(This
section of the trip log
includes our arrival, our initial days in Paris and a day trip to
Auvers sur Oise.
You can enlarge any picture in this narrative by
clicking on it - it
will open in a separate window and in many cases, show detail you can't
see in the smaller version.)
Saturday May 4
We drove up to Minneapolis Friday afternoon, got the car settled into
its parking space for the trip, had supper with Katie and George at Ziadi's Mediterranean
Restaurant
downstairs. (Nice people, really good food!)
On Saturday George took us to the airport, getting us there around 1:30
pm for a 4 PM flight. We had TSA Pre-✓ so that was plenty of
time! We weren't happy with the timing of the flight - it
was too early to really give us a chance to sleep. But we did
splurge for Delta's "Comfort+" giving us a little more legroom and
recline. The flight was totally full, but other than that, it
went
well. The served supper was pretty good, there were lots of
snacks and drinks offered and we had a pre-arrival "breakfast" in the
morning.
I will say (again) that Charles deGaulle airport in Paris is the worst
major airport I have ever experienced in terms of logistics and
signage. But, asking lots of questions, we muddled through it and
arrived at the area where we were to be met somewhere around 8
AM. While I scouted for our group leader,
John visited an ATM and got some Euros. Jennifer, our leader, was
late (actually she said we were early!) but did
eventually find us plus 2 others who arrived shortly afterwards.
My first impression was that she was disorganized, indecisive and
easily confused. I thought "Oh dear - it's going to be a long
week." However, she grew on me rapidly and I came to really enjoy
and appreciate her over the course of the journey.
Sunday May 5
 So, we piled
into a medium-sized van for the ride into Paris. I guess it was
around 10 AM when we were delivered to the Best
Western Opera Faubourg
hotel in the 9th arrondissement, a very central location for us.
Of course they didn't  have
rooms ready at that hour but they stored our
luggage for us. We knew we had to go out and walk to stay awake
and decided, along with our new friend Kay, who arrived with us, to
head down towards the Tuileries Garden. (Silly me left my camera
in the carry-on stored
at the hotel - remember how tired we are - so all of these first
pictures were taken with my cell phone which does not make a good
camera!) Along the way we passed
the Opera House (left) and went through the Place Vendome (right) with
its large
Napoleonic monument and many upscale shops all around it.
A few pictures from the Jardin Tuileries: a little bit of the garden,
our first view of the Eiffel Tower and Rodin's "The Kiss" in front of
the Orangerie, where we serendipitously ended up!
  
The first Sunday of
the month is "free admission day" at many of the museums, including the
Orangerie. Surprisingly it wasn't even
overly crowded. One whole floor was full of huge "Waterlilies"
murals by Claude Monet (the picture is the only one of both of us
during
the whole trip); downstairs held many other impressionist paintings and
a special exhibit on Franz Marc and
August Macke and other artists of Der Blaue Reiter art movement
(roughly 1911-1914). We had a light lunch there at
the café where they had various beverages, sandwiches and wraps at
quite reasonable costs. So that was the first of many museums
during our trip!
We walked back to the hotel where we got into our room, unpacked,
rested a bit then went across the street for a group dinner at Au Général
Lafayette.
We introduced ourselves, had a great dinner and talked a bit about what
we would be doing over the next few days. Of course we didn't
sleep very well that first night - good old jet lag - but we were up
Monday morning for breakfast buffet in the hotel and our first day of
sightseeing.
Monday May 6
  Breakfast
was
just
okay – eggs, yogurt, croissants, fruit, bacon, etc. There was
some
runny oatmeal and various juices. Certainly it was enough to get
us going for the day. We took a bus most of
the way to
SacreCoeur (photo left), then rode up the Funicular the rest of the
way, enjoyed the views (photo right) and walked
through the church. Below are pictures of "love locks" along
the stairs from the funicular - this is apparently very common
throughout Europe (sort of the equivalent of initials carved on a tree
in the US), John and busker on the
stairs, and one view inside the basilica.
