Day 8 - 7/7 Notre Dame, Historical Paris, and the Louvre

Our morning began with an early start since we had a packed day of touring and sightseeing in Paris. We knew Notre Dame would be horrendous so we wanted to get there just as they opened to avoid a majority of the crowds. We learned that the nearest bus stop was out of service and figured that walking was the quickest way to get to the Isle de Cite where the cathedral was. Janine took a detour at an early morning farmer's market to see if there were any good souvenir items.

Notre Dame Cathedral

We began ambitious day at Notre Dame just as the cathedral was opening. We have have been warned in the past about the lines and crowds that form during the summer travel season and wanted to spare ourselves from that as much as we could. We used Rick Steve’s handy audio guide app to tour us through the cathedral. We learned from our previous travel encounters and swapped our depth over breadth strategy to make sure Janine could see more of the city. To accommodate this strategy I made sure to take notes on interesting things to look up later as opposed to hunting around or reading every single placard in the building. One anecdote though that I enjoyed were the severed heads of the kings of Judea and Israel that line the front of the church’s facade. During the French Revolution, when sentiments toward the monarchy were less than friendly, Parisian stormed the cathedral and lopped the heads off the statues of the kings whom they assumed were the likenesses of French monarchs. Unfortunately, they were not aware that they were French kings, but depictions of the kings of Judea and Israel. It was assumed the heads were forever lost until it was revealed that the heads were actually collected by a local teacher and buried nearby hoping they could be used again during calmer times. The original heads were found in 1973 (by the cousin of the French president at the time) and are now on display in the Musee de Cluny. After leaving the cathedral, we went to the Pope Jean Paul playground off to the side of the church for Olivia to play around in before moving on to our next destination. She enjoyed riding on the play equipment immensely as quite upset when we had to go.

Olivia and Janine at Notre Dame

Inside the Notre Dame cathedral

Statue of Joan of Arc in Notre Dame

Olivia enjoying the play equipment at the Pope Jean Paul park

Deportation Memorial

At the end of the Isle de Cite is the relatively new Deportation Memorial.  It was made to commemorate those who were gathered by the Nazis during their occupation of France and sent to the concentration camps. I was glad that I had the audio guide from Rick Steve to give context to this memorial since the park employee’s English was limited telling me what I couldn’t do, which included photos. Even without the context, the message portrayed through the architectural design choice told a narrative of descent, imprisonment, death, and hope. We left the memorial and made our way for an early lunch at a nearby cafe Au Vieu Paris d’Arcole a quaint old cafe with low ceilings and good food. Janine and I both had a country style chicken leg in a rich cream sauce with grilled cherry tomatoes and a side of roasted potatoes. Olivia was not shy about grabbing the tomatoes off both of our plates.

More walking tour

photo from travefranceonline.com

After lunch, we made our way off the Isle de Cite towards the left bank. We made a quick stop at a row of tourist souvenir shops to pick up a cheesy parisian beret by request to put on Olivia by my mom. We crossed through the square in front of Notre Dame and saw the huge line and were glad that we didn’t have to deal with that. After a quick stroll through Eglise Saint-Julien-le-Pauvre and the oldest tree in Paris, we strolled to the nearby Shakespeare & Co bookstore. I am not much for following famous literary minds, but this haunt played home to many American expats and struggling writers such as F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, and Ezra Pound.

In front of the bookstore was an ornate green drinking fountain. This and many others like it are called  “Wallace Fountains” named after the British benefactor who donated them to the city for the reconstruction of Paris after the Franco-Prussian war.  This was exciting to see partly because I have a fondness for infrastructure and its history. The other part being that I learned from a 99% Invisible podcast on fountains that these fountains were meant to deliver water to the poor and elderly, not just because water is an essential, but to avoid the evil sin of alcohol consumption. Many fountains set up during the Victorian era were done so by temperance societies.

As we continued on through the narrow streets of the Latin Quarter and passed by the myriad of Greek food restaurants, we walked up to the Saint-Michel fountain and learned about how this has become a defactor site for much of Paris’ social upheaval. The tour noted that the stone slabs used to be cobble stone, but were replaced once student protestors in the 60s pulled them from them ground and used them as ammunition against Parisian police.

We had planned to visit Sainte Chapelle and the Conciergerie, but we still needed visit the Louvre before it closed, so we decided to cut the Sainte Chapelle and push the Conciergerie for a later time. It didn’t help that Olivia's patience was wearing thin, so we wanted to take a break from the touring as well. As we walked past the chapel we noticed a loud commotion happening across the street in an open square. It was a group of protestors and I learned that they were from France’s communist party doing a demonstration. I vaguely remember this happening last time I was here and my tour guide mentioning that this is a common occurrence.

Communist party protestors near the Conciergerie 

We made our way to the Place Dauphine on the other side of the Isle while listening to the Sainte Chapelle commentary. The Place Dauphine provided a nice shady park for Olivia to stretch her legs and run around. After a few a short time there and a diaper change, we left the park and crossed the Pont Neuf bridge to make our way to the Louvre. At this point in the afternoon we were all getting collectively hot and tired. Before entering the Louvre, we needed to find a Starbucks for free Wifi since Janine’s audio guide updated that morning and wiped all the info she pre-downloaded the night before. So we walked the length of the palace to a Starbucks with Wifi and air conditioning. I began the slow download process while Janine ordered an Iced Mocha. After 15 minutes of downloading time, the file finally transferred and we were set to go.

