Took about 40 minutes to walk there from our hotel; the subway ride would have been about a half hour and require climbing up and down lots of stairs. One of my goals for today was to avoid stairs unless absolutely necessary, in response to yesterday's Stairs Extravaganza.
We bought our new 4-day passes. The audio-guide was not included, so we opted out. We figured the brochure should be enough.
Then we found out that they had no brochures in English. No clue why. Mind boggling.
So instead, I took the brochure in Spanish and Andy took the one in French. We figured between the two we should be able to make two.
It was a spectacular day for walking in the garden - with our Spanish and French brochures. First Important Thing was the enlarged version of The Thinker - which is "El Pensador" in Spanish. From now one, every time I see an image of that statue I will think "El Pensador!".
Anyway, in about 5 minutes we realized that the Spanish/French thing wasn't going to work. Batting zero, we rented the audio guides.
In hind-sight, we realized we should have toured the exhibits inside the house/museum before the garden. But no suggestion was made (might have been in the brochure, but it would have been in Spanish or French), so we toured the garden first.
Wandering around the garden in search of audio-tagged items, I was suddenly brutally attacked by a vicious chestnut tree. Yes, it fired projectiles right at me. Here's the evidence:
No joke: this chestnut hit me in the face - and bounced off my sunglasses. Would have hit me straight in the eye otherwise. Felt like Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz when the trees flung their apples at her.
There were very few items in the garden that were tagged for the audio guide. The ones that were tagged had explanations that seemed to assume some kind of prior knowledge of some other piece. Like this one, called "Meditation":
Wow what an awkward position for meditating. Turns out this is a stand alone piece from one of Rodin's greatest works called "Hell's Gate"
So maybe we should have started here and some of the other pieces elsewhere in the garden would have been familiar.
Once inside the inside exhibits, lots and lots of items were tagged for the audio guide. Many of the pieces were studies for Hell's Gate and therefore for the stand alone pieces we saw in the garden. Things fell into place and made sense. Perhaps it SHOULD be suggested to tour the house first.
You can see "The Thinker" at the top of the Hell's Gate. Rodin pulled him out and made him into a stand alone piece:
This one should look familiar as well:
Known as "The Kiss", apparently it originated somewhere on Hell's Gate as a pair of doomed/adulterous lovers.
We were done with the exhibits about 1:00 - took us maybe 3 hours to tour the whole museum. We decided to have lunch in the museum cafeteria, because we hadn't seen any cafes on the way over in the morning. Lunch was disappointing. Even the gelato was a bit disappointing, which is really hard to do.
And the instant we left the museum grounds, of course we spotted a cafe across the street. Never mind.
Next on the agenda: the Museum of the Army. Not that French military history is all that alluring (after 10 days of hearing about assorted kings, revolutions, empires, more kings, more revolutions....yeah, not so enthused), but it's housed in a building that was a church and then a hospital. And also somewhere in there is Napoleon's tomb.
Our handy museum passes in hand, we walk into the ticket office. Andy goes up to the information desk and asks for a map of the museum. Ms. Charming Information Person, snaps: "you have to have a ticket!" And Andy says, "We have tickets - we have a museum pass". WIth great non-enthusiasm, we now have a map.
We sat on a bench looking at the map and I noticed that nowhere is there a little bathroom logo (I bet you were just waiting for the bathroom story, weren't you?). So we go back up to the Information Desk. Mind you, it's been a few minutes since we were last there, and we'd seen the information person smile and be very pleasant to other people as they ask their questions. Now we're back, and we ask: "Where are the bathrooms?" The answer:
"You have to have a ticket!"
Yes, yes, WE HAVE A MUSEUM PASS, where are the bathrooms?
In a rather brusk fashion, she circles one of the halls on the map and says: "It's in here, down the stairs".
Sensing that she'd rather be doing anything else than answer any more of our questions, we continue into the exhibits.
The first one was a huge collection of armor. My favorite is this guy:
This seriously looks like the Evil Donald Duck who lives in the Alternate Universe on the other side of a mal-functioning transporter.
Next exhibit was the actual "Museum of the Army". Maybe. The basement floor is all about Charles de Gaul ("SHAHdegoh", all one word slurred together). Oh look, there's the bathrooms down there, too. The next 4 floors going up contain the rest of the French military history. Oh look, there's an elevator! Great!
Oh look, the elevator is out of order. Which means to view the upstairs exhibits means climbing 4 flights of stairs. Yeah. No. Not THAT into French military history.
Andy goes up to the exhibits with my iPad in tow to take pictures, while I navigate the stairs down to the bathroom. And then find a place to put myself for a while.
Andy comes back with this neat relief map ordered by Louis XVI:
This map is original, which means it's over 200 years old.
Navigating around the construction that seems to be everywhere in this museum, we find the part of the building that was/is the oringal church (the oringal purpose for this building). Take a look:
Quite beautiful - if you look closely at the altar, it is clear glass. On the other side is the room where Napoleon's tomb is located.
Therefore, next stop is Napoleon's tomb - we had to go outside, around the corner, stand in a line, and show the museum pass. Normally when we show the museum pass, we are waved in - this time the guard marked our passes with a "D". We have no idea what this means.
Anyway, Napoleon's tomb is obviously the big attraction, because there's tons of people everywhere. And here he is:
Ok, so now it's 4:00 and we're done with two museums. Hmm....
We decided to walk in the direction of a recommended restaurant (La Coupola) in Montparnasse. We take our time. We take breaks. We walk slowly. Really slowly. We stop at an ATM and take out money. And take another break.
We arrived at the restaurant at 5:15. A bit early for dinner, so we camped out on a bench.
At 6:00 we walk into the restaurant - to find out it doesn't open till 6:30. But they seat us anyway, close to the street. We ordered drinks and got the wifi password - we're good to go!
We started noticing that a crowd is forming - all of them men in formal wear. Then they came in, and we noticed the influx of a parade of Very Dresse Up People. We are NOT Very Dressed Up. We are in jeans and collared shirts. And sneakers. Soon other interesting people show up - ball gowns and tiaras for the ladies, tuxes for the men. Or not - some of the men are wearing white straw hats, or the classic beret with striped shirts and suspenders. A big crowd has now formed just inside the restaurant. This crowd is having a great time, whatever it is they are celebrating!
For dinner I had the chateaubriand - a phenominal steak. For dessert I had some "Supreme....something somthing..." - bottom layer was crushed pastachios, next a layer of chocolate <something>, a layer of vanilla <something>, topped by another layer of chocolate. Accompanied by the strawberry-est strawberrys ever. Scrumptious. Andy ordered <something> which turned out to be huge cream puffs with vanilla ice cream drowned in chocolate sauce (the waiter quite enjoyed pouring out the chocolate sauce with a "VOILA!"). YUMMMMMM....
A couple is seated at the table next to us - they have a little-bitty-terrier dog. Of course, I have to say hello to the dog. Turns out her name is Katyah.
We ended up having a delightful conversation with the couple - they are from Frankfurt, a 3 hour train ride away. Today is their 25th wedding anniversay, so they are having dinner and spending the night in Paris. We got to talking about dogs and birds and cats, and I don't know what.
I stepped away for a few minutes for the obligatory trip down the stairs to the ladies' room. I had to thread my way through the party crowd to do it. Me in my jeans, them in their evening wear. When I came up the stairs, I was confused by tuxedoed men talking to me - finally, I understood them. They were saying,"Bon soir, Madam!" Oh my, well ok, "Bon Soir!".
I threaded my way back to the door to the outside patio where Andy and our table were. There was a (very tall and very nicely dressed) woman holding the door an blocking my way. She appeared to have no plans to move. So I said, "Excuse me?".
She looked me up and down, obviously taking in the t-shirt and jeans, stared at me, and said in the snarkiest voice imaginable she said, "Yes?"
I stared back and said,: I need to go back to my seat. Which is over there. On the other side of the room. Please let me by."
And then I just walked under her arm and went back to my chair. Sometimes there are advantages to being short.
All of the other wait staff up to that point had been very nice to us - possibly it was just her job to keep the riff-raff out of the fete going on. But still, my goodness. Being polite never hurts.
All in all, the restuarant was fabulous. Kudos to my buddy, Jack, who recommended it!
Tomorrow: Not sure. Maybe the Catacombs.
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