John's turn again. We're comfortably settled onto our train, departing momentarily from Gare St. Lazaire in Paris to Bayeux in Normandy. Big comfy seats, plenty of baggage space, airily designed-cars - should be a fairly relaxing trip. I may not finish this entry before we get there, as I do want to see more of France!
Flash-back time to yesterday (Friday, June 27th). As Michelle wrote we split up for the day - she & Alexa on their Versaille trip while Ben & I visited a few more sites in Paris. Since we'd been up fairly late the night before he & I got a late start, and ran into some delays at Gare d'Austerlitz procuring Metro passes for the day. Friday is a BIG travel day in France and it seemed everyone was trying to get out of town.
Our first stop of the morning was the Rodin Museum, located just across the street from the Invalides complex. The museum occupies the house Rodin lived in during the later part of his life, as well as the extensive gardens behind the house, separated by a tall wall from the rest of Paris. Sculptures by Rodin, his companion Camille Caudill and a few works by his friends (we came across a painting by Monet and another by Van Gogh) are located throughout the house and gardens. Ben took some really terrific pictures including the one above of his favorite sculpture, The Tower of Labor. We spent a few minutes in the garden cafe having a drink and a bit of bread (Ben is definitely the bagette-powered boy!) but the lunch offerings weren't to his liking, so we ate lunch at a cafe across the street from the museum.
I'm not the art fan Michelle is, but I'd wanted to visit this museum since I'd first heard about it. Rodin's mastery of his chosen form struck me very viscerally - one small piece, The Cry, shows little more than a male head clearly crying out - in anguish I thought, but another might see exaltation. The Gates of Hell, located in the garden, is simply phenomenal.
After lunch we returned to the Invalides complex to what seems to be a little-visited section of the museum - the Musee des Plans Reliefs. Its location on the fourth floor (no elevator) of the east wing, which is undergoing renovations, is probably the main reason it was almost entirely deserted for the hour that Ben & I spent in it. The contents? An extensive collection of scale models, incredibly realistic, of various citadelles, fortresses and fortified towns in France. Some were relatively small, a few feet on a side, but several were over 10 feet across. The oldest dated model I found was from 1700. Apparently these were maintained secretly by the French Army until the 20th century. Ben was fascinated by the models, and we spent a while discussing the science of this kind of military engineering (the ideas of bastions, lazarettes, why you'd put a separate citadelle next to a fortified city, etc.).
We departed Invalides for good, getting into a glimpse of the Eglise St. Louis which shares a wall with Napoleon's tomb. From there we hopped onto the Metro and across to the Right Bank of the Seine for a visit to the National Maritime Museum at Trocadero Square.
More models here, but this time of ships - everything from 64-gun ships-of-the-line to France's modern aircraft carrier, the Charles de Galle. The explanations are only in French but we were able to puzzle things out well enough. There's also a big collection of nautical-themed art, from some panoramic paintings of various ports to scenes from famous battles, Trafalgar among them.
We popped out onto the plaza on Trodcadero square and discovered that the guidebooks were correct - it's the best view of the Eiffel Tower in Paris. Definitely tourist central! Ben finally got a vanilla-chocolate ice cream twist he'd been wanting but been unable to find (the soft-serve stuff is known as glace itallienne, by the way). We had a couple hours yet to kill before meeting back up with the girls, so we found some bench space and did some people-watching while Ben played with some of the toy knights he's picked up. I probably could have offered to take pictures of groups for a euro a pop and paid for our Metro passes for the day!
We ventured into the Metro again to the Latin Quarter and our designated meeting place, the church of St. Germain de Pres, parts of which date from the sixth century - yes, parts of the walls are 1500 years old! We staked out the entry from a cafe across the street while Ben had build-your-own hot chocolate & I had tea. After rendevousing with the girls we hacked our way down Blvd. St. Germain to a family-friendly restraunt we'd eaten at earlier in the week, and Italian chain called del Arte. Then back to the Chalik, where Michelle & I packed while two tired kids rested!
We did our final packing this morning; Michelle in her wizardry only needed to pop out one of our spare bags, and that mainly for dirty clothes. We "checked out" with Mssr. Valat who helped us maneuver our luggage off the boat and gangway onto the quai. We said our farewells, crossed the street to the Gare and caught a cab to Gare St. Lazaire, where this train awaited us.
We're now zipping through beautiful countryside and occasionally very small towns. We'll be in Bayeux in about another hour or so...
Addendum:
We arrived in Bayeux a little at about 3:15 today. The Bayeux station is tiny, just a few older buildings next to the tracks and absolutely no line at the counter. The available taxis were all snatched up before we made it over to the taxi stand, but it's a small town and one swung back by a short time later to take us to our hotel, the Hotel d'Argouges. It's a 16th-century townhouse built by the eponymous Lord d'Argouges. We're in one of their apartments, in the main building, with the window of the master bedroom overlooking the garden. What's really neat is that despite being located on the main east-west street through town, the house itself is actually set back from the road and from our window, the only things I hear this moment are the birds in the garden. (Well, there's some horns honking a good ways off, but it's still pretty peaceful.)
Aside from a bit of exploring Ben & I did around the block, and a nice walk to and from dinner, we've pretty much taken the night off. Tomorrow we plan to get up early to make the trek to Mont St. Michel before the hordes of tourists arrive, and then hopefully see some of the sights in Bayeux in the afternoon, with some country driving in between.
Michelle's Addendum:
I've added a photo of the hotel where we are living in the lap of luxury. Two items John did not mention -1) there is a Christmas card (the photo type) from Rick Steves hanging in a nook in the reception area - he stays here every year (for those who don't know, Rick Steves is THE authority on European travel and has a PBS show and writes guidebooks; we are traveling with two of his guidebooks, one of his backpacks, and a money belt sold by him); 2) apartment here means, essentially, two bedrooms with a bathroom. It's roomy (particularly given French standards), and has a BATHTUB. WOOT.
Also, a totally cute thing from our journey this morning. There was a family near us in the train station with a son who looked to be about Ben's age. So I urged Ben to go up to him and ask if he spoke English (in French, of course). Turns out they were from Texas so the boy and Ben hung out together trading Gameboy tips. Yet another cool encounter from the road - we've met all sorts of interesting people from many countries (including Australia - a mother and daughter on the tour bus in Paris who were traveling with a choral group) who strike up a conversation when they hear you speaking English.
Finally, I forgot to mention an incident a couple days ago that shows how 'unplugged' I've become. We were eating breakfast at the train station (the only breakfast outside the boat when we were in Paris), and the waiter, upon hearing us and hearing where we were from, asked us (in a very French accent just after taking our order) "Hillary or Barak Obama?" Between the accent and the timing and my being totally out of the political scene - I totally had no clue what he was talking about. It took at least three times before John told me what he was asking. Apparently the French (like much of Europe, I hear) thinks our election was between just those two. Also, I am apparently able to totally get away from it all... we had no TV for a week without any real pain. Go figure.
Michelle's Addendum:
I've added a photo of the hotel where we are living in the lap of luxury. Two items John did not mention -1) there is a Christmas card (the photo type) from Rick Steves hanging in a nook in the reception area - he stays here every year (for those who don't know, Rick Steves is THE authority on European travel and has a PBS show and writes guidebooks; we are traveling with two of his guidebooks, one of his backpacks, and a money belt sold by him); 2) apartment here means, essentially, two bedrooms with a bathroom. It's roomy (particularly given French standards), and has a BATHTUB. WOOT.
Also, a totally cute thing from our journey this morning. There was a family near us in the train station with a son who looked to be about Ben's age. So I urged Ben to go up to him and ask if he spoke English (in French, of course). Turns out they were from Texas so the boy and Ben hung out together trading Gameboy tips. Yet another cool encounter from the road - we've met all sorts of interesting people from many countries (including Australia - a mother and daughter on the tour bus in Paris who were traveling with a choral group) who strike up a conversation when they hear you speaking English.
Finally, I forgot to mention an incident a couple days ago that shows how 'unplugged' I've become. We were eating breakfast at the train station (the only breakfast outside the boat when we were in Paris), and the waiter, upon hearing us and hearing where we were from, asked us (in a very French accent just after taking our order) "Hillary or Barak Obama?" Between the accent and the timing and my being totally out of the political scene - I totally had no clue what he was talking about. It took at least three times before John told me what he was asking. Apparently the French (like much of Europe, I hear) thinks our election was between just those two. Also, I am apparently able to totally get away from it all... we had no TV for a week without any real pain. Go figure.
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