It's Monday; this must be Monet

This morning we woke up at 5:30, getting ready for our day-trip to Giverny and Monet's gardens. We needed to catch the 8:15 train to Vernon, so we were dressed and out of the house by 7:30, walking up the Avenue de l' Opera to catch our train at Gare Saint Lazare, right behind the Opera. This picture shows how big the Opera is, but you can't see the giant dome from this angle.

We went to the wrong ticket counter (as usual) to buy our tickets. When we found the right one, the very nice young lady took one look at my gray hair and beard and offered us a senior discount. We found our train, but had to look for a while for two seats together; the train was pretty full.

When we arrived in Vernon (the first city in Normandy) we rented bicycles for the 5km ride out to Giverny. (It would have been much cheaper just to take the regular shuttle, but I wanted to ride bikes.) Kathy got a fairly nice bike.

I got a bike built for midgets with no higher gears (they had removed the crank deraileur), so I was peddleing a mile a minute. It was a hard ride, especially while trying to take pictures of myself riding like this.

The ride out to Giverny was actually very nice. There is a paved, off-road bike path the entire way. Since most people take the shuttle bus, it's not very crowded at all. (There are regular Fat Tire Bike Tours on Tuesday and Saturday, so it's probably more crowded then.)

When we got to Giverny, we waited about a half-hour for tickets and then wandered around the gardens. The main garden was planted by Claude Monet himself. (He lived here for the last forty years of his life.)

It is very symmetrical, but appears really informal, kind of like an impressionist painting.

The second half of the property houses the streams and lilly ponds. It's really uncanny, because you can "see" his famous paintings as you (and the hundreds of other tourists) walk around. (This was a Monday, and the entire place was packed.)

Around noon, it started lightly raining. We went outside and had an apple and some cheese and started the ride back to Vernon. Kathy saw this horse and decided to feed it.

After we turned in our bikes, we wandered around town to get a feel for small-town, non-touristy France.

Vernon has a very old Gothic cathedral, but unlike the more famous ones, this one really shows its age. When you see the old churches in Paris, you don't realize how much time and effort is required to keep them in the good shape they are in. Without constant rennovation and rebuilding the stone blackens and disintigrates.

On a side street of old Norman buildings we found a cafe and had an omelete and quiche for lunch, just before they closed.

Back at the train station, we called Michael Dente (the pastor from CC Paris) and he came by and picked us up, so we could see his new house. By moving to the suburbs, he was able to lower his housing costs significantly, as well as provide a better environment for his family.

The house is really great; 100 years old built out of stone. When it came time to catch our train back to Paris, Mike and Becky asked if we wanted to stay for dinner, and then volunteered to drive us back to Paris instead of taking the train. Mike barbecued and Becky made home made French fries with potatoes fresh from the local farmers.

After dinner, both of them drove us back to Paris, and gave us a guided tour on our way back to the apartment. A long but great day.

Sunday in Paris

Kathy may be sixty, but after walking all over yesterday, I feel just plain-old ancient. Everything aches. Sleeping in helped thought. Unlike Costa Mesa, we don't have to leave by 7:30 am to make it to church. While the Calvary Chapel Paris French-language service takes place in the morning, the English service doesn't start until 3:00 pm.

When we got up around 9:00, I cooked omelets, and ate breakfast out on the balcony to the music from the church across the street.

A scouting group set up a table for a bake sale between services.

After lounging around in the morning, we set off for Calvary Chapel around noon, walking along the Seine. The Paris Respire (Paris Breathes) program closes off several sections of the city for biking, walking and roller blading each Sunday, including the usually busy express lanes that follow the Seine.

At Pont Marie we crossed over the tip of Ile Saint-Louis and looked at the back side of Notre Dame from the bridge. Then we walked the length of Ile Saint-Louis, picking up a melon-pistatio cone at the Berthillon take-away window. (The main store had a line a half-block long.)

After a few false starts we found the church (which meets in the weekday offices of Jews for Jesus) a little after 2:00. (We didn't know how long the walk would take, so we budgeted a lot of extra time.)

We had some nice visting before the service started. While the pastor Michael Dente and his worship group practiced for the service, his wife Becky and their two daughters helped Kathy try to make sense of the mobile phone the Broderson's lent us. (The SIM card was all in French).

There were about 20 people at the English-language service; Michael taught on Matthew 17:1-6; Jesus' transfiguration. It was a really good message.