The Louvre

There was some confusion trying to get into the museum. As museum pass holders, we thought we could get into the palace through a special entrance. However, we were turned away due to the stroller and told to take the main entrance. I figured it was because they only had an escalator and frowned upon stroller usage. Nevertheless, we were frustrated by the fact that there wasn’t a clear indication about how that would work since we wanted to skip standing in the long line and baking in the hot sun. Fortunately, they automatically let us walk straight through to security once they saw we had the stroller. Once we got in the underground entrance of the museum and performed an emergency diaper change, we made our way to the galleries. Janine and I had an argument about which entrance we needed to go to since there were 4 and I, of course, was wrong. Once we got in, we realized that this place was not very stroller/wheelchair friendly. I can’t really blame the old palace for being like that though. Needless to say, Janine and I did a lot of lifting up and down stair cases through the gallery. The showcase of statues and paintings were impressive. It is always a treat to fall in love again with classics that I have seen before such as the Venice de Milo.  

Any trip to the Louvre is not complete without a visit to the one, the only, Mona Lisa. With Olivia having fallen asleep early on in the museum walk through, we realized bringing her into the mob tourists would be an automatic early wake up for her, so we took turns at the painting.  Janine and I originally had an apprehension to even trying since we both have an extreme dislike for crowds, but we knew it was something we should do. I joked with Janine that we should use Olivia to reenact the scene from LOTR: Two Towers where Aragorn tosses Gimli at the Orcs to clear out the throngs of people. After each of us gently moved our way to the front and took pleasure in this work, we continued to the the Romanticism section.

Although i have a strong fondness for Baroque, I really do enjoy works from the Romanticists and Neoclassical art (1800-1850). I sat and admired David’s The Coronation of Napoleon for a long time and sat in awe of its detail and historical significance. After teaching about Napoleon I found myself having a deep appreciation for this work. It felt like taking in a nice meal and make sure I could savor it for as long as possible before moving on. The only thing that really made me move was the fact that the museum was set to close in less than 30 minutes and we had a few more works to look at by Delacroix and Gericault.

Giving my giddy nerd grin

And this is where my excitement was soured. As we were moving on to more Romantic works, Janine was approached by a docent and told that the museum closed in 15 minutes. We thought it was odd, because the museum was set to close at 6:00pm and it was only 5:30. Janine nodded and we moved on to the Romanticism room. It was a treat. I marveled at Liberty Leading the People and The Raft of the Medusa appreciating their composition, theme, and color. I was about to walk over to The Death of Sardanapalus when the same docent approached me. She told me that my wife and daughter were leaving and that I should too since the museum was not closed. I was confused by this and this confusion turned to anger as I was being escorted out of the room and to the elevator. What the hell was going on? The museum wasn’t closed for another 15 minutes and there were still crowds of people walking about, but we were specifically picked to leave. Keep in mind, there was no explanation besides “the museum was closed.” I found no point in arguing since there would be a language barrier and I figured such an argument would be fruitless given the time left. My guess for this ejection was because we had a stroller and for whatever reason they thought we should leave first since we would clog up the exits with our umbrella stroller. Listen, Janine and I are more than capable of maneuvering ourselves around crowds and staircases without the need for an early ejection. In fact, i’d gather we could manage better than a lot of individuals there without strollers. Why did we have to be penalized for having kid? This only added to our belief that Parisians may love kids, but the city’s infrastructure and planning do not reflect this notion at all. My anger only grew by the time we walked out of the museum entirely and I needed a moment to recollect my thoughts. I felt a little embarrassed having being picked out like that. It only added insult to injury that it was in one of the rooms I was looking forward to the most. I must keep an optimistic view though and remind myself that i’ll be back.

After cooling off outside and kindly telling the North African souvenir peddlers that we did not need selfie sticks or eiffel tower key chains, we decided to eat at the cafe at the floor of our apartment building. With the amount of traffic going on during rush hour the time spent on the bus was actually equivalent to us just walking back home, but having walked 18k steps (approx. 8.5 miles) that day, we were ok with just sitting on the bus. Once we arrived at the apartment, we dropped off all our stuff and made our way downstairs to cafe Les Arenes. The cafe, like most other place we visited, were very friendly and accommodating as they could be with Olivia. Unfortunately, our daughter’s tiredness could not repay their kindness and she was particularly fussy that evening. This did not combine well with our tiredness so we took turns eating while entertaining our daughter. We ordered an appetizer as Olivia’s entree that we misread and assumed was a warm grilled zucchini dish with tomato sauce that Olivia would like. Unfortunately, it was served chilled and Olivia refused to touch it. She insisted on jumping around the bar area while we at it instead, the dish was pretty good. I had the Pork Belly with risotto that was pretty tasty. As we ate, the crowd behind us grew larger since they were trying to grab a spot for the Eurocup games. Olivia really did not want to sit down for the meal and had no interest in our food and at some point her screaming forced me to consume my food much faster than I would prefer (and I eat pretty fast) and take her out for a walk. While on this walk I did my best to have a heart to heart discussion with a toddler about being nice to others and listening to mommy when she asks you to do something. I walked around the block with her and made a pit stop at the ATM before returning. Janine had finished by then and was in the process of paying the bill. We made our way upstairs and immediately put Olivia to sleep hoping she get enough rest for tomorrow.