Parting shots

Well, Paris is a city. One homeless person actually has a rabbit for a companion.

A shop on Ile de la Cité, near Notre Dame.

On the left, Notre Dame, on Ile de la Cité, taken from Ile St. Louis.

Tomorrow is day 31 and we're out of here. The leaves are coming out on the trees, daffodils are blooming and we're ready for springtime in New England. Thanks for checking out the blog. C'est fini. -Ellen and Andy

The curious case of Mr. Dovale and the dead window

The Seine from the top of the Eiffel Tower.

Rodin's "The Thinker". (31 days in Paris in March-what the hell were WE thinking?)

Problem solved.

Arc de Triomphe from the Eiffel Tour.

Knowing a little French is never really enough when unusual situations arise. Recently, Ellen had gone to the market and forgotten to take her key so she had to ring the bell of the concierge, Mrs. Dovale, to get back into the building. Mr. Dovale let her in, and leading her into the courtyard, he keep saying something in French, pointing to our bedroom window and dropping his head to one side with his eyes closed. The most Ellen could understand was "dead window", which made no sense to either of us. All Ellen could do was apologize and keep saying that she didn't understand.

Yesterday, as I was taking a nap on the couch, the doorbell rang. I answered the bell and found a very nice neighbor from the floor above us who introduced herself and told me she had been asked to pass on a message. She was from Iowa and had been deputized by Mr. Dovale because of her fluency in both French and English. She explained that there was a dead pigeon on the ledge below our bedroom window, off to the right such that we could not see it without opening the window and leaning out. Mr. Dovale wanted us to either retrieve the pigeon and put it in the garbage or flick it off the ledge, down four stories, onto the courtyard so that he could dispose of it. Dumping it into the courtyard seemed a bit indelicate. I couldn't reach it by leaning out the window so Ellen got the Swiffer handle and I leaned out, pulled it closer along the ledge, then reached down and put it in a plastic bag, of course never touching the dead pigeon in the process. I double bagged it and put it out in the garbage can.

We then wrote a note on a piece of paper so we could tell the Dovale's all was well. "l'oiseau morte c'est fini", which I think means "the dead bird is over". I showed it to Mrs. Dovale and she was very thankful. -A.

On the Lam at La Défense

Mac person with early Mac.

La Défense business district.

View from La Grande Arche, the red object is an Alexander Calder stabile. "Sandy" lived in Roxbury, CT.

Note: If you are tired of hearing about our adventures with public transportation, please skip to the next paragraph. Go ahead, it's OK. . . . No? OK. So this morning we take the RER to La Defense. The RER is like the Metro but faster because it has fewer stops. To exit the station we go up two floors, by escalator, head to the exit turnstiles only to find out that our monthly passes don't work. We go back down two levels, ask questions at the newsstand. Language difficulties, confusion, etc. Bottom line: we can not exit the station. We can ask the people at the info counter but we can't get to the info counter because it's beyond the turnstiles. Interesting. As we're considering getting on the next train back, which is all we can do, we see people coming in through the special side doors for people with strollers, luggage, etc. So we darted through before the doors shut. Luckily the three soldiers with automatic weapons that were patrolling the station missed our little maneuver. A side note: earlier, at a different station, as I stood checking my notes on which train we wanted, a nice young Frenchman stopped and made sure we could find our train. So much for the anti-American stereotype.

Optional start point -- La Défense a.k.a. "Le petit Manhattan", is the skyscraper area of Paris. The most notable landmark is La Grande Arche (picture a squared-off arch with no curves). We took the elevator to the top where they had an exhibit of computers throughout history. Andy and I got to relive our chiphead days.

Yesterday I was on the DL with a cold so Andy went to the Picasso Museum by himself. When we're not out riding on buses, we read, and read. TV only has a few news channels, but on Saturday and Sunday nights, they have Jay Leno! Jay is like our USO show. Comedy, music, audience participation -- I half expect to see Ann Margaret shimmying around in tight Army fatigues. They run two current shows, back to back with only two commercial breaks. When he does those newspaper headlines with the ridiculous typos I just die laughing. Now I know why the troops found Bob Hope so funny. They loved Bob just like we love Jay.

Happy spring everyone. -E.