Afterward, we stood around talking until about 5:00. The worship leader was a young man named Chris Holifield who works as the IT director for a Texas oil company drilling just outside of Paris. Who knew that France had oil? He and his wife Jeanette have been married just a few months. I also talked with a gentleman from Mauritius, the ex-French island off the east coast of Africa, right above Madagascar.

We were pretty hungry after church, so we stopped at a pizza place and split a large pizza, then headed home by subway to turn in early.

The Left Bank

Saturday in Paris and another beautiful sunny day. I woke up early to pick up baguettes for breakfast. The bakery on the corner wasn't open so I walked around the block, down to the Seine and up to Pont Nuef. I guess Parisians don't get up early on Saturday, because all of the streets were empty.

When I got back to the apartment, Kathy was up and had coffee made. We had some bread left from yesterday, along with some strawberry jam for breakfast, and set out, around 9:00 to see the Left Bank.

Our first stop was the Pont des Arts, the oldest pedestrian iron bridge across from the Louvre to the Academe Francaise. The iron grill-work of the bridge is filled with small padlocks. It's a tradition for lovers to come to Paris, write their names on a small lock, lock it to the bridge and throw the key in the Seine.

Walking around the Academe Francaise, there is a small park with a statue of Voltaire. Someone had thrown red paint all over him, (like with a water balloon).

Right next to the statue of Voltaire is the building housing Roger-Viollet, a huge archive of historical photographs. You can't buy them (or buy prints), but there are always some really interesting photos in the window. Inside you can see wall after wall of binders filled with historical photos.

A block down rue de Seine we turned off to see the hotel where Oscar Wilde died in 1900. His last words were, purportedly, "Either this wallpaper goes, or I do." We walked over and looked at the room prices; starting at 350 Euro, going on up to 950 Euro a night.

It seems like almost every other building has a plaque telling what famous person lived (or died) in that building. We passed the novelist George Sand's house and then stopped for a few minutes in a toy store that makes miniature tableaus of different European storybook and comic characters (Babar, Tintin, Asterix and so on). They're really amazing, (and pretty expensive).

Half-way down the rue de Seine we turned off on rue Jacob and saw the house where Richard Wagner wrote The Flying Dutchman (before he was famous). Today it's a bar with a small plaque.

Around the corner was Eugene Delacroix' house, studio and museum. We didn't go in (although we did see some Delacroix paintings at St. Sulpice later in the day.) Instead we turned left at the Abbey Mansion and headed down to the intersection of rue de Buci and rue de Seine to the "heart of the Left Bank".

We spent the next hour window shopping, people watching and eating gelato, meandering down rue de Buci to rue St. Andre-des-Arts. Turning left, we took a picture in front of Cafe le Procope, one of the world's oldest continuously operating restaurants. This was the place where coffee was first introduced to Europe in 1686. It was a favorite of Voltaire, Benjamin Franklin and Napoleon.

By this time, both of us were pretty tired, so we headed back to our apartment for a little rest. We got something to eat, Kathy changed her shoes (sandals can be really hard to walk with on the rough cobble-stone streets). By 3:00 we were ready to head back out to see the rest of the Left-Bank sights.

We started by heading directly to St. Germain-de-Pres, the oldest church in Paris, built in the 11th century. It stands atop an older church that goes back to the fall of Rome.

That church was destroyed by Vikings in 886. The day we were there the square in front of the church was filled with a huge book fair.

Across the street are two of the famous Paris cafes, Les Deux Magots and Le Cafe de Flore. (Despite the sound, Les Deux Magots actually means "The Two Chinamen"). These cafes where where Wilde, Picasso, Hemingway, Sartre, Camu, Simone de Beauvoir and even Jim Morrison hung out. Across the street is the Brasserie Lipp where Hemingway wrote A Farewell to Arms. Today, all are filled with tourists, as you'd expect.

Down rue des Cannettes we went looking for a recommended crêperie. We found it, but there was only one customer, and I didn't feel that comfortable eating there. (Our schedules are not quite on the French eating schedules. We're used to eating when we're hungry; in Paris, you eat when it is lunch-time,12-2, or dinner time, 7-9).

Instead of eating we headed on to our last Left Bank stop, the huge St. Sulpice church, modeled after St. Paul's in London. One of it's two towers has never been finished, which looks so strange.