 We passed a few sights on the way to the Montmartre
Museum which was an old home and studio used
by many well-known artists. I mostly enjoyed the very nice
"Renoir Garden" (one picture at left) - there is also a café there and
it would be lovely to sit in the garden and enjoy tea. Inside the
building is a restoration of Suzanne
Valedon's studio.  She was the mother of Maurice Utrillo - we saw
some of his works and read about
him yesterday. She was
first a model for many artists before she started painting
herself. When her son Maurice began to show signs of alcoholism,
she encouraged him instead to try painting and he became more
well-known than
she was.
We set a time to meet and then split up. I walked to the
Lapin Agile, known to me from the Steve Martin play "Picasso at
the Lapin Agile" so I had to go see it! It apparently hosts
classic cabaret acts but it doesn't open until 9 pm and the show goes
until 1 am! Originally there was a rabbit (lapin) carved onto the
door by Andre Gill (we saw a bust of him while walking
Montmartre).  So the venue
became known for the "lapin à
Gill" which eventually degenerated to the Lapin Agile ("lively
rabbit"). I walked by the Montmartre vineyard (left) - once known
as the
place to buy the most expensive, very bad wine, though I understand
its reputation has improved much since then. I tracked down the 2
windmills built in the early
17th century 'Le Moulin
Blute-Fin'
and 'Le Moulin Radet' (image below right) together now known as
'Le Moulin de la Galette.'  In the 19th
century the windmill owners, the Debray
family,
decided to use the flour to make a type of flat brown
cake or
bread (known as a galette) that was sold with a glass
of wine
on the premises - hence the name! In my wanderings, I
passed a dog
park and "the man who walked through walls" on Rue Norvin. (pictured
below.) I
happened to be there when a guide was regaling his audience with the
very funny urban legend about him.  The abbreviated version is
that he discovered the ability to walk through walls and began to use
that magical skill to, among other things, rob banks and sneak into
homes to carry on affairs with beautiful women. After a while he
was over-doing the "beautiful women" part and having trouble
performing, so went to see a doctor. The doctor gave him some
medication that would give back his love life, but would take away his
ability to walk through walls. So he decided to take just half of
the dose hoping to keep some of each talent. Alas, it was
balanced too well and he got stuck, able to only get half of him
through the wall, and he has been there ever since, providing photo ops
for tourists!
  We had lunch
at La
Bonne Franquette, a Monmartre café long known for the many artists
that spent time there. We walked through more of Montmartre
and captured more of its flavor. At left is Jennifer (though not
a great picture of her) showing us one of the places that Vincent Van
Gogh lived; to the right is the famous Moulin Rouge (it was never a
working windmill). Some of our group had dinner and a show there
the next night - they said it was well worth it and described numerous
"side shows." But we were still suffering jet lag and thought
we'd be better served with some rest!
As we made our way down to where we could meet our bus,
we enjoyed much street art. Here are a few examples. At the
left, creative ironworks over windows, the center is a mural - there is
no kid there - and on the right is a Day Care Center! (I had to
take it in spite of the reflection.)
 We met our bus
at the bottom of the hill and went to the Louvre.
There were street performers out in front, as there were at just about
every attraction. It was quite crowded and exhaustion set
in from so
many steps and a long day. Fortunately, as part of
a tour, we didn't have to wait in line and Jennifer whisked us around
to see some of the major pieces she thought we'd be interested
in. (There is lots of construction around the Mona Lisa and they
have made it almost impossible to get a picture without reflection and
interference. However, I took one anyway, just to show we were
there!) Then we had another hour on our own; I saw the
foundation of
the original
building and then upstairs the Napoleon III (Charles-Louis) apartments
that
were pretty gaudy. We bussed
to the Grand
Café des Capucines for dinner. All of
the food was wonderful but it was consistently WAY TOO
MUCH. After dinner there was an option of
a bus
tour to see the lights of Paris at
night but we had seen enough on a previous visit and chose to come back
to the hotel to crash and
sleep. (Below: Mona Lisa, Venus de Milo and Winged
Victory - some of the most well known pieces in the Louvre.)
