Paris is a happening place. Going out early, you can observe the city waking up. It's vibrant and everyone is hustling; great energy. People are sitting at sidewalk cafes having their morning coffee; at lunch time, those same cafes are jammed when the weather is nice (and it has been every day so far); in late afternoon and early evening, they are back again for after-work socializing. In the evenings, the streets are crowded with people walking around enjoying themselves; restaurants are packed until late at night. The people-watching is fabulous.
When we visit large cities, we usually walk everywhere; not just for the exercise but for the experience of getting a feel for the city. We've done this extensively in London, Rome, and New York. But this time, it's more difficult; we guess our age is starting to show. Also, Bill is dealing with a heel injury, so we'll need to cut down on the walking and check out the public transportation.
The #69 bus runs from the Bastille to the Eiffel Tower and goes past just about everything. The trip took us longer than expected because we had to learn the system and buy a book of tickets. The tickets are good for the Metro and the bus system, but this morning we decided the bus would be best.
We took the bus to the Eiffel Tower. By the time we got there, the lines were such that the wait would be about an hour and a half. With a wait like this, viewing it from below was just fine with us. Our daughter-in-law and grandchildren visited it in December and didn't see lines like this. There is an excellent restaurant at the top; dinner is 200 Euros per person and a reservation is required three months in advance. Maybe next time. We walked to the Musee du Quai Branly. This is a modern museum exhibiting art and artifacts of primitive cultures from Oceana, Asia, Africa and the Americas. It's very extensive and you could spend days inside the place. Very impressive.
In walking to our next museum, we strolled down the Rue du Cler. This is a market street, with many vendors of produce, meats and food in general. It also has many cafes. We had an excellent (if overpriced) lunch and observed the people passing by.
After lunch, we walked to the Musee Rodin. It's located in a large eighteenth century house (in which Rodin once lived and worked) that has been converted to the museum. Inside are a number of his smaller creations and studies for the larger ones. These include Eve, The Kiss, and The Hand of God. The gardens outside the house are extensive, beautiful and very relaxing, filled with paths, sculptured shrubs and roses. There we saw the full size Thinker and The Burghers of Calais, amoung many others.
We then started the long walk toward home. Our feet and backs were pretty tired but we had concert tickets, so off we went. We walked to the Left Bank and sat in a cafe for refreshments, then took the short walk to Sainte-Chapell for a concert of Pachabel's Canon, Vivaldi's Four Seasons, and a few selections from Mozart. This was an excellent concert in a beautiful place, the sounds echoing off the surrounding stained glass windows (and a pigeon that entertained us by flying around during the performance).
Then it was a relatively short walk down the Isle de la Citie and Ile St. Louis back to Rue St. Paul, where we had dinner at L'Enoteca, a good Italian restaurant just a block from our studio.
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