Inside we saw three of Delacroix's famous murals, including Jacob Wrestling the Angel and The Archangel Micheal. We walked around the church and found the statue of Joan of Arc (very had to see as it was unlighted) and he Egyptian obelisk that figures into the Da Vinci Code.

Outside, we walked left two blocks to the Luxembourg Garden. There, we found a couple of chairs and just enjoyed the outdoors along with the rest of Paris. After a half-hour we were ready to head back home.

On the way we found a brasserie and had the plat du jour. Kathy had fish (good sauce, but a lot of bones), while I had beef and potatoes. Made it back to our apartment completely exhausted after our first full day.

On to Paris

We woke this morning to wet streets and cloudy, threatening skies. Our plan had been to get up early, head to Brussels, and do a quick three-hour walking tour before our 1:15 pm train to Paris. With the rain that seemed a lot less attractive.

Instead, we had a leisurely breakfast and ambled down to the main square around 10, picked up a bus for the station and hopped on the train for Brussels that left at 10:30.

By 11:30 we were sitting on a bench in Brussels Midi station waiting for the train to Paris. We stuck our heads outside, but it was raining harder now. Also, there's really nothing interesting to see at the Midi station; the interesting sites are at the Central station and the trip didn't seem that attractive now that it was raining.

We took turns sitting, watching the luggage and walking around. We picked up some sandwiches, sodas and paprika-flavored shoestring potatoes for a picnic lunch on the train.

Around 12:30 we headed up to the platform to wait for the train, but it was already there, so we found our seats. The Thalys train is one of the very high-speed trains that goes from Brussels to Paris in a little more than an hour. Last time we were in Europe, we had a Eurail Pass, so we were always in the first-class carriage. This time we bought 2nd-class tickets, and the seats were a little more like economy-class airline seats. Still very nice, but a little cramped.

As we pulled away from the station, we brought out our lunch and books. The train was really fast and really quiet. Several times we paralleled a freeway and we passed the cars going our direction like they were in first gear. Kathy fell asleep right after she finished eating, but I wanted to make sure I knew how to get on the subway and find our apartment once we got to Paris.

At 2:30 we stepped off the train at Gare du Nord, paused a second for a picture, and set off in search of the Metro (which was right in the train station). I stopped by a Tabbac shop and bought a carnet of 10 tickets, we found our line and hopped on.

Four stops later we were at Les Halles, walking through the mall and up the escalator into a sunny, busy Friday afternoon in Paris.

Our apartment was about two blocks from the Metro stop. We passed the door once. It looks just like this one, but it is actually two doors down. Following the instructions sent to us by Vacations in Paris, we let ourselves into the building and finally opened the door on our home for the next week.

The apartment was very nice but we immediately had one disappointment. One of the selling points was the view, directly across from the l'Oratoire du Louve. The city of Paris, though, has begun restoring the building, so the entire facade is draped in white, which isn't nearly as attractive.

The rest of the apartment was great. It has a separate bedroom and bath along with a small, but nice kitchen and a large combined dining-living area that looks out over the street. There's also a small balcony.

Our first order of business was to do some shopping. The "house book" left in the apartment said that the best grocery-household shopping was on Rue Montorguil just north of Les Halles. That looked like only a few blocks away, so we took off walking.

As we walked through the park at Bourse de Commerce, we were surprised to see several homeless people sleeping on the street and in doorways. I didn't remember seeing that back in 2007.

Rue Montorguil was indeed a great shopping street in the Parisian sense. There was every kind of store; cheese shops, bakeries, fish mongers, butchers. We weren't quite ready for that, though; we wanted something more like a Ralph's. Fortunately, on the corner, we found a familiar sight: Starbucks.

From the guidebook, I had "memorized" the location of a good grocery store, "Monoprix". I had also "memorized" the map to get there. It seemed like we walked for every, and, when we didn't find it, we purchased some more subway tickets and headed back home.

We stopped by a local grocery (kind of like buying groceries at a 7-11) and got eggs and milk. Once we were back in the apartment, I looked up the address again, and realized that we should have been looking for 21 Rue du Opera instead of 51. We also realized we had forgotten quite a few things, so, at 8:00 pm we made one last run and found the Monoprix.

It was a really nice store and we got almost everything we needed. By 9:30 (early, I guess, by Parisian standards), we were home and unpacked, and headed for bed.

Tomorrow, the Left Bank.