New Thing #94 - Wanderlust (Paris & Barcelona Day 2)

Month 6 - Wanderlust

December 1, 2018 - Paris: Day 2

Up at 7:00 to shower and get breakfast in the hotel. Their breakfast spread was pretty extensive with assorted pastries/breads, fruit, cereal, ham, cheeses, yogurts, juices, etc. Wasn't bad for 10 Euros.

Yes, that is a hot dog, but it's a French hot dog, so you know it's fancy.

Ready to explore Paris!

Called the Uber driver for our ride to the Louvre. We had booked a small group private tour of the famous museum, and we were to meet at the Arc de Triomphe du Carousel, which was supposedly in front of the infamous glass pyramid at the Louvre. Somehow, there was some confusion and he drove us to the Arc de Triomphe instead (the big famous arch from Napoleon).

Did I mention that today was the second weekend in a row that the Paris working class were going to be protesting gas prices, wages and all sorts of other things? Did I also mention that the Arc de Triomphe was the epicenter of said protests?

Yeah. Neat.

So, if you haven't put two and two together yet, our Uber driver tried to drop us off SMACK DAB in the middle of the chaos. In his somewhat defense, he did try to warn us about where he was going to drop us off. At least, based on his broken English, charades and noises, we eventually figured out he was talking about the protests. However, we just assumed he was talking about them to say they were going on, NOT trying to make sure we wanted to go down there. So, imagine our surprise when he turns onto the Champs-Élysées, heading directly for the Arc de Triomphe. Sandi and I quickly realized we weren't in Kansas anymore.

The streets were mostly empty, except for hundreds of police officers in full riot gear, armored trucks and the occasional protestor walking towards the Arc. As we got closer to the circle where the biggest concentration of people were, we noticed that our Uber driver's app was showing that we were about to be dropped off. So this was not a shortcut to the Louvre, but rather he somehow misunderstood our final destination and was about to drop us off in the middle of the chaos.

Insert panic button.

He pulled over to the side of the road and was pretty much like "okay, we're here, enjoy Paris!" We kept saying "No No!" Eventually he figured out that we did NOT want to get out of the car. In the tense moments that passed, I don't really remember much, except for us frantically trying to get him to drive away, trying to give him the address for the Carousel, trying to schedule another Uber for him, him refusing the Uber, him not understanding what the heck the AdeTduC (I'm abbreviating) was, or understanding me when I said the Louvre, but finally giving me his phone to put in the address. Once the address for the Louvre was in his phone, he left, but stopped shortly thereafter and asked us for "money? money?" clearly needing to make sure we had money to pay him.

"OUI!" Hell yes, we have money, just get us the f*ck out of here!

As we drove away, we tried to figure out what he was going to charge us. He was no longer using the Uber app, and he kept throwing out numbers, partly in French, partly in broken English. Since Sandi had given him a tip on the original ride, he assumed that was all we were going to pay him. We assured him we had the 20 Euros he requested, and we were finally able to relax that we were out of the danger zone AND we were not going to miss our tour.

I wish I had taken a few photos of the scene, but given the circumstances and our frenetic urge to get the hell out of Dodge, taking photos was the last thing on my mind.

We arrived at the Louvre with 15 minutes to spare – HALLELUJAH, walked to the center and immediately saw the AdeTduC as plain as day. I know my French is awful, but clearly our driver hadn't been familiar enough with Parisian tourist attractions to know where we were going. Or, looking back, he might have done it on purpose to gain some extra cash. Damn French.

Made it to the Louvre!

Arc de Triomphe du Carousel

Sooooon!!!

We met our small group, along with our guide, Violet, and got started. Because we paid extra for this tour, rather than just paying the admission into the museum, we were able to skip the line and go right in. Since it was December, the line wasn't terribly long, but still nice to skip it. Group tours even have their own space for lockers (we didn't have to wear our coats!) and bathrooms. And having Violet was great. I love when tour guides really know what they're showing you, rather than just reading from a script. She was an art history major who studied in Rome and Tuscany, and I could have listened to her all day.

Under the glass pyramid.

Violet explained that the art up here changes every so often. This gilded piece is not permanent.

I don't know why, but I loved these lockers. #nerdalert

The Louvre is 652,000 square feet (or roughly 9.5 miles of walking) and is filled with 380,000 objects (paintings, sculptures, jewelry, you name it). But that only encapsulates 8% of the Louvre's total collection. ONLY 8%!! Obviously a 3 hour tour was not going to be nearly enough time to make even a tiny dent, so Violet was only going to pick out the most important pieces. (To give you an idea of the size, if you only spent 30 seconds looking at every single piece of art, every day all day, it would take 100 days to view everything.)

