Thank You for Stopping By

Sorry if the type is huge again -- I figured out how to edit the HTML last time, but today it's flummoxed me.

Yesterday was Day 3 of my three-day museum pass.

It turns out, the day to activate a 3-day museum pass is Wednesday. Not Sunday, like I did.

I scanned the list of places Kelli was not interested in seeing, and it's a pretty short list.

The Asian Art museum is nearby, and not on her "to-do" list. Of course, it is closed on Tuesdays, so I didn't even waste my time trying that.

I decided, since essentially everyplace I have gone has been closed on the day I went, that instead of NOT seeing a series of fabulously beautiful inanimate objects, I would take this opportunity to not see some fabulously beautiful animate objects.

I went to the tropical fish aquarium, out on the Eastern edge of the city, directly adjacent to the Peripherique.

The first photograph (remember, like Chinese ideograms, we read from the bottom up -- or do they read from the right to left? Since I don't read them, I have no idea. Anyway, photos are in inverse order of the text that describes them) is of the Peripherique at the Porte Doree. It's not very interesting, but -- it's more interesting than the aquarium.

First, I rode my friendly local #8 Metro line all the way across town to Porte Doree station. When I got out, I toured the neighborhood for perhaps 15 minutes trying to find the aquarium's address -- of course, it was UP the hill, barely out of sight to the left of the photograph. It is open Tuesdays, but, so terribly sorry, not THIS Tuesday -- major work being done on the entryway.

Well, I'm already out there, so let's take a walk around the neighborhood -- some very nice, modern apartment buildings line one side of the street; the other side is the Bois de Vincennes, which is a park/forest with seating areas and basketball courts and petanque, or boule, courts -- petanque is the French version of bocce, or bocce is the Italian version of petanque, depending on who is intimidating your opinion at the moment.

Also, there's a circus being built -- it opens in a couple of day -- les Etoiles de Beijing, the Stars of