First, the photo for the thumbnail:
From the top of Notre Dame, a gargoyle looks over Paris. He seems to be giving the Evil Eye to the Eiffel Tower.
The original plan for this morning was to visit the Palais Garnier - the old opera house that, in theory, inspired the story for "The Phantom Of The Opera". According to the Rick Steve's travel guide (albeit 2013 -- I didn't think much would have changed other than prices), the Palais Garnier was included in the museum pass we bought.
Took about 30 minutes to walk there:
When we got inside, the guard said the museum pass does NOT apply. It's 10 euro for a ticket, and the next English tour is at 2:30. Way too late. We asked if we could go in without a tour - which was a different ticket line. Then we saw the sign that the theater/auditorium was closed due to rehearsals. Seemed kinda silly to pay the fee and not be able to see the auditorium, so we left.
So now what? We thought we might try to see the catacombs, though the catacombs' website warned about long lines. It was also a very long walk - over an hour. Taking the train had us doing crazy things - take this to there, leave the station, take another train from there to here....We decided to take a cab.
When we arrived at the catacombs, the line was indeed very long. We asked the guard at the head of the line and he said the line was running about 2 hours long. It was now 12:30. We decided to go to lunch instead.
Over lunch (I had a "smoked salmon" salad - really good lox!), we reviewed our options. Before we left the hotel we had asked the front desk for suggestions for finding the kind of shopping we like to do - local artists/artisans/crafts people. The front desk person suggested Montmartre - but we thought we had been there the day we toured Sacre Coeure, and it didn't look very attractive.
Apparently we were in the wrong place. We need to be BEHIND the church up at the top of the hill. She gave us directions to a Metro stop that was located almost at the top of The Hill (but at the bottom of The Steps). We decided to take a chance.
The French have a reputation for being grumpy and rude specifically to Americans, refusing to speak English and refusing to try to understand our attempts at speaking French. We have not found that to be true, for the most part. We have come across stereotypically grumpy people, but 99% of the time, they have been gracious and helpful.
For example, we were changing trains and standing at an intersection between two lines. We couldn't match the signs on the walls with the labels on the subway map. A woman stopped and asked where we were trying to go - and we told her, we're looking for the Abesses stop on line #12. She then figured out what the confusion was and walked with us to the correct hallway to take us to the correct train. She insisted on helping us, above and beyond. It was awesome.
Then, when we got off at the Abesses stop, there was more confusion as to how to exit the station to take us to the funicular (shuttle train) to take us to the top of the Sacre Coeure hill. A young man explained that we reallly really should take the elevator to the subway exit, because otherwise we would be climbing several flights of stairs. He showed us the elevator - no button to push; we just waited for it to show up.
When we exited the elevator and then (of course) climbed another flight of stairs to get to the street, he showed us the direction to the funicular. Just awesome. Again. Spontaneous niceness. Random act of kindness.
And so we did find the funicular, which took us to Sacre Coeure. And behind the church was - a little market with street artists selling their work. At last!
We ended up buying two watercolors from one artist (slight discount for buying two). Success at last!
Yey! We would have been a bit disappointed if we had come home without one piece of art. Unheard of! Can't happen!
We decided to make one last attempt at Notre Dame - since it was bright and sunny, Andy would be able to get better photos. And now we have a museum pass again, so the tower is included. And I could visit the treasury.
We made it to Notre Dame with an hour to spare. Andy got into the line (30 minute wait) and I went into the cathedral.
To find out that the treasury is NOT included in the museum pass. Oh my goodness gracious.
I waited outside for Andy to go up and come down. Eventually it occurred to me I could just go back to the hotel room and wait there, too. The photo at the top of the blog is one of many great photos - with a clear sky and fantastic visibility.
We had dinner at one of the restuarants recommended by the front desk. I had "south west duck" (south west of what? France?) - which was phenominal. Andy had steak.
For dessert I had something called "bitter spicy chocolate cakes with smoked pear sorbet". I think "bitter chocolate" is actually "dark chocolate" - it was certainly dark and it certainly was NOT bitter. YUMMMM.
Andy had something called a "baba" - a pastry made with - what? The server had a hard time explaining it to us, because she kept saying it was made with "hum" - "hum"?? - until she showed us the bottle of RUM. And it had cherries. Awesome.
One more full day in France - tomorrow we are off to Giverny. We are doing this on our own, no bus tour. This will be interesting - we will need to take the subway to a bigger train station, take the train to Giverny then find the bus to Monet's gardens.
Tomorrow: Giverny, The Adventure!
No comments:
Post a Comment