A visit to Paris in November

We had the privilege of traveling to Paris (France, must it be said) for a week in November.  There was really no special reason for choosing this time, except we had recently moved to Oceanside, California, and had been very busy getting organized and working on the new home.  We needed a break.

Our usual pattern, back when we lived in the Dallas area, was to drive ourselves back and forth to the airport, and park our car at an off-airport lot. But that was Dallas, and there is a daily non-stop flight between Paris and Dallas, which meant we were in okay shape by the time we got home.  From San Diego, there are no non-stop flights to/from Paris. There is only one non-stop from Los Angeles, which is at least a two hour drive from here, possibly more if there is a traffic calamity or wildfire.  So we elected to stay with the familiar, and booked on American Airlines, connecting at DFW.  But this meant we would return to San Diego after dark and after traveling for 15 or 16 hours, and driving ourselves didn’t seem attractive.

I recalled that the lady next door to us (“roofmates” is the local term) has a son who drives for Uber, so I asked her if he did airport runs.  She replied that he no longer drove for Uber, but would take us privately for $50 each way.  Initially that seemed high, but parking at San Diego is higher than in Dallas, and when we had used a car service to/from DFW it had been a lot more, so we decided to go with him.

Our flight to DFW was on a Friday morning at around 11 AM, and we figured we needed to be there well in advance, so we asked to be picked up at 7:30.  We were ready early, so I texted the driver that we were ready if he wanted to come early. He replied that he was out front. Great minds think alike.

So we got in a Ford Explorer and enjoyed having someone else take us to the airport.  Once there, we stopped at the Airspace Lounge (shared by American, British Air, and Japan Air) for some coffee and breakfast.

Our DFW flight was on time, but we were in coach on an A321 Airbus, and it had the worst seat pitch I have ever experienced. Seriously, there was no place for my knees.  It felt like when I sat in an elementary school chair while teaching ESL back in Texas. Fortunately, it’s not a very long flight.

Knees against seat back. I was sitting up straight.

At DFW we hung around in the Admiral’s Club in terminal D for a while. Our flight left at 6 PM, and was supposed to arrive in Paris at around 10 AM. We had booked extra legroom seats (Main Cabin Extra) to give us more space.  It worked – I could cross my legs unless the person ahead of me reclined.  That’s as good as it gets in coach. 

787 leg room

The 787 Dreamliner is a more pleasant experience than, for example, a 777. But it’s still nine across, 3-3-3, and you have to get up to let the window seat occupant out from time to time.  The flight to Paris was very smooth.  There is lots of nice in-flight entertainment (IFE) on the 787.

But, our flight out of DFW was delayed for quite some time, due to what the pilot described as a minor problem. By the time we took off, we were more than an hour behind schedule.  Service was fine. I watched a couple of French movies using the IFE.  I had not heard any French in a while and it helped to get back into the rhythm.  I tried my best to listen and not look at the subtitles.

Our plane landed in Paris on a foggy, rainy morning. I had my raincoat packed in my rollaboard, and wondered if we would be dumped out on the tarmac as is often the case at Charles de Gaulle airport (CDG). But no, we got a jetbridge.  A very long walk ensued to get to passport control, but once there the line was very short.  The walk felt good after so much sitting.

Upon arrival (we had carried on our bags) we went to the taxi line and hopped in a taxi.  The driver had no idea where our hotel was but they all use GPS. This guy’s GPS took him on some narrow, crowded streets that we had never seen before.  Dude, use a different program.  I think he was using Waze. We got to the Hotel Relais Bosquet at around noon, too late for a free meal in the breakfast room.  At least our room was ready.

