Oh how wonderful it is to wake up as a tourist in a super bed in accommodation right in the centre of the activity! Ilse, you were SPOT ON with Hotel de la Sorbonne! The trick is to book 6 months in advance, for they sometimes have fantastic offers that make it possible for budget travellers to do this kind of thing.. We lay in bed and gassed much longer than we’d intended, but once we got going, we headed for Rue Mouffetard, where Izzie said there was this wonderful bakery called Mouffe’tarte, where you could buy slices of quiche and sweet tarts for a late breakfast a.k.a. brunch. Rue Mouffetard wasn’t far, but when we found Mouffe’tarte, it was closed for some reason, and we went hungry. We strolled down the street, which turns into a wonderful market street with food boutiques of every description.
Fromagerie
At one spot there was a deli shop where you could buy any kind of bird off a rotisserie, complete with roast potatoes done at the bottom of the roasting machine in the drippings!!
Anyone for roast duck/pheasant/quail?
I learned there that the French are serious enough about fresh coffee that they have bruleries – coffee roasting boutiques, and you smell the roast coffee up the street.
Brulerie, Rue Mouffetard
At the bottom of the street we found a lovely place to eat a late breakfast, La Salle a Manger (the Dining Room). We got a lovely table outside, not too sunny,
La Salle a Manger
and soon we were savouring freshly baked breads, croissants, rolls and even a pain au chocolat (choc croissant). But the jams, man oh man! Indescribable!
Breads, jams & fresh coffee in a bowl
Strawberry jam, lime marmalade (my favourite, best in the world!), white chocolate vanilla spread (white nutella) and mimosa honey. They even provided a choice between salted and unsalted butter! Gosh, how can anyone rave so much about a mere Continental Breakfast??!! We congratulated ourselves the whole time on being so blessed with good happenstances! Across the road was a vegetable hawker who called out his specials on local cherries non-stop,
Market scene
while behind him the church bell pealed every halfhour. Local housewives hurried past with wheelie baskets filling up with fresh produce for the weekend, children wobbled past on their scooters, and the whole lively scene charmed us no end.
Market day
Now we wanted to go and see Palais Royal and the Louvre – not the inside of the museum, just the outside. The glass pyramids weren’t there yet in 1970.
Palais Royal with pyramids
Yes, it is awe-inspiring to see an old building and a modern edifice married so successfully! And I just love this B&W photo that Ilse took! Here is my try:
Louvre
As we moved further and further from this busy square, no doubt as busy as this through the Da Vinci Code book and movie, and the fact that it was a few days before the next movie would be released, we got a better view of the grand palace which now houses France’s best and oldest art treasures.
Louvre precinct
This took us to another beautiful grand park of Paris, the Jardin des Tuileries, past the Arc de Triomphe du Carousel, a smaller version of the real Arc de Triomphe down the road. Then left over the bridge to the side of the Tuileries, to the Musee d’Orsay, the art museum we chose to peruse on this visit. It is the museum where Paris’s art treasures dating from 1848 to 1950 are housed, including the Impressionists, probably the biggest draw card for us!
Musee d'Orsay
The museum is an old station building from 1900, expertly restored and converted into a worldclass art gallery between 1980 and 1986. What a beautiful space this is!
Station Clock
We absolutely loved this outing. Ilse studied art, and she learned all about these painters at school. She told me how whe had been to Paris in Std. 9 with the Andersons, and how she had wanted to see this museum. None of the Andersons were remotely interested, so Oom Geoff took her to Musee d’Orsay and left her there with 2 hours to browse. This time, however, we had time, and we decided to see only the Impressionists (from early to late). Early on we saw Manet’s Dejeuner sur l’Herbe, then on through many rooms filled with works of all the Impressionists, and we ended with Monet’s Dejeuner, an attention-grabbing juxtaposition of a huge square canvas and a tall oblong one forming a whole. By this time our energy was flagging a bit, so we went to the museum restaurant to get revived. It is on the top floor of the building right behind the clock, with a fantastic view over the Paris skyline.
Sacre Coeur on the hill
After quiche and salad we could take up another challenge, this time to Sacre Coeur and Montmartre.
Sacre Coeur
We got there by metro. The metro entrance at Abbesses is the oldest in Paris – it still sports the original art nouveau sign.
Abbesses metro entrance
Just here we found something you don’t read about in the guide books: an authentic Art Nouveau church.
Art Nouveau
Neither of us can remember what its name was, but we do remember how intrigued we were.
Art Nouveau church
Somehow I had gotten my memories crossed. I had the idea of an artist colony in Montmartre, a bohemian area around the hill on which the strange white church stands. But this turned out to be a seedy area, not at all nice to browse in, moreover it was raining and not at all pleasant to trudge up the hill. We got to the church after a hefty climb. It is a spacious and interesting church. A service was in full swing, so we didn’t stay. As we started the descent it started raining hard and we had to find shelter. After the downpour we looked at life going on around the carousel.
Merry-go-round in the rain
As we wondered how we would survive this seedy area, we stumbled on a street of fabric shops.
Fabric shops
What the heck, let’s go in, we said. Our mouths fell open, and we struggled to close them again! Here were the most amazing fabrics in cottons and linens and voiles, other natural fabrics, and such an array of beautiful materials you have never seen!! Upholstering fabrics galore, the one more beautiful than the next! This was the last cherry on a full and enjoyable day.Now we were cold and wet and tired, so the idea of going back to l’Ecritoire Restaurant for a small supper was very inviting. It was such a nice place we didn’t even want to try something new! Ilse had Soupe a l’Oignon again, and I had a dish with duck – very good! And the hotel 2 steps away was of course the best of the deal…
Two happy wanderers
