Paris and the Globe

Lynne and I have just gotten up on Thursday morning after a couple of activity-filled days, including a day trip to Paris yesterday.

I still can't wrap my head around the fact that you can take a two-hour train trip between the cities.  The train station in London, St. Pancras, is only two tube stops from my flat.  The place is totally renovated and beautiful and there is a special lounge for customers of EuroStar, the high-speed rail service to Paris.  The trip is very smooth and you are in the "chunnel" for about 20 minutes of the trip.  The Paris station is Gare du Nord, which it must be said, is a typical dirty, crowded station.  There is little guidance for which Metro to take (French or English).  We went to the ticket window for the Metro and the woman there was awful.  I asked for a day pass and she said something that I could not hear or understand.  I said excuse me and she talked even lower and actually moved back from the microphone.  What she was saying was, "I don't understand English."  but swear to God she was saying it so low no one could hear her, including Lynne.  Now perhaps I made the fatal mistake of not asking if she understood English before I started speaking it but two thing:.  It was clear I could not hear her.  She could have come closer to the mic and said that she did not understand------ and she did not understand English at the international terminal where thousands of people come in from London every day?  I think she did understand and was just being difficult.  I have rarely encountered the "Parisien" attitude attributed to people in that city, but she had it in spades.

We finally made it to Chatelet, downtown and started to walk towards the Musee D'Orsay, our only real destination for the day.  On the Isle de la Citi, we sat at a cafe and had some delayed breakfast.

We had been urged to come into the cafe by a very adorable waiter who wiped away the memory of that Metro woman.

Then we started walking along the Seine.  It was a bit of a cloudy day but the city still looked beautiful.

 Notre Dame in the background.

The Louvre from across the river.....

The Institute du France, once famous, and perhaps still famous, for trying to protect the french language from intrusions of English and other languages.....

And the Musee D'Orsay, once a train station.

In case you're wondering, this is the closest we got to the Eiffel Tower....

Paris has a different idea about how to present itself than London.  While London is getting all cleaned up and sparkly, Paris remains the well-worn city with the gorgeous buildings definitely showing their age.  Both strategies have their advantages.  London looks great, but can almost look like Disneyland with its ancient buildings looking like they were constructed last year.  You can really see the age and the experience of the structures in Paris but especially on an overcast day, they can look a bit dreary.

Another difference.  London appears nonchalant about security--maybe it isn't but there are few outward signs, while at the Musee D'Orsay we encountered a number of three-men teams in fatigues with what I can only assume were loaded machine guns.

And our bags were searched as we entered the museum, in contrast to the British Museum, where there were not any people at the door.

The same was true of the Louvre, where we stopped just briefly to use the ATM.

---the requisite picture to show I was really there----

The D'Orsay has some of the most beautiful paintings even done, including many by Degas, Renoir, Monet, Manet, etc.  We spent a blissful hour and a half in the museum, just taking in the loveliness.

Here's the funniest picture of the day, telling tourists, I guess, to move to a different doorway...or something like that.

Of course, we sat at a sidewalk cafe for a while before we had to return to the train station and our trip back.

On Tuesday, we had walked into the city and seen some of the sights that had been pointed out to me in a previous guided tour, including the Ledenhall market, which was used as a set on the first Harry Potter film.

For you Jane Austin fans out there, the market in on Grace Church street in Cheapside, where Elizabeth Bennet's aunt and uncle, the Gardiners, lived.

Then we walked across the river, over the London Bridge on our way to the Tate Modern art gallery.  But first we encountered the Globe theater, which is a replica of the one owned by William Shakespeare.  I thought it was smaller, but it just holds fewer people than it would in the Bard's day because of fire laws.  We had a guided tour that was a lot of fun.

 That piece of machinery is not from Shakespeare 's day.

The Tate is another of those new buildings on the south side of the river that looks like a prison.

But inside it has some beautiful works of art.....

And it must  be said, some hideous things that should not be classified as art (in my opinion).  The gallery just picked up this Picasso, which I believe is now the most expensive painting ever.

Here's another difference between London and Paris.  We are able to take all the photos we want at the London galleries while cameras are strictly forbidden in Paris.

We were going to take a pub walk on Tuesday but we decided to put it off and relax.  Good decision, considering how early we had to get up for the train on Wednesday.