We are meeting some
nice and interesting people – age-wise
we are probably about the middle of the group. Some are slow but
not disruptive. Jennifer is an excellent
guide; she knows lots of
stories and how to get everywhere. The only downside is that she
is not always very organized; she changes
her mind about places and times so you can't wander too far until you
are sure you have the right meeting place! Cati
(her assistant for the Paris part of our trip) is fun and helps a lot
to keep us together and distribute handouts, tickets, etc.
Tuesday, May 7
  This
morning we started at the Musée D'Orsay and it was great
as always. At the left is the view across the Seine from the
museum. This is Pont Royal in front of the Louvre on the opposite
bank. On the right is the main hall of the museum (that was
originally a railway station). There was the usual mild confusion
about leaving and getting
us
all in, but Jen
did a good job of whizzing through the major points she wanted to make,
showing us and telling
us about the history of impressionism and various artists. We
had
a half hour or so left before lunch then another hour after lunch to
wander on our own. One of my favorite artists of the
period is Camille Pissarro so I made sure to track down a few of his
works.
At left is Pissarro's "Red Roofs" - a more typical example of
his impressionist style; in the center is "Woman in an Orchard" painted
in 1887 during his brief excursion into pointilism. (Click on
each of those to get a larger image and see the differences more
clearly!) At the right is the classic duo City Dance and Country
Dance by Renoir.
 We had
lunch at the restaurant in the museum on the second floor. It was
good, and with a better portion size, but
a bit slow - lunch is a busy time! At the left is a view through
the big clock facing north. If you enlarge it, you can see Sacre
Coeur up on its hill. With the rest of my free time, I went
through the "new" furniture
exhibit (actually 1960's-70's and I'm at the right age to find that all
rather amusing) and both of the temporary expositions –
Black
Models and
the one from Nadi to "Talisman" by Serusier.
It was all interesting, just a bit crowded but that is to be expected!
 I had not
really absorbed the fact that virtually all of these paintings were
created using models. The artists don't just create from their
internal images - they used both male and female models of all ages,
sizes and races. Many of these models became well known, but the
Black ones were mostly anonymous. This exhibit tried to identify
some of the prominent Black models of the 19th century, including those
used in the well-known "The Raft of the Medusa" (Géricault) up to works
by
Matisse. At the right is "Charity" by Alexandre Laemlein (1846)
intended to show charity being spread to all without discrimination
- somewhat unusual in the use of children as models.
 The other special exhibit was "The Talisman" referring
to Paul Sérusier's Landscape
at the Bois d’Amour. (Left) Painted in Brittany in 1888, it
became known as the "talisman" for a group of artists known as the
Nabis (meaning "prophets") at the Académie Julian. They
adopted its pure colors and simplified forms as an icon of a new type
of painting, seeking to escape mere reproduction (even the
impressionists' works still presented the reality of what was observed)
with replacing the image with something more colorful and abstract that
evoked the feeling, but not the physical reality.
"A
close observation of the painting allows one to recognise certain
elements of the landscape represented : the wood, at the top on the
left, the transversal path, the row of beech trees on the river bank,
and the mill, at the back, on the right. Each of these elements is a
stain of colour. Subsequent
generations would reinterpret the picture in this light as the herald
of a new
conception of painting as pure, autonomous, and abstract." (From the
Musée D'Orsay website about the exhibition.)
 In the afternoon we went to the Rodin Museum – we went
quickly through
the first floor and a
brief walk through the second then on to the garden.
It
was a beautiful
day and I'd much rather spend the time outdoors! Saw
many of his major pieces and also minor
ones – for large installations like the Bughurs of Calais and The Gates
of Hell, we also saw individual prototypes. Indoors,
I liked the room full of
"parts:" feet, heads, hands, etc that he
used as models! What a riot.
He
left all of his unsold works, along with his home, to France
on the condition that they keep it up as a museum of
his
works.
The photo to the right is the back of
the museum as seen from the garden. Below are his "Balzac" (left)
and "Les Ombres." Les Ombres was a prototype that was replicated
at the top of the Gates of Hell, shown on the right. The final
"Gates" was 21 feet high - which is hard to tell from the photo!
