Two Americans in Paris, Day Four

Here it is almost a month since we returned and I am finally finishing up our blog. Better late than never. :)

July 8th was our last day in Paris, as well as our second wedding anniversary. (If someone had told me on July 8, 2005 that I would be spending July 8, 2007 in Paris with my husband, I don't know if I would have believed them!) On the agenda: gather food for a picnic, visit the Orsay Museum, take a trip to Versailles and spend the evening at Sacre-Coeur and Montmartre. A grand farewell to an even grander trip.

After the usual morning routine, we headed out onto Rue Cler to assemble our picnic. We had been looking forward to this since we arrived on our little street because it is a jumble of specialty food shops and markets. We selected apricots, apples and raspberries from a local produce stand, ham from this amazing Italian deli called Davoli (where we had to wait in line with all the locals...it was a pretty happenin' place!), and this little baby wheel of soft cheese from La Fromagerie. We tried to purchase bread and breakfast from our favorite bakery, Boulangerie Patisserie Artisnale, but the line was stretching so far into the street we decided it wasn't worth the wait. After carefully packing our goodies in the daypack we were off to the Orsay.

We decided to walk to the Orsay because Rick said we could, and because seeing the city on foot is just such an unbeatable experience. On the way, we stopped at a bakery and purchased two croissants for a light breakfast. They were scrumptious! We kept walking and walking and walking, finally reaching the Seine. Eventually we arrived at the museum, skipped the rather long line with our handy museum pass and entered the beautiful building. There was a special section on Picasso on the lower floor, so we checked it out since we didn't make it to the Picasso Museum, but there were sooo many people that we scrambled through the displays and moved on.

I have to tell you, the building that houses the Orsay is AMAZING. Karen told us it is a former train station, and it has this beautiful glass ceiling and amazing curves. I loved it.

We checked out some Art Nouveau furniture and then headed up to the Impressionist galleries. We saw lots of Manet, Monet, Renoir, some more of our friend Van Gogh, and much more. It was getting late, so we headed outside and across the street to the handy metro/RER stop that would take us to Versailles. When we got to the ticket line we could hear the teller being rude to the people in front of us, so I told Jason to use simple words and his fingers to tell her we wanted two tickets to Versailles. Well he did just that, but she goes "HOW MANY" and Jason again told her two. They went back and forth like this for a bit, and finally he gave her 50 Euro and she goes "No." He was like, "What?" "No. Too big." She wouldn't break a 50 for our tickets that cost 12.20. So we went back, dazed, into the daylight. Where would we find a place to get smaller bills?

Jason does not get mad easily, and he really doesn't swear very often. So when he looks at me and says "We're not going to f****** Versailles", I got a little worried. I told him we had to, it would be cool, and it was our anniversary. "No. I'm not going back down and talking to her. This is shit." Hmmm. Finally I convinced him we could buy a bottle of water from a street stand, break the 50 and go buy our tickets. My plan worked, she was still rude, but we made it onto the metro, switched to the RER, ate our little picnic, and eventually got off at Versailles.

It was sprinkling at Versailles, and chilly, but we made our way to the Palace. It actually doesn't look all that impressive when you see it head on, and we had to struggle walking over some topsy-turvy cobblestones to get there. And it seemed that every tourist in France must have converged upon Versailles the same day we did. As we stood in the massive front courtyard, we had to decide if we should see the inside of the palace first, or the gardens. Since we didn't know how long it would be before the weather really broke, we went with the gardens.

When I say "gardens" I really mean freakin' Central Park. The grounds at Versailles are MASSIVE. Even Jason was impressed. We had to pay extra since it was Sunday and the fountains were supposed to be running, but much to our disappointment they were not. We decided to walk down past the Grand Canal (back in the day it housed 9 ships including a warship with cannons), stopped for some ice cream, and headed to the Grand Trianon Palace. This little place was the "summer home". Yeah. We toured the inside since it was starting to rain, and for a "summer home" the place was pretty fancy.

We kept walking and saw the Petit Trianon, which was where Marie-Antoinette spent a lot of her time, and wanted to walk out to her peasant hamlet, but by this point the weather was really not cooperating. Jason and I turned around, sharing our little umbrella, and waited for a tram to take us back to the main palace (would have been a 25 minute walk in the POURING rain). We had to wait through two trams before one came by that was not full, and then enjoyed a damp, bumpy ride back up. And, figures, the fountains were now on in full glory.

After some confusion, and waiting in the drenched, unevenly surfaced front courtyard, we made it inside the main palace. Basically we wandered through the rooms with about a bazillion other soggy tourists and ogled at the absolute wealth that built the place. Everything was just so ornate. Gilding was everywhere. Not my idea of interior decorating, but shoot, it was impressive. I loveloveloved the Hall of Mirrors. We found out later that it just came out of a long restoration. Marie-Antoinette's bedroom was pretty cool, even though there were so many people that I literally could not move for a good 60 seconds. Finally we got to the gift shop, I bought a cute magnet, and we high-tailed it to the train station.

When we arrived back in Paris it was after 5:00 PM and rainy, so we decided to nix our excursion to Montmartre. It took me a bit to get over my disappointment because both Martina and Karen had said this area was lovely, but Jason reminded me that we WOULD be back someday. So we headed back to Rue Cler, ate a delicious dinner at the Chinese place across from our hotel, and then walked to our bakery so I could finally purchase one of those macaroons I had been eyeing. I decided to try the pistachio flavor. It was flat out the best piece of food I had on the entire trip! This delicious cream is sandwiched between two cookies with crunchy shells and soft, cakey interiors. Oh man. A trip back just to have another macaroon would be worth the cost. :)

We went back to our hotel, reminisced about our trip and our two-year-old marriage, packed and fell asleep.

The day we left Paris, we got up early, caught the metro, transfered to the RER, experienced one of the cities biggest metro stations, I bought two more macaroons (one crossed the Atlantic with me and arrived in the mouths of my parents) and we finally made it to CDG. The airport was huge, we took a bit to find our bearings, and then we had to take a freakin' shuttle just to get to our terminal. Crazy. Our flight home was wonderful due to the fact that each seat had it's own TV screen and a large choice of movies. I watched four straight and didn't even mind the 8 hours of sitting. :) Jason was able to see a couple movies he had been really wanting to see, and it was just a much more enjoyable flight than the one coming over.

We landed in Philadelphia, had to go through customs, get our bags and re-check them, go through security, walk through the airport to our terminal, and we were supposed to go through security AGAIN. But it was 5:00 PM and our flight left at 5:20. The line was so long we couldn't see the end. So I went up to this woman and told her, "We just landed from Paris. We've been gone for 23 days. We are not going to stand in line AGAIN and miss our flight." She was really helpful and got us to the head of the line. We made our flight, and by 10:45 PM PST we were happily in my parents living room.

This was a trip of dreams for me, and while Jason has not wanted this since the time he was 10 (like me!), by the time we got home he couldn't stop talking about all the things we saw and experienced --- and he was already speaking of "when we go back" and "where we'll go next" (perhaps the UK and Ireland?!). I believe we have found true travel partners in each other. I would so strongly encourage people to travel if they have that desire. The memories we have will last us a lifetime, and that is worth more to us than any material thing we could buy. Here's to the future and whatever travel adventures it holds in store. :)