Our first full day in Paris was a full one indeed! I am realizing that I may have been a bit ambitious in my itinerary-planning and that I may need to ease up in the next few days, to keep from returning to St. Andrews as an exhausted, burnt-out bunch! We left our apartment at 9am and went straight to a boulangerie for croissants and a baguette. I chose one near our apartment that I had read about in a food blog, and it was a quick walk, just on the other side of the Place des Vosges. We took a quick tour of the square on our way (and took some photos too…), and found the bakery with no problem. I went in with Emma and stood behind a woman, trying to eavesdrop on her conversation with the woman behind the counter to make sure that my rehearsed French was going to come out ok. When it was my turn, I blurted out a quick bonjour and asked for what I wanted in French without having to resort to pointing at the items. The woman behind the counter nodded, gathered the items as I listed them, and gave me my total and then my change with a curt merci. I thanked her and left, but was just a wee bit put out that she wasn’t a bit nicer to me (though I did greatly appreciate that she didn’t automatically speak English back to me, and carried out the transaction en français). Then I remembered that I hadn’t greeted her with the required bonjour Madame! and she probably thought I was quite rude as a result. And what’s worse—I left without saying merci Madame as well. So, all of this means that I’ll have to find a new boulangerie for our morning bread today!
We planned to take a very early Métro trip to the Cathédrale de Notre Dame, but were delayed a bit when our intended Métro station of departure was closed for repair, and then when the second Métro station we visited only sold tickets with a chip-and-pin credit card or with Euro coins. We intended to buy a carnet (or 10-pack) of tickets which would run us €12 and we didn’t have that much money in coins. So, we went to yet a third Métro station, which thankfully did accept bills and we were on our way—though we were halfway to Notre Dame by that point anyway. The Métro proved to be very easy to use, after we figured out that we actually had to open the doors for ourselves, missed our intended stop, rode to the next stop, switched directions, and rode back to the previous stop again. The kids thought it was a real adventure, though, and I made it through my first Métro ride without having my purse stolen, so all in all it was a great success.
Notre Dame was lovely, and we spent a good deal of time touring the inside. I had billed the visit to the kids, though, as an opportunity to see all the gargoyles from the tower, so as we waited in the queue to get into the cathedral, they were anxious to pass through quickly to start the climb. Unfortunately, when we arrived at the tower, we learned that the towers were closed because of a workers’ strike. I remembered that this happens all the time in Paris, and am assuming that it’s probably about job cuts, but I did think for a moment that if I lived in a city as lovely as Paris, I might be swayed to see the benefit of a few days “on strike” as well! So we walked around the cathedral instead, then crossed the Petit Pont over to the Left Bank for a trip to Shakespeare and Company, a secondhand English bookstore about which I had read great things. David browsed for a bit, and John and I sat outside, where we watched a small group of people conducting a photo shoot with a model outside the shop (it’s quite the quaint setting, as you can imagine!). The model was sitting on a bench and cycling through the various expressions (Now you’re bored! Now you’re pensive! Give me flustered! Now you’re pouting!) and though it was a very small bench, a Frenchman saw a bit of open space next to her, sat right down and began to read his newspaper. John and I thought this was hilarious, and so John started to take some photos of her as well (and she and her camera crew were too put out by the paper-reading Frenchman to notice!). They always say that the French don’t need much personal space!