We unpacked, and then went to lunch at the little crepe place, Ulysse en Gaulle, on Rue Cler. We generally go there on arrival for a simple, light meal. Unfortunately, our rustiness at French resulted in an erroneous order – my wife’s egg and cheese crepe had the same ingredients as my egg, cheese and ham crepe.  She doesn’t eat meat. They fixed it but were unhappy about it.It was a reminder – the French don’t really understand vegetarians, and you have to remind them every time, no exceptions, that you don’t want meat.  You almost have to be forceful about it.  Ulysse en Gaulle is in a shop that used to sell horsemeat, and the old sign remains carved into the building.  Their crepes are really good!

Ham, cheese, egg crepe

 

We poked around in Franprix, a not-so-supermarket on Rue du Champs de Mars, and got some wine and munchies. There was a huge line when we went to check out, and a lady carrying a dozen things (she should have had a basket) knocked some stuff off a shelf and just stood there not knowing what to do.  I said ‘pas de probleme, Madame’, and rescued her.  The French look amazed any time an American speaks to them in French, however badly, and they always know you're not French. (Interestingly, they cannot distinguish among accents and can't tell a Brit from a Yank.)  In France, you take your stuff out of the cart and put it where the checker can scan it, and then you deal with it afterward. The clerk does nothing except scan the items and take your payment. I remember back to when my parents lived in Oklahoma, and Mom would put her stuff in the basket and not have to touch it again until she got home. They unloaded the basket, bagged up the groceries, and carried them out to her car for her. Nothing like that happens in Paris.

That evening we did nothing fancy for dinner, but went to Tribeca (on Rue Cler) which is actually pretty nice.  It seemed the restaurant might have changed hands since our last visit. The wait staff had been black ladies from West Africa, and now it seemed to be white men from France. The service was still good, as was the food. We ate there several times during the week, because a) it’s easy, b) it’s cheap, c) there’s stuff for a vegetarian, and d) great pizza.

The next morning (Sunday) we were somewhat jet lagged and got up early. We got cleaned up and got to the breakfast room a few minutes after it was nominally open, but Sundays are different. The people there were not ready for anyone to be eating so early.  It was a bit of a struggle.  But they have wonderful food, once it gets there.

We decided, even though it was a bad weather day, to visit the Marmottan Monet museum.  This museum is not included in the Paris Museum Pass, which we planned to get, and is off in a relatively far away part of town.  I counted out the exact change for two carnets (10 count) of Metro tickets and went to the booth at the Ecole Militaire stop.  I asked for two carnets and proudly produced my exact amount, and the clerk recoiled in horror.  ‘No money’ he said, in English.  Oh.  ‘Credit Card’, he said.  I asked, American Credit Card?  He nodded.  Okay, that was different from our previous visits.  I slipped my card , which has a chip, into the reader and it worked.  I did have to sign a piece of paper, which would not have been the case if I had a chip-and-PIN card like a real European.

Getting to the museum was pretty easy.  We used the Metro app on my phone to navigate. This year we switched from AT&T to T-Mobile, with the idea of using our phones overseas.  AT&T will sell you a data plan, not cheap but not as expensive as four or five years ago, but T-Mobile charges nothing for international roaming for text and data. I used the phone basically the same way I would at home, where I have an unlimited data plan. It was a bit slow at times, but it really helped to improve the experience.  Getting to this museum required changing Metro lines. When we exited the station, the wind was howling and rain was pouring down. And it was cold! Whose idea was this? We’re not in California any more! 

Not in California any more!

The Marmottan Monet is one of our favorites, but they have never allowed photography. This is both a blessing and a curse, in that we don’t have selfie-popping visitors from Asia, and people shoving you out of the way to get a photo, but some of the paintings there would make a nice picture on the computer back home.  So I didn’t even bring my DSLR camera.  But when we got there this Sunday, there was a guy taking photos close up with a fancy (and noisy) camera, and then taking a photo of the placard next to each piece, identifying it.  I was annoyed.  Eventually, I realized they were not stopping anyone from taking photos.

