6th Day in Paris…

As I said last time, I took a day off, and stayed in the apartment all day except for a couple three interesting excursions. One was to see if my host was right about how close to the subway we were…he was…within walking distance so I didn’t have to bother with the bus unless I wished to. Then I toured the neighborhood looking for an ATM, an upscale grocery store, a nice bar, etc. Found all those things and more. But I didn’t bother with photos because I already had 700 pictures of places I’d been and knew I’d be putting most of them here on the blog. You’ll have to imagine a modern French city I guess. Here’s a shot of the apartments I was staying at. Up on the 4th floor right in the middle of the building. This part of town is kind of upscale with all sorts of high classed business nearby. My host, Youssef, gave me directions to a fancy ‘French’ restaurant and I thought I’d try it for dinner after I wandered around the neighborhood for a few hours. During my wanders, I did find some street vendors and one of them had a nice set of brass locks that would fit nicely on those wire under-the-bed drawers for luggage I found typical hostels have.

The apartment is on a quiet side street which ‘T’s into two main streets, both of which end up on a large 5 lane city street heading into downtown Paris. So though there was lots of activity nearby, it was very quiet here on this street.

Also found that upscale grocery I was looking for and found all the fresh foods I would handily carry. Since I’ll be here for a week, with refrigerator and kitchen privileges, I bought nearly a weeks worth of food. Saves the cost of b-fast, lunch, and dinner out every day. I made 3 trips out of the apartment that day, on discovery journeys, while I’d search the internet for touristy facts while I was home. Found a nice bar around 16:00 that had a Football game on and a bunch of people hanging around watching it. Plus they had beer and food, like hot sausage dinners, so that 2nd night I ate out while enjoying a game with fans.

The next morning, I planned on heading back to the Louvre to actually tour. On the walking tour 2 days before, we only visited the museum buildings, didn’t go inside. Walked to the subway, bought a booklet of 10 subway tickets, found the right train, got off at the right stop, and headed for the Louvre. And here’s just one of the many museum buildings at 10AM when I arrived. Tourist info kind of shows that there is little advantage to arriving early in the morning. Walk through that causeway, across the courtyard, through that other causeway, and you bump into the pyramid. Stand in line for a while, buy your ticket inside the pyramid (where they are less expensive than at any other sales outlet, especially at hotels), take an escalator down 2-3 stories, and you find yourself in a huge modern shopping mall. Damnit!!!Then you take a few minutes to find the actual entrance to the museum, by asking a guard, and after getting to the right hallway, find this statue. It’s ancient Greek.

There’s that famous Grecian Urn you’ve heard tell about. And then a famous Roman general. For the ladies. Look how much longer a guy’s toes were in those days…Wow, just wow.

And then, after following the crowd (and the convenient signs) for just an hour, you find yourself in the Mona Lisa viewing room. There were probably 50 people surrounding the painting which is under a plastic guard, roped off so you can’t walk right up to it. I had to be patient and follow the crowd in towards the painting slowly until I was right on the velvet rope.  She’s a cutie. But so is this one. And this one is a brazen hussy.

And here are a few more of the galleries at the Louvre. This was a palace at one time, but the King hated the place and moved to Versaille. Hard to imagine this being someONE’s home.
 So after 2 & 1/2 hours of walking, visiting gallery after gallery, some of which just use to be hallways for the king, having trouble comprehending the scale of this place, I ended up in the ‘mall’. Lots of way too expensive shops, then a food court. All underground from the pyramid. Three or four stories below ground no less. Ok, time for a little snack and an espresso. I saw all the hallways branching off from this center court, with museum signs indicating what style of artwork was contained within. It all seemed kind of overwhelming. Wow, I was thinking, I’d need a minimum of 3 days to cover this whole place even superficially. Seems like a chore. And then back to the pyramid. And a cappuccino this time. Yumm. If you will notice in this picture, there are NO exit signs. Signs all over the museum lead you back to this mall area, but none of them point to an exit. After 4 & 1/2 hours of walking, I was getting a little pissed, because the guards kept pointing when I’d ask how to get out of this place and wherever they’d point would lead me back here. GAH! I couldn’t get out of the damn place! You think US commercialism is bad? Well it takes a back seat to the French. Eventually, I did finally spot an exit and got the hell out of there. This picture is of the level just under one of the pyramids. There are two that I know of. This is the smaller of the two. Here’s a great picture: Pyramids of the Louvre. That picture shows the escalators down into the shopping mall, and eventually you can find your way into the museum, but this was the way out. There’s an exit around that corner on the left. It was only 2:30 PM when I finally found the exit, it was raining and dismal, so I just headed home. Did kind of intend to make a trip back here because there were two halls I hadn’t been in.

Next day I decided to stay in because of bad weather but in mid-afternoon it did clear up somewhat. Pretty heavy rain most of the day though. Around 4:30 PM it was clear enough and I walked over to that fancy restaurant Youssef had told me about but they didn’t open until 5:30 PM and I was hungry NOW. So I walked up the street and into another restaurant whose menu didn’t look too awful.

Here’s the menu. French! Make any sense to you? Me neither. But I’d carried my trusty tablet with it’s WiFi connection and checked stuff out with my translator. But it was tedious doing that. Look at all the words you have to type in. So I asked the waiter in English. He had to go get their English speaker on the staff. So I had a new waiter. The meal I ended up ordering turned out to be $25 USD. House wine extra of course. The place was pretty fancy with table cloths and such. House wine. Bread basket. Etc. Choice of 3 each, Entree’, main dish, and dessert. And a salad of the day.

Just so you know, an ‘Entree’ in France is the ‘Entrance’ to a meal. It’s a small course served before a larger one. In the US, it’s the main course. Silly ‘Meracuns. ‘Plat au choix’ is of course, Plate of choice or ‘Main Course’ in ‘Meracun. Then ‘Dessert au choix’ should be self evident. French lesson over.

I had to ask the waiter what all this stuff in the below picture was for. My readers are a sophisticated bunch so I’m sure I don’t need to tell them what this stuff is. Tasted good though. Mixed right that is. Delicious actually. A little of this, a little of that, yumm.

A nice pork chop with Freedom fries! I’m not such a plebeian that I ordered fries, they came with the chop. It’s on the menu! I checked, and fries were on practically every ‘Plat au choix’. Then this strange desert I ordered simply because even translated into English it sounded weird. Some kind of sour, whipped cheese and a not very sweet berry sauce. Good though. So, that’s two more days in Paris. See you next time.