The Other Side

Days 77 - 78, Monday 3rd & Tuesday 4th November 2008 (Cath)

With only two days left in Paris, what were we to do, apart from eat and drink?

Sit and stare at Monet’s Waterlilies in the rooms he designed for them at the Orangerie in the Jardin des Tuileries – utterly beautiful and uplifting.

 Step straight out of the Orangerie to see a bronze cast of Rodin’s The Kiss, after a ridiculously long queue kept us away from the marble version in the Hotel Biron yesterday.

Avoid being scammed by two men, separately, who just happen to each ‘find’ on the ground and generously offer us the same ‘gold’ ring in Place de la Concorde. 

Take a leisurely stroll through the Autumn leaves along the Champs Elysee.

Have a very French lunch: a meal on the sidewalk of Paris’ most famous boulevard, even if we do eat takeaway baguettes while sitting on a metro station wall, instead of a plate on the table of an overpriced cafe. Milkshakes were advertised at 10 Euro, and the persisting sun and short-sleeves weather was almost as much of a shock!

Walk to the Arc de Triomphe and watch the mad roundabout traffic for a while, strangely disappointed not to see a minor crash this time either, despite some close calls.

Take a photo on Pont Alexandre III, so that when we get home we can compare it to the one we took last time, and see how much we have aged.

Catch the metro a few last times, pretending we live here and know it like the backs of our hands.

Also pay a few visits to the patissier and boulangier, purely for old times’ sake.

And suddenly it is time to say goodbye and bon voyage to our travel companions of the last three and a bit weeks. As much as we are enjoying our travels and know that we are lucky to have a potentially challenging few months still before us, parts of us are insanely jealous that Hamish and Jen are heading home, and are very sad to part with their familiar faces. We want to stow away in their luggage! To see our family and friends, to feel the spring sun and head down to the beach, to go to the races (or at least have a BBQ and watch them on TV) – just to be in Australia! One day soon…

Day 76, Sunday 2nd November 2008 (Cath)

(Happy Birthday Rob!)

We started the day by catching the metro to the Place de la Concorde, then taking a lovely walk with Hamish through the Jardins des Tuileries, past the Louvre, and along and across the Seine to the Ile de la Cite.

We really knew we were in Paris now.

Palais du Justice

Saint Chappelle

Most of Paris’ major museums and attractions, including Saint Chappelle, have free entry on the first Sunday of each month. Unsurprisingly, we weren’t the only ones to realise this was the day to visit, but the queues were never so bad as to put us off. The longest we waited in line was about 45 minutes at the Musee d’Orsay, but not only was the wait more than justified by the quality of the museum, it also provided the ideal opportunity to make a birthday phone call home to my little bro and hear about the home-cooked meal I was missing out on (you can’t seem to get muesli slice here)!

Al looking like a giant in line at the Musee d’Orsay (grey jumper – definitely not a cardigan). (Editorial note: cardigans are usually woollen, with buttons that go half way up the chest, shoulder pads optional – it is definitely not a cardigan. Al)

Inside the museum (formerly a train station)

Gustave Caillebotte, The Floor Planers – one of my favourite paintings

Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Bal au Moulin de la Galette

As expected, the impressionist collection was impressive (and that’s not supposed to be some sort of pun, I just can’t think of a better word), with Monet (one of his Haystacks is here), Pissarro and Van Gogh my other favourites. Van Gogh’s Starry Night Over the Rhone was on loan to another museum, so luckily I had seen it when it came to the NGV a few years ago! Some of these paintings must be very well-travelled, and thinking about the resources that must be needed to facilitate their transport made me feel guilty that we weren’t paying anything to see them. Then I thought of the people who would be able to see this art today when they otherwise wouldn’t be able to afford to, and the benefit this could have for humankind, and the fact that I was saving $60 for the day, and I felt better.

Another museum whose free entry policy we took advantage of was the Musee Rodin, where we wandered the gardens and met a few of his sculptures – the life in them is amazing.