We stopped at a crêperie for lunch that had been suggested to us by a friend (thanks Kay!) and got two huge crêpes which we ate outside the bookstore. We bought Emma a kids’ book on Henry VIII (yes, that does exist!) but David couldn’t be persuaded to buy any Foucault, despite my prompting. Instead, we walked across two more bridges that cross the Seine for some ice cream at Berthillon—another must-do on many people’s Paris trip, including ours. We ordered strawberry and mango, and I did a passable job of communicating with the girl in the shop, though I was flustered about the use of the Madame part at the end of our transaction because she was much younger than me, and I didn’t want to insult her with a Mademoiselle, which I have read is a bit dated, especially coming from one woman to another! Or perhaps that’s just what they tell middle-aged women so they aren’t insulted when someone doesn’t Mademoiselle them? We took another Métro trip (this one frightfully crowded, where we were almost trampled by a group of American girls…) towards the 1e arrondissement to see the Musee de l’Orangerie, a museum of Impressionist work where Monet’s water-lily paintings—the Nymphéas—are displayed on curved walls in two separate rooms under direct diffused light, as he originally intended them to be displayed. I thought this would be a great introduction to Impressionism for the kids, and since it was a small museum, they wouldn’t feel overwhelmed. I thought the museum was fabulous—just my kind of thing, and they tolerated it well enough, especially the bottom floor that houses the Paul Guillaume collection of Impressionist paintings, where I gave them my camera and listed items they would need to find in the paintings as a kind of an Impressionist scavenger hunt. After our museum visit, we walked through the nearby Jardin des Tuileries, an elegant Parisian park with dusty wide paths, elegant fountains, and many Pelouse Non Accessible signs on the grass. We took the kids to a small playground to the side of the garden, where they played for a good bit, then to a set of ground-level trampolines, which they loved and which were worth way more than the €2 entrance price.
By around 5pm, we were all starting to get a bit hungry (I wonder how one says “peckish” in French?) so we headed towards the Louvre, where an underground food court with foods from around the world was recommended by one of my many guide books. When we arrived, I was struck once again by how frightfully expensive Paris can be! A meal at a food court was going to run us €15 euros (about $22) each, so I couldn’t imagine how much a meal at a nice bistro would be later in the week. David went off with the kids to procure some pizza with a parlez-vous anglais? approach, and I went a few shops down to try to get some lamb tagine in couscous with stewed lemons for us. The couple in front of me didn’t speak French, and when they tried to pay with their credit card, the woman behind the counter told them her credit card machine must not be working so they would have to pay with cash. They didn’t understand, since she had swiped their card through the machine and gave them a receipt which they couldn’t read, and she obviously didn’t speak English so just kept repeating to them, louder each time, Il ne march pas! Il ne marche pas! and putting her hand on their tray to keep them from walking away with their meal. She finally got her point across somehow and they paid in cash, then left, and because I had heard the whole thing, and understood the whole thing, I felt confident going into my transaction. So, I began with a hefty Bonjour Madame! and launched into our order in French. I faltered a bit when pressed to come up with the word for “chick peas” so I did have to point for that one, but she stuck with me, and then I even asked a question about one of the salads. She made a suggestion to me that I order a certain meal combination to make our order a bit cheaper, and to basically give us a free dessert, and then I asked which dessert she would recommend, and I managed to understand her completely as she pointed to each one and described what was inside. I chose the almond pastry she recommended (qui est tout à fait délicieux) and paid for my meal with another hearty Merci Madame…Bonsoir! then went off in search of the David and the kids to recount my victory, line by line.
After dinner, we were off to the Louvre (it’s open late on Friday nights, so there was no line at all to get in). We bought our tickets (the guy behind the counter complemented John on his French football jersey…) and quickly perused the map for the things we really wanted to see. David wanted to see The Wedding Feast at Cana and a few other paintings that he teaches, and I wanted to see some of the Roman and Egyptian collections. Emma asked to see the Napoleon III apartments and I figured (or more hoped, actually) that John would be impressed with all the French sculptures on the ground floor. The Louvre is immense, obviously, and since it was evening and we were all a bit tired going in, we had to engineer a hit-the-highlights of the highlights trip and do the bare minimum with kids, but it was still a great visit. We saw much of what we wanted to see, and Emma and John politely sat on a bench and mocked us (John played the role of David gesturing at a painting and explaining the triangles of light, while Emma pretended to frantically run around like me, offering to translate all the placards under the paintings…). The apartments and the French sculptures were a hit, and we left on a high note (though as we left, I overheard an American woman say to her young daughter after the girl asked what a certain Egyptian display was: “I don’t know, hon, but isn’t it cool?” and hoped that I had not uttered the same phrase at some point in the visit!)
Love this (especially since I can steal all of your great research about restaurants!). We almost went to the Louvre last night, but I started to feel sick. Nice to know it isn't too busy at night!
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