Paris Day 2 -- Louvre / Musee d’Orsay

Following a leisurely breakfast at our hotel, we again traveled by subway into the city center to visit the Louvre and the Musee d’Orsay. We walked through Tuileries Garden in heading toward the museum’s central plaza crowned, as it is, with a futuristic glass plated pyramid. Once inside, we headed straight past the Venus de Milo toward the Italian Renaissance paintings, saw the Giottos and then the Mona Lisa and Veronese’s massive Feast at Cana. We then took in the Carravagio’s and some of Goya’s drawings, then headed into the Grand hall of large scale 19th century French paintings—Delacroix, Delaroche, and, of course, Gericault’s masterpiece Raft of the Medusa. It was all breathtaking. We then stood in a square gallery I thought had been the site of Samuel F. B. Morse’s Gallery of the Louvre, but alas, I was mistaken. We marched through the great hall of David’s Oath of the Horatii and Rape of the Sabine Women before quickly breezing (unfortunately) through the Dutch galleries and the 18th century French paintings of Watteau, Fragonard, Chardin, et al. Chardin’s monkey paintings always get me!

We left the Louvre and headed across the river to the Musee d’Orsay. But first, we took a detour to the Boulevard St. Germain, where we lunched on salads and monsieur croques (open faced grilled cheese sandwiches) and $12 glasses of Kronenbourg beer at the café known as Deux Magots. All was delicious and the weather was delightful. Sated, we entered the museum, a converted train station, that houses the Louvre’s collection of nineteenth and early twentieth century paintings and sculpture. Though the large Courbet paintings were not on view, Manet’s Dejuener sur la Herbe more than satisfied. Also enjoyed seeing paintings by Fantin-Latour (Homage to Delacroix), Bonnard, and…oh I can’t think of what else…

From there we walked along the Seine, on the river front, and through a tree lined park, toward the Royal Palais and the Champs Elysses and caught a quick glimpse of the Arc d’Triomphe. It was all glorious, and despite the trouble I had getting into the Metro (the gate messed up as I was entering and essentially took my ticket without allowing me to enter), we made it back to the hotel in plenty of time to shower, pack, and dine on some local Turkish cuisine before getting back into the van for an overnight jaunt to Bilbao.

(something I learned during the trip was that it was possible to include more than five pics per post)

Ahhh Paris! Day 1

To my surprise, we were rewarded for our suffering with 1 1/2 days in Paris, one of the greatest cities I’ve ever visited. The weather was perfect as we took the Metro into the city center. We first had a snack at a small café, then walked along the Seine to the Eiffel Tower. One of the couriers wanted to take the elevator to the top, so we obliged, waiting in a series of lines for well over an hour. Once at the top, the views were magnificent, if a little vertiginous, but the most frightening feature of the tower’s highest level were the wax figure mannequins of Alec Eiffel and his colleagues pouring over their blueprints. Proud of his accomplishment back in the late 19th century, Eiffel had an office in the tower’s highest point. So the French decided it best to use several very lifelike figures to tell this story. For those of you who don’t know, I’m a little weirded out, to say the least, by mannequins, so their presence was startling, yet somehow intriguing.

We finally returned to the ground just after dusk and proceeded to walk to Montparnasse, the neighborhood where Sandy and I had stayed (at the Hotel de Bains) back in the summer of 2003. Our destination was the Bistro du Dome, a seafood and fish restaurant where we had eaten on that trip. Though the walk was long (I recommended a taxi, but no one took me up on it), everyone seemed to enjoy what was a delicious dinner of oysters, mussels in curry sauce, and a variety of fishes, ranging from sea bass to skate (a strangely bony fish with succulent white meat). Afterward, we enjoyed a nutella crepe on the Boulevard Montparnasse before taking the long subway ride back to our hotel.

Road to Paris / Montreuil

Pics of things mentioned in the previous post...

On the Road Again

The ferry landed in Travemünde, Germany, near Lubek at around 9pm. So we loaded back into the van and hit the road, driving all night through Germany, into Netherlands, and across the tip of Belgium. We watched two films: The Big Lebowski and Zoolander, which helped to pass the time. Around midnight, we stopped at a truck near Salzberg, Germany. It was a very nice, and, of course, interesting place. Along with snacks, beer, and porn magazines, the rest stop had a full service café, and a variety of trucking accessories, including what I have taken to calling trucker clogs—several of the Finn drivers were wearing them. Though the road was smooth, the seats inside the somewhat cramped were hard and unforgiving. Sleep came in fleeting doses. By dawn we had entered northern France, and I awoke to a full sunrise that saturated the sky and the rolling fields on each side of the highway. Within a couple of hours, we were rolling through the narrow streets of Montreuil, a Paris suburb. We were deposited at the Hotel Franklin, and immediately set about looking for some petite de’jeuner. We found this café nearby, where we feasted on baguette with butter and marmalade and croissants with good coffee. Afterwards, we retired to our rooms for a few hours’ rest.

Finnmaid the Ferry Pt 4

Damn! Those Finnish drivers can drink! The group of them began by bringing over a round of Blue Hawaiians. Then shots of vodka, then shots of licorice tasting liqueur--a Finnish speciality. We drank, and drank, and drank. And while tipsy, only one the drivers got wasted drunk. I even woke the next morning feeling ok. Sleepy but okay. It was fun, doing all the toasts, and succumbing to peer pressure....like high school all over again.

It was fun.

Finnmaid the Ferry Pt 3

Views from the deck, including the helicopter landing pad (!), and views taken as we departed Helsinki's harbor. A beautiful afternoon for sailing on the Baltic!

Finnmaid the Ferry Pt 2

Here are pics of my cabin, and from the deck of the boat. Hard to get a sense of the size of the thing as there was no vantage point from which I could successfully capture the immensity of it. Of course, it wasn't the cruise liner that we expected...but was sufficiently large enough to shield us from an intense rocking from the waves. Overall, though, while you felt the movement of the water throughout the journey, to our great good fortune, the Baltic Sea was relatively calm. Because I can only fit five images per post, I will devote a few more posts to the Ferry experience...I mean, it was 24 hours of my life, and it was an interesting, if a little dull and monotonous, experience...

Finnmaid the Ferry Pt 1

Though the bus ride was any but smooth, its spaciousness was sorely missed as we boarded our next vehicle...the small Volkswagen van seen here. We drove this onto and into the belly of the ferry, where several trucks were parked, ours included. We went up to the deck to take a quick look around, so here a couple of pics of the ferry itself, and the truck trailers lined up in the rear of the boat. More pics of the ship's interior in the next post...