Al getting a head scratch

The Thinker

Our day in Paris had been very full and very rewarding, but it felt as though, as tourists, we were missing something. From the Musee Rodin we walked north towards the Seine, then along the river to the west, and found it just as the sun was going down – the Eiffel Tower, complete with a ring of EU stars. We met Hamish and Jen for a meal nearby, then, after more than a few poses with the tower, headed back to the metro and our Montmartre home.

Blue Steel – how appropriate!

Day 75, Saturday 1st November 2008 (Cath)

It had rained heavily overnight, so even though it was now only drizzling, it was so cold and puddly that my water-soaked feet felt like they were about to lose all circulation and drop off. It was time for my poor black ballet flats with their cracked soles to go into the bin. They had done some good miles back at work, and I knew I would lose them someday. They were classy Target originals, so it was only appropriate that they were replaced by a 5 Euro pair and some 2 Euro stockings from Versailles’ version of Harris Scarffe.

Puddles no longer a threat

They did the job – my feet felt warmer and drier than they had since the zip on one of my boots broke a few days earlier (I had to wait until Tuesday to collect my boots from the cordonnerie I had taken them to in Paris for repairs).

With the drizzle continuing, it was convenient that there was a huge palace nearby for shelter.

Chateau de Versailles

Until this stage of the trip, we had successfully avoided spending any significant amount of time queuing. We could tell we were back in a touristy area when it took longer to queue for audio guides about the palace than it did for the original entrance tickets. It took a while to adjust to the crowds of people like us (you shouldn’t really complain too loudly about the tourists when you are one, should you?), but battling them to see the amazingly elaborate decor inside was worth it.

The Hall of Mirrors

Jeff Koons’ aptly titled sculpture, ‘Balloon Dog’

Several of Jeff Koons’ sculptures have been temporarily installed throughout the palace, most of them bright and playful, some of them odd comments on contemporary society and pop culture (e.g. a hideous sculpture of Michael Jackson and his chimp Bubbles, made out of the largest piece of porcelain in the world). Some of them seemed out of place, but overall I liked the idea (and the balloon dog) – I imagine that if Louis XIV was alive today, these would be the kinds of flamboyant objects he would use to decorate his palace.

A portion of the gardens (Bassin de Latone in the foreground, with the Grand Canal in the distance) - we imagine they would be even more impressive with flowers in bloom and water spurting from the fountains!

The gardens are so expansive (800 hectares) that it is quite easy to get lost in them, and this photo was taken just after we realised that we were going to need to do some backtracking to get to where we thought we were heading (we had just been in the Labyrinthe, so please cut us some slack).

The Grand Trianon – the treaty defining the borders of Hungary after World War I was signed here

The Hameau de la Reine (Queen’s Hamlet)

Marie Antoinette had this model country village built so that she could escape there to enjoy the pleasures of the simple life, apparently playing shepherdess and milkmaid without getting her hands dirty. The milk churns were made of porcelain but painted to look like wood, and inside the farmhouse where the Queen would sleep was just as luxurious as her chambers in the palace itself. Obviously the real peasants in the rest of France weren’t too impressed (despite, as Al points out, being allowed to eat cake), but it looks like she had some fun.

We were very excited to see a fleeting patch of blue sky, so quickly took a photo even though it’s just me and some steps (and I do apologise for the lack of photos of Al lately – he has been hogging the camera, partly due to his not having had a haircut for the last two months).

Day 74, Friday 31st October 2008 (Cath)

After driving around it in an anticipation-building spiral for the last few weeks, we have reached our (well, really, the) ultimate French destination – Paris! We followed Dolores’ directions for the last time, dropped off our trusty Renault at the airport, and found our way to our comfortable Parisian digs, just down the hill from the Moulin Rouge in Montmarte.

