Nine hours of sleep. We slept in like lazy sacks of turd. The hotel room's curtains, when fully drawn, completely blocked the light and my internal chronometer is all dizzy so we ended up scratching plans for the Louvre since it would be close to noon by the time we got there. We decided instead to hit the Musée de la Marine.
Learning from yesterday, we bought 2 demi baguettes for breakfast (total cost 1/10th of yesterday's meagre breakfast and caustic service) and ate them as we walked. We walked across the Pont de Bir Hakeim, which has a giant statue of someone on a raging horse, I think. The bridge was built to commemorate a ridiculous number of soldiers who either triumphed or perished, I don't recall, when marching across a desert or a city, I'm not certain which, named Bir Hakeim. Don't know what that has to do with horses. Then again, maybe it was a giant goddesse on a sea creature. My memory is kind of foggy.
The Musée de la Marine and the adjoining building, which together form the old Palais de Chaillon, are very white and extremely bright when one has left one's sunglasses at the hotel. It was very hot and very uphill. I was not in the best of moods. But, the sight of the Eiffel Tower from across the river, what a sight worthy of many photos. It really does lean away from the sun, it's weird!
The Musée de la Marine was stupendous. HUGE models of monster square-rigged warships at 1:18 or even 1:12 scale! Nadine composed some wicked pictures of the models.
One model described how some Egyptian decided to give France an obelisk, leaving it up to the French to get it to Paris. So the French built a special barge, sailed over, cut down the obelisk, levered and pullied it over to the barge which they had pulled up onto a beach, sawed the end off the barge, pulled the obelisk in, sewed the boat back up, and took it home. This is the big spike that sits in the middle of Place Concorde, and inspired us to check it out later that day.
Next up, the Arc de Triomphe - but lunch first. We had pasta and a burger and a demi bouteille of red wine that went straight to our heads as we looked out over the sidewalk patio. With a lot of giggling we continued to the Arc de Triomphe. We were first struck by the madcap traffic circle around the Arc. I can see that the rule is for traffic in the circle to yield to traffic entering, and the policy is to do so begrudgingly. I counted about two near misses in a handful of seconds as cars and scooters threw themselves across multiple lanes. Lanes that were of course only perceived, not painted.
Nadine found a bench and wrote a postcard (a drunken postcard, I might add, to my dear friend and maid of honor Stephanie) while I gaped at the traffic. Two people came to ask us where the tunnel was to go underneath, but we hadn't found it at that point. I began to wonder how many Frenchmen were actually in Paris.
Good great view from the top of the Arc, man, oh man. We reversed Nadine's trick of taking photos through the pay telescope by getting ultra-close pics of the Eiffel Tower.
We picture-bombed the underside and outside of the Arc, and then decided we would walk down the Champs Elysées straight to the Place Concorde to marvel at the spike. ("Real Egyptian sh**!" Nadine enthused.)
We finally found some shade and liquids along the Champs Elysées, photo-noting the Louis Vuitton store with a long line-up.
The spike was very Egyptian, and like the Arc de Triomphe, ringed by a Paris-style accolade of madcap motorists.
Our next stop was decided to be the Gardens around the Louvre (Jardin des Tuileries) as the sun settled and we strolled along eating sorbet cones. We took a whole photo-journal of our approach to the glass pyramid. We had a nice sit by the pyramid.
We took the bus home to save an hour's walk in the dark. Bought two bottles of wine at a corner market, and then struck another item off our list by getting dinner at duhn duhn daa... McDonalds. I had a Royale with bacon and got miffed when the silly wench at the counter wouldn't accept my French. I was saying, "Quoi?" because she was speaking at 2 decibels in a noisy environment, not because I don't know what "Coke? Coke? Coke? Coke?" means. I just kept forging ahead with my order but had to repeat it all because she never progressed to the subroutine after "Coke?". I have two bottles of wine and it's ten o'clock. No Coke! The McDonalds tasted funny. No diarrhea though, praise be.
I wanted more fries, though. I can never get enough of McDonald's fries. The wine wasn't the greatest; I guess our expectations of French standards were a little high. That, or just not the right meal to eat with it. ;-P Found two English channels - CNN and something else. Tried to watch French TV but they spoke way too fast, even for me. And so to bed..
No comments:
Post a Comment