france travelogue V: paris redux
Jan. 23rd, 2026 09:05 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jazzfishThis has been four-fifths written since mid-September. May as well finish a thing, to the extent that memory serves.
Thursday 8/21: Up too early again, to drive to Marseille, drop off the rental cars, and board an 8AM train to Paris. Excitement: at six-thirty we got a text from the other car with "The rental car place doesn't open for dropoff til eight." After some panic, we found the closed rental car place, and sent most of the crew on to the train station, leaving me and Steph's brother Daniel to return the cars and catch a later train. Thankfully someone showed up to work early and was willing to accept the cars, and Daniel and I barely made our train.
The eight of them had two sets of four seats; I was on my own, with a non-window seat. So I dozed most of the trip, that or read my Wendy Cope book, and have no real impression of traveling by train. It's certainly less industrial than Amtrak. Not quite on the comfort/smooth-ride level of an urban light rail, but much further in that direction than I'd expected.
Lunch was ... I don't even remember, it was late and I got myself a Snickers bar to tide me over and avoid a repeat of Gordes. We checked into the hotel near where we'd stayed previously, and headed off to Ile de Cite. There we discovered that one could in fact get into Notre-Dame, if one was willing to wait in a long line. And the line, while long, moved pretty quickly. So in the end we made it to the big famous cathedral after all.
It's... it's Big. There is A Lot of it, in terms of both stuff inside and just space. Sainte-Chappelle mostly went Up, and that was impressive in itself; Notre-Dame goes both Up and Out. And sure, modern buildings can do that as well, but there's a sense of solidity to the construction at Notre-Dame that one doesn't get in modern concrete and glass architecture. We sat quietly for a bit, and that gave a nice sense of, well. Sacredness. It's not my cathedral but there's something there nonetheless. Lots of stained-glass, difficult to see; lots of good statuary and other decor. Worth doing, I think, though it's overshadowed in my memory by the two from the next day.
Dinner all together in the hotel suite that Steph and Gemma and I had gotten (the others were in two normal rooms, since they were only there for the night), and a last evening of family social, and then a solid sleep.
Friday 8/22: We got up not too painfully early to see the rest of them off, and then the three of us headed up to the top of Montmartre. There's a funicular (chain railway) from the Metro station at the base to the peak, and we took that rather than climb the couple of hundred steps. Very touristy but still pretty neat.
First on the list was Sacre-Coeur, the new cathedral (late 1800s, just in time to be a major symbol during the Paris Commune). Astoundingly beautiful, and at a more human scale than Notre-Dame.
As we went in to Sacre-Coeur I'd spied a smaller stone church with some neat stained-glass next door. A bit of map sleuthing revealed this to be Saint-Pierre. We had time so we popped in there for a bit as well. This felt more church-like, more cramped and and less soaring. The stained glass had more of an art-deco feel to it, though, which made me happy. Honestly I could have wandered in and out of cathedrals and churches for weeks and not gotten bored.
Most of the rest of the day involved trailing after Steph as she trawled the fabric district. The foot of Montmartre is absolutely littered with fabric and clothing stores. I believe she acquired several metres of various linen and silk, for various uses. We also popped in to a couple of 'kilo stores,' a thrift store where one buys items by the kilo (there are several different price tiers, but still). I ended up with a couple of decent shirts at a not horrible price.
Dinner in the hotel, and another night of solid sleep.
Saturday 8/23: I woke up and went on the requisite croissant run for breakfast. On my way back I stumbled on the Charlie Hebdo memorial, so we all swung by there first thing. It's a couple of plaques in an alley, and a big mural across the way. I was mostly impressed that it existed at all.
We stopped in at what's left of the ruins of the Bastille, a few white stone blocks in a park, and then hit the Pantheon. This was originally intended as a state cathedral to St Genevieve, the patron saint of Paris, but it happened to be completed during the First Republic and they said "absolutely no way are we going to have a new state religious building on our watch." After some discussion it ended up as a sort of temple to the glory of France, and a tomb for "distinguished French citizens." It had more of a Smithsonian museum feeling to it than anything else in Paris: lots of open space, lots of art. M. Foucault's pendulum (well, a replica) hangs from the central dome, which adds to the Smithsonian feel. I mostly wanted to see it for Dumas's tomb, added in 2002 next to Victor Hugo and Emile Zola, and that felt pretty good, but the whole thing was worth seeing.
