Day 2: Le Louvre

DAY 2 of a week in Paris - Monday

Le Louvre et Champs-Elysées

• BREAKFAST: la patisserie below the apartment
• Le Louvre - today's post
• LUNCH: Angelina tea salon. 226 Rue de Rivoli (between Rues d'Alger and de Castiglione)
• Tuilleries
• Madeleine Church & Place de la Concorde
• Place Vendome
• Arc de Triomphe - view Paris (daily 10 a.m. to 5:30 p.m.)
• Champs-Elysées
• DINNER: La Boutique à Sandwiches. 12 Rue du Colisée (between Rue de Ponethieu and Ave des Champs-Elysées)
• Buddha Bar (8 rue Boissy d'Anglais, near Place de la Concorde)

Right next door to the Tuileries gardens, the Louvre sits like a grand jewel in the center of the Paris crown. Dating back to the 12th century when it was a fortress, then a residence, its history is long and complex (of course).

I have us visiting the Louvre on Monday, but in fact Nancy and I visited a second time on the following Sunday in 1997. The reason? We wanted to see more, and we're cheapskates - you can get in for free on Sundays. The downside to that, of course, is that you have to wait in line for quite a while. I think we waited an hour. But if you are in Paris more than a week, it's nice if you can make a couple of visits here, and spread out the vast collections. They say if you stopped in front of each work for 15 seconds it would take a month solid to view every work in the museum.





Personally, I find large museums incredibly daunting, and not too pleasant. Walking the long galleries of the Louvre - as long as a football field or two - is torturous for me. Like mall walking, when fatigue sets in because the pace is too slow. I much prefer the small house museums, such as the Picasso and Rodin.

But you must go, of course, and to see the collections in bite sizes is my recommendation. I never plan to visit for more than two hours, and I set out to see specific works.

On the first visit I recommend "Louvre Lite" - seeing the highlights, which gets you moving at a faster pace, you can even jog between them if you wish:

• Mary Magdalene by Erhart on the Lower Ground floor - my personal favorite; read here to see why.
• Venus de Milo on the Ground floor
• Mona Lisa and Winged Victory on the First floor

The handy map they give you displays the highlights.










Next post: Angelina Tea Salon - a less overwhelming subject.

a tale of two hotels: part II - Hotel du Vieux Marais

DAY 2 of a week in Paris - Monday

La Louvre et Champs-Elysées

• BREAKFAST: la patisserie below the apartment
• La Louvre
• LUNCH: Angelina tea salon. 226 Rue de Rivoli (between Rues d'Alger and de Castiglione)
• Tuilleries
• Madeleine Church & Place de la Concorde
• Place Vendome
• Arc de Triomphe - view Paris (daily 10 a.m. to 5:30 p.m.)
• Champs-Elysées
• DINNER: La Boutique à Sandwiches. 12 Rue du Colisée (between Rue de Ponethieu and Ave des Champs-Elysées)
• Buddha Bar (8 rue Boissy d'Anglais, near Place de la Concorde)

After spending our first of two weeks in the Hotel Saint-Roch, the shabby not-so-chic hotel I'd found online for us (last post) until Nancy's friend's apartment was available, we threw our things into our suitcases, hopped into a taxi and headed for rue du Platre in the Marais. There is a lot of history and buzz around Le Marais district of Paris, and it's a highly desirable area of residence. My sister's friend who owns the apartment is an opera singer in NYC, and she was lucky to get a prized apartment in this building that also houses the Hotel du Vieux Marais.

As I mentioned in the last post, there are always certain things you expect that don't happen on a trip like this, and things you don't expect that do. When those unexpected things turn out to be life-long loves, they are good indeed.