I later asked one of the employees about it, in French, and learned (in English) that the museum had started allowing photos (without flash) a couple of moons earlier.  I have not heard time described in number of moons before – maybe she didn’t know how to say ‘months’.  But - damn!  I still didn’t have my camera.  Next time!

One of the themes of our trip was – we speak to them in French, and they speak to us in English. Sometimes their English was worse than our French, but they kept on, and so did we.  Only a few people we encountered did not speak English, all of them drivers of one sort or another.

The next four days we were Museum Pass people.  The Paris Museum Pass gets you into most of the major attractions in Paris (notably not the Eiffel Tower) and lets you avoid the ticket-buying line, which at some attractions is a huge deal.  So it’s saving you time and hassle, and if you go to enough attractions, it saves you money.  We purchased our passes at a tabac (tobacco store/newsstand) at the end of Rue Cler, having noticed it mentioned in Rick Steves’ Paris guide book.  This was great because sometimes you have to wait in line to buy a Museum Pass.

Our first Museum under the Pass was the Louvre. It is open on Monday, when a lot of the other attractions are closed.  We had always gone in through the Carrousel du Louvre, an elaborate underground shopping mall.  There is a security entrance which usually had a short line.  The Museum Pass gets you out of the ticket line but everyone must go through security.  But our entrance had thousands of people waiting to get in.  We would have been in line for hours.  I approached one of the security people, showing her the Museum Pass, and she said outside by the Pyramid.

So we went outside by the Pyramid.  There was a short line for pass holders and we were inside the Louvre in a few seconds.  We spent a couple of hours at the Louvre, enough to observe something I had heard about but couldn’t imagine. The museum was about 60% filled by Asian visitors, and all they seem to do was take selfies. The usual scene could be found around the Mona Lisa, but instead of simply crowding to get the best view, they would crowd to the front, turn their backs on the Mona Lisa, and take a photo of themselves with the Mona Lisa in the background.  It detracted from the experience, and I remembered how Rick Steves had talked about taking his tour groups to different places so they wouldn’t be overwhelmed by all the visitors from Asia.  The Asians have money and they want to see Europe, but the museums such as the Louvre contain nothing that relates to their cultural heritage, and they treat European culture with disrespect.  I think next time we would go to the Louvre on one of the nights it’s open late, in the hope of avoiding all that, but I’m not sure that would work, either.

Little tiny square at the rear is  . . .

the Mona Lisa

This scene was repeated in front of every major well-known work of art in the Louvre.

That afternoon, we went over to the Centre Pompidou, also open Mondays. We had an awful lunch in their little café – we had very good luck there in the past but we’ll never eat there again. The menu was promising but they had almost none of it available.  The Pompidou is the place for modern art in Paris, and they have always had the strangest stuff imaginable. This day it did not disappoint. One thing we noticed right away was no Chinese were there. It is a very interesting place to walk around and snap some photos.  Every time you turn a corner you will see something you’ve never seen before.  This one is a favorite, and I like it more the older I get.

The next day (Tuesday) we visited our favorite museum, the Musée d’Orsay, home of, among other things, the Impressionists.  The Orsay had a huge ticket line, and we almost felt guilty about walking past it to the Museum Pass line, which was short. The last time we had visited they had banned photography, but somebody saw the French Minister of Culture snapping photos and outed her, and the ban went away quickly. Selfie sticks, thankfully, are banned. This museum was redone a few years back, and the lighting is perfect, and paintings are shown against a dark grey background that makes them really pop. 

After Orsay, we went to Musee Rodin, which is not too far away. The Rodin had been problematic for us, because the floor was in such bad shape that you could easily trip and crash into some priceless work of art. We heard that the museum had been renovated, but really couldn’t tell much difference, except the rough flooring was repaired. I guess we are not sculpture fans, but this museum left me cold. There are an awful lot of fragments on display in addition to a few key pieces.  The museum has a beautiful garden and some exceptional sculptures are on display there. I think I would just go to the garden and ignore the building.  It was getting somewhat dark but I was shooting Raw so I had something to work with.