Lunch, and then the Musee Rodin. This is half historical shrine to Rodin and half sculpture garden. (Apparently people kept on saying "ooh, Rodin is so chic, he's transgressive and modern, we should get him to make a sculpture for our town / institution" and then getting mad when the resulting commission was deeply modern and transgressive, depicting a realistic and mildly-grotesque version of what they wanted rather than a classical idealized sculpture.) As is always the case there's something indescribable about seeing Good Art in person rather than photographs, and that effect is exaggerated with sculpture. Also The Thinker makes so much more sense in context: ten feet up, looking down from the lintel of the Gates Of Hell. (The Gates of Hell was Rodin's final work, composed of a whole bunch of smaller sculptures, and there is no 'official' final version of it. Most of the Rodin sculptures you may have heard of, with the obvious exception of the Burghers of Calais, include in their description "Repurposed from the Gates of Hell.")
Dinner, including my one French omelette of the trip (it was ... fine), and then M. Eiffel's tower. Perhaps the ultimate tourist trap to cap the trip. But: worth it. The city spread out below, the wind, the -light-... there's a reason this is the quintessential Paris experience. The Arc de Triomphe towers over everything around it and is still at ant-scale. We didn't quite catch actual sunset but 'golden hour' from nine hundred feet up is its own reward.
Creme brulee for dessert, and back to the hotel to pack and sleep.
Sunday 8/24: And then it was time to leave: another run through the painfully slow customs at Charles de Gaulle, another sevenish-hour plane trip. Thankfully I had no one next to me, so I had mostly plenty of space and occasionally Steph instead. At the Minneapolis airport while waiting for our ride home we heard a couple of folks talking about how Melissa Etheridge and the Indigo Girls were playing the Minnesota State Fair that evening, but since we were all struggling to stay upright long enough to get home that seemed like just Too Much. So instead we came home and fell over. The end.
Potential wrapup of random bits that didn't fit anywhere else coming, um, maybe.
Thursday 8/21: Up too early again, to drive to Marseille, drop off the rental cars, and board an 8AM train to Paris. Excitement: at six-thirty we got a text from the other car with "The rental car place doesn't open for dropoff til eight." After some panic, we found the closed rental car place, and sent most of the crew on to the train station, leaving me and Steph's brother Daniel to return the cars and catch a later train. Thankfully someone showed up to work early and was willing to accept the cars, and Daniel and I barely made our train.
The eight of them had two sets of four seats; I was on my own, with a non-window seat. So I dozed most of the trip, that or read my Wendy Cope book, and have no real impression of traveling by train. It's certainly less industrial than Amtrak. Not quite on the comfort/smooth-ride level of an urban light rail, but much further in that direction than I'd expected.
Lunch was ... I don't even remember, it was late and I got myself a Snickers bar to tide me over and avoid a repeat of Gordes. We checked into the hotel near where we'd stayed previously, and headed off to Ile de Cite. There we discovered that one could in fact get into Notre-Dame, if one was willing to wait in a long line. And the line, while long, moved pretty quickly. So in the end we made it to the big famous cathedral after all.
It's... it's Big. There is A Lot of it, in terms of both stuff inside and just space. Sainte-Chappelle mostly went Up, and that was impressive in itself; Notre-Dame goes both Up and Out. And sure, modern buildings can do that as well, but there's a sense of solidity to the construction at Notre-Dame that one doesn't get in modern concrete and glass architecture. We sat quietly for a bit, and that gave a nice sense of, well. Sacredness. It's not my cathedral but there's something there nonetheless. Lots of stained-glass, difficult to see; lots of good statuary and other decor. Worth doing, I think, though it's overshadowed in my memory by the two from the next day.
Dinner all together in the hotel suite that Steph and Gemma and I had gotten (the others were in two normal rooms, since they were only there for the night), and a last evening of family social, and then a solid sleep.
