Notre Dame, The Louvre, and the Place de la Concorde

So, I'm putting my scrapbook together, and I'm going through all the odds and ends that I picked up along the way in Paris.

I've kept every brochure, every ticket, every receipt.

I've kept little leaves I picked up off the ground.

I even kept the french sugar packets off the cafe' tables.

I literally kept every souvenir I could get my tiny little hands on.

I didn't really have enough time to do a travel log while I was there, but I found on the back of one of my receipts some scribbled down notes. They aren't like "today I went to the Louvre.." kind of notes, but instead they're of the "Why do all these beautiful fountains smell like dead fish?" variety. Just a few very unfiltered thoughts about the way I felt about Paris while I was there in the moment. So for whatever reason, I'll share.

*My tour guide just told us about our meeting place for the afternoon and then repeated it in 3 other languages for everyone on the bus. Impressive. Everyone here seems to be bilingual except me.

*This city is clean, CLEAN, CLEAN!! I haven't seen a piece of litter in 3 days.

*I had no idea Paris was divided into quarters. 

* Everyone is very polite here. I wonder where the "Parisians hate Americans" stereotype came from?

*Every single building looks like a castle. Even the public toilets. 

*How can a city smell so sweet like crepes and also like piss at the same time?

*Even the graffiti is gorgeous here. 

*It's true. French people really stink. 

*I wonder why there are virtually no fat people here when all they eat is cream filled pastries. I haven't seen any joggers so...?

And there you have it. Those were my intimate thoughts about the City of Lights.  

My family literally did 5 million things in our 4 days in Paris. Our plane landed at 9am, we dropped our luggage off at the hotel and we hit the ground running. By noon on the first day we had already walked from our hotel, down the Champs-Élysées, to the Grand Palais, to the Petit Palais, to the Pantheon, to half a dozen bridges, and then here to the Louvre. We literally walked for miles with our heads looking up at all the architecture and our jaws open. And I'm so glad we walked and didn't take a cab ride to all the main places we wanted to go otherwise we would have missed all the details along the way.

But anyway, the Louvre! Talk about grand, this place is gigantic!

It was originally built as a fortress by King Phillipe-Auguste to protect Paris from a viking invasion but when that never happened, it was turned into an enormous royal palace. After decades of use through the middle ages, Louis XVI decided he would rather live in the palace of Versailles with his wife Marie Antoinette so they kept all the spare stuff here kind of like a storage garage. In 1793 it was opened to the public as a museum to show off all the royal paintings and sculptures.

The Louvre is the largest museum in the entire world and houses over 1 million pieces of artwork, the most famous being the Mona Lisa. I heard a tour guide saying that if you spent 30 seconds looking at every single piece of art, and you never took a break to eat, sleep or pee, it would take you just over 9 months to see everything.

We didn't go inside, the line was hours long and I didn't want to spend that time waiting to fight with a million other tourists to see the Mona Lisa or the Venus de Milo, so we just hung out in the courtyard for a while.
The Arc de Triomphe du Carrousel was also designed for Napoleon's military victories but in comparison to Arc de Triomphe de l'Étoile, this one only took a couple of years to build instead of 30, and it is only half the size.

The Place du Carrousel is the courtyard just outside the Louvre. It is home to the Roue de Paris which was installed in 2000 for the millennium celebrations. We didn't ride on it but I'm sure the view from the top of the wheel is outstanding.

So, right down the street is the Place de la Concord and it has a seriously creepy vibe to it. It's the largest open public square in the city and it happens to be where the main guillotine was during the French Revolution. The guillotine beheaded over 1,300 people in just one month during the summer of 1794's "reign of terror," with a total of just under 3000 people total being killed there including Marie Antoinette and her husband King Louis XVI. There is an old wives tale that a herd of cattle once refused to cross the square because the smell of blood was so strong.

The tall pointed obelisk in the middle of the square is called Cleopatra's Needle. There are three of them in the world, the other 2 in New York City and London. All three are original ancient Egypt stone monuments but they don't really have anything to do with Queen Cleopatra VII of Egypt.

From there we headed to a little Gothic cathedral called Notre-Dame.

Notre-Dame de Paris, French for Our Lady of Paris, holds some of the most first class pieces of Catholicism history including the Crown of Thorns, one of the Holy Nails, and a piece of the True Cross.  

The detail in the stone is like nothing I've ever seen before. To think about the fact that the ground breaking for this cathedral was in 1163 to be "completed" in 1345 blows my mind.

Obviously, there have been many changes and restoration done throughout the years, but the main structure remains the same. My favorite part of the additions are the gargoyles which are actually functional water spouts used for drainage.  

There was a mass going on while we were there with bleachers set up out front for everyone to sit. There was a large projector screen and a giant camera and boom microphone to broadcast the ceremony to the people outside. It was extremely hectic.

Roman Catholic Saint and French heroine Joan of Arc has a great statue right as you're exiting the church. I think it's great that there are so many fantastic women in French history and that they are celebrated the way they are. 

There it is; our first morning in Paris. I've been trying to blog as much as possible so that I have a reason to go through all my pictures and remember everything I learned. If I don't write it down now, I'll forget all the details. Since The Brighter Writer is kind of a melting pot of my ideas and experiences, all of you have to sit through every vacation I ever go on! Ha!

Seriously, I appreciate all the love lately and thanks for reading! 

Next week, I'll start writing about my trips to the Palace of Versailles and Claude Monet's house.  Have a great weekend everyone!

Monet's Garden: Giverny, France

When I thought about France as a general whole, I suppose I never included the city of Paris. I always think of Paris as a separate entity for whatever reason. When I think of everywhere else in France however, I think about a rolling countryside, quaint little villages and far off castles. 

My daughter watched the Disney movie Beauty and the Beast a million times right before I left on this vacation, so in my tiny little pea brain I guess I figured I was going to the opening scene of Belle singing about her provincial life...

Like this:

Or like this:

 I know it's horribly corny, but it's embarrassingly true. I didn't even know this was a concept in my head until we drove through it and I thought to myself, "why does this place look so familiar?" 

And then it shamelessly dawned on me...

Oh.

Yes.

I'm in a 3-year-old's imagination.

That's right.

But it was seriously like something right out of a fairytale.

Imagine driving down the one way road, windows down, clean air blowing your hair in the wind, and when you look strait ahead you see the remnants of an old abandoned castle.

This particular one is called the Chateau de la Roche Guyon. After I got home, I was trying to find some information about it, and this is what I stumbled across from one grumpy historian: "At the summit of a steep promontory, dominating the bank of the great river Seine, rises a frightful castle without title to nobility, called La Roche. Invisible on the surface, it is hollowed out of a high cliff. The able hand of the builder has established in the mountainside, digging into the rock, an ample dwelling provided with a few miserable openings".

!!!

A dwelling providing a few miserable openings?!

I suppose in comparison to some of the other castles in the neighborhood it may fall a little bit short, but it's still beautiful nonetheless. I wouldn't exactly call it a shack...

These kinds of little tossed aside treasures were everywhere. This "dwelling" on the right of the road had an underground lookout tower which looked like it hadn't been stepped inside of for years.

But upon closer inspection, it had a bulletin board posted to the left of the staircase so it must be used for something.

So we kept driving, and I kept daydreaming of what it must be like to live here. I didn't see any schools, I didn't see any businesses,  I didn't even see any people. I just saw these gorgeous houses made of beautiful stone and every one has climbing roses all the way up each and every side. Quite a different smell than I had just left behind in Versailles.

Our completely insane tour guide (who was arguably one of the sweetest men on the continent) drives us the wrong way up the steepest one way street I've ever been on, as fast as he could take us, turning corners so quickly it was making me dizzy. There wasn't a knuckle in the car that wasn't white. Finally with one sharp left turn, the mini-bus comes to a halt and parks.

Just like that.

And as I look up and to the opposite side of the van, this is what I see through the window:

SERIOUSLY?!

This place is Le Moulin de Fourges. It is built as a replica of one of the buildings on the Versailles grounds which was used by Marie Antoinette when she wanted to pretend she was a farmer. She had an entire village constructed so she felt like she was a commoner away from Court constraints. It's hard to imagine a place like this as someones playhouse in their backyard.

We were running late due to someone spending more than their allotted time in the Versailles garden gift shop (I don't have any idea who that could have been...) and so we were escorted immediately to our table for a quick lunch before heading to Claude Monet's gardens.

So here I was, in the middle of France, at Belle's house, sipping extraordinarily fancy wine (at 11am) and spreading my fancy Pâté that tasted like cat food on my fancy french bread with my fancy napkin on my lap, and my fancy 5 forks that I couldn't for the life of me differentiate between.

They're lucky I put the water in the big wine glass...

The chicken marsala was amazing but the fresh apple strudel for dessert was even more amazing.

Our guide Max gave us about half an hour to wander around the grounds to "make pictures" before we headed to Monet's Garden.

One last look before we were off again.

Pulling up to Giverny came along with a strong sense of calm. We had to walk a few short blocks to get to the gardens and every street we came to looked like a Disney movie set.

We started getting closer to the entrance sign but even before we could see the garden we could smell it. The sweet scent of lilac and rose could have taken you to the front gate even if you were blind. 

The intoxicating aroma of thousands of flowers hit me in the face like a punch and reminded me how tired I was. It just seems like a place built to take a long nap in the shade of the summer heat. It is just so completely relaxing.

Claude Monet was famous for being one of the founders of Impressionist style oil paintings.  He produced hundreds of them in the late 1890's and early 1900's. Having a strong passion for art throughout his entire life, he moved to his house located here in Giverny, France in 1883 because of the inspiration from its small garden. From then, he cultivated a living masterpiece which continued to inspire him for the rest of his life. His most famous works are all impressionistic visions of places found in this garden, perhaps the most famous being "Water Lilies" which is on display at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in Los Angeles, California.

It is unbelievably cool to see the same yellow flowers grow in the exact spot Monet planted them over 100 years ago.

This piece tittled "Water Lily Pond and Weeping Willow" is one of my all time favorites.

In person, it's everything you'd expect it to be.

There was a very strict "NO PHOTOGRAPHY ALLOWED" rule enforced once we were inside Mr. Monet's house seen below. So I'll end today's post with this little peak-a-boo view and with the words of Monet himself:

“It’s on the strength of observation and reflection that one finds a way. So we must dig and delve unceasingly.”

Disneyland Paris

I've been trying to finish my Paris posts for weeks, but the combo of losing employees at work and having to cover all the unfilled shifts, the awful Colorado flood last weekend, and every other daily distraction, my writing has been few and far between.

My final Paris post is a quick one!

We all know how I feel about the happiest place on Earth ...

Because going to all 5 Disney theme parks is on my bucket list, I was just dying to find out how the Paris Disneyland stacked up against the California original.

Initially, Euro Disney received really poor reviews for numerous reasons. First of all, France considered Disneyland Paris to be a sick representation of American consumerism. Further, the American managers required nothing but English to be spoken throughout the park. And lastly, it probably seemed a bit ridiculous to them that we romanticised Kings, Queens and Princesses and that we had a strange obsession with enchanted castles. Royalty were the every day norm for them and you don't see Europeans going around dressing up like the President of the United States and decorating their bedrooms like the White House.

Eventually, Paris and the rest of Europe either got sick of fighting it, turned the other cheek, or just relaxed a little and let it go. Either way, the upward climb of business has been amazing and now it is the number one most visited attraction in all of France and Europe.

Yes, it's true that most people don't fly all the way across an ocean to visit another country and then end up at Disneyland. But this is my family we're talking about here. We're Disney fanatics. So the option of not going wasn't even thrown into the ring.  Also a tradition in my family, you can't just go as your normal self. All three of us picked a character and dressed accordingly.

Pulling up seemed familiar. We were really early so it appeared as though the only other people there were employees. This just gave us more time to take it all in.

Some obvious differences were clear right from the get go. Everything was in French. I assumed the fairy from Pinocchio was still saying "when you wish upon a star," but for all I know she could be spouting off profanities.

Le Château de la Belle au Bois Dormant = The Castle of the Beauty who was Dormant in the Wood otherwise known as Sleeping Beauty's Castle.

In California, the riverboat that plunges through the Rivers of America is called the Mark Twain. In Paris, the riverboat is named the Molly Brown. As in "the unsinkable Molly Brown," survivor of the infamous Titanic.

Pirates of the Caribbean is almost the same as the one we're used to. The outside façade is very different but the ride itself is very similar. We got our picture taken going down the first steep slope in our boat, but the "Dead Men Tell No Tales" anthem was still prevalent all the way through, the option of taking a wench for a bride was still available, and the damn dog still won't give up the key.

Instead of the Haunted Mansion, we were now entering the Haunted Manor. Guests still sit through the ride in the usual "doom buggies," but instead this house tells the story of The Phantom of the Opera and it is designed to be scarier and darker than it's sister mansion.

We rode It's A Small World twice. Once to get the picture of the Eiffel Tower out front,

and then again because we thought it was funny that the American part of the ride was stereotyped with a Greenbay Packer and a New York Met.

My favorite thing about the entire park was that Alice has an entire wonderland spread over the majority of Fantasyland. Not just a ride and some teacups, but a separate labyrinth, a castle, a ride, a photo station, statues and some teacups. She's kind of big deal.

The Mad Hatter's Teacup ride is under its own little weather proof station.

Pretty much the coolest ride I've ever seen.

Of course we spun our cup as fast as we could go, but when a photo opportunity presents itself, we know when to slow down for the camera.

So to say au revoir to France, we did it the way our family knows best, which is to give back a little to the American Economy.

Now that we're back across the pond and in the States, I'm happy to say that we're all safe and sound from the terrible floods that destroyed our little corner of Colorado. Both my house and my sister's house was luckily spared from any damage as we're both far enough away from our beloved Big Thompson River and the Cache Le Poudre River. None the less, our poor towns and the towns we love around us are destroyed and it will take quite a while for roads and bridges to be repaired. 

I'll keep you posted! 

Until then, please keep the rescue workers, those who lost their lives, property, friends and family in your thoughts.