“Oh, dear.”

After traveling half the day, and lugging our bags up the hills of Montmartre, those were the first words Ruth softly spoke as we stepped into our new home for the next three nights.

Erika and I immediately set about to doing what we do: checking out the bedrooms, finding the washing machine, exploring the kitchen. But Ruth was quite clearly stricken.

“It’s just so… old, and… run down,” she clarified.

Truth is, I don’t think Erika or I batted an eye when we walked inside. Yeah, it was a pretty old place, but I dunno… it’s alright!

Ruth was getting a slight introduction to the way we’d been traveling, and she was not having it.

“I hope you two did a much better job picking our next place!” she said.

I think travel had changed us.

Montmartre

Nice place or not, we were right in the middle of the coolest neighborhood in all of Paris. Montmartre! Historic center of art and debauchery. The infamous red-light district of Pigalle, with its centerpiece the Moulin Rouge, was just a short walk from our place. And above it all, high on top of the hill, the beautiful Basilique du Sacré-Coeur, with its sweeping views of all of Paris.

Though we weren’t excited about climbing the hill, we did look forward to getting up there to see the basilica, and take in those views. But not yet. First, we were off to the heart of Paris!

Notre Dame

This was going to be a heavy day of walking, I hope Ruth came prepared. And it was an ugly day too, overcast and chilly. Basically, we got a London weather day. London weather in Paris, and Parisian weather in London.

We began where one must when visiting Paris: on the Île de la Cité, at the gates of the cathedral of Notre Dame. Touring Europe involves so many church and cathedral visits, and yet, still Notre Dame stands out. The gothic architecture, and the enormous, beautiful stained glass easily stand out and stick in your memory. No one knows what the hell a flying buttress is, but everybody knows, when they look at Notre Dame, “yes, those are flying buttresses.”

This visit was, obviously, before the fire that just happened in early 2019.

Writing this post, and looking back through the pictures, it’s sad to think that that’s the last that I’ll see of that Notre Dame. Notre Dame, in one form or another, has been standing on that spot since the 1200’s. It’s a readily identifiable symbol of both Paris and France. No matter how bad the damage, it’s gonna be back.

But it’ll be different. Which, is how it’s always been, evolving through the centuries. Still, that’s the last that I’ll see of that version of Notre Dame.

A Walk in the Park

The walk continued. We crossed the Seine to the Rive Droit, wended our way west along the river, until we arrived at the Louvre. Not to go inside, I don’t care how ugly a day it was, we weren’t going to make it uglier by dealing with that place. Plus, it was Tuesday, the Louvre is closed Tuesdays.

No, we came just to see the famous Pyramid. It was great–between the weather, and the museum being closed, there was nobody there!

We continued west, into the Tuileries gardens. Even on an ugly day, it’s still a lovely place to walk.

When we arrived at the Place de la Concorde, Ruth was a little tired. Okay, she was very tired, so instead of continuing the walk like we’d planned, we instead jumped on metro to get us over to our next stop.

La Tour Eiffel

Erika loves the Eiffel Tower. Loves it! Flipping through pictures on her phone to choose pictures for this post, I had to get through about 8 million Eiffel Tower pictures. She loves it!

And it is super impressive. Getting closer to it, you get the increasing realization of just how huge it is. But 8 million pictures, I don’t know. And that was on an overcast day!

Visiting it right now… kind of sucks. We weren’t planning to go up it, it’s too expensive and time consuming. But just going down underneath it, standing there, looking up at the massive tower, is way cool. Now, that whole area is fenced off, and you have to go through basically an airport security check to get in. No gels or liquids, take your shoes off… okay, you can keep your shoes on, but the liquids part is true.

Mind you, this isn’t to get inside, this is just to get into the public plaza underneath! The fence is rather unsightly, it makes walking around the area fairly difficult, and… well, there’s a security check to hang out in the public plaza.

Paris hasn’t been a stranger to terrorism recently, I get that. Still, we’re slowly fencing off our public monuments, and ourselves, to fear. Consider us terrorized, I guess. The terrorists are winning.

Musée D’Orsay

We began our last full day in Paris by going to one of my favorite museums of all time. No, not the Louvre, that hellhole teeming with humanity. No, I mean the Musée D’Orsay of course!

The Musée D’Orsay was one of my favorite parts of my first trip to Paris, and I can tell you it’s still one of my most favorite museums. It’s hard to say what exactly is so wonderful about Musée D’Orsay. It’s the huge collection of Impressionist art, and the tight focus on one era of art. It’s the building itself–airy, spacious, gorgeous. It’s the size of the collection, not cripplingly large like that other museum across town everyone has heard of. It’s the space you have to breathe, and not spend the day fighting with massive crowds, like that other museum across town everyone has heard of.

There’s a whole room full of Van Gogh works! And it’s awesome!

I’ll happily go there every time I’m in Paris. It’s lovely, and it doesn’t get old.

When we left the museum, we crossed the Seine and headed across town to the spectacular Palais Garnier. The Palais Garnier is the home of the Paris opera, and easily one of the most beautiful buildings on earth.

From there, it’s a short walk around to the other side of the Palais Garnier, to where the Galeries Lafayette is hiding. This ridiculously opulent upscale shopping mall is worth a visit just to see the incredible glass domed roof inside. You don’t need to do any shopping, just come in, take the escalator all the way up then back down, admiring the building.

Then we did some shopping. Not at the Galeries, at the Benetton around the corner. Ruth was on the hunt for some new jeans!

Sacre Coeur

Before we could leave Paris, we needed to make that hike up Montmartre we’d been putting off. So we stopped by the apartment, dropped off Ruth’s new jeans, and headed up the hill.

I thought we finally killed poor Ruth.

But she made it! By god she made it. There is a funicular that can take you up and down a portion of the hill–you still have to climb a lot just to get to the funicular. It’s also kind of silly expensive, costing as much as a Métro ride. So you can spend an hour on trains, wending your way across all of Paris; or, for the same price, 30 seconds on the funicular to cut out a small portion of the hill. Despite these short comings, Ruth took it to get back down. I think that was probably for the best.

Anyway, we got up there just before sundown and had some beautiful views of the Basilica and all of Paris. We walked through the church, passed on climbing to the top of it, then trekked back down to our apartment. Our rapid-fire tour of Paris was coming to a close, and we had dinner to make, and packing to do.

Paris, Je t’aime encore

I love Paris. I love the French language, I love French culture, I love French food, I love French wine. The first time I visited Paris, I fell hard for it. I went full Kanye, planning to fly Air France there for long weekends all the time. Paris would be my second home.

For a lot of reasons, that didn’t happen. But I was finally back!

And the sheen had come off.

Whether it was men pissing in the subway stations, or trash in the streets, I saw things I didn’t see years ago. I never saw the ‘rude Parisian’ before, but I saw them now!

Obviously, those things were there before, I just hadn’t seen them. Years had gone by, and I’d seen a lot more of the world. And now I could see a lot more of Paris, too.

Paris, je t’aime encore. Mais, je te vois mieux. I guess it doesn’t fit as well on a T-shirt.

Next Time

“Podemos sentarnos juntos?” I asked, after the flight attendant asked if we could move and sit more toward the back of the plane.

“Por supuesto,” she replied.

Well, we could sit together, but why would we when we could each get our own row? I hadn’t looked at all, but the back half of the Airbus A320 we were on was pretty much completely empty.

We flew through Paris, and now the three of us were flying, each to our own row, on some Spanish airline called Vueling, on our way to our next country: Portugal! Next time, we land in the fantastic Porto, I hope you’ll come back to read about it!