Paris, je t'aime! Part 6: More Time on the Left Bank

In Part 5 of the blog, we'd just finished climbing the towers at Notre Dame and taking 85 million pictures of the city.

What's that?

You didn't get enough pictures of

Notre Dame in the last blog?

Don't worry - I got you!

Houseboats on the Seine

Just another lovely Parisian building

with some lovely balcony railings

After emerging back into the sunlight (and throngs of tourists) in front of Notre Dame, we headed further into the Left Bank, past the Sorbonne (again), and to our next destination, the Pantheon.  The Pantheon building used to be a church, but in the late 1700's, it was changed from having a religious purpose to a civic one, and it now serves as a mausoleum for famous French people, including Victor Hugo, Alexandre Dumas, Marie and Pierre Curie, Emile Zola, Louis Braille, Voltaire, and Rousseau.  No, everyone, we didn't go see stupid Jim Morrison's grave in Paris; we saw the final resting spots of true artists and heroes.  Anywhoo.

As you might imagine, the Pantheon's not too shabby looking:

Peeking out at the end of the street...

Lots of amazing spots in Paris

(and other parts of France, we found)

have streets and other buildings right up to them,

so it can be hard to stand back and get a glamour shot

of the entire space.

Thus, you get these little chopped up photo bits...

...here's the frieze...

...here are some columns, etc.

In addition to the famous folks interred there, the Pantheon also contains amazing sculpture, and it's where the original Foucault pendulum was installed...by Foucault himself!

This is where the pendulum normally goes,

but it was being restored while we were there.

That is one sad engineer.

After looking at the art and architecture, it was time to venture down a spiral stone staircase and head to the crypts!

Sigh.  So many stairs.  Everywhere.

I took this shot - while I was waiting for Chris

to finish up in the restroom (now, there's a change from our norm) -

because I loved how the stairs were all worn

from centuries of people using them.

See how they all sag near the right side?

That's from billions of feet.

Time for famous dead people!

I don't believe Saint Exupery is interred here,

this is just a plaque to his memory - 

he wrote The Little Prince.

Voltaire and Rousseau - across the street neighbors

I mean, it's crazy nutso that these

amazing, world-changing people are all here, right?
It was madness to me.

A typical crypt - 

I think that's Dumas

at the end.

Marie and Pierre Curie -

I love that she's first here.

He did some amazing stuff in his life, too,

but she was obviously far more famous,

and with good reason.

We finished up at the Pantheon, and it was high time for lunch (it was like 2pm by this time, and we were hungry)!  We wandered past La Closerie Des Lilas, the famous cafe where Hemingway wrote The Sun Also Rises, and ended up at Eric Kayser, a notable bakery with locations all over the city.  We picked this one, however, as it allowed us to take some sandwiches and other baked goods into the Jardin de Luxembourg and have a picnic!

 What do I spy?

The outside of the Institute of Oceanography -

how cool is that?!?!?

Famous people ate here.

We didn't.

Voila!  Time for lunch!

We fended off pigeons and thoroughly enjoyed our sandwiches and cookies while we took in the scenery of the garden.  This garden was also created by Marie de Medici (she was everywhere), and it served as the lawn for the Palais de Luxembourg, where the French Senate still meets.

After lunch, we strolled through the garden

and headed right past the Palais, above.

We caught a bus on the northern end of the garden to take us to our next stop, the Rodin Museum.  The Museum is housed in a giant house, which used to be a hotel, until Rodin bought it in the late 1800s, booted everyone out, and took over.  The real attraction for me, however, was the garden there, which contained some of Rodin's most famous sculptures.

This was his HOUSE you guys.

By this point in his life,

he wasn't one of those struggling artists you hear about.

Wait!  That guy looks familiar!

The Gates of Hell

We can never truly know what he was thinking...

maybe he's pondering whether he'll need an umbrella later.

Spoiler alert - the answer is yes.

The Rodin Museum was really neat, but we were beat and ready to head back to the hotel to rest for a bit.  In thinking about the trip upon our return home, I really did overschedule us on certain days - I need to remember moving forward that two "almost 40's" can't storm a city quite like two "almost 30's" can, or at least, they can't without daily naps.  Anywhoo, next time we come to Paris (we'll return!), we'll spend more time here and at the Army Museum, which we also planned to hit but were too tired to visit.

The gilded dome of the Army Museum

from Rodin's gardens.

Napoleon is interred there,

and we really wanted to go say hello.

Chris likes art museums, I like dead people.

We make it work.

All sorts of old pieces of metal in this shot.

We rode the metro back to our hotel (on line 8, which we took to calling the sweatiest metro in the city - pretty old, heavily trafficked by commuters, and not particularly airy) and had some time to chill out in the A/C for a while before changing into our evening clothes and heading back onto the Left Bank.  Our first destination was another famous museum open late for the evening - the Musee D'Orsay!  Unlike the Louvre, which has pretty much all art from all time periods (other than contemporary/modern), the D'Orsay focuses mainly on Impressionism and the time periods directly before and after.  It was one of Chris' favorite museums on his first trip to France, and I could see why - you really see masterwork after masterwork as you wander its galleries.

The D'Orsay is also located in an old train station, which was scheduled to be torn down in the 1970s; thankfully, the outcry from the public had it re purposed into its current iteration instead, which is a lovely spot.

The original station clock was preserved,

and it's an amazing piece of art in its own right.

After spending some time with the greats, we headed out of the D'Orsay intending to walk to the Champs de Mars, home to the Eiffel Tower.  However, it was starting to rain pretty well, so we decided metro was the way to go.  Thankfully, the D'Orsay, being an old train station, has a new train station right underneath it, and we were able to make a quick connection to our destination.  As we emerged from the train tunnel, the rain immediately turned into a downpour which left us running back under the elevated platform and buying a few cheap (as in, not great) umbrellas.  C'est la vie!

Now properly armed against the weather, we commenced strolling once more (while trying to avoid the muddy puddles in the area).  Guess what we found?

The tower all lit up at night really is spectacular, and on the hour, it sparkles, which you can somewhat see in the shots above.  It's really gorgeous - it's hard to overstate just how pretty and iconic it is.  We wandered around its base for awhile on our way to find some dinner.

I will say that, in the pouring rain,

you have the area around the tower

almost entirely to yourself

(guys selling cheap umbrellas aside, of course).

We had a few dinner options already mapped out, but they were jam packed (they must be good!), so we hopped into a neighboring spot, Bistro De Quartier.  The rain continued, actually becoming harder over the course of the meal, so we decided a warm appetizer was in order.  Time for cheese!

For someone who didn't know what camembert

was going into this trip,

Chris very surely enjoyed it while we were in France.

Our meal was great - we started with aperols and the baked camembert, and our mains were beef tartare (Chris) and a pasta dish (me).  We also shared a half bottle of wine, and for dessert, we had red berries, delicious with homemade cream!  A win all around!

Glad to be out of the rain

After dinner, it was time to head back to the Marais on the metro, and we fell asleep pretty quickly.  We'd be up early the next day, as it was time to head to Versailles!

Later!

Amy

P.S. - Okay, so parts 4, 5, and 6 of the blog were all Thursday, 10/11.  Total step count for this day (I wore my FitBit all day long) was 31,605.  Yeah, that's like 15 miles of walking in one day.  No wonder we didn't gain any weight on this trip, even with all the cheese and wine!