Champs-Elysées

-
-

DAY 2 of a week in Paris - Monday

Le Louvre et Champs-Elysées

• BREAKFAST: la patisserie below the apartment
• Le 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 - TODAY'S POST
• 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)

Next on our itinerary after the Tuilleries is the Madeleine Church, which I have posted about here and here.

So today I'm sharing just a little bit about the Champs-Elysées. Because I have never been a person of means - or a shopper (maybe they go hand in hand) - I have not spent much time on this fashionable avenue.

I have already told the story of meeting Catherine, an American woman traveling alone like me. I first noticed her at the café in the photo of me at top drinking a café crème (taken by a Chinese couple who first asked me with gestures to take their picture). Funny how you notice other Americans in a foreign city. Catherine and I didn't speak there, but later in the day when we saw each other in a totally different part of the city, we stopped and introduced ourselves. Has that ever happened to you? You're in one of the world's big cities, and you see the same people in different spots, sometimes even on different days?

This little hour at a café on my solo 2006 trip is one of a few Champs-Elysées memories.

The first happened with Nancy in 1997. We had not yet heard of Sephora, the cosmetics store par excellence. So when we walked into their flagship store on the Champs-Elysées we felt we'd entered a magical realm of womanly dreams come true. What aided that fantasy was a tall beautiful model in a maxi-length black coat and one white glove opening the door for us. Throughout the vast store were many other beautiful male and female models/sales clerks dressed in the same costume. The room's walls were lined floor to ceiling with women's perfume on one wall and men's cologne on the other, then make-up down the center. Any product queen would feel she'd died and gone to heaven. We saw dutiful husbands (or lovers) leaving with pretty little bags that we assumed contained tiny bottles of perfume. In the middle of our browsing, suddenly we were being rushed out of the store. There was a bomb scare! We were able to go back into the store after a few minutes to finish dipping white paper dipsticks into perfume bottles to sample scents. (Imagine how the avenue would have smelled if a bomb had gone off. Ok, somber but fragrant thought.) I was a dutiful wife and bought my husband a bottle of cologne (was it Dior?).

Now, of course, Americans can go into a Sephora in any shopping mall or even JC Penneys. But for us, the experience was part of the Paris mystique.

Don snapped this in 2003

Another Champs-Elysées memory was with Don in 2003. I posted about the gracious French doctor - Giancarlo - who owned the apartment where we stayed on the tiny island Ile Saint-Louis. He refused to settle for handing us a key to the apartment in a café and instead insisted on picking us up at the airport! And not only that. Knowing from our emails that this was Don's first visit to this gorgeous city, he took the extra effort to drive in on the Champs-Elysées en route to the apartment so that Don would see the best and most interesting approach right off the bat. So much for a French reputation of rudeness! On this crazy heart-racing drive he also told us how the city hires cleaners who every night wash graffiti off the city's white buildings, leaving them pristine and fresh every morning. Oh, and one more thing. At Rond-point at Place de Charles De Gaulle the circle around the Arc de Triomphe, suddenly all cars - which had been driving at breakneck speed - slowed to a crawl. Giancarlo explained that in this circle of pavement, insurance does not cover drivers!




One of the happy discoveries while walking with Nancy, in the 1997 photo below, was the Allée Marcel Proust, just at the start of the Champs-Elysées, and parallel with it. It is a pretty park-like walkway, quiet and protected from the hustle of the busy avenue.




We found Allée Marcel Proust just after watching President Clinton's limousine speed by on his way to the presidential palace to see Jacques Chirac. Clinton was in Paris to give a NATO speech.

Jardin des Tuileries

DAY 2 of a week in Paris - Monday

Le Louvre et Champs-Elysées

• BREAKFAST: la patisserie below the apartment
• Le Louvre
• LUNCH: Angelina tea salon. 226 Rue de Rivoli (between Rues d'Alger and de Castiglione)
• Tuilleries - TODAY'S POST
• 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)

In most of my trips to Paris, I have sought to stay near the center of the city so that every day's jaunts end up back here, at the Tuileries gardens. It's beautiful in the morning, as the sun rises behind the Louvre, and it's more beautiful in the evening as the sun sets behind the Arc de Triomphe and the obelisk at Place de la Concorde (the direction of the top photo).

At the end of a long day of walking, I feel like the fellow in the statue above - utterly spent and ready for sitting in one of the green metal reclining chairs by a fountain.



There is great people watching, especially the kids who rent toy sailboats and push them around the pool with their sticks.



Of course the flowers are fabulous, as are all the flowers in Paris. I've noticed year after year that the garden designers around the city do unique things each year. One year I was surprised and pleased to see thistle in the Luxembourg gardens. Wonderful!

But each visit there have been irises.



You can buy an ice cream.



You can sleep in the shade.


You can bring your lunch and eat with a friend.






Above is me, and below is my sister Nancy, in 1997, the year our mother passed away with Alzheimer's. We treated ourselves to two full weeks in Paris - my first visit since I studied abroad in college in 1975.




I can't say that after resting in the Tuileries we necessarily felt like doing Pilates, but it was nice to watch this lady doing hers with the Louvre in the background.



I leave you with this final sketch by Fabrice Moireau, from his book Paris Sketchbook.

Angelina Tea Salon

DAY 2 of a week in Paris - Monday

Le Louvre et Champs-Elysées

• BREAKFAST: la patisserie below the apartment
• Le Louvre
• LUNCH: Angelina tea salon. 226 Rue de Rivoli (between Rues d'Alger and de Castiglione) - TODAY'S POST
• 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)

The little clipping from Access Paris calls this the Rolls-Royce of tea salons, and I imagine it is.

It sits under the shady colonnade on rue de Rivoli - a fashionable and expensive street of touristy shops and hotels. This is where you're likely to pick up a sight-seeing bus for a two-hour tour of the city (a good idea to get the lay of the place). You can find nice souvenirs on this street, even not too expensively. But of course, you have to get off this tourist rue and off into your own discoveries. I have a sweet story to share from this street one day soon, my favorite Paris story.

Angelina is a nice stop after a long day along the Seine. The Tuilleries gardens are just across the street, next to the Louvre, so you can walk over there after tea, sit back in the sun for a while to rest your weary legs, and feel drops from the fountain blown by the wind while you watch children push toy sailboats with sticks.

I wish I had images of Angelina besides the napkin I took away, above, but you can read a lovely post about it at The Paris Traveler. So I will give you instead images I do have from another tea salon, across from eastern-most end of the Louvre.



These little tea stops are wonderful with a friend, but they are equally fine alone. A place to stop on a long stroll up the Seine, to write down reflections on what you just saw - because you know you'll forget. To drink a cup of tea or café crème, maybe nibble on a madeleine or croissant.

Or watch the world go by.




226 Rue de Rivoli (between Rues d'Alger and de Catiglione)
PARIS Métro: Concorde or Tuileries

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.