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July 01, 2006
Paris Chronicles 2
TIM: The major thing we did our second day in Paris was visit the Rodin Museum. But first I must tell you all about a strange hobby I adopted in Paris – sugar packet collecting! In Paris, all the cafes have their sugar in long, thin packets. I met this phenomenon in London, four years ago, and have always lamented the fact that I didn’t save any for souvenirs. I remedied this on our Paris trip, to remind me of the cafes we went to. Here’s another sugar related story: On the morning of our second day in Paris, we had breakfast in the little, angular, non-symmetrical courtyard of our hotel. There was a British family that came for breakfast. They had a little girl and she wanted “Frosted Flakes”. The hotel had only regular cornflakes, so the ever-ready-to-please mom improvised by scraping sugar off of sugar cubes (since the hotel also didn’t have sugar packets) onto the girl’s cornflakes. What a mum thing to do! I’m sure if the girl had her way, she would have placed a cube of sugar on each cornflake!
T&J: Now for the Rodin Museum. The Rodin Museum was filled with the cutest little sugar packets you ever saw! Rodin himself designed them and…..
Just kidding. The Rodin Museum was filled with the most awe-inspiring sculptures created since Michelangelo. This museum was fabulous not only, of course, for the sculpture but for the interior of the museum itself. It is housed in the Hôtel de Biron built in the early 1700s, a classic example of rococo architecture and design. Each room had magnificent woodwork, beautiful paintings on the ceiling, gigantic mirrors and geometrically patterned hardwood floors (that creaked when you walked on them). We spent about an hour and half there and then ventured outside to the café. We found that the pigeons of Paris eat very well but have poor table manners. They show up for lunch without an invitation, chew with their mouth open, don’t use napkins, spill drinks, never sit still, and even eat off of other peoples’ plates! How gauche! 
After we ate we meandered through the gardens and sculptures outside the museum.
We were inundated by roses – thousands of them, and their cumulative scent was an olfactory delight. We saw The Burgers of Calais, The Thinker, Balzac, The Gates of Hell, and the Three Fates. All were situated and presented beautifully in the garden amongst the roses, bushes and trees.
When we were done visiting the works of Mr. Rodin, we took the Metro from the Varenne stop to Invalides, then the RER to Pont d’Alma. The RER was so cool – a double decker monster of a train! What was not cool was the fact that the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris in the Palais de Tokyo was closed for renovation. Bummer. We wanted to see the stained-glass influenced paintings of Georges Rouault here. All we saw was a group of punk skateboarders using the Palais de Tokyo as an obstacle course. We then decided to substitute Rouault with Monet and visit the Musée de l’Orangerie in the Tuileries Gardens to see the Nymphéas – the water lily paintings. We hurried underground, caught two Metro trains and walked briskly to the museum. It was 4:15 and the museum closed at 5 pm. It was all for naught though – that museum was also closed for renovations! We realized that we had been struck by that bane of all tourists –
THE CURSE OF THE CLOSED MUSEUMS!!!
Worse than the Black Plague, more hideous than boils, this ghastly specter waits to strike unwary art fans. Somewhat disappointed, we walked around the Tuileries Gardens a bit and found Café Véry which made it all better. What a pleasant time we had here. Joanna ordered a tarte aux poire carmelises (a caramelized pear tarte) avec un boule de glace chocolat noir (with one scoop of dark chocolate ice cream).
It was a mouthful both of words and taste! She was beaming. She was in Chocolate Heaven. Tim ordered a double café crème and sucked that caffeinated nectar down. So we sat here for an hour and rested our weary Metro chasing, closed museum cursing bones.
We walked some more through the Jardin des Tuileries and saw:
1) Beautiful statuary
2) Beautiful trees, hedges, beds of flowers aligned in swirling arabesque–like patterns
3) Kids sailing sailboats and ducks swimming in the great round pool with a fountain in the center
4) A painter painting in an abstract way the gardens and the Musée d’Orsay across the Seine
5) A fun fair!
We walked a while through the fair and saw all kinds of rides and games – dark rides, a spook house, bumper cars, a carousel, a trampoline, and a Ferris wheel. This Ferris wheel was big! We couldn’t pass up a chance to admire the view from the top so we bought a ticket and hopped on.
Up we went, down we went, up we went, down we went! The view of course was spectacular – the Eiffel Tower in all its grandeur, the great expanse of the Louvre right under us, the sparkling river Seine, Sacré-Coeur in the distance! It was a great ride. By then we had forgotten about the closed museums. There was always something else in Paris to attract ones attention – always a diversion. Nothing here was boring!
Paris Chronicles | By Tim and Jo | 11:14 AM
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Comments
I really want to ride on the original Ferris wheel, because it had cable cars instead of seats, but I believe it was pulled down after whatever World Exhibition it was built to promote (Chicago's???).
Posted by: funke at July 3, 2006 08:41 PM