The Thinker.

Gates of Hell

The Burghers of Calais

Wednesday we had some fun. The adventure was a visit to Versailles. We followed the helpful instructions in the Rick Steves Paris book and purchased our tickets at the nearby Metro stop. At Les Invalides we took the very long walk and climb to the RER C line.  When we got there we learned there was a service interruption due to a fire. No trains. A helpful SNCF employee asked where we were going and we said the Chateau de Versailles. She said to take the Metro to Montparnasse (huge railway station) and ride the N line to Versailles.

Montparnasse has some signs for the N line but not enough. We finally asked for directions, but they were in French and broken English leaving us uncertain where to go. I saw on a status board a train with Versailles as a destination and we went for it and we barely caught it.  It was the right train, but . . . .

In the Rick Steves book it warns you there are two Versaiiles stations and you want the second. This train stopped at a Versailles station but the next one was not Versailles Rive Gauche as we expected, but something else. Merde! So we got off at the next stop and retraced our steps to the one Versailles stop.

Once there we had to use our tickets to exit through a turnstile. Jody’s worked but mine didn’t. I don’t know if it uses a time stamp or what. I got the clerk to let me through. Then a nice lady advised us to take bus B to the chateau. The bus driver collected 4 euro and off we went.

Except we didn’t know where to get off, and rode much, much too far. The driver told us to catch another bus in the opposite direction and where to get off.

I fired up Uber and had a driver in 4 minutes.  A few minutes later we were at the Chateau.  We had never used Uber before in France, but we heard some people talking about it in the breakfast room of the hotel and thought it worth a try.

We had a pretty good day at Versailles, once we got there, at least an hour later than we had hoped.  They have introduced free audioguides, which really help you to understand what you are looking at. Many of the rooms had items that were supposed to be there but were not. I assume they were removed for cleaning and maintenance, or possibly loaned to other museums, There were not a lot of people there, perhaps on account of the screwed up train situation.  The Hall of Mirrors was pretty crowded.  Imagine that, people were taking selfies.

One place we had not seen was a huge gallery of paintings, large format paintings,  depicting dozens of battles in the long and bloody history of France. 




These paintings were not of recent history, but of times when the French came out on top.  One of interest was a painting of Yorktown, Virginia, where the French and Americans joined forces to defeat the British and secured American independence. The big tall guy is General Washington.  

I spent a very unpleasant 19 weeks in Yorktown, VA, back in the early 1970's. But afterwards I got to go to sea for a while. 

We poked around the gardens for a while, but it is fall and it was a bit cold. After the difficulty we had getting there, we decided to allow extra time for the return trip, in case we had to go to that other train station.

After leaving the Chateau, we had to find Versailles Rive Gauche, since we hadn’t come that way. It was a bit longer walk than we expected, but the trains were restoring service, and after waiting half an hour or so, we were on our way back to Paris.

The Chateau is on the Paris Museum Pass.  Lines were short on a Wednesday in mid-November, but I could see the pass saving you time during the busier seasons.

Day 4 of our Museum Pass (you can buy 2, 4, or 6 days) we went to L’Orangerie, home of Monet’s famous Water Lily series. There were almost no people there, which is really nice.  

The ban has been lifted.  We enjoyed the quiet in the Monet rooms.  The displays in the basement were as expected.  They had a special exhibition about the Dada movement, which to my taste belonged over in the Centre Pompidou with the rest of the weird stuff. On one of our prior visits, there were so many people using flash photography that it was no surprise that on the next visit photography was not allowed.

