Paris Day 3

Wednesday, April 09, 2008, 2130

Good day. This morning we slept in a bit. I did at least. It was a no shower day for me. We had breakfast, the usual. I had 2 cups of coffee. Then I laid back down. Luke decided to take his shower while I tried to sleep. He was supposed to blog a bit. I don’t know if he did or not.
Mom and dad left in the meantime. Luke and I had a few hours to ourselves as we couldn’t tear ourselves away from the apartment. We had some lunch leftovers, risotto and the potato and bacon dish with cream, butter, salt and pepper. Yummy! More starch for me please!

We went on the Marais walk or basically to that neighborhood as I wasn’t particularly interested in what the walk had to offer me. We wandered around the area looking at the city and the people. I have noticed that Paris is WAY less touristy than Italy. We also saw one of Ricks most disappointing Paris site; the site of the Bastille, which is now just a column in monument. I took a picture in front of it because Bastille Day is on July 14- my b-day. The monument didn’t even have the date of the event on there at all, that would have made the picture better. Anyway then we gravitated to the Holocaust memorial.

The security was tight. TIGHT. We waited in line to enter the free museum/memorial, they let 3-4 in at a time to have bag electronically searched and to walk through the metal detector.
We first saw a memorial wall with the names of the 50,000 or so Jews reported missing or taken from their homes in France. We walked into the basement where the exhibits started. We saw lots of pictures with captions (some in English). I liked the little stories they had. For instance there would be this display with a large picture of a person. Below the picture would be their documents, post cards they sent etc, also a little story about their life. It would start general details about the person, birthdates, family, marriage, when she was abducted, what happened to her family, and what eventually happened to her. I really enjoyed that. I find myself reading the descriptions that are in French. I don’t catch myself until a few sentences later. I found that I can understand a bit of French here and there or at least get the jest of the sentence.

We stopped for Lunch along the way to the Pompidou center. We didn’t find any food worth eating along the way so we stopped at a G24 grocery store. We decided a pre-made sandwich was too much money so we bought a loaf of bread, 3 slices of jambon and mustard mayonnaise. Also we got something sweet- a hazelnut chocolate bar. We walked a bit to find a place to sit down. It was starting to sprinkle out and threaten to rain. We found a seat on the edge of the fountain and it was even partially covered with an overhang so if it did start to rain we would not get wet. We fixed our lunch and then walked to the Pompidou museum.

The Pompidou museum is one that you can see from a great distance. It is tall and it is very different appearing. The escalators are on the outside of the building as are the duct work and ventilation tubes. The museum is like 6 stories tall. Only 3-4 levels but the ceilings are very tall.
We were kind of in a hurry to get through the museum. We paid with the Museum card. We got right in, had our bags checked and dropped off the backpack to free up our arms. We had trouble figuring out where the museum actually started. We rode up like 5 escalators. When we got to the top floor (where the good stuff was) there was a fantastic view of the city. You could see above all the 4 story apartment buildings and businesses, see the downtown skyscrapers, the Eiffel tower etc.

We saw some modern art. Much of it was not pleasing to the eye. Some of it was just large and totally abstract. I told Luke that it looked like and 8th grade art display. We saw some of the big names and saw some pieces we recognized. Saw some Mondrian (the guy who painted a grid of squares and filled them in with color), Picasso, Degas, Dali (weird!), 2 Pollack’s, Kandinsky, Chagall, and Matisse.

The layout of the art rooms was kind of neat. They had a grid of rooms with a hallway between all of them. So each room had 4 walls to put things on, also outer walls, you could walk straight ahead or side to side to see the rooms you wanted. You were not forced to walk through all of them to see 1 painting.

We didn’t spend too much time in this museum. In fact we sped through there pretty quickly.
We left here and agreed to go to the Sacre Coeur and to the Moulin Rouge in the Monmartre area. We had to transfer a few times on the metro but we got there. Then we paid with our carte l’orange and rode the funicular to the top where the church is. One of the better things about this church is the view.
Luke and I looked for a minute at the view, picked out a few monuments with the help of Rick and looked at the crowd, took some pictures and decided to go into the church.
There were of course some beggars at the entrance. We went inside and I was astonished at how large it was. It had primary permanent seating in the center aisles. It also had moveable chairs along the sides of this. There is a Joan of Arc statue, also stained glass depicting her story. We saw St. Pieter and Luke rubbed his toe; it was all smooth and shiny.

We left the church quite hastily. We went out of the church to view the Paris panorama up on the butte. I asked Luke if we could feed the birds with our sandwich bread. He said yes. I was ecstatic. Hip hip hooray. I threw some out to get the birds to come closer, they did. I had one furry warm pigeon that liked me. He kept flying up to my hand. He trusted me; I even pet him a bit, on the tummy and on the wing. I knew it was the same bird because he was missing a toe. We had about 30 or so around us. Lukie was feeding some too. It was quite enjoyable. Luke hypothesized that the sparrows survive by being quicker than the pigeons. The sparrows would catch the bread out of the air before the pigeons could get it. They were so much quicker. We saw a dude feeding the sparrows at Notre Dame and he had quite a few in his hand at one time. That is what I secretly wanted- sparrows on my hand. It didn’t happen..

We walked down the steps to Montmartre. The steps could be equivocated to the Spanish steps in Italy. They were grand and each level had a viewing area with stairs on either side. We stopped to gawk at some of the mediocre street vendors. Luke complained that I wouldn’t let him stop. I simply told him that we had eaten just recently. I also said that he didn’t need any street food. I don’t know why he thinks that is so good. I don’t know. I figure if he wants to eat grand he will eat at a restaurant.

We walked through the garment district. They had bins of clothes with tags still on. Some were 3€ or €5. It was chaotic. We continued on towards the Moulin rouge windmill and Luke stopped in a few shoe places hoping they had his size in the European style tennis shoe that are so popular.

We saw the Moulin Rouge windmill, there was a show going on that evening. We also saw at la Cigale- Yael Naim was to perform that night. I would have liked to go see her, but we would have had to scrap almost a whole day of touring.

We then headed for home and made it there at about 730 or so. Mom and Dad came home shortly after that. We ate powdered soup- tomato and potato. They turned out pretty well surprisingly. Dad made a crème’ brulee’ from a Knorr package too, that was pretty tasty as well.
I probably haven’t mentioned the tiramisu! We found tiramisu like we had in Italy, Little Debbie style! It is prepared in a plastic container and shelf stable. It tastes rummy and coffee flavored! Yummy, anyway we ate some of that too. We found another favorite treat. Chocolate dipped pieces of crepes. Fantastic.

We tried to go to bed on time. We have to discuss again what we were going to do the next day. Bon nuit’.