Travelogue Update -- Just Photos

Detail from a Raul Dufy painting at the City Museum of Moden Art. They claim it is the largest painting in the world. I'm a Dufy fan, so we had to check it out.
Taken from a boat ride along a canel. One of those C-list things you do when you have the time. Although it's not true here, most of the surrounding buildings are contemporary, a nice change from the inner city. We lost count of the number of locks we passed through.

Orsay Museum, housed in a converted train station -- a beautiful building with mostly impressionism. My favorite Paris museum.

Paris Vignettes

One of the best things about any trip is the little moments when you really love being in a foreign place and you just enjoy the moment. Here are a few that come to mind--

§ Entering the subway my magnetic card works and Andy's doesn't. So now we're on different sides of the turnstiles. A passerby takes Andy's card, and using a kleenex, attempts to clean the magnetic strip. No luck. Next a woman who is with her family comes over and motions to Andy that they will both go through together, on her card, but they must be quick, and stay very close together. Victory! "Charlie on the MTA" disaster averted.

§ Shopping on RooMoo on Sunday morning while being entertained by two American jazz musicians performing "It Must Be Love"; a five-piece band, complete with a tuba player; and a French trio (with accordion, of course) playing traditional French music while some couples dance and people sing along following the printed lyrics that are passed out to the gathered crowd.

§ Spotting a Bassett Hound on RooMoo!

§ In a park in the middle of Paris, seeing a great blue heron and being reminded of last March in Florida.

§ Hearing some commotion in the boulevard and stepping onto the balcony to see hundreds (400? 500?) of inline skaters rolling down the street with a police escort. Does this happen every Friday night? It's clearly well organized. As the light turns red, they back up like a river behind a dam until the floodgates open and they flow down the to the Seine.

§ The novelty of having so many things available within a block or two -- patisseries, great Vietnamese takeout, pharmacies, small markets, wine shops, cafés, newsstands, crepe stands, fresh produce, a jazz club, and right next door, a shop selling cheesy lingerie and baby clothes (I guess one leads to the other).

§ Walking down to the Seine after dinner and just lingering on the bridge, looking at the lights and remembering why we came here.

The Longest Day

Invasion landing point at Pointe du Hoc.

The American cemetery. The beach is below in the distance.

A bombed out bunker.

Yesterday we took an all day (and part of the evening) bus trip to Normandy. The whole tourist bit -- the two-story tour bus with over-sized windows, even in the ceiling, in case you want to bird watch perhaps. The tour guide was French but the tour was in English only, thank heavens. She talked almost the whole time, 7 am 'til 9 pm. I napped a lot. The first stop was the Memorial museum in Caen, which was packed with school kids, but after that we went out to the beaches and saw bunkers and the cliffs at Omaha beach, plus a few other stops. The American cemetery was very impressive and beautifully maintained. I enjoyed seeing the countryside which is mostly flat with green farm fields, cows, sheep and stone farm houses (refer to Bourne Identity, farm house where he shoots the other agent in the field).

Today the country had a general strike, but the buses were running so it didn't effect us. The students did march past our apartment but that's become the norm. Worked on our face tans while reading in the park and added two more churches to our impromptu tour of churches -- we spot a church and stop in and take a look. No churches have pews. They all have rigid little straight-back chairs with cane seats. That plus the chill must keep the faithful wide awake.

My godson wants a T-shirt that says something in French but so far our search has only turned up T-shirts with English on them. "I love Paris" won't due for a teenage boy. The search continues. -E.

Military History vs. Shopping

Today we went our separate ways. (But we're still married! -E) I went to tour the Army Museum and Napoleon's Tomb while Ellen went shopping. I wonder why she didn't want to see Napoleon' Tomb. It was very interesting and the Army Museum went on and on and on. Plenty of displays of guns, uniforms, knives, hand grenades and bombs. Not to mention short films of WWI and WWII action. Also paintings of the Franco-Prussian War of 1870. Did you know that Hitler only visited Paris once, in 1940, for 3 hours (and that was before double-decker tour buses -E). In the afernoon we again went to Luxembourg Gardens for the sun, fresh air and people watching. It really is a lovely park, though not too much in bloom yet. -A.