"The Loveliness of Paris"

 "THE LOVELINESS OF PARIS"

October 28

If you are or ever have been a fan of the late, great Tony Bennett, you probably recognize the title of this entry as the opening line of his immortal "I Left My Heart in San Francisco." It popped into my head as I reflected on this, our first full day sightseeing in Paris. We started early, as we were scheduled to take a small group driving tour called a "Panoramic Morning Paris City Tour." We were instructed to meet at a restaurant called The Winston (as you might guess, named for Winston Churchill, who as a liberator of Paris and France falls right in there with Charles de Gaulle and Dwight Eisenhower in the pantheon of 20th Century heroes of France), literally a stone's throw from the Arc de Triomphe. The challenge was that we were to meet there at 8:00 AM (and were encouraged to be there 15 minutes early), and it took about 20 minutes on the Metro at rush hour to get there. First, however, we had to brave the crowds at Gare St. Lazare and purchase. (We opted for the 3 day Paris Visite pass since much like modern day expat Charlie of the old Kingston Trio song "M.T.A." we would be riding riding forever -- okay, well, the rest of the week -- beneath the streets of Paris.) We followed the usually, though not always, clear signage to the depths of GSL to find the platform of our train and make sure we took the one headed in the right direction. Meanwhile we tried to remember to foil pickpockets by not speaking loudly or acting in a way that screams "We're Americans!", then squeezed onto the train with our heads on a swivel, following the advice on YouTube (and verified by Lucky Pierre and his accomplished band of pickpockets). God granted us good fortune and traveling mercies, and we made it on time to our stop, got off, and voila! -- there was the Arc de Triomphe looming out of the morning fog. Magnificent!  And sure enough, in the next block was the sign for The Winston. Lafayette, we ARE here!

Arriving right on time to The Winston we found no bus, minivan, or anyone who looked "in charge." Qu'est que c'est?!? Time to panic? No, at an outside table we saw a couple of ladies (to use a Southern term, widderwomen perhaps?) who appeared to be a tad older than we are and noting that we didn't sound French, looked at us expectantly. It turns out that they too were waiting for the Panoramic tour and were old friends and traveling companions from Missouri and Nebraska, respectively. In 5 - 10 minutes our guide/driver, Julie (sp?), showed up in her minivan, welcomed us, and scooped us up. We dashed headlong into Paris morning traffic, braving the roughly a half dozen imaginary "lanes" and legion of potential exits into and out of the roundabout at the Arc de Triomphe. [Mon Dieu! I'll never again make fun of the French for capitulating to the Allemand in just 6 weeks in 1940! Parisians routinely exhibit bravery at least twice a day.]

Julie led us into the foggy, overcast day and zooming traffic on our way to a number of traditional buildings of note (most of which we had heard of) for the next 3 1/2 hours. To adjust to traffic, construction, lack of proximate parking, and other challenges she wisely had built in some options for sightseeing. But off we went with Julie giving helpful commentary to help us determine what we were seeing, its history and scale of importance, etc. We saw the sacred nonsecular places like Notre Dame and Sacre Coeur cathedral in Montmartre (technically a suburb of Paris), but also the secular like Moulin Rouge and a small, winding "shopping center" inside a tiny alleyway. We also crossed the Seine countless times, an inevitability if you're traveling in Paris. (I've been to American cities like Portland, OR and Pittsburgh, which with typical American humility call themselves "The City of Bridges."  Get over yourselves!  Paris, according to Professor Google and his trusted assistant A.I., has 37 bridges across the Seine!") But enough words; take a look:

Notre Dame

Proving we were there

Le Petit Palais

The Pantheon

Eglise St. Etienne-du-Mont

Colonne Vendome

Detail of Colonne Vendome

Sacre Coeur cathedral in Montmartre

We were at Sacre Coeur too!

From the Seine

The Moulin Rouge, the secular "cathedral,"
is much smaller and less ornate

As we approached noon, and having left the hotel so early that we had skipped breakfast, Susan and I were starving.  We had a reservation for a tour of the Eiffel Tower at 2:00, so Julie dropped us off at a restaurant called the Belloy that she recommended since it's on the Metro line to the Place du Trocadero, where we'd be headed. Trocadero is on the Right Bank (Rive Droite, actually the N side of the river) just across the Seine from the Tower on the Left Bank (Rive Gauche, on the S side). [Why they decided to name them Left and Right banks rather than North and South was a mystery to me, so like any inquisitive scholar, I consulted the omniscient Prof. Google and his graduate assistant, AI. According to them, in olden days it was common practice to name the sides/banks of a river based on their side as one traveled downstream, i.e., toward the sea. Okaaaay.] Anyway, the Belloy was a good choice, as they offered both breakfast and lunch at that time of day. I opted for the former and Susan the latter. We were well-fortified to march inexorably toward La Tour Eiffel. 

Okay, so we didn't really march the whole way, but hopped on the Metro and saved time and our strength.  We had learned from numerous sources from written and online travel guides to NBC's coverage of the Olympics that one of the best views of the Tower is La Place du Trocadero. I can't imagine that it's not. (There are normally beautiful gardens at Trocadero, but they had been dug up -- Olympics perhaps? -- and not yet replaced.)  When we got off the Metro at the Trocadero, we emerged into a still foggy and quite overcast day, as some of the following photos will show. Fortunately our fears that it would be so cloudy and perhaps rainy that our view of and from the Tower would be disappointing proved unfounded. The Place du Trocadero is a huckster's delight, as there were scores of young men (many quite possibly recent immigrants?) who were trying to sell souvenirs of metal replicas of the tower from displays on blankets to gawking tourists. If one sidestepped them and the many other tourists taking selfies and shots of the Tower, a great view for a Tower photo was possible. We took advantage ...

