Hello all - it's been a fairly quiet week. None of my colleagues from the UK have been in the office this week. But, we did have a couple evenings out. Tuesday we invited some French friends from my time here in 2009 to join us for dinner. We went to Schwartz's New York Deli for hamburgers. They were all happy to try it, and found the burgers too big to finish (same as us on our first visit). Debbie an I learned our lesson and split one between us - perfect! We also met our friends the Davis's from Tucson at Le Petite Marche on Thursday. This was one of our favorite restaurants from our previous visit, and it is still good! A couple fun evenings on the town with friends!
Thursday, Debbie's sister Shauna arrived. She is visiting for a little over a week. Deb took the Air France bus from Arc de Triomphe to Charles De Gaule to meet Shauna. It all went smoothly, but the web information about the bus was a bit off - it cost more, it left every half hour (as opposed to every 15 minutes), and it didn't stop at terminal 2A (you had to walk from 2B). Debbie managed it! We've noticed that the info you can get on the web is not always so accurate! They made it back without any issues. That evening, we walked down to the Trocadero so Shauna could see the Eiffel Tower. On Friday, Debbie and Shauna took one of the hop-on / hop-off buses to see sights around the town.
Saturday we took the #2 metro up to Montmartre and spent the day wandering from Moulin Rouge to Sacre Coeur, and back to Abbesse. It was a fine day for a stroll through the city. We started with a picture in front of Moulin Rouge, and then walked up rue Lepic. We saw Theo van Gogh's apartment (where brother Vincent spent a couple years). We avoided the long flight of steps up to Sacre Coeur by taking rue Lepic, recommended unless you are trying to get in shape!
We passed the open air dance hall Moulin de la Galette, immortalized by Renoir (doesn't look like that today, by the way). We passed an interesting sculpture of a man passing through a wall, based on the short story "Le Passe-Muralille" by Marcel Ayme (who lived next door). There was a very cool cabaret "Au Lapin Agile" (the agile rabbit) right across from a small vineyard right in the heart of Montmartre. The vineyard Clos Montmartre has been in operation since since 1933. We passed Musee de Montmartre, which is the oldest building in the area (decided not to go in).
We finished up at Basillica Sacre Coeur, walked through the church, and then spent time on the front steps watching the crowd. Shauna went down to watch a mime. The crowd was fun to watch. After a bit, we wound our way down through place du Tertre (and its masses of people and artists) and to Bateau Lavoir (the Laundry Boat), an old piano factory that was used as a studio by Picasso and others. We stopped for lunch at a cafe in the area, then home.
Saturday evening, we piled back into the metro to St. Germain de Pres for dinner at Bistro d'Henri. It was a fun little place, with friendly staff (and English menus). Beef Bourguignon for Shauna, lamb shank cooked with cinnamon and prunes for me - very French. A successful day!
Sunday, we took it a bit easy. I went to church, and then met Debbie and Shauna at Invalides. Again, we thought we would get a free pass to the museum for the first Sunday of the month - not at Invalides! We bought our tickets at went to see Napoleon's Tomb - always an impressive sight in it's Eglise du Dome resting place. To me, the crypt for General Foch is the most understated and moving, with it's black marble soldiers from WWI. We spent time in the gardens next to the dome, and in Eglise St Louis next door, then went into the Musee de l'Armee (just took in the section covering WWI and WWII) - I figure I'll return to this when Chase visits. It wasn't too interesting to the girls!
After Invalides, we walked next door to Rodin Museum - one of my favorite places. We even got to go in free! Yahoo. Unfortunately, it started raining pretty hard just as we got into the garden. There was a long line waiting to enter the museum, and it was time to feed ourselves - so we headed to the cafeteria next to the garden. We lucked out and scored a table under an umbrella, and had a lovely jambon and formage baguette, and cafe for me. Even though it was rainy, the temperature was mild. It was great. We wandered the garden once the rain let up. Debbie and Shauna provided captions for the various statues - what they were saying / thinking. Spent some time just looking at the details on many of them. After the garden, we enjoyed a special exhibit of marble pieces next to the gift shop. Very nice.
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