Moving On

We took it pretty easy during our last few days in Paris--neighborhood strolls, a movie, evening get-togethers with boating friends, a little shopping, and some final preparations for departing the Arsenal on June 27. 

Wandering the streets of Ile Saint-Louis (the smaller of the two islands
in the Seine that comprised the heart of the old city), we were astounded
by how many buildings had plaques denoting past owners and/or
residents: for example, the photo in the lower right was that of a residence
of the Nobel prize winning physicists Marie and Pierre Curie.

The House of the Doves on Rue de la Colombe, the site of a 
medieval legend about the rescue of two doves from the ruins of
a collapsed building who became symbols of marital devotion--and  
where a patient French bulldog (at left) waits for its owner to exit
the wine bar that now inhabits the ground floor. 

Covered flower market on the Ile de la Cite.

Grass and glass--the Accor Arena, a popular concert and sports
 venue near the Paris Bercy train station.

                                           

Our New Zealand boating friends from last year, Margaret
 and John, cruised into the Arsenal on Sunday, June 25,
 and we were able to have a catch up/farewell dinner on 
Monday evening.

It took until Sunday for us to get back to the National Archives and actually go into the building. There were more people around than when Mecki and I had visited a few days earlier (the surrounding streets were packed with people shopping and strolling on a warm weekend day), but it's not one of those items on the "must see/must do" lists of most tourists, so once we got off of the shopping streets we weren't fighting crowds.

The Museum of the National Archives is housed in the Hotel (Mansion) de Soubise, an 18th century building built on the site--and incorporating remnants--of two previous mansions, the original from the late 14th century and its 16th century successor. It was the residence of the family of the Prince of Soubise until it was seized during the French Revolution and sold. In1808 it was acquired by the government of France and assigned by Napoleon to the National Archives. To house an ever-increasing number of records, several record repositories were added to the site during the 19th century. 

The museum allows for a visit of the living quarters of the Prince and Princess Soubise, where several of the rooms are used for temporary exhibitions and for the display of facsimiles of some of the important and interesting archival materials (such as the last letter of Marie Antoinette). When we were there, the special exhibition was on the French Revolution.

After several rounds of renovations over the centuries, 
the turreted tower is the only remaining piece of
the original 14th century medieval building.

The Princess' Ceremonial Room. The furniture and the wall
coverings are authentic; the ladder and plant material were part 
of a contemporary artistic installation.

The grand staircase.

From 695, a declaration on land ownership
from King Childebert II.

All good things must come to an end, hopefully to make way for other good things. It was hard to believe how quickly our 3 weeks in Paris passed, but there we were on Tuesday, June 27, leaving the lock of the Arsenal and heading upstream on the Seine.

It doesn't seem that long ago that we were making the turn
into the lock.

The first section that we travelled on the river was very urbanized and not exactly scenic. But as we continued on during that first day of cruising--and certainly on the second--it was much greener and quite attractive. Each lock has two chambers, big and bigger, to accommodate commercial barges that can range up to 110 meters in length. There aren't a lot of moorings for pleasure craft along this stretch of waterway, so on the first day of cruising we moored on the upstream quay of the lock at the town of Evry. 

Evry is a spread-out, and in many ways commercialized,
exurban area of Paris, but we did find a 12th century
church in the old village center.

The Seine has many residential barges along its banks.

This was one of the odder locks we entered. One side was sloped
(to accommodate wide boats) and one side had cylindrical
metal supports with gaps between the cylinders. Very strange.
The Seine locks are definitely designed for large commercial
boats, not for smaller pleasure craft.

The second day of cruising (Wednesday, June 28) brought us to the town of Melun, where we were able to find space on a rather long quay that is used in part by pleasure craft and in part by commercial boats (tour-type boats rather than cargo haulers). Melun is only about 25 miles from Paris, although thanks to the curves in the river we cruised about 40 miles during our first two days. It's definitely a historic area, with origins going back at least to Roman times, but many of the stops on the walking tour talk about what used to exist on a particular site, not what currently remains. Castles, mills, religious buildings, fortifications--either completely gone or only minor vestiges remain.

Melun has some pretty parks on the island and
along the different arms of the Seine split by the island.

No signs were seen that declared Melun a "flower city",
 but given the number of blooms on the bridges, they
certainly should be able to make the claim.

The remains of Saint-Sauveur Priory. Established originally in
the 10th century, the vestiges here date from the 12th century.
Most of what existed in the priory's heyday disappeared
 during the French Revolution when it was sold as National
 Property and divided into workshops, shops, private homes, etc.

The "Melun Dodo" is a bit of environmental art, created from
recycled materials.

The 12th century Notre-Dame collegiate church. 

A prison is situated on the eastern end of the island, immediately
adjacent to the Notre-Dame church. For nearly 4 decades in the 
early 19th century the church was enclosed within the prison walls,
finally being "freed" in 1850.

We're in Melun for 2 nights and have had the good fortune to be moored behind a barge that we recognized from our time at the DBA rally in Auxerre in 2017. We've enjoyed socializing with owners Alex and Louise. We also took advantage of better-than-expected weather today to visit a chateau in the vicinity that was an inspiration for the chateau at Versailles. But as it's getting late, the details of that visit will have to wait for another day.

Cruise of Dreams

We were sufficiently re-energized on Sunday to tackle a couple of the items on our Paris wish list. Our first stop of the day was at the "Church of Conspicuous Consumption", otherwise known as the flagship of the high-end French department store chain Galeries Lafayette. We'd wandered into the store on a previous trip to Paris, but at that time weren't aware that they had a rooftop terrace with views over the city--and I didn't even have to buy a 4000-euro purse to access it.

The interior of the store is pretty amazing--over-the-top Art Nouveau,
including an enormous glass and metal cupola at the top.

Four shopping floors of sculpted and decorated magnificence.

Us on the terrace of the Galleries Lafayette, the Palais Garnier
(Paris Opera) in the upper left, the Eiffel Tower a small
presence in the distance.

We had to peek between a gap in the roof 
structures to see this view of the Basilique
de Sacre Coeur on its hilltop in Montmartre.

After leaving the terrace we took the metro to the northern Paris suburb of Saint Denis. Having seen the Reims Cathedral, the coronation site of so many kings of France, I thought it only fitting to go full circle and visit the Saint Denis Basilica Cathedral, the burial site of most of the kings and queens of France from the 6th century onwards.

The current building dates from the 12th century, but it contains a crypt area underneath that dates from earlier centuries. It is put forward as a masterpiece of Gothic construction. The basilica cathedral stands on the site of what was a Gallo-Roman cemetery that contained the tomb of the martyred Saint Denis, thought to be the first Bishop of Paris, and around whom a cult developed that made this location a place of pilgrimage. Saint Denis had been decapitated on the hill of Montmartre, and as the story goes, he indicated where he wanted to be buried by carrying his head to the site of the current church.

For centuries, kings of France and their families were buried in Saint Denis Basilica Cathedral, with elaborate tombs and recumbent statues to mark the locations. Then came 1793, and the "great desecration" of many of the tombs and bodies of royals within the church. The accounts of what took place are pretty horrific, and in the end, the remains of 46 kings, 32 queens, and 63 other royals were thrown into two mass graves adjacent to the church and covered in quicklime. Some of the stone effigies and tombs were destroyed, but many were saved because of the efforts of an archeologist at the time who claimed that they were works of art that needed to be preserved. Napoleon I reopened the basilica, and when Louis XVIII became king he re-established Saint Denis as a royal necropolis. 

West facade of Saint Denis Basilica Cathedral (right), 
the City Hall of Saint Denis (left).

Interior of the church and some of the recumbent
royal funerary monuments.

Clovis I (upper), King of the Francs 481-511; Chilebert I (lower), King
of Paris 511-558. Neither statue was contemporaneous with the subject
it portrayed, but were 12th (Chilebert) and 13th (Clovis) century works.

                      

The tomb of Louis XII and his wife Anne.

The effigies and tombs that were saved by archeologist
Alexandre Lenoir are back in Saint Denis, mostly in their
original locations.

The Bourbon Grave in the crypt of the church, holding
the remains of Marie Antoinette (center left) and Louis XVI
(center right). The remains had been located in the Madelaine
cemetery in Paris after a search ordered by Louis XVIII.  

Markers for the royal ossuary, which contains the bones
exhumed from the mass graves created during the "great
desecration." The destruction of the remains was too
great to allow for subsequent identifications, so the
plaques now list the names of those whose remains
are contained within the ossuary.

Our friend Mecki arrived on Monday afternoon. She'd been to Paris before, but she said her last time here was probably sometime in the 1980's. So, she and I tried to do things that would give her a good sense of Paris, but without running ourselves ragged.

Mecki is a fan of Claude Monet, so what better place to go than Musee Marmottan Monet. It has the 
world's largest collection of Monet paintings, including many of the water lilies at his
 home in Giverny that so fascinated him during the last years of his life.

Mecki was not disappointed by the
water lilies.

Lunch followed museum, then a visit to the terrace of
the Galleries Lafayette, then a selfie on the steps
of the Paris Garnier Opera House after finishing
some delicious ice cream cones.

After walking by the Louvre and the Tuilleries Gardens we started walking back
toward the Arsenal along the Seine, and ran into this at Pont Neuf. We first thought
it was a movie or TV shoot, but it turned out to be the preparations for a Louis Vuitton
fashion show to be held that evening to celebrate Pharrell Williams
as the new creative director for the menswear line. If we turned around, we saw . . . 

. . . this. The Louis Vuitton corporate headquarters is to the
right in the photo. The area was teeming with scads of young
"men in black" (ushers? models?). The huge figure in the background
is that of Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama. The so-called "princess of
polka dots" is a fashion collaborator with Louis Vuitton. 

On Wednesday morning Mecki and I strolled around the nearby Marais district while Lon got the boat ready for a cruise on the Seine. The stroll through the Marais was lovely. As it was a weekday morning, the streets were fairly quiet. We went to the Place de Vosges and then just meandered, encountering some hidden courtyards and gardens, and a remnant of what had been a lively Jewish neighborhood prior to the Holocaust.

We went in search of the gardens at the National Archives complex
and found that the buildings and courtyard (and the view of 
the neighboring buildings) were pretty nice.

The garden was a little oasis, both for the half dozen or so people
in the park and for this duck family.

Wednesday afternoon we finally were able to do the thing that was an absolute must on our Paris bucket list: a cruise on the Seine to the Eiffel Tower and back. We've been on a Seine cruise before, and we've seen the sights along the river, but there was just something special about being able to do it on our own boat. And we think it was a highlight for Mecki as well.

When going downstream, we had to take the passage between the
Ile-St. Louis and the Ile de la Cite. Passage alternates between
upstream and downstream traffic and is controlled by traffic
lights. Downstream traffic is allowed to enter between 35 and 50
minutes past the hour. Here we are hovering behind three commercial
 barges, waiting for the light to change from red to green.

Making the turn into the passage, with the Notre Dame de Paris
Cathedral under scaffold to our left.

Mecki enjoys the cruise. Pont Alexandre III 
approaches and the Eiffel Tower becomes visible
in the distance.

Lon was doing most of the driving and had to keep his "head
on a swivel" to keep track of all the boat traffic, mostly tour boats.
We stayed to the right while a faster tour boat passed us at
the Pont Alexandre III bridge.

It was a fantastic day for a cruise.

It was exciting to approach the famous landmark.
(Thanks for the photo, Mecki!)

Mecki on CARIB III as we make our downstream
pass of the Eiffel Tower.

The spot where we could legally turn around--just past the tip
of the island bearing the replica of the Statue of Liberty.

The tower is very big when you're this close. 

The Seine has a "bevy of bridges."

The end of a great afternoon--and a somewhat delayed 
entry (due to commercial traffic) back into the Arsenal
lock.

We had an uneventful dockage (the best kind!) into the slip and then it was time to wind down from the adrenalin rush and relax. Because it was the first day of summer it was Fete de la Musique day in Paris and elsewhere in France. Not only were there numerous musical acts playing in public squares throughout the city, many restaurants had bands or DJs on site. Mecki took us out to dinner and then we sat on the back of CARIB, listing to a cacophony of competing musical sounds from the Place de la Bastille and neighborhood restaurants. The Place de Bastille, the surrounding restaurants, and the quay in the port were packed with people. Thank goodness for windows that could muffle the sound and make it possible to sleep.

Mecki left us this morning and, because it is a rather wet day, we cancelled plans for a day trip to Beauvais and are staying around the boat. We're quickly approaching the end of our time in Paris, so we need to pin down what we hope to do in our final few days here and think about our upcoming cruise to Auxerre.

Live and Learn

During a visit to Paris in 2017 we strolled through parts of the Montmartre neighborhood, the "village" on the hill in Paris' 18th arrondissement famous for the artists that used to frequent it in the late 1800's and early 1900's (Picasso, Renoir, Van Gogh, etc, etc.), the French can-can at cabarets like the Moulin Rouge, and the Sacre-Coeur church. We thought it was worth revisiting, and having had some success in the past with guided walking tours, we decided to go that route and see if we could learn some new things. We booked with one of the "free" tour companies (well, "free" only if you don't give your guide a gratuity when the tour is done) that stated in their website that they capped bookings at 6 per tour. The small group aspect sounded good to us, so you can imagine our disappointment on Tuesday morning when we showed up at the appointed meeting place and people kept coming, and coming, and coming. Apparently, they weren't as restrictive with the numbers as they had led us to believe. As it turned out, there were multiple walking tour companies with groups meeting at that same location at the same time, so we switched to a group that had less than the 20+ attendees of our original group. 

Our guide was congenial and amusing, but after all was said and done, we wished we'd just pulled up a walking tour itinerary on-line and done our own thing. So many of the walking tour groups kept bumping into each other at the same points of interest that we started feeling a bit hemmed in. Live and learn. 

The Wall of Je T'aime (the I Love You wall), created in 2000. "I love you" is written
311 times in 250 languages. It was a filming location for the Netflix series
 "Emily in Paris", which probably accounts for some of the crowd at the site.
 (Lon and I tried watching the show, but found it cringeworthy and
 couldn't even get through the first episode. Oh, well, what do we know?)

The lemmings of Montmartre.

Of the thirty or so windmills that used to be on Montmartre, this
windmill and another that comprise the "Moulin de la Galette" are
the sole remaining windmills (not counting the red windmill
atop the Moulin Rouge).

You, too, can view the can-can if you are willing to shell out
100+ euro per ticket.

There's no escaping the crowds at Sacre Coeur.

Sharing the Paris view with hundreds of our closest friends. 
Apparently this was a "light" day, as the line to enter the 
Basilica of the Sacred Heart wasn't all that long. Still, we decided
against the climb to the top of the dome--just getting up the hill
was enough climbing for one day.

Tuesday night was rest-and-recover time, and Wednesday was mostly a day for Lon to address some of the paint touch-ups needed on the exterior of the boat, and for me to wash clothes and modify a new shower curtain. But all work and no play is never a good idea, so we rewarded ourselves with an early evening movie (the latest "Guardians of the Galaxy") at the 27-screen multiplex in the Forum des Halles underground mall in the center of Paris. We're always thrilled to find films in English, and we usually find ourselves in a mostly empty theater. Not this time. The theater was relatively small--probably less than 100 seats--but every seat was filled. 

The Louvre-Rivoli metro station, where we got off to go to
 the movie, has to be the most beautiful in Paris. The subdued
 lighting and colors, and replicas of art found in the Louvre, are a stark
 contrast to the usual white subway tile and dirty floors.

After the movie we walked to the Seine to catch twilight. As usual,
the walls by the river were full of people enjoying the evening. We'd
 hoped to see the evening light show at the Eiffel Tower, but it was
 still too bright at 10 p.m., and we weren't willing to stay out until 11 p.m.
 to catch the next opportunity.

Thursday unexpectedly turned into a work day as well, but we found time before dinner for a walk on a portion of the Coulee Verte Rene-Dumont, a 4.7-kilometer elevated park built on top of an old railway line. It runs from just east of the Place de la Bastille out to the wooded area of the Bois de Vincennes. Completed in the early 90's, it apparently provided the inspiration for New York City's "High Line" park. It's a beautiful place, seemingly unknown to tourists and probably many Parisiens aside from those in the neighborhood.

Some areas had sun and flowers, others were
more lushly green and shady. It was awesome to
get above the traffic.

We loved this apartment building adjacent to the 
elevated park. The pattern of the brick and the 
windows was stunning.

On Friday morning we went back to another site we'd found on a previous visit to Paris, the Palais Royal. Former residence of Cardinal Richelieu, we'd walked by it last September and vowed to return when we had more time. We'd seen the interesting black and white columns in the courtyard and thought there would be some of the interior of the building to explore, but as it turned out, the courtyard and the gardens were the only things open to the public. 

The courtyard and the columns are still striking, and there was a lot
of photographic posing going on.

View of the Palace from the end of the garden.

We could have gone inside the building had we felt like shopping,
as there were a number of stores off the arcade that overlooked the 
courtyard. However, I decided that I did not need a 795-euro pair
of ankle busters.

And then we just walked to see what we could see between the Palais Royal and the Arsenal.

We came across Florida in Paris . . . but no palm trees.

The Galerie Vivienne, a covered passageway built in 1823.
It now houses a number of luxury shops.

The Basilica of Notre-Dame de Victoires, constructed
by Louis XIII in thanks to the Virgin Mary for his 
military victories. Originally an abbey church, after the
Revolution it was the seat of the stock exchange, and then
became a church again after Napoleon came to power.

The interior of the church has an astounding 37,000+
marble plaques expressing thanks. They cover
numerous walls and pillars.

An amazing church in the vicinity of the Forum shopping center where we'd seen our Wednesday movie was Saint-Eustache. Construction of the present church began in 1532 and continued for about 100 years. It struck us as very cathedral-like in size, but for all of that it is simply a parish church. 

Lon in the interior of Saint-Eustache provides some 
sense of the size of the church. A large-scale restoration
 project of the paint on the side chapels is ongoing.
This side was complete and the colors were stunning.

One exterior facade.

Interior areas that have yet to be restored.

And just before we got to the metro station that would take us back to the Bastille, we came across the free-standing Tour Saint-Jacques. It is the last remaining vestige of the former 16th-century church Saint-Jacques-de-la-Boucherie (Saint James of the Butchers) that was demolished in 1797 during the French Revolution. The church had been one that welcomed those on the pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela, and for that reason it is listed as a World Heritage Site by UNESCO.

The 300-steps to get to the top of the tower were
calling our name, but as we'd already walked quite a
bit, it was easy to convince ourselves that the 12 euros
(each) to do the climb was a bit much.

We have a visitor joining us next week. My friend Mecki from New York City is visiting family in Germany and is taking the train to Paris on Monday to stay with us for a few days. We're looking forward to it!