Boxing Day - our last day in Paris

Yesterday, Christmas Day, we dined at the Jules Verne restaurant on the 2nd level of the Eiffel Tower.  Another over-the-top meal, as this place also has a Michelin Star.  The elevator up the side of the leg of the tower was - well, terrifying.  I assume this lift was more or less original equipment or at least original design.  I was pretty sure that, as Jar Jar Binks would say "We's a all gonna die."

It was a complete mob scene at the base of the tower.  I can't imagine what it would be like during peak tourist season.  Hopefully I will never have to find out.

This morning (Boxing Day) we woke to sunshine - the first we've seen since our arrival.  It was dazzling, especially shining on the buildings and monuments that feature gold gilded components like this one:

We took up Julie's suggestion and took in the first elevated park in the world - called the Promenade Plantee, or the Couree Verte.  Like the High-line in Manhattan (which was inspired by this park), it's built atop an old railroad viaduct that was originally operated in the 1850s.  

Since it's older than the High Line and has had more time to get established, the trees and landscaping are far more mature and look great, even in winter.  Amazingly, the roses were still blooming.

We then decided to head over to the Sacre Coeur, probably the 2nd most famous church in Paris.  While we were dining in the Eiffel Tower, we could see this church far in the distance, sitting atop a fairly good sized hill.  We figured the view from their would be worth taking in, especially on a clear sunny day.  What we didn't know was that the subway station that you use to get to the church is deep underground - and we had to climb YET ANOTHER DAMNED CIRCULAR STAIRCASE - and this one was longer than any we'd encountered so far.  I've learned to hate circular staircases.  French torture devices. 

This isn't one of our pics - but it's still a nice photo of the Sacre Coeur.

So tonight, we finish up the trip with a tour of the Paris Catacombs, then back to reality tomorrow morning when we head back to CDG and start our journey home.  It's been a great trip, but one of the things we love best about living in San Francisco - it's always a pleasure coming home to the City by the Bay.

As we've dug deeper into the Parisien landscape, we've found more typical urban conditions that plague the other major cities in the western world - graffiti, homeless encampments, and extreme poverty.  Paris is clean, though.  In spite of one of the highest smoking rates in the western world, the city isn't covered in cigarette litter.  You still see shopkeepers sweeping their sidewalks and curbs every morning.  It's a great city, and we look forward to returning.

Christmas Morning

Yesterday was a walk-around day - just exploring and getting lost in Paris.  We stumbled onto the Pompidou museum - something you either love or hate (Jeff the former, me the latter).  The building really brought modernism architecture to a new place - put all the guts of the building on the outside of the building, keep all the nuts and bolts exposed, etc.  I think it's a hot mess, as maintaining it has proven to be impossible.  In only 40 years the plexiglass is etched and cloudy, and the architectural components are stained, weathered and look beat to hell.  But - it certainly evokes a response, and in that regard, the building is a huge artistic success.

Here's a pic I took from inside one of the galleries; you can't argue with the way the new and the old go together here.

Last night's dinner cruise was an utterly unique way to celebrate Christmas Eve.  The boat sailed up and down the Seine while we were dining.  Everybody was dressed to the nines; there were even men in tuxedos.  High point of the evening was when we sailed past Notre Dame, the singer, a guy with a beautiful Irish tenor voice, started singing Shubert's Ave Maria.  It was one of those moments that brings out the goosebumps. 

I've been amazed at how late dawn arrives in Paris, so I checked our latitude and learned Paris is a bit further north than Duluth, Minnesota... the exceptionally short days might explain why we're STILL struggling with jet lag? 

Eiffel tower all lit up

Last night at 11:00 on the dinner cruise, we were passing by the Eiffel Tower when the sparkly-shiny lights went off.  The guests on the boat all burst out in cheers and applause.  This is what it looked like:

Sparkly Shiny Eiffel Tower

Tourist porn, childhood homes, the museum shuffle and a man named Guy

Jeff here - Guten Tag from Paris!

Are you familiar with food porn? It's a social media trend of people taking pictures of food, usually predicated on it being a unique preparation. Walking around Paris, I coined the phrase "tourist porn" to represent the uber pictorial qualities of this beautiful city. From buildings to tree lined streets, the Seine to the Eiffel Tower, and the wealth of museums and churches, there are countless things to photograph.

I don't think the pic I have attached counts as tourist porn per se, but it was fun to take. As many of you know, my friend Christian spent his formative years in Paris before his family moved back to the Pittsburgh area where we met in 6th grade. Kevin and I went to see the house he lived in. HIs front door opened onto the back of the Grand Palais - a large historic site, exhibition hall and museum complex on the Champs Elysees. Definitely a change from where we grew up in Bethel Park.

Kev twisted his ankle before we came and while he's had to wear a brace to support it, he has been getting around like a pro! What's interesting is that when we are out and walking, he's fine. When we're in museums, it starts to aggravate him. We call it the museum shuffle. It's that sort of sideways shuffle as you walk horizontally looking at paintings and sculptures. In this city, with it's preponderance of museums, I'm sure it's a common malady.

Kev's already told you about our arrival at Guy Savoy and getting to meet the chef himself. The food was nothing short of phenomenal! They had a variety of offerings for dinner - you could do the 12 course tasting menu, do a traditional starter, main course, and dessert offering, or a customized tasting menu of 6 - 7 courses. We chose the latter for a couple reasons: (1) the food is rich! (2) while they say it's 6 or 7 courses, there were all sorts of special interludes from the chef. An example which encompasses both reasons - the chef made a pumpkin soup which had a few slivers of white truffle in it. We took a taste and while it was tasty, it also was very rich.

Here are a few of the things we ate over the 3.5 hours at the restaurant:
2 amuse bouche
Chestnut soup with roasted chestnuts and black mushrooms
Scallop carpaccio
Soft egg on a cauliflower broth
Roasted lobster
Artichoke soup with parmesan and black truffle
Veal sweetbreads
4 -5 different desserts
As you can see, we definitely did not go home hungry!

I hope you all have a wonderful Christmas!

Christmas Eve Morning

We visited the Musee D'Orsey Museum on the 23rd (our 20th Anniversary); it's a massive museum located right across the river from our hotel on the Left Bank.  A former Beaux Art train station, it was converted into its current form as a museum.  The building was almost lost to progress, but it was saved and the conversion was completed in 1986. This museum houses many notable works, including Vincent Van Gogh's self portrait along with a few other of his more famous pieces, several Rodin sculptures, and a really interesting collection of Art Nouveau furnishings.  If you like impressionism, this is must-see.

One of the (many) things nice about this trip has been the crowds (really, the lack of them).  There are plenty of people around, but no lines.  That said, Paris is NOT a place for parents with children in strollers, or anybody in a wheelchair. Accessibility hasn't been implemented here, and there are stairs everywhere.  Strangely, circular staircases are very common.

Last stop of the day was our anniversary dinner at Restaurant Guy Savoy.  One of the best restaurants in the world, with 3 Michelin Stars, we were pretty stoked about this.  We got all dressed up and entered this gorgeous classic building with a huge marble staircase (with red carpet, of course).  This led to the entrance to the restaurant, with lots of people greeting us as we walked down the hallway.  I noticed a man in Chef Whites standing in the hallway, he greeted us, and I asked him if he was the Chef.  His response:

"Yes.  I am the Chef!  I am Guy!  the owner, the manager... I am the man!"  A great moment - here's a pic of the guy (no I did not take his picture - this from Wikipedia):

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Portrait_de_Guy_Savoy.jpeg#/media/File:Portrait_de_Guy_Savoy.jpeg

The meal was extraordinary, as were the wines.  Jeff now has a new food obsession:  sweetbreads.

Here are a few pics from the day.

Notice the streetlight on the right?  Looks VERY SIMILAR to the streetlights the City of San Francisco specified for the Mission Bay redevelopment project.  In fact, it's clear and obvious to me that Paris was the inspiration and what drove the design behind the Mission Bay Master Plan.  Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, they say.  Too bad Mission Bay didn't turn out anything at all like Paris, though.

My mother always had an expression for art that pushed boundaries:  "Musta had a disturbed childhood".... that came to mind when we walked past this sculpture at Musee D'Orsay.

Saturday Morning 6:00 AM

Some random musings about Paris...

Still haven't seen a poodle - french or otherwise, but DID finally see  a French Bulldog.  Dogs aren't nearly the big deal here that they are in SF.

WAY more smoking here than California...

Lots of motorcycles and scooters, which makes sense in this very crowded city. Strangest thing is, we estimate one in four scooters on the road here are Piaggio MP3 - the model with the two wheels in the front that Jeff and I owned for several years (and happily donated to KQED last year when it died on the 280 Fwy).

Parisiens will do anything to dine or drink outside.  We've had no real downpours since we've been here, and it's not wet enough to warrant using an umbrella (it never does in Seattle, but never mind that for now...).  But everything in the city is wet from mist and fog and..,. winter. Yet still Parisiens sit outdoors in protected spots sipping their coffees or cocktails or having one of their famous 3-hour lunches.

Since arriving, we've started seeing more homeless as we've explored the city, and learned it's a massive problem here - far larger than San Francisco (we have 7,000, Paris has 30,000 - an increase of 84% in the last 11 years).  Same thing is driving the problem there as in the US - high housing costs and neglecting to build housing over the years.  Also wages aren't keeping up... many of the same societal structural problems we have, including income inequality.

I usually don't like musicians performing in subways, but yesterday there was a small stringed orchestra playing an absolutely beautiful rendition of Pachabel's Canon in D in one of the stations; later we heard a solo saxaphone playing in the car in front of us - he was REALLY good, playing a Jazz standard from the 50s.  PERFECT.

Heard our first piped-in Christmas Carol yesterday.  The French approach Christmas with far more restraint and common sense than Americans.

French women are gorgeous.

More later! 

Friday December 22nd - Museums, museums, museums

If you want a healthy tourist business, you need to have lots of things for visitors to do... and Paris really steps up to the plate by having literally dozens of museums all over the city.  Today we went to the L'Orangerie (famous for the series of huge canvases called "Water Lilies", given by Claude Monet to the City of Paris as a gift; they quite literally built two huge oval rooms to display these spectacular pieces of impressionism - a pic below, including a close-up of one of his brush strokes that caught my eye.

We crossed over the Seine on the bridge where lovers put their locks to signify the permanence of their love (photo).  We went to see St. Chapelle, an ancient church just a couple blocks from Notre Dame (heavy Catholic influence here).  St. Chapelle recently restored its famous stained glass windows, along with everything else (exteriors, steel, etc).  A huge and very successful undertaking - I wondered where they got the money....Then we checked out the grand lady of them all - Notre Dame.  Very impressive.

Paris makes visiting easy - we purchased a Museum pass which covers all the admission prices to all the museums; we also bought visitors passes for the Metro (subway) system.  Their subways are fast, clean, reliable and cover the city like a spiderweb.  You're never far from a station.

Last stop of the day was the Champs Elysees for a late night stroll and to check out the holiday lighting.  They strung up animated LED lights to make the hundreds of trees leading down to the Arc de Triomphe look like champagne flutes, with bubbles rising through the wine and popping.  Astounding.  Then the Eifell Tower finally made her entrance (been missing all week in the fog and overcast).  Suddenly, there she stood, bathed in that orange light in the distance, and then the sparkly lights went off covering the structure with thousands of bursts of white light.  So beautiful - and so cool.  They know what they're doing here, that's for sure.  And damn this city is CLEAN.

Notre Dame

St. Chapelle
(Click on this to make it bigger)

Water Lilies - Claude Monet

Champs Elyses

Love lock Bridge

aka Ponts des Arts 

Here's the story about the locks and the trouble they've created, from Wikipedia:

Love locks[edit]

Lovers on the Pont des Arts

Pont des Arts Love locks

Since late 2008, tourists have taken to attaching padlocks (love locks) with their first names written or engraved on them to the railing or the grate on the side of the bridge, then throwing the key into the Seine river below, as a romantic gesture.^[4] This gesture is said to represent a couple's committed love.^[5] Although this is not a French tradition and has only been taking place in Paris since the end of 2008, with locks occasionally being cut off by city workers, since 2012 the number of locks covering the bridge has become overwhelming, with locks being attached upon other locks. In February 2014, Le Monde estimated^[6] that there were over 700,000 locks; with the 2014 summer tourist season, many thousands more have since been added, creating a serious safety concern for city authorities and an aesthetic issue for Parisians.

Tourists on the Pont des Arts

By 2014, concern was being expressed about the possible damage the weight of the locks were doing to the structure of the bridge. In May, the newly elected mayor, Anne Hidalgo, announced that she was tasking her First Deputy Mayor, Bruno Julliard, with finding alternatives to love locks in Paris.^[7] In June, part of the parapet on the bridge collapsed under the weight of all of the padlocks that had been attached to it.^[8]

In August 2014, the Paris Mayor's Office began to say publicly that they wanted to encourage tourists to take "selfies" instead of leaving love locks, when they launched the "Love Without Locks" campaign and social media hashtag. The web site states: "Our bridges can no longer withstand your gestures of love. Set them free by declaring your love with #lovewithoutlocks."^[9] With the high tourist season in full swing, more than 50% of the panels on the Pont des Arts had to be boarded over with plywood because the weight of the locks (estimated by the city to be 700 kg per panel) was creating the risk of more panels collapsing.^[10]

On 18 September 2014, the City Hall of Paris replaced three panels of this bridge with a special glass as an experiment as they search for alternative materials for the bridge where locks cannot be attached.^[11]

From 1 June 2015, city council workmen from Paris started to cut down all the locks after years of complaints from locals. Health and Safety officials said "the romantic gestures cause long term Heritage degradation and danger to visitors".^{[citation needed]} As of 2015, over a million locks were placed, weighing approximately 45 tons.^[12]Street artists like Jace, El Seed, Brusk or Pantonio have been chosen to paint the new panels that replaces the old railings with locks.^[13]