A wee bit closer look from Trocadero

Tower from Place du Trocadero

With time to spare before our 14:00 reservation (the French, and much of Europe, use military time) we stopped for lots of photo ops as we made our way across the Pont d'Iena bridge toward the tower. Although the Eiffel Tower didn't quite rival the Louvre for its teeming masses of tourists, it came darn close. We were glad that we had bought tickets in advance. Even then we were directed to a queue for our time slot and to go through security (as we did at the Louvre and all tourist sites in Paris. The message is crystal clear: Do not BYOB where B = bombe!). 

The Tower and Pont d'Iena Bridge:
My favorite of our pix

Looking straight up from beneath the Tower

Eventually at about 1400 we squeezed onto the elevator for the 2nd of 2 levels of the Tower, which is at 377' of the 1083' total height, or about 1/3 of the way up. Although I'm very much what the French might call poule mouilee ("chicken feces" in English) when it comes to heights, I had elected to buy the most expensive tickets to take us all the way to the top, where we'd be met with a glass of champagne. [If for once in your life you're going up on the Eiffel Tower, why not go all the way to the top?!?]  Actually I can answer that question: With the sardine-packed elevator during the ascent to level 2, Susan and I both had flare-ups of our aforementioned poultry disorder and decided that rather than boarding a smaller and even more crowded elevator to ride twice as high still, we'd settle for enjoying the view from level 2. And so we did. As you'd expect, the views were exceptional:

Place du Trocadero from level 2 of the Tower

The Pantheon from level 2

Holy Trinity Cathedral

    

Sacre Coeur on Montmartre

Montparnasse Tower

    

Looking westward on the Seine

My mission would be incomplete if I didn't share a little info about the Eiffel Tower, long one of the iconic wonders of the modern world. Gustave Eiffel was a civil engineer and railroad bridge builder who won the bid to build the tower, which was to be a 300m (1,000') tower for the 1889 Exposition Universelle (World's Fair) to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the French Revolution. It was the world's tallest manmade structure when it was built (and remained that until 1930), but was to be dismantled about 20 years after the Exposition. Or maybe not?! If you're interested in more history, of the Tower, see https://www.toureiffel.paris/en/the-monument/history . [One more aside: Soon after the Paris World's Fair the city of Chicago earned the bid to host the 1892 World's Fair, which was to celebrate the 400th anniversary of Columbus's "discovery of America" (although he never went anywhere near Chicago, the U.S., or even North America). The Chicago planners felt enormous pressure to come up with a structure to rival the Eiffel Tower as the landmark of the fair.  Their answer? The Ferris Wheel. I learned this 2-3 years ago while reading Erik Larson's The Devil in the White City, which is the true story of a serial killer who preyed on young women at that same Chicago World's Fair. I heartily recommend the book if you enjoy mystery and history.]

To rest from the 1 mile walk back to the Place du Trocadero, where we'd catch the Metro back to GSL and our hotel, and to reflect on our experiences on our first full day in Paris, we stopped at a restaurant for a drink and a snack. The Cafe du Trocadero had been recommended by a friend of Susan's. It's right by the Metro station ... and courtesy of the departure of leaves with the arrival of fall, gave us another look at the structure around and on which we'd just spent over 2 hours. We did something we hadn't done so far in France -- sat at outside restaurant tables to enjoy the view -- something we had studiously avoided because that's where the smokers sit. (And I might add that judging from the popularity of smoking the French, a learned people, have apparently not heard the Surgeon General's warning about the dangers of smoking, don't believe it, or simply don't care.) We had some refreshing vin (Susan) and biere (me), and even enjoyed an aperitif -- my first real chance to "get stuck into," to use an Aussie-ism, some of those legendary French fromages (cheeses). After that bit of R&R, we hopped the Metro back to the Albar to recuperate from a full day of being tourists.

The view from the Cafe Trocadero:
See what's hiding behind the middle tree?!

Our day had been quite busy and tiring, but we had enough of an appetite that our wine & cheese eventually wore off.  Thanks to recommendations from the hotel staff, after a rest we walked the 5-6 minutes to a storied seafood restaurant called the Brasserie Mollard. The restaurant, which has existed in some form since 1895, is spacious with gold mosaics and painted tiles, and was the most upscale restaurant in which we dined in France. The food and service were excellent, the servings generous, and the prices somewhat reflective of the setting and fare. Susan, who has a dairy allergy, opted for a huge salad, while I went with a "special" that offered an appetizer, entree (American version), and a dessert. For the appetizer I chose to atone for having wimped out of going to the "tippy-top" of the Eiffel Tower and by trying one of those items I had promised myself I'd try in France, i.e., escargot. Having been fortified by some premium wine, and armed with a device that resembled miniature forceps, I ate every one of my snails. They were garlicky and tasty, though probably not a dish I'd ordinarily ask for back home. I was proud of myself for having eaten escargot and heartily enjoyed my grilled swordfish, dessert, and wine. A sumptuous end to a very full day.

Brasserie Mollard

    

These snails must've been a step slow