We arrived in paris (in one of it's 6 train ...
Trip Start
Jun 08, 2001
1
7
Trip End
Aug 06, 2001
Paris, France
Monday, July 23, 2001
We did a lot of walking while in Paris, our hotel was about a mile from the Louvre, and several of the other museums. Our first day we went to the Orsay museum, which was beautiful! We saw many different types of art, even a special exhibition about a famous furniture designer. There was Van Gogh, Monet, Manet, Cezanne, Rembrandt, and many others that we're forgetting, I'm sure. We had planned to also go to the Louvre the same day, but the Orsay itself took a good 4 hours to see, and we didn't feel like battling anymore museum crowds, especially since the Louvre is many times larger than the Orsay! We walked down to the Rodin museum, it was a favorite of ours. It was a large house and garden full of Rodin's sculptures, and a few of the paintings from his collection. The collection was fairly spread out, and it was nice to walk the garden and find sculptures hidden behind hedges. Even famous sculptures, like "The Thinker" and "The Gates of Hell" (based on Dante's Inferno) were uncrowded and easy to view almost alone.
At the end of the day, however, we were so tired of looking at art- ok, that's not really true, we were mostly tired of the other people who were also looking at art, that would walk and stand right in front of you while you were looking at something, or worse yet, the entire tour groups that insisted on having their picture taken...individually...in front of a famous sculpture or painting. We were a bit tired of the crowds, and really wanted to get some dinner! Actually, one tip for anyone going to Paris, the best thing about all the museums was that we had a "Paris Museum Pass" and could go to the front on the line! It costs the same as entry to any 2 museums would, and it really is worth the money just to not have to stand in line for tickets!
The next day we went to the Louvre, the building itsself is amazing, and the size of it is overwhelming. We wandered through the whole thing for about 4 hours, by the time we got to the last wing we were barely even looking at the artwork, but we did get to see the Mona Lisa...with about 100 people crowding around it. Also here was the Venus di Milo, Dying Slave (Michelangelo), and many other pieces of art that we recognized. That night we went on a cruise on the Siene, and saw the Eiffel Tower glowing with lights. We went back to the courtyard area by our hotel and had our best Parisian meal- at an asian restaurant! When we got back to the room there was a special on TV, "Sound and Fury" a movie about a Deaf family in America. It was ironic, that the one movie that was in English and we had a chance of understanding, had French dubbed over the spoken English...but Ellie interpreted what she could of the signing, so it was actually kinda fun. It turned out to be a whole special on Deafness, and was followed by French Deaf people at Gallaudet college in Washington DC. Strangely enough, on our trip so far we haven't seen any Deaf people! We thought that with the Deaf Olympics happening in Rome this summer, we would meet a few deaf travellers, but not yet. Oh well...
Our last full day in Paris we went to the Eiffel Tower, then walked to the Arc de Triumph and down the Champs de Elysse, where they were setting up bleachers to get ready for Bastille Day and the final leg of the Tour de France. It was a long day of walking, so we went back to the room and took a nap, then went out for an authentic French meal...escargot and all. It was good, but not the rave we had hoped it would be.
The next morning we headed out by train to a Northwest coastal town and caught a ferry to Rosslare, Ireland. We had planned on staying another night somewhere in the Northwest area of France to see the Normandy beaches but we either made this ferry or we had to wait 2 more weeks for an opening on another ferry. It was supposed to leave at 6pm but was late due to poor weather and we didn't set sail until 9pm. We had been warned that it was going to be a bumpy ride and we were reminded of that as we were going to our sleeping room we could follow the trail of vomit down the hallway. We were surprised that the ferry was an old, smaller cruise boat that had a restaurant, lounge, movie theatre, coffee and souvinier shop and its own hypnotist putting on shows in the ballroom. Unfortunately, both of us get seasick and getting out of bed for any extended period of time was not a good thing! The weather was so bad that nobody was allowed out on the deck of the boat and it was crowded in the common areas because many people don't get sleeping quarters because they plan to spend their time on the decks. The ride was scheduled to last 14 hours and we were supposed to arrive in Ireland at 6am, the next morning but 21 hours later we arrived at 4pm! There wasn't much scenery to see from the boat due to the weather and we spent most of our time sleeping and reading.
Everybody told us that either you love or you hate Paris. We are in the middle! It certainly was the opposite of the small, quaint towns that we have been spending most of our time in and of course we expected that. Unlike the rest of France, the people weren't the nicest and there are a lot of people, cars, mopeds and noise but you can't help but love the amount of history, culture and art that the city contains.
Next adventure, Ireland, where we rent a car and Ron figures out how to drive on the left side of the road!