We had free time and dinner on
our own tonight. We were back at hotel
close to 5 but
John felt a nap coming on, so we rested for a bit before going out for
food. We ended up at a little café just across the
street (Brasserie le Flash 54 rue Lafayette). John
had a Croque Monsieur with the best french fries I've ever had; I had
an
avocado/shrimp
salad that was also very good. We relaxed the rest of the
evening: I caught up on my trip log and read. After a long and
tiring day we enjoyed the chance to crash!
Wednesday May 8 -
  This
morning we went off on the bus to
what is now a suburb of Paris: Auvers sur Oise, where
Van Gogh lived, worked and died. At left is a sculpture of Van
Gogh done by Ossip Zadkine. We walked up to the church - Notre
Dame de l'Assomption. It was raining so nice to drop into the
church for a few minutes! We were the only ones there and John
couldn't resist testing out the acoustics so he sang a hymn for us that
was remarkable and well received by our colleagues. We went on up
to the cemetery where we saw Vincent and Theo's graves (pictured at
right) among many others. It is interesting that theirs were just
vine-covered while most were quite decorated!
Below
is the church, his famous painting of the church (that we saw in the
Musée d'Orsay) and one of the windows in the church.
  We had
a great
lunch at Sous
la Porche – I think the best so far! Salad
with brochetta and goat cheese, beef
and veggies, then flan with cinnamon/grahamcracker crumbs and sugar
with
caramel for dessert. The shop next door sells chocolates
and its owner came in with a whole basket of goodies to sell.
Great marketing! I think she sold most of
them!
Besides the church and the cemetery in the rain, we also
visited the Inn he lived in.   There
was a nicely-done video about his life and we walked through to see his
quarters - the rooms are empty now but apparently his cost 3.5 francs a
week at the time. We took a walk and saw a
bit of town after lunch. As we walked around town, it was
interesting to see the real sites (church, steps, city
hall, etc) and then compare
to his impressionist paintings. Above left is the current Town
Hall and to the right a reproduction of his painting of it. The
left photo here shows the "crooked stairs" and, at the right a copy of
his painting of them!
Back in Paris, we got off the bus about a mile down the road
from our hotel and went to the Galeries de Lafayette
– it seems like the biggest
dept store in
the world. It was SOOO crowded! There were very long
lines of Asian tourists at the Louis Vuitton shop, waiting to buy
their limit of 3 handbags each (at 1000 - 5000€ each). It just
made me laugh! We enjoyed walking through the amazing gourmet
section of
every kind of food you could want. The fresh food market was
quite impressive, but we had no way to save or transport it. The
whole thing spread out into 3 different buildings. While it was
fun to see for a short time, there were way too many people, too much
going on for my taste. Below left is what we called "Galeries
corner" (intersection of 3 streets: Rue Lafayette, Blvd Haussmann and
Rue de la Chaussée d'Antin), the center is just a peek at one little
corner of the spice shop and on the right, the hailstorm outside the
restaurant (see next paragraph).
After a short rest back at the hotel, we went
to dinner with
Kay Miller to Au Général Lafayette – another 8-10 more from our group
came in
while we were there. Tonight was a "dinner on your own"
night. Road
Scholar gave us each 20€ in vouchers – we chose the Au Général because
it was close, we knew they accepted the vouchers and we had enjoyed
their dinner the first night. We got the
Prix Fixe meal for 22€ which was a great deal. Though my
chicken was a little dry, the dessert chocolate cake made up for
it! Not long after we
got there, a torrential hail storm descended (picture at right
above). Everyone who was sitting out on the sidewalk hurried
indoors. Fortunately
it only lasted 5
minutes or so, and it was a lovely evening by the time we left,
but it was really wicked while it was coming down!
Tomorrow we have to be up early to get the bus at 8 am heading
to
Normandy and our riverboat for the rest of the trip. Cati, our
assistant, isn't going so we said goodbye to her today; our driver
Frederick
will take us up but then we likely won't see him again either.
Jennifer
continues to be vague and a bit indecisive at times, but somehow it all works – she is very
knowledgeable
about
art history and tells great stories.
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