Friday 8/22: We got up not too painfully early to see the rest of them off, and then the three of us headed up to the top of Montmartre. There's a funicular (chain railway) from the Metro station at the base to the peak, and we took that rather than climb the couple of hundred steps. Very touristy but still pretty neat.
First on the list was Sacre-Coeur, the new cathedral (late 1800s, just in time to be a major symbol during the Paris Commune). Astoundingly beautiful, and at a more human scale than Notre-Dame.
As we went in to Sacre-Coeur I'd spied a smaller stone church with some neat stained-glass next door. A bit of map sleuthing revealed this to be Saint-Pierre. We had time so we popped in there for a bit as well. This felt more church-like, more cramped and and less soaring. The stained glass had more of an art-deco feel to it, though, which made me happy. Honestly I could have wandered in and out of cathedrals and churches for weeks and not gotten bored.
Most of the rest of the day involved trailing after Steph as she trawled the fabric district. The foot of Montmartre is absolutely littered with fabric and clothing stores. I believe she acquired several metres of various linen and silk, for various uses. We also popped in to a couple of 'kilo stores,' a thrift store where one buys items by the kilo (there are several different price tiers, but still). I ended up with a couple of decent shirts at a not horrible price.
Dinner in the hotel, and another night of solid sleep.
Saturday 8/23: I woke up and went on the requisite croissant run for breakfast. On my way back I stumbled on the Charlie Hebdo memorial, so we all swung by there first thing. It's a couple of plaques in an alley, and a big mural across the way. I was mostly impressed that it existed at all.
We stopped in at what's left of the ruins of the Bastille, a few white stone blocks in a park, and then hit the Pantheon. This was originally intended as a state cathedral to St Genevieve, the patron saint of Paris, but it happened to be completed during the First Republic and they said "absolutely no way are we going to have a new state religious building on our watch." After some discussion it ended up as a sort of temple to the glory of France, and a tomb for "distinguished French citizens." It had more of a Smithsonian museum feeling to it than anything else in Paris: lots of open space, lots of art. M. Foucault's pendulum (well, a replica) hangs from the central dome, which adds to the Smithsonian feel. I mostly wanted to see it for Dumas's tomb, added in 2002 next to Victor Hugo and Emile Zola, and that felt pretty good, but the whole thing was worth seeing.
Lunch, and then the Musee Rodin. This is half historical shrine to Rodin and half sculpture garden. (Apparently people kept on saying "ooh, Rodin is so chic, he's transgressive and modern, we should get him to make a sculpture for our town / institution" and then getting mad when the resulting commission was deeply modern and transgressive, depicting a realistic and mildly-grotesque version of what they wanted rather than a classical idealized sculpture.) As is always the case there's something indescribable about seeing Good Art in person rather than photographs, and that effect is exaggerated with sculpture. Also The Thinker makes so much more sense in context: ten feet up, looking down from the lintel of the Gates Of Hell. (The Gates of Hell was Rodin's final work, composed of a whole bunch of smaller sculptures, and there is no 'official' final version of it. Most of the Rodin sculptures you may have heard of, with the obvious exception of the Burghers of Calais, include in their description "Repurposed from the Gates of Hell.")
Dinner, including my one French omelette of the trip (it was ... fine), and then M. Eiffel's tower. Perhaps the ultimate tourist trap to cap the trip. But: worth it. The city spread out below, the wind, the -light-... there's a reason this is the quintessential Paris experience. The Arc de Triomphe towers over everything around it and is still at ant-scale. We didn't quite catch actual sunset but 'golden hour' from nine hundred feet up is its own reward.
Creme brulee for dessert, and back to the hotel to pack and sleep.
Sunday 8/24: And then it was time to leave: another run through the painfully slow customs at Charles de Gaulle, another sevenish-hour plane trip. Thankfully I had no one next to me, so I had mostly plenty of space and occasionally Steph instead. At the Minneapolis airport while waiting for our ride home we heard a couple of folks talking about how Melissa Etheridge and the Indigo Girls were playing the Minnesota State Fair that evening, but since we were all struggling to stay upright long enough to get home that seemed like just Too Much. So instead we came home and fell over. The end.
Potential wrapup of random bits that didn't fit anywhere else coming, um, maybe.