The Tower at Last

Before I start in with the post for today, I forgot to talk about dinner from last night:

The Fourth Restaurant

This restaurant on a side street near the Plaza de Bastille was recommended to us by a friend of Kevin’s. The standout here was Fondant aux Chocolat (might be au rather than aux? Not sure.) It was a really soft chocolate cake, whose filling I would guess was ganache based on texture and consistency. Some might say that it was too rich, but I would say that eating chocolate that is “too rich” is a problem I would like to have. However, despite being a “local” place, the meal ended up being a bit too expensive for our tastes. 130€ is a lot for 4 people, especially when you’re multiplying it by 1.4. On to Thursday!

Croissant and an apple pastry for breakfast again. Ah, how will I ever readjust to breakfast in the United States? In fairness, I doubt that eating pastries for breakfast every day is particularly healthy. How do Parisians stay so thin? A mystery for the ages (not really, from the look of things they actually exercise, unlike most Americans).

As a side note, one thing I will not have any trouble readjusting to when I return is water at restaurants. Most restaurants here seem to only have bottled water, so it is expensive to drink as much water as I am used to.

Kevin and Aria were really tired, so we let them sleep in while we returned to the Musée D’Orsay to see the post-impressionists. (The previous time we went there we ran out of time.) If you’re curious what the difference is between an impressionist and a post-impressionist (I certainly didn’t know previously), here is my understanding. Both impressionists and post-impressionists create paintings which are “impressions” of a scene, i.e. they don’t attempt to produce photograph-like realism but instead create a more stylized representation. Post-impressionists, however, don’t even try to match the colors, so long as the overall effect is correct. Here is an example of an intermediate piece:

Did you ever wonder if impressionism wasn't started intentionally? Maybe some painter was just really nearsighted.

This is a normal sort of pastoral scene with cypress trees. They are mostly green, which is the correct color. However, if you examine them you will also notice reds and yellows, which would not have appeared in the actual scene:

The colors, the colors!

The colors are intended to produce the correct “impression” without being literally correct. There were two other paintings I saw which I felt were interesting enough to share. The first piece, unfortunately, doesn’t come out quite right in the photograph:

The sleep of reason produces monsters.

The painting depicts several monstrous figures in an obscure locale. The title, which unfortunately I can’t remember exactly, makes some reference to human savagery. The difference between the actual painting and the picture here, is that in the picture most of the figures are readily identifiable. In the original painting, everything is very dark, so that it is difficult to make out the figures. However, the longer you stare at it the more you can make out in the darkness. The effect is somewhat like a cave in which your eyes adjust, slowly making out more and more of your surroundings. However, in this case what you are surrounded by is monsters.

I don’t have too much to say about the last painting, but it should be pretty clear to most people who know me why I took a picture of it:

Kitty!

After we were finished at the Musée, we walked back to the apartment along the Seine to meet Aria and Kevin. One thing I’ve noticed along the Seine are houseboats:

Based on my admittedly small sample size, I estimate that about 90% of Parisian houseboats are named after women

I’m always curious about people whose lifestyles are very different than my own. I wonder what it would be like to live on a houseboat like this? Do they mostly stay in one place, or do they move up and down the Seine, maybe even out of the city depending on the season? What kind of jobs do they have? What are the inside of the boats like? Do you have to replace your boat periodically, or do they basically last as long as you take care of them? I find these questions interesting to think about. We also saw something pretty odd on one of the quays:

Where does he think he's going to plug in that TV?

It looks like somebody basically took some furniture and other items down by the Seine and set up a little apartment. We saw the guy there later sitting around and talking to some people. The best explanation we can come up with is that it was either some kind of performance art or an effort to make people think more about the situation of the homeless.

After we got back, it was finally time to try the gelato place near our apartment!

Also known as taking the sweet train to tastytown.

I had chocolate, vanilla, and lemon, and of the three lemon was clearly the best. Not to knock good old chocolate, surely the king of flavors, but this was some tasty lemon I can tell you. As for comparing it to the ice cream shop, I think the chocolate ice cream was better than the chocolate gelato, but overall the gelato was superior.

Subsequently, we went to see the archaeological crypt under Notre Dame:

Reminds me of my room. But cleaner.

Basically, when they were doing excavations in preparation for building Notre Dame, they found a whole bunch of older ruins underneath the ground. Paris, apparently, was originally settled by a group of Celts named the Parisii, and had since been occupied by a Gallic city and a Roman city before it began its current incarnation during the middle ages. They found ruins of both Roman and middle ages buildings under the current church. Sadly, my sunglasses lens joined the archaeological remnants to be found by future generation, or at least the janitor when they clean out the little pit that separates visitors from the ruins proper. Fortunately they were really cheap sunglasses, so no big loss. After that, we went to see a church named Saint-Chapelle that has the oldest stained glass in Paris:

Interestingly, unlike most of the churches I’ve seen in Europe, this one was painted pretty much floor to ceiling:

Maybe the King built it? He certainly seems to like painting ceilings, AND the color gold.