We started in the basement to see the original Louvre structure, which used to be a fortress. During renovations it was discovered and added to the museum tour. We walked through what was once the moat and noticed drawing in the bricks. She told us that each group of bricklayers would "sign" their bricks as they were added. It's how they were paid (the more bricks laid, the more the team was paid).

Rendering of original fortress.

I'm in a moat! 

The heart team.

The cross team.

Great Sphinx of Tanis

Venus de Milo (actually called the Aphrodite of Milos) is one of only two original Greek sculptures here. Everything else are just Roman copies of Greek originals.

Even in December, this place was busy.

Why don't they make ceilings like this anymore?!

Love love love the ceilings/windows/arches where Winged Victory is displayed.

Winged Victory. The only other original Greek sculpture.

Heads and arms are often missing from statues from this time. Sometimes it's because those are the weakest areas of the marble and they were easily broken off in transport. Other times, Catholics would destroy Pagan sculptures as a way to spread Catholicism and deter people from worshiping Greek and Roman gods.

Hay gurl hay!

"I'm gonna stand by the bar...put out the vibe." I couldn't help notice the resemblance to Jim Carrey's Lloyd Christmas from Dumb & Dumber.

Yet another angle!

Big. Damn. Paintings.

This painting had significance. I don't remember why. I just find it pretty impractical to fight in the nude....

Wedding Feast at Cana, the largest painting in the Louvre. It depicts the first miracle where Jesus turned water into wine. According to Violet, Napoleon decided he must have it at any cost, so it order to move it, it was cut apart and then put back together when it arrived in Paris. And they didn't do a great job putting it back together. I guess this was pretty typical of era when paintings were bigger than my house and nearly impossible to transport.

More paintings in the Italian room.

The Mona Lisa. Her popularity was clearly a publicity stunt after it was stolen years ago. No one really paid any attention to it prior to that.

Not a crazy big crowd, but I wasn't that interested.

The longest gallery in the Louvre from one direction.

And the other direction.

St. John the Baptist by da Vinci. Some say that the face resembles the one from the Mona Lisa, and that they both resemble his apprentice and lover, who was a dude.

The Slaves by Michelangelo.

The original selfie. Not gonna lie, I kinda wanted to take a photo like this, but we moved on too fast. Even Beyonce and Jay-Z took selfies with it!

Once we finished with Violet, she said we could stay as long as we wanted, but once we left, we couldn't return. I opted to grab a quick lunch of quiche lorraine in the museum's cafe before heading over to the Eiffel Tower for our tour. 

View from the lunch cafe.

Quiche lorraine wasn't too bad! And just what I needed to get me through the afternoon.

Saw a few Christmas decorations up in the shopping area.

Stopped for a quick photo with the inverted pyramid...

And then another with the outside pyramid...

And one more "touching" the top of the pyramid...no shame.

It's as gorgeous outside as it is in.

Due to the weather and how tired we were, we opted to take an Uber to the Eiffel Tower, though it was probably walkable. But once we got in the Uber, our ETA kept getting delayed further and further. What should have only been a 10 minute drive, turned into 15-20 and we still weren't anywhere close to where we needed to be.

Every street we tried to turn down was blocked – either by police road blocks or protestors. The streets that happened to be open were gridlocked. Our driver eventually pulled over to let us out. Using Google translate on his phone, he told us that the protestors were the cause of the traffic (no shit) and he couldn't get across the river. We would need to take the Metro. One small problem. We only had 15 minutes to get to the ET, we didn't know where the Metro was, nor how long it would take to get where we needed to go. Not to mention that I wasn't sure how many protestors were taking the Metro around. I really didn't want to get stuck underground with them.

I quickly asked a police officer where the Metro was and determined it was at least a 15 minute walk away and directly through the protestors, so Sandi called the tour company hoping we would be able to swap our tour for tomorrow. I can't come to Paris and NOT see the Eiffel Tower!! Fortunately, the tour co. was incredibly understanding when we mentioned that protestors were keeping us from getting to our tour. They had three options available for the next day, including late afternoon.

Thank God we were able to switch our tour. I didn't want to have to buy another ticket tomorrow! Now that we had that squared away, we quickly realized another dilemma. We were on the wrong side of the river from our hotel with limited means of getting anywhere. True, we could take the Metro, but I was still leery of being trapped underground. Plus, we would need to power through a bunch of other attractions today instead of tomorrow due the to schedule change.