One of the unexpected things that wasn't so lovely was that this apartment in the Marais was a 4th floor walk-up. We had spared nothing packing our suitcases for two weeks in Paris. We must have been pretending we were Ms. & Ms. Gotrocks, taking dresses and as many shoes as we wanted. So we had BIG suitcases. But since we weren't Ms. and Ms. Gotrocks, we had to carry those suitcases up four flights by ourselves. But once we were up there, it was great, complete with floor length balcony windows (ours is the top floor in the photo above, just hidden under the hotel card, my sister in her own room and me on a futon in the living room with those tall windows.

So I'm getting to my life-long love discovery. Our first morning waking up in the apartment we decided to try out the patisserie in the ground floor of the apartment building. I went for a café crème and a Danish-looking pastry. We sat outside under an umbrella in the spring sun, watching local residents hurry by on their way to work. This is not a tourist district.



We met pretty Ellen, another American from Boston, who was staying in the hotel. We invited her up for some wine and cheese later in the week, another nice reason to stay in an apartment if you can - they cost no more than a hotel per night, and you have a kitchen, washing machine and lots of room. In the photo above I'm not talking to myself, I'm talking to Ellen. In the photo below, Ellen and Nancy are there looking pretty at our table.



All right, I won't keep you in suspense any longer. My life-long discovery. That Danish-looking pastry was called pain aux raisins (bread with raisins). Although I tried to find its equal at many patisseries in Paris, I never found one as phenomenally delicious as at this little patisserie in the Marais. The secret is that within the spiral of dough and raisins is custard. Yes custard. The delicate brioche dough, combined with custard, is the most delicious thing I've ever tasted. The little woman who bakes them is not terribly friendly and doesn't seem to know a word of English, but the woman knows how to bake.



The afternoon before we left Paris after our two week stay, I ordered 18 of these to pick up in the morning, on our way to the airport. I had brought Ziploc bags for who knows what reason. I packaged up my treasures, snuggled them into the suitcase, and took them - a little flatter - to the office two days after arriving home. I shared them with my colleagues, and they declared that even two-three days old, these were the best tasting things they'd ever eaten.

Now, when I return to Paris, I always try to find an apartment in the Marais - not only for the desirable neighborhood, but for this little patisserie and its pain aux raisins.



I found this photo online at a Flickr page. Hope they don't mind.

a tale of two hotels: part I - Saint-Roch

DAY 2 of a week in Paris - Monday

La Louvre et Champs-Elysées

• BREAKFAST: la patisserie below the apartment
• La Louvre
• LUNCH: Angelina tea salon. 226 Rue de Rivoli (between Rues d'Alger and de Castiglione)
• Tuilleries
• Madeleine Church & Place de la Concorde
• Place Vendome
• Arc de Triomphe - view Paris (daily 10 a.m. to 5:30 p.m.)
• Champs-Elysées
• DINNER: La Boutique à Sandwiches. 12 Rue du Colisée (between Rue de Ponethieu and Ave des Champs-Elysées)
• Buddha Bar (8 rue Boissy d'Anglais, near Place de la Concorde)

My love of travel planning for Paris began in April 1997 when my sister told me she was taking me to Paris in three weeks, for a two week stay. It was just after our mother had died of Alzheimer's, after Nancy and I had cared for her - Nancy particularly, for six months before we found a lovely home for seniors with dementia. When Mom passed away that March after eighteen months in the home, Nancy and Don began conniving secretly about a vacation for her and me, and where would Ruth want to go? First word out of Don's mouth was "Paris" - even though I hadn't really ever talked about it since a 3-day visit there in my college days. I think he just thought of the most romantic destination in that instant.

After my sister stunned me with this news in my office it didn't take long for me to start planning the trip, which she asked me to do. Joy! Nancy had a friend who owned a Paris apartment (located above the second hotel in this tale, Hotel du Vieux Marais - in the photo at the right), but sadly it was only available the second week of our trip. So for our first week I found us a hotel online, Hotel Saint-Roch, which appeared cozy and charming, and was reasonably priced (under $100 a night).

The Hotel Saint-Roch was on rue Saint-Roch, which was named for the historic church of the same name located there. Geographically very close to the Louvre and Tuileries gardens in the center of Paris, I thought it would make a perfect launching point.

Well, certain things about the Saint-Roch were perfection, but the charm was a little ragged, and we found out it was nicknamed by Parisians "St Roach." Some things you plan, and they don't turn out so well. Other things you don't plan, and you are surprised by their astonishing beauty.

In spite of the imperfections of this shabby little hotel, there were perfect things:

* Location. I had been right about this at least, that after a tiring day walking the city, our legs shaking with weariness, we would be glad to be at the center of things.

* The beauty of music. So the thing we couldn't have known or planned was that this little hotel on a narrow street across from a big church would provide a serenade every evening as we walked rue Saint-Roch, exhausted with happy exploration, back to our room. Heavenly music shimmered down on us through the windows of the church. One night choir practice, another organ practice, yet another orchestra. We climbed the winding stair to our room to it, we undressed and washed the street grime from ourselves to it, we climbed into bed and fell asleep to it - our open windows conduits for a Paris lullaby as comforting as la Vie en Rose.

Next week I'll tell you about the second hotel in this tale, where we stayed our second week, and the discovery that would become one of my most important in Paris.

PARIS Métro: Pyramides or Tuileries

Berthillon ice cream

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Day 1 of a week in Paris - Sunday

The Islands: Ile de la Cité - Ile Saint-Louis

Berthillon

• Breakfast: Hotel? (not sure if la patisserie is open Sundays)
• Notre Dame; tour and climb tower
• Place Louis-Lepine - bird and flower market
• Sainte-Chapelle; tour and purchase billets for evening concert - LAST POST
• Lunch: Brasserie de Isle St-Louis -- Look for the stork!
• Walk Isle St-Louis; ice cream at Berthillion; Square Barye - THIS POST
• Supper: Sandwich or omelette?
• Evening concert at Sainte Chapelle - LAST POST

After reading about Berthillon in my favorite Paris travel guide - ACCESS - then finding the flagship store on rue St-Louis en Ile the main street down the center of tiny Ile Saint-Louis (the smaller "ship" island floating in the Seine, behind Ile de la Cité on which the Notre-Dame sits) and waiting in line for maybe 30 minutes, I was starting to realize that an ice cream cone in Paris was not going to be like an ice cream cone at Baskin-Robbins. Seeing customers leave with their small cone and one or two golf-ball sized scoops, instead of baseball-and-a-half sized scoops a la Baskin-Robbins, I noted that once again, the French culinary experience proved that if you eat smaller amounts of food made with expert skill from fresh, high quality ingredients, you will be satisfied with less.

There are unusual flavors, such as rhubarb, pear and grapefruit, but my favorite (not that I've tried them all) is strawberry, which my sister Nancy is enjoying, above, while she holds mine so I can snap the photo. The flavor is intense - as if condensed, and not overly sweet. One scoop is parfait pour mois.

I skimmed the history of ice cream at this informative site and learned that ices date back to 1100 BC! Berthillon began in the 1950s only. The Italians brought their gelato to France via Catherine de Medici - known as the mother of French cuisine (interesting that she, and it, were really Italian) - in the 1500s. She's the one, remember, who at age 14 married the Duc d'Orleans (who later became Henri II), also age 14.

This page on the Berthillon web site gives locations of the shops around Paris. But you will also find their ice cream sold in patisseries and restaurants around the city.

Here are two last images of Ile Saint-Louis, as this is the last post of Day 1 on the islands. The first is of the Brasserie de Isle St-Louis again, where we had omelettes, and the second is of the Pont St-Louis, the little pedestrian bridge between the islands where musicians, painters, body contortionists, magicians - entertainers of all sorts, set up their shows and hope for a few Euro in their boxes.

I loved the horn player with his child on his back.

Next post we'll move on to Day 2 of a week in Paris.

PARIS Métro: Cité