Our next stop (we used a bunch of Metro tickets) was the Picasso Museum. We had not been there since a major renovation had taken place. I was glad we had the use of GPS to find the place, because it wasn’t obvious. The museum is in a former mansion, and the rooms are kind of small, so sometimes it is hard to see the works because there are people in the way. I gather that on busy days they must limit access for people until somebody leaves.  We are not big Picasso fans, but this museum is very interesting, and they had a showing of one year’s (1932) worth of work on Picasso’s part, laid out month by month. I enjoyed the museum but am still not a Picasso fan.  I have to say the guy worked his butt off. It was interesting to learn about his problems with the Spanish government (under Franco) which led to him living in France.

After leaving the Picasso Museum we decided to find our old favorite place at Place du Marché Ste Catherine. Jody loves the goat cheese salad (chevre chaud) at Au Bistro de la Place, a tiny restaurant we have been going to since 2003. 

Chevre chaud makes Jody smile

The chevre chaud was really good, and I can still, barely, manage the teeny tiny chairs and tables.   We then poked around the Monoprix on Rue St Antoine, drooling on the stuff we couldn’t bring home.  And then we rode the #69 bus back to Rue Cler. Always a fascinating ride, cutting across four lanes of traffic on Rue de Rivoli, and going through the archway to the Louvre with a couple of inches clearance on each side of the bus.  Parisian bus drivers are incredible.

Thursday was my birthday, and we went to La Fontaine de Mars, a traditional French restaurant a few blocks away from our hotel. This place is crazy busy and things move really quickly. I had some foie gras and half of Jody’s vegetables.  It’s really good.  My dessert was chocolate mousse.  Good time.  You need to make a reservation if you want to go there. Our hotel took care of it for us, and we weren’t shunted upstairs the way they do to most tourists.

Friday was, very sadly, our last full day in Paris, and it started out raining. We decided to visit the Jacquemart-Andre museum, which is not on the Museum Pass. There is nearly always a special exhibition, and this one was a collection by a couple called the Hansens, and it had a variety of beautiful Impessionsist works.  The special exhibition spaces were very crowded but the regular apartments that make up the rest of the museum were not.  The museum offers an excellent audioguide, which makes for pleasant viewing.  Afterwards we had lunch in the museum café, which is an incredible place to eat and a destination in itself. Lots of salads, but a beautiful setting with wonderful service.

That afternoon we decided to visit the grand magazins (department stores) on Boulevard Hausmann.  The French go nuts over window displays, and the Christmas windows are insane.  We had hoped to find some Christmas cards but the Galeries Lafayette and Printemps are above such banalities. 

Galeries Lafayette dome

Eventually, we headed over to BHV, sort of like the Sears of Paris, where we found some Christmas cards but very, very few. They do New Year’s cards in France rather than Christmas cards.  We bought all the Christmas cars they had, and it wasn’t a lot.

That evening we basically just packed. We had to leave early for the airport in the morning, and the recommendation is three hours prior to departure.  (The recommendation in this case was overkill.)  We ate at Café Central, a brasserie on Rue Cler, and we had burgers. Jody had a veggie burger.  Mine was really good, and we washed it down with some Cote du Rhone. They were pushing Beaujolais Nouveau but we passed on it.

Our return trip was through DFW.  The flight from Paris was over ten hours, and we knew that our flight to San Diego would be in a different terminal. Getting through customs was a breeze, using Global Entry. We had received upgrades to first class – which we learned of in Paris – and we just went to our gate. The A321 has less leg room in first class than the 787-9 does in Main Cabin Extra.  But the seats were wider.  I was sitting next to an old lady who was on supplemental oxygen. She was on her way to San Diego for some medical procedure at the University of California. It was sort of a return to reality for me.

Flying into the setting sun

San Diego

We had texted our driver when we got to Dallas to let him know we were on schedule, and he was waiting in the cell phone lot at San Diego International Airport (formerly Lindbergh Field, but Lindy is not politically correct any more).  I was really glad not to have to drive home after so long a day of travel.

The cats seemed happy to see us.

We’ll probably not endure so long a trip for a just week’s stay again.  It was quite a bit easier from DFW.