With limited Uber access on this side of the river, we opted to just start walking and see what sites we saw along the way. Our final destination was Notre Dame, so we took off in that direction. Shortly after, we ran in to yet more protestors. Each way we tried to take, there were more of them. The only way to definitively get around them was to essentially go through them. Luckily for us, they were peaceful at the intersection we chose. While there were a lot, they weren't violent or rowdy. And since I had a red coat on, I powered through the middle, with Sandi on my tail. I was pretty easy to spot in a sea of yellow vests.

Can't tell if these were supposed to be Christmas decorations or just art.

Yellow vests = protestors

Shutting down traffic.

And more of them. Didn't get a photo of the crowd we went through.

Not sure if this group was late to the party or if they just decided to go home.

I found out after we left that things near the Arc de Triomphe got pretty intense with way more violence that we knew about at the time. I'm glad we didn't end up in that this morning!

Ste. Chapelle was on our route, so we headed that direction in the cold and rainy weather. We had heard great things about this church, and it would at least offer us a respite from the elements.

The Seine.

Ste. Chapelle, a Gothic style church completed in the 1200s.

The weather made for some beautifully eerie photos.

When we walked in we were less than impressed. This didn't seem to have the splendor that we were anticipating.

I mean, it's pretty and all, but we were clearly missing something.

After leaving and coming back again, we were told where the stairs were. Do you see them here? Nah, neither did we.

Oh hey, here they are, tucked way back in the corner with one tiny sign. Someone needs to help them with their wayfinding and signage!

Okay, so THIS is what were expecting. It absolutely took our breath away!

The detail is incredible.

Photos don't do it justice. I wish we were here during Easter, because they put on concerts inside the chapel.

After we finished here, we continued for a few minutes to Notre Dame. The line was out the door, but we opted to wait since it was moving pretty quickly. After a quick online search, we found that mass shouldn't start for another hour or so, and we figured we could get in and out beforehand. Wrong. Mass (I'm assuming it was mass, since I don't speak French) was already in full swing. The aisles of the church were blocked off to tourists, only leaving the outer aisles for people to move about. I felt very weird being here during a service, not to mention being herded like cows through a very small space.

Pretty sure this was Mass. And I felt like a bum taking photos during it.

We waited around until Mass was over, thinking we could get more photos after the people filed out, but we were wrong. Patrons stayed and tourists flooded the center aisles. It was fairly chaotic.

At the end of a very long, cold day, we left without exploring more of this beautiful church. We never made it back either, and I do regret that.

Too. Many. People.

Insert cold, hungry peeps at this point. We were ready for dinner, though it was clearly too early for most places to be open. We Ubered to the Picasso Museum and considered going in, but our rumbling stomachs deterred us. What followed next was an unsuccessful hour long jaunt along the streets of Paris trying to find a decent restaurant. The ones with top stars on Yelp weren't open yet, others were things like Vegan burgers (ick, no) or the French restaurant we walked in to, requested an English menu and the waiter rolled his eyes and threw them on our table without a word. Needless to say, we weren't thrilled about our options. Instead of wandering more, we Ubered back to our hotel, where I had found a decently rated French restaurant only a few blocks away. And it was open!

Street decorations.

Not a ton of Christmas decor was out just yet, but I did appreciate the Eiffel Tower street lights!

We managed to find Au Métro, a delicious little brasserie around the corner from our hotel that had nice waiters, delicious food and even better wine. No joke, the Chardonnay was the best I've ever had. I didn't pay attention to the menu, as I just ordered the cheapest glass I could find. But, damn, it was tasty!!

The menu was extensive, but for some reason the veal linguini spoke to me. Which is weird, because I normally don't crave veal. Like, ever. But when in Paris, I guess!

Third special down: veal linguini

Between the wine, the warm fresh baguettes (delish) and the intoxicating mushroom sauce for my veal, I was a happy camper. The veal was just okay, but I masked it with the sauce. I was just happy to have a full belly again. We headed back to the hotel for a night cap in the hotel bar, which was really just the size of our bathroom with a surly night clerk who didn't seem pleased to help. Sandi wanted vodka with ice and he proceeded to get ice out of a weird baggie thing, while I tried some French beer. Despite the whirlwind of a day, we were happy with what we accomplished and had no troubles falling asleep.

I must know what is in that sauce!!