On Sunday morning, we woke up early (around 7:30AM) and began to get ready for the day. The bathroom in our room was small, and the bathing area was a really small tub, with the bottom molded as a seat for your bottom and sprayer to rinse yourself off. I got in and realized that they didn't provide washcloths with our towels. Larry suggested and I accepted the offer to use an extra clean sock as my washcloth. There is a picture, but I will only be sharing that with certain special people (you know who you are).
We finished getting ready and headed out for the day. Our goal was to had petit dejuener (breakfast) at a nice cafe before starting the day. We walked up and past the Pantheon, and down a bunch of side streets. The city was very, almost eerily quiet and we found it hard to find a cafe. We eventually found one, sat in the front by the windows, and had our breakfast of croissants, baguette, orange juice and cafe au lait. It was tasty and relaxing.
We stopped by our hotel to grab our gear for the day and headed down to the Musee National du Moyen Age or its more common name, the Musee de Cluny. The museum is made up of two parts, the
Hotel de Cluny, a residence built in the 1300's and the third century Gallo-Roman baths that the hotel was built on top of. The Hotel houses medival art and artifacts. Its most notable item is the tapestries of the Lady and the Unicorn, which are 6 tapestries depicting the five senses and
free will.
I had been to the Musee de Cluny before and had thought that one of my favorite things in Paris had been there, but we had walked through the entire museum and had not seen it. There was a section that was closed, and so I asked the security guards int he museum why it was closed. The strike was the cause, but it was going to open at 1 Pm. At this point it was 11:30Am, so we decided to leave, get some lunch and then go back to see the "Chapelle".
We walked down the street to La Creperie de Cluny and had crepe meals that were served in bowls. I had Bonne Femme, which consisted of a buckwheat crepe (galette), ham, cheese, and bechamel sauce. It was delicious. I don't remember exactly what Larry had, but it had ratatouille in it and he was happy.
After lunch, we headed back to the Musee de Cluny and went straight to see the
Chappelle. It is a very small room in the museum, but the intricacy of the ceiling just blows me away. We finished visiting the rest of the newly opened wing and then headed out.
We headed back onto Ile de la Cite, and headed toward Saint Chappelle. The chapel is located
inside the walls of the Palis de Justice. We went through security where the English directions instructed us to put our bag on the "travelator" for x-ray scanning. Once inside, we headed over and purchased tickets for Saint Chappelle. The woman at the ticket booth confirmed that we spoke English then instructed us to hurry in, as a tour in English had just started. We found the tour guide, a dishevaled woman in her mid-thirties, wearing a strange combination of leggings, a long flowy skirt, ankle boots, sweaters and an oversized coat. Her hair was frizzy and looked as though it had hastily being put in a loose bun. She reminded me of
Helena Bonham Carter. She knew a ton about Saint Chappelle and was making cute witty jokes about the royalty of the time. Saint Chappelle had been built by Louis IX, who built it to house the relics of Jesus Christ that he had collected to prove his worth as King to the people of France, and more importantly to prove Paris's position as the most important city in Europe. The relics included the Crown of Thorns and a piece of the cross that Jesus as crucified on.
You enter on the lower level of the chapel in the Lower Chapel, which was used by the common people as a place to worship. It is dark, and the walls are covered with elaborate paintings made to
look like draped cloth. Taking the set of spiral stairs up, you enter the
Upper or Royal Chapel, where the relics were displayed and the King and his court came to worship. The stained glass is beautiful and overwhelming. Our tour guide gave a detailed description of the intentions behind all of the ornate wall coverings and stained glass. From the bottom of the room working up on the walls were images of the common people and sculptures of different flora and fauna for each bay. The upper wall, mostly made of stained glass, depicted books of the bible. Spanning across the lower and upper walls were
sculptures of the Kings of France as disiples (conveying that the Kings are both earthly and heavenly). I was amazing at how much this woman knew and how interested I was in learning the history. There was symbolizism and intention with every single decoration, all meant to drive home the point that King Louis and the line of French kings were direct descendants of Jesus Christ. When the tour was over, the guide informed us that she was a student studying art history and that these tours were the way she made her living.
We tipped the tour guide, finished up at Saint Chapelle and headed out to the
Marche aux Oiseaux (bird market) which is set up every Sunday where a flower market usually stands. Here you can purchase birds, cages and feed. Larry and I considered buying a bird as a pet for the week and letting it go before we left, but decided that we didn't want to waste money on a bird that we would have to take care of and then just let go. Instead, we bought
roasted chestnuts from a vendor using a coffee can full of coals, a pizza pan and a shopping cart as his food stand. They were warm and yummy on a cold day.
We headed down to the end of the Ile, to the
Pont Nuef, rested for a minute and then trekked across the bridge to the right bank of the Seine. We wandered the streets and ended up accidentally at
Saint Eustache. It was getting dark out and it was very difficult to see inside, but Larry was still very impressed at how massive the church was. We went back out into the streets, walking through the Les Halles section of town and down to the Centre Pompidou, Paris' very heavily contested modern art museum. We had planned on going to see the building, but not the actually art inside. I had been there before, and Larry was not that interested. As
these pictures display, it did not make a big impression on us.
We turned onto the Rue de Rivoli, and walked by the Hotel de Ville. We were hungry and decided on dinner at a restaurant called Feria. I had read about an apertif (an alcoholic drink appetizer- these French have something to teach us) that the French drink called
kir, which is white wine with a drop of cassis(currant) liquer, so we decided to start with that. It was tasty but not too dissimilar from standard white wine. We had burgers with some kind of Alsacian cheese and fries. We then had
creme brulee for dessert. Delicious!
We continued on to Auld Alliance, a Scottish pub that had I visited almost daily during my first visit to Paris, due to its English speaking bartenders, beer and proximity to the youth hostel I was staying at. When Larry and I got there, it was about half full. We ordered beers and sat down. My stomach started hurting and I figured that I had just over eaten, but it did not make me very interested in drinking.
Larry had a few more beers while I nursed mine. After about an hour, we decided to head home. It had started raining while we were in the bar and now it was pouring, so we put on the rain gear that we had brought and walked the 20 minute walk back to the hotel in the pouring rain.
We got back and fell asleep and about an hour later, I woke up and felt awful. It was the same type of feeling I had had in Dallas a few weeks earlier and I believe was food poisoning. I spent the rest of the night with many trips to the bathroom and spent some time sleeping on the bathroom floor. I kept Larry up, worrying about me and our plans for the rest of the week. I finally started to feel good enough to go to bed around 5:30.
