Our Blog - Paris

We had family coming to Paris and Normandy for a little vacation, and so we headed up to Paris to spend a few days with them. While we were there, we took some time to see a few things that we hadn't seen before and, of course, spent time going through the newly-reopened Notre Dame.

We didn't know that the Festival of Bread for the Paris region was going on during our weekend trip. They had setup a large tent in the square in front of Notre Dame. In addition to the actual competition, you could watch them making croissants and pain au chocolates (called chocolatine in Toulouse), and buy them if you wanted. They were explaining the competition a little ... each of the contestants make, for example, a baguette by hand using the same ingredients, the same oven, the same atmospheric conditions. In this way, when they are judged, you are truly judging the work of the baker and not the other factors. Here you can see them with the pain au chocolates ... after getting the dough rolled out, each is cut into the right size rectangle and 2 strips of chocolate are placed down, then the baker rolls it up. It then proofs on the tray before baking.

We only did a few specific things while we were in Paris, most of the time we wanted to just hang out with family. The main thing that we had on our list to do this visit was to go through Notre-Dame Cathedral to see it now that it has reopened after the fire. It was very busy inside even though I didn't really think it was high season yet. There is also a process for getting a time slot to enter and "skip the queue", which I will discuss as part of the blog.

What is a May vacation without a little hail storm! Turn the sound up for the full effect!

Two other things that we did on this trip that we hadn't done before was a visit to the Victor Hugo House museum where the writer Victor Hugo lived for a time, and a visit to the Conciergerie, which was the prison where Marie Antoinette was held before she was beheaded during the French Revolution.

The entire group took a night-time boat cruise to see the twinkling of the Eiffel Tower. Just a few pictures of sites from the boat ... first is Pont Neuf (the "new" bridge, ironically named, since it is the oldest standing bridge across the river Seine in Paris). Then the top of part of the Louvre, then the Musee d'Orsay (former train station turned into an art museum with its' famous clock dating back to 1900).

We didn't get a great view of Notre Dame, but I did get a bit from the boat. Then the "new" Pont d'Alma bridge but with a statue from the original. It is said that the city uses this statue to tell the level of the water ... if it touches the toes, it is too high and water traffic gets reduced or stopped.

The "star" of the trip was the Eiffel Tower. The night-time boat cruises are all timed to be at the right point when the twinkling of the tower begins. As we got close, we could get a nice view of the tower lit up with the beacon.

Then the twinkling started (which seems to be at the top of the hour after sunset) The picture has some of the twinkling lights but it is best seen in the video.

And proof that I take horrible selfies! Even with the new editing capabilities with my new iPhone, I can't "fix" the selfie :-(

We did a little bit of just walking around and I grabbed just a couple pictures. The first is of the Hotel de Sens, a 16th century private mansion that today houses the Forney art library. The mansion was built to serve as a residence for the archbishops of Sens on the site of a former 14th century mansion that as used by King Charles V before the royalty moved into the newly built Louvre palace.

If you've read some of my former blogs, you have definitely seen the Saint Jacques tower before. It is a 170-foot-tall Flamboyant Gothic tower in the middle of town that is all that remains of the 16th-century Church of Saint-Jacques-de-la-Boucherie, demolished in 1797 during the French Revolution. A bit of trivia: The tower inspired Alexandre Dumas to write the play La tour Saint-Jacques-de-la-boucherie in 1856.

The best metro station entrance in Paris (in my humble opinion) is the one at the Palais Royal. Most metro entrances do not have a name, but this one does: the "Kiosque des Noctambules" (Night Owls Kiosk). It was created in 2000 by a French artist to celebrate the centenary of the Parisian Metro. Colored glass beads from Murano, Italy are strung on an aluminum structure, creating something that resembles a cdrown. The stairs are surrounded by an aluminum lace and the art work continues down the stairs with painted earthenware tiles and two display cases with colored glass beads.