Paris in Shades of Grey

 Paris is a city like no other. I am sure I am not the first person to think or say this. I came away thinking this is even better than NYC, and I like NYC a lot. But it doesn't have the history Paris has or the wide open boulevards, monuments and sculptures, palaces and range of architecture styles that Paris has. Paris has every kind of person you can imagine from street people who would fit right into Santa Cruz to women who look like they just arrived from Saudi Arabia. The history and art alone are more than you can take in in five days. But we did our best, walking every day till our feet hurt.

We stayed in our third Air BnB apartment. It was a bit outside of all the famous things which was good because we felt like we were in a regular neighborhood. There was easy access to the metro and shops and restaurants near by. The place itself was spacious and had a good kitchen where we could cook. We only ate dinner out once and so did not find Paris that expensive.

Front of our Building

Front door of Apartment

Day one-
We were lucky enough to have an excellent tour guide on our first day in Paris, my Uncle's friend Cristiane. She is French, lived in the US for years but has spent much of her life in Paris and retired here a while ago. She took us on a walk and bus tour along the Sienne that hit some of the famous and not so famous sites and helped us get oriented to the city.

This is a wonderful new museum building that is very alive. The plants are like a living collage on the building

Anika and Cristiane

These are a series of sculptures representing people from various countries.  What is really cool about them is the textures or imprints he used from objects in the city or country they are from.  If you want to know more about them go to this web site http://lesenfantsdumonde.zeblog.com/.

This is a phenomena we saw in France and Germany. People lock a lock to a bridge to seal their love. The Notre Dam is in the background. The bridge is covered with these.

This guy below and his "vehicle" here would fit right on the mall in Santa Cruz.

Santa Cruz type guy

Two of the oldest homes still standing in Paris from Medievel times in the Marais area.

One of our last stops was a Jewish neighborhood. I had no idea there was such a strong Jewish presence in Paris but there is. I would like to go back to some of the museums in this area

Day Two-
We had very grey, sometimes rainy weather in Paris. Our second day it was hard to get out of the apartment it was so uninviting. But we finally did. We spent some time going to stores Anika wanted to see. Then we hit a couple of sites.

Dave in front of the Angelic Pretty Store one of Anika's picks.

After Anika's stores we headed for the Musee de l'Orangerie. This is a great small museum of impressionists. But its real claim to fame is two rooms designed by Monet for his water lily paintings. These are incredible to see in real life and to hear how they became the focus of the last years of his life and career.  This building was damaged during WW2 and there were photos of the state the Water Lily room were in at the end of the war, so we are lucky the paintings survived. There is also a good collection of other artists of that time. We discovered an artist new to us. We had only ever seen a piece or two by Soutine in the past, but this museum has the biggest collection and it was impressive. It is always fun to discover a new artist you like.

You can't take photos in the museum but these below are from the park it is in.

Anika in a Henry Moore sculpture

Arc d' Triumphe

Day Three

Anika took a day off from touring and Dave and I headed for the park on our first day of sunshine. We went to Parc de la Villette.

From there we headed to Montmartre. this is where many artists and writers have lived in the past. Now it is pretty chi chi and touristy. We had lunch there and took a self guided walking tour.

This is an original metro entrance in the art nouveau style.

Typical Montre Mart street

House Van Gough lived in with his brother Theo for a short time.

Cafe where Amalie worked in the movie.

Day Four - The Louvre
It is hard to believe you can spend one entire day at a museum and still feel that you only saw a fraction of the place. But that is how it felt to us at the Louvre. This museum is HUGE. We had audio guides and did a basic tour that takes you to the most famous pieces (Venus de Milo, Mona Lisa etc.) Then we went to the sections that most interested us. It is very easy to get lost and you get directions like "You must go up to go down." or "You must go down to go up." The building itself is so grandiose it almost over whelms some of the art. Everything is ornate.

Venus de Milo

This painting is so big it took the artist three years to paint. It is of Napoleon's coronation.

My favorite piece of the day by Michelangelo

Final Thoughts on France

Color
I hope the people who love France will not take offense, but my color for France is grey. I do not mean like dull or dingy but it felt grey. This may be because we had so few days of sun but it was like a film over everything much of the time. Buildings were tinged in grey. Nice was a little more colorful but still there was the grey. there was a lot of green in the country side. Lets say it was muted. This did not make me like it less or leave a bad impression. It just felt grey. All the old stone buildings in the country and cement in the city, it was grey. Think black and white Woody Allen movie, its really shades of grey and some how very stylish.

Dogs
The dogs were well behaved and pampered. They are allowed every where. We saw one sitting on a seat next to its owner at a restaurant. Dogs come and go in public places with their owners. There is less poop on the side walks than Buenos Aires but you still have to be careful. There are cats too and they don't look like strays but its harder to tell with a cat sometimes.

Toilets
Public bathrooms were okay. But many had no toilet seat. What is up with that!

Food.
Of course there was great food everywhere. We did not eat out a lot but could get great ingredients for doing our own cooking. And we had a few really good meals out including Chinese food in a restaurant full of Asian people in Paris. We learned about rose wines and cheeses of all sorts. I could have had pastries every day. Even chocolate croissants tasted better in France. We saw many people especially in Paris eating Mc Donalds and I wanted to grab the bag and tell them don't you know what's in this? Don't eat it when you have so much good food around!

I think the French people appreciate art and pretty things. There seems to be public art everywhere.

They have a significant social safety net with child care from infants on, for all as an example. They have one of the highest birthrates in Europe which some say is because of the childcare available. History also seems appreciated as buildings are restored and kept up. Like every country and all people it has its contradictions. The above photo of a baby playing at the beach on the side of a cooling tower, next to a wind turbine sums it up. They have the highest percentage of their energy from nuclear power of any country in the world. People where helpful and not rude ( as you often hear in the US) but they were a bit more aloof than in some places we have been. As Dave said " The French were nicer than we expected". Sometimes it seemed things were made more complicated than they had to be. We really were told to go up to go down and the systems for some things did not seem well thought out. But you could have wine and cheese and a bagette, sit in a cafe and talk for hours, look at beautiful art even on a grey day.