It felt strange to see the old red windmill – it was the first place, since we left home in August, where Al and I were retracing our past steps. It looked a lot tackier in the light of day than it had on the night we first took photos outside it a few years ago, before we had headed down the hill to the only just slightly less famous cabaret, ‘La Nouvelle Eve’. After exploring a bit more of Montmarte today, we were shocked to realise that one of the boarded-up doors on our street was La Nouvelle Eve itself, looking a little bit worse for wear. It will always shine on in our memories (and possibly still reopen for the next tourist season).

(The magic seemed to come back after the sun went down)

Jenni’s guidebook led us on a walking tour of Montmarte, passing Renoir’s studio, an apartment where Van Gogh once lived, and the green-windmill-topped house where open air balls used to be held, the subject of Renoir’s painting Le Moulin de la Galette. The property is now private and surrounded by high fences, guard dogs, and some of the spikiest metal things I’ve ever seen. Okay, okay, we won’t come in!

Montmarte Cemetery (where we found the grave of Adolphe Sax, inventor of the saxophone)

Sacre Coeur (which has a spectacular location, but actually looked a bit clunky after we had seen so many intricately carved gothic facades)

View from the steps below Sacre Coeur

Pavement stencil further down the hill in Montmarte – I worry about penguins too

We celebrated our first night in Paris at a bar where the staff had made an impressive effort with Halloween costumes (Halloween is bigger here than we realised, with marzipan pumpkins for sale in most patisseries), and watched the French hope, Tsonga, knock Roddick out of the Paris Masters finals.

Days 72 – 73, Wednesday 29th & Thursday 30th October 2008 (Cath)

Enough about the war – it was time for some bubbles.

Lots of bubbles! This is Hamish with just some of them, cellared in what were originally Roman chalk mines, so that the temperature is constant all year round.

Our first glass of real Champagne, at the Taittinger caves.

Moet et Chandon in Epernay.

Beneath this building is at least one bottle of champagne for every single resident of France. ‘Is this place insured?’, asked one American guy on our guided tour. Pause. ‘Yes, it is insured’, said our unamused French-Canadian guide. Later, an immaculately groomed German woman in jodphurs noticed a wire running along the 8-foot-high ceiling and interrupted the guide. ‘Is this 220 volts?’

‘I am not sure how many volts it is’, replied our very proper guide.

‘But it’s live?’, insisted the outraged visitor.

‘Madame, if you are considering touching it, that is not something I would recommend’, was the reply.

Vintage Moet ready for us to sample – very classy.

We had the Vintage 2003, which was released only a couple of weeks earlier. Most other Champagne houses didn’t produce a vintage that year, as it was the hottest European summer on record and hence gave a yield that was generally considered poor, but Moet et Chandon decided to take on the challenge and learn how to work with climate change to create unique wine. So, thankfully, although one may have to forgo many of modern life’s material luxuries if one wishes to continue living on this planet, one will still be able to sip some very posh champagne.

Dom Perignon, the monk who started it all.

Epernay’s entry in the ‘freaky child mannequins of Europe’ contest – actually sort of cute.

My little shop!

Actually, a little bit more about the war needed to be investigated, too. This is the school in Reims where the Nazis first signed a complete surrender, to end World War II in Europe (another one was later signed in Berlin to satisfy Stalin):

The museum here is almost perfect – not too big and not too small. It has a really interesting film, with footage of the signing; some personal stories, my favourite being about the young stenographer who received the message to be transmitted and realised what it meant; and most impressively the map room (from where Eisenhower commanded the Allies during the war), which has been left as it was when the war ended.

We didn’t go to this restaurant in Reims, but its hopeful-looking cow nearly pulled us in:

We had a couple of classy dinners in Reims, but its roads were almost harder to navigate than Luxembourg – it seemed like every third street turned into a dead end because of road works. At one stage in the centre of town, an older French man offered to help us, but when we explained where we needed to go (to the main road out of town), he shrugged and said ‘they changed all the signs on Monday. I live here and I have no idea how to get there now’. So for a quiet last night closer to where we were staying (near a very classy motorway interchange), we paid a last visit to Flunch.

The French version of Sizzler

No Moet here, but a great vegie bar (guess which end the French fries are at?)