Also unlike most other churches I’ve seen, it’s got two floors, and the second floor is definitely the more impressive of the two:

You wouldn't believe how many photos I had to take of this room before I got one that wasn't ridiculously blurry.

You’re supposed to be quiet when visiting churches, but so far I’ve yet to go to a (tourist-attracting) church where this was observed. Someone tried to shush the visitors while we were there, which caused them to quiet down for, oh, say, 10 seconds or so. Maybe it would be better if they put some posters in there:

Talking in church is double plus unholy.

The church is also right next to the Parisian Hall of Justice, so I took this opportunity to engage in a little criminal behavior right under the noses of les policiers:

"No, really, I'm being kidnapped! Why won't anyone believe me!"

The gate to the Hall of Justice had a feature I thought was interesting:

There's also a house in a rich neighborhood in California that has a fence with these. I can't decide whether they're more creepy on a Hall of Justice or a rich person's house.

For those of you who do not know, this is a fasches. It is an object dating from the pre-republic period of Rome. It is an axe wrapped in rods, and it is a symbol of how the head of a household has the right of corporal and capital punishment over the members of the household. While in some ways this is appropriate for a courthouse, it has some connotations that I find a little bothersome. For one thing, the Roman head of a household had the right to inflict these punishments for any reason he saw fit, real or imagined. This is not the kind of thing I would want my justice department to be doing. It was not a symbol of law so much as power. The other reason is that it has since been appropriated by the fascist movement, whose name in fact comes from this word. I’m not a big fan of fascist government, and given Europe’s history I would have thought they wouldn’t be either. (Realistically, I am probably putting more thought into this fence design than the designer did, so that’s the real most likely explanation for it. Also, what, me, over-think things?)

We then had a late lunch, and headed, at long last, to the Eiffel Tower!

Find enclosed the requisite picture that every visitor to Paris must take.

If you haven’t been to the Eiffel tower, it’s big. REALLY big. (It probably seems bigger than it actually is just because in general the buildings in Paris are not allowed to be taller than 5 floors.) You need to take two elevators to get to the top, and wait in the vicinity of an hour and a half (at least in our case). It costs ~13€ a person. However, it’s still apparently the most popular tourist attraction in the world. And to be honest? The view is spectacular:

I can see my house from here!

Interestingly, the only time it rained while we were in Paris was when we were up the Eiffel Tower (well, and that evening, but we were inside and asleep so it didn’t make much of a difference). We were actually up there in a lightning storm, so it was kind of exciting. I don’t know how often the Tower gets hit with lightning, but it’s by far the tallest object around and it’s made of metal so I would guess if lightning strikes in its vicinity it strikes the tower. However, none struck the tower while we were up (or at least I’m assuming not since otherwise I imagine we would have been temporarily deafened.) One thing that was cool is you could look over the edge of the tower and watch the water droplets falling:

Behold: The cliffs...of INSANITY!

You could actually tell where the air currents were by watching the water. Also, because I said I’d get the companion shot, here’s the Arc de Triomphe from the Eiffel Tower:

As promised, so delivered

On the way back, we saw something odd; there were a bunch of police officers kind of furtively standing behind a pillar on a bridge. Every once in a while one of them would peek out and look down the bridge. I didn’t manage to get a picture of them peeking out, but here’s an artist’s impression:

"Artist" should be in quotes

We’re not really sure what they were trying to look at, but after awhile they just ran off:

"Look, Doughnuts!" Wait, They're in France. "Look, Beignets!"

For dinner, we ate at another place near the Plaza de Bastille:

Fifth restaurant

They had a lamb special, which I ordered. It was quite good. It was served with green beans wrapped in bacon, which is not a preparation that I’ve seen before. Still, all things being equal I support adding more bacon to cooking.

When we got back to the apartent we had a little scare. To get into the courtyard where the apartment is, you need to enter a door from the street using a combination lock. However, the combination we had didn’t work anymore! not good… We called Pierre, who is renting us the apartment, but only got his answering machine. We were waiting out there trying to decide what to do. Just walk around until morning? Try to find a hotel? Sleep somewhere on the street? Fortunately, Pierre called back and told us that the combination is changed periodically, and he gave us the new passcode so we could get in. Phew!

BONUS: More sign failage!

Rules are made to be broken, especially when you're American!)

Sorry for the poor picture quality; I didn’t want to make the fact that I was photographing them too obvious.

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