French Travel Journal, Part 2

Posted on | July 18, 2008 |

I’m still post-treatment and having all the side-effects because my body was already stressed from the travel. But I’m still around! here’s the second installment of our travel journal.

So, where was I? Oh, yes, we were soaking wet in our red touristy ponchos at the Eiffel Tower…

After the soaking wet fiasco at the Eiffel Tower, we made our way back to the hotel via Metro. We were poor travelers, as we had not read the hotel’s information notebook that told us where we could find the closest metro station. We went back to the Arc de Triomphe and walked over a kilometer (yes, folks, they do use the Metric system in Europe!) to our hotel. On our way back, we were really confused. A lovely French woman with her children in a stroller was kind enough to help us find our way to the hotel. We were simply three blocks away. If we’d not met her, we’d have given up, I’m sure, and tried to take a taxi the three measly blocks!

Double Expresso - a life-line during our trip!

After changing clothes and looking at a map of exactly where we are (duh!), we decided to find a cafe to sit in and to explore the area close by. It was still drizzling, but we switched our ponchos for the travel jackets we’d brought with us and the umbrellas. Much less touristy, and we fit in much better! We walked down the street that was an open-air market (marche) and I picked up some fruit; Dave picked up some pastry. We were dry and happy, finally. We found a cafe. I had my first cup of double expresso (double) with no soy milk. Over the week, I became much more accustomed to getting my caffeine in a quick shot, rather than slowly with a leisurely soy latte. Tastes less sweet and smooth, but I sure did cut down on the calories!

After the cafe, we walked a bit more to find a spot to eat. Now, the thing about Paris is that all the cafes serve some food - at least pastry - but at a certain time, they become restaurants and you can’t just sit and have a coffee. The market area had quite a few different places that looked like restaurants, but they were lunch places or places to “take away” food like we do in the US. With our (at this point, at least) limited knowledge of French and the words used in signage, we had difficulty understanding that. We did find a place to eat.

Eating in Paris was fairly easy, even though I have a ton of allergies. I think I mentioned before I left that I had created an allergy card that translated my list of food allergies. We would spend some time looking at the menu, translating it with software in our Palm-based phones, and then the server would come. I’d hand him (usually a male) the card and say, with a smile, “Je suis allergic“. And, for the most part, they were able to look at the menu and tell me what would be easy to prepare. I urged them to go to the chef with the allergy card and make sure. I ate a lot of “bar” a sea-bass like fish that is locally caught and readily available. Only a few times did the chef have a different option for me, since some things were prepared in advance with something on my allergy list. What I found was that the allergy card was taken much more seriously than my comments to servers here in the US. So, I’ve printed out some in English to carry when I go to restaurants here. We’ll see how that goes!

The Louvre, Paris, France

The next day, Wednesday, we went to the Louvre. we took the Metro, which required several changes and many stairs. By the time we got done with the trip itself, I was already tired. But I perservered. It was the only museum Dave was willing to go to with me. (Though he’s supportive of my art, he says he can’t appreciate art or museums in the same way I do.) And so, we went. We went through an airport-like screening, with my bag and cane needing to be x-rayed, we took the escalator down, we stood in line for tickets. And we found out, after 20 minutes of waiting in line that, since I’m “handicapped” (their word), I get to see the Louvre for free, as does my “companion”. So we headed in.

Mona Lisa - From about 10 meters away and through 3 panes of glass

Upon entering the European art wing, I noticed an unwelcoming scent. It was a mixture of mildew and sulfur, best I could tell. I hoped that as we got to the floors with the Mona Lisa and the Venus de Milo that we’d find it dissipated. Not so. And, honestly, Mona and Venus were so crowded and kept so far from easy viewing (a rope was around the double layers of glass that surrounded her and kept us about 10 meters away from Mona, for example), that I could not enjoy it very much. I was disappointed, but also had a headache from the smells. We figured that since we saw the two main attractions and paid nothing, it wasn’t too bad to leave. I knew I would visit another musuem on my own later in the week on my own. We then went to a cafe to see if my headache would go away and to decide on our next step.

Illustration of Notre Dame Cathedral, Paris, France

The headache dissipated and we decided to head to the Notre Dame Cathedral on the Ile de le Cite, located in the midst of the Seine. We took the Metro to the “Citie” stop and then walked to Notre Dame. There we encountered our first Gypsy beggars and saw a lot of tourists. We took a seat along the outside front and I sat and drew. I started with a blind contour, so Notre Dame is a bit off-kilter, but I did take a lot of photos to look at and paint later. To the left is my rendering on-site. Not my greatest work, but oh, there was so much detail to capture… And, I had fun!

By the time I had done as much as I could with the drawing, Dave and I were getting hungry and ready to find a place to have lunch. We walked along the streets of and crossed over to the Ile de Saint-Louis. We found a bistro and sat down for lunch. From there, we walked down the cute cobblestone streets of Ile de Saint-Louis and headed back across the bridge to the Right Bank. We were headed to the Jewish Quarter of Paris, which we had been told was well-worth our time. We were going to spend about an hour there and then head back to the hotel.

Well, it started raining just as we crossed the Seine. We did, however, learn from our mistakes the day before, and I had to small umbrellas in my day pack. We had just passed a Metro station and ran into it for shelter. We decided that since I was tired and it quickly went from not raining to pouring, that we’d head back to the hotel. It wasn’t raining by the time we got to the hotel, but that was fine. We were tired and I was really trying to manage my energy. We went to the room and rested up for a while.

I think that’s enough of an update for the trip now. I’ll share more tomorrow.

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