only found on European rivers?

Left: A creepy door in our neighborhood - I'm pretty sure a secret society meets here.

Right: that dark door with the two rows of tiny windows is the narrowest apartment in Paris.

Plenty of street characters and people taking pics in wedding attire. (All the ones we saw were Asian - is that a thing?)

Left: Important building with not so important cyclists in front.

Right: golden dragons of Pont Alexander III - built to celebrate the treaty between France and Russia around 1900.

Bridges bridges everywhere

Pont de Arts (the only pedestrian-only bridge connecting the Right Bank and Left Bank

Musicians everywhere.

Down at the end of the street is the Opera Bastille. We didn't make it that far. The actual Bastille (fortress-turned-prison) that symbolized royal tyrrany, the one stormed by Parisians on 7/14/1789 to kick of the Revolution has been gone since the Revolution, the Opera in its place.

My hunky Parisian navigator. You would hardly know he was a tourist except for the Rick Steves book tucked in the back of his jeans.

One part of trips like these that Kyle really loves is learning to navigate public transportation - seriously! And I am so grateful!

My store: Allison,

French Starbucks = Paul

This was a spot in our neighborhood we used as a landmark - and we liked to say it - Arty Dandy.

One of the main streets in our little hood.

Metzger Freres (moving company)

I'm a sucker for cobblestone.

More Pont Alexandre III and behind it the glass domed Grand Palais (where Paris Fashion Week happens).

Look at all the tiny chimneys

And these windows + balconies. Swoon.

Before we left on our trip Kyle and I watched the HBO mini-series John Adams so of course we think we are American/French Revolution experts (though we've already forgotten most of it). But here is America's favorite Francophile Thomas Jefferson - the French love him, and he loved them. Even though the US didn't come to the aid of the French revolutionaries (for fear that Britain, who they just signed a treaty with, would fear their monarchy would be challenged and would retaliate - and our new republic just couldn't handle it) Thomas Jefferson pretty much wrote the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen (a document central to their Revolution) form his parlor in Paris.

Of lesser importance - this cheeky devil.

Snackbreak at the Jardin des Tuileries (not far from the Orangerie and just a little upstream from the Louvre)

With a nice view of the ET

And the obelisk of Luxor at the Place de la Concorde aka "peace place" aka where the guillotine used to be. Nice. The obelisk was brought here from Egypt in the 1830s (did they not want it?). The gold-leaf cap was added in 1998 - the original was stolen 2500 years ago. Oh - big note: ALL of the statues or things in Paris that appear gold ARE gold - not solid, but at least gold leaf.

We already had a packed schedule but I drug Kyle into St. Sulpice (an otherwise not that interesting church in our neighborhood) because it played a role in the Davinci Code (I know, I'm ridiculous). There is an obelisk that is used as a "gnomon" which means its part of a sundial. There is a tiny hole on the wall opposite the obelisk that lets light in just right at the equinoxes and shines down on this brass inlay in the floor to a plate at the alter. It's all very seasonal/scientific/rational (probably saving the church during the French Revolution) but Dan Brown of course turned it into something nefarious so I had to see it. The Rose Line I think it was...it had something to do with the world's first Prime Meridian. Did it tie into Point Zero at Notre Dame? I don't remember.

We didn't actually find Les Marionnettes in the Luxembourg Gardens but we had a nice stroll through what became our favorite park. (I wanted to see them because of a scene in an old Cary Grant/Hitchcock movie Charade.)

There is also supposed to be a merry-go-round and a flea market with rare old stamps...in the movie set/filmed in the 1960s.

Had my movie-search not brought us into the park we wouldn't have discovered this lovely spot!

The Palace was completed in 1615 by Marie de Medici (another Medici!) who was recently widowed by Henry IV and modeled it after her home in Florence - the Pitti Palace - we've been there! She was later exiled to Germany (because her son was a threat to the throne).

Maybe the best part is that the French secret service/CIA is headquartered BENEATH the park! Crazy and I love it. Wish they offered tours.

Take a load off.

Or rent a boat to sail.

Beautiful in and of itself. And you can see the ET.

Very French. Even though its sorta Italian.

On our way out of the park - could this little fountain area be any prettier?

Louis 14er - we're questioning whether this was in Paris or actually Versailles. If you see it, let us know.

It was a little too crowded to crab a table but this is Les Deux Magots Cafe - Hemingway's favorite where he wrote much of A Farewell to Arms. Also frequented by Oscar Wilde, Picasso, Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, Camus, and Jim Morrison.

Stone engravings on seemingly random buildings that say things about Kings.

Bridge(s) of Love (Pont du Carousel?)

Have I ever told you the story of me getting my feelings hurt when Kyle and I went to Italy because (I thought he should have known that) there was a specific place along the Cinqe Terre hike where lovers put a lock. I know. Well, five years later I'm over it. :) And this year he brought a lock. :)

Ours is the "Master" one in the middle. I'm sure we'll be able to find it again.

Just a few minutes after we put our lock on one of the bridges we came upon a small film crew filming an old man with a roller suitcase and bolt cutters muttering in French and cutting locks from one of the fences in between bridges. What?!?! These are sacred love locks! You can't do that!

Oh but he did.

Simple, beautiful WWII memorial right in the middle of the city.

BOOKS

Bouquinistes along the Left Bank have been around since the mid 1500s. The waiting list for a stall is about 8 years. Each stall is owned by different entrepreneur...

Most of whom were taking the day off this day.

Shakespeare and Company was opened by an American in the 1920s, geared towards the post WWI generation traveling to find themselves. Frequented by Hemingway, James Joyce, George Bernard Shaw, Gertrude Stein and Ezra Pound. Struggling writers are given cheap rent in tiny rooms upstairs, or cots in the store.

We bought an old copy of A Tale of Two Cities which seemed appropriate.

FYI our friend Carlos stayed here for a week or say back in his even-more-nomadic days and he says these beds are the fancy ones.

ARC DE TRIUMPH

The other quintessential Parisian icon (along with the ET) that I was prepared to be underwhelmed by that I ended up being super impressed by. Construction started in 1809 to honor Napoleon's soldiers, who, despite being outnumbered won a remarkable battle against the Austrians at the Battle of Austerliz. It is patterned after the ceremonial arches of ancient Roman conquerors (like the Titus one in Rome) but more than twice their size. He died before it was completed but his funeral procession (19 years after he died) passed under it bringing his body back from exile in St. Helena to be buried in Rome under the dome. A huge swastika flag hung from here during the occupation by the Nazis and now all city parades start and end here with a minute of silence.

You can't tell becuase I waited or pauses in traffic bu the Arc is at the center of a GIANT round-about where 12 roads converge (called the Etoile) so there are always tons of cars. And there are no lanes. So its a little cray.

Still remembering how revolutionaries barricaded the tiny medieval streets of Paris which aided their Revolution, Napoleon III (nephew of the Napoleon who ruled after him) commissioned a guy named Baron Haussman to basically rebuild Paris. He knocked down, well, lots of stuff and created these large (wide) boulevards that intersected at major monuments

We've already seen the views from up top so now we can stroll down teh famous Champs-Elysees - home of Bastille Day celebrations, and the finale of the Tour de France.

From Louis Vuitton to Gap, this place was just a super wide street with every chain store you can imagine - fancy and not-fancy. I guess globalization makes stores not so special

Somebody's fancy place.

A bunch of super rowdy Belgian soccer, ahem football, fans freaking out over a victory over France. These guys made American tourists look like angels.

(if you've seen enough buildings - just skip to the food section at the bottom)

SACRE COUR

Looks old but was built from 1875-1919 by Parisians humiliated by German invaders. Otto von Bismarck's Prussian army laid seige to Paris for more than 4 months in 1870 and Parisian Catholics thought they were being punished for the city's liberal ways so they built it in penance. Sacre Cour means sacred heart.

Lots of stairs.

Still loving the gargoyles.

MONTMART

Hilltop in the north of the city that used to be its only little city and has been home to everyone from monks (1200s), farmers using the windmills (1600s), gypsum miners (1700s), Parisian liberals (1800s), Modernist painters (1900s), and lots of jazzy arts, dreamers, GIs and expats. La Boheme - the original Bohemians started right here.

The feel reminded me a lot of the arts/sketchy Trastavere neighborhood in Rome. We ended up just sort of wandering around because our map and the audiotour and the landmarks we were seeing didn't seem to jive.

Cabaret, La Vie en Rose, some famous Black Cat place...

Street artists doing their thing while tourists do their things while eating crepes.

The heart of Montmarte. And you guessed it - lots of famous vagabonds dined here.

Left: One of the few windmills (moulin) still on the Butte.

Right: Vincent van Gogh's house

Emelie anyone? Cafe de 2 Moulins from the movie!

And lastly the famed Moulin Rouge (red windmill) which used to have shows of cancan girls (sketched by Toulouse-Lautrec as seen in the Orsay) but now its just a seedy music/show venue on a seemingly seedy corner.

LE PRECOPE

Other than our boatride dinner we only ate out at one other super fancy place. I don't like having to make meal reservations so that limits your options. But we were able to get a table at Le Precope in the Latin Quarter. Founded in 1686 it claims to be the longest continually operating restaurant in Paris, if not Europe. Famous patrons: Voltaire, Robespierre, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson. In fact, Ben Franklin drafted the Franco-American treaty of 1778 in the cafe. Bam.

Traditional french cuisine. Kyle had escargot with some sort of pesto. Please ask me to show you the videos of him eating them if you're ever over...

I had far more civilized and less adventurous french onion soup.

Cafes and food in windows...forever!

Giant meringue!

Macaroons for miles.

And bread and more bread.

And pastries.

WHAT WE ACTUALLY ATE
Baguettes.

Tiny espresso (boo) and yummy ice cream (yay)!

Street sandwhiches and even McDonalds once (looking out from the 2nd floor at the Ritz Carlton so it felt fancy.)

Yep, more ice cream. They make it look so pretty!

Is that my fancy face?

One of the cafes in our hood for dinner.

LADUREE

Famous 19th century tea salon "patisserie" renounced for their macaroons. I spent a small fortune bringing these back as gifts for people - they're not as great after an international flight.

These guys are pretty but...

These guys are the famous ones.

They have these standard flavors plus a bunch of seasonal ones. Flavors range from normal ice-cream type flavors to the Marie-Antoinette (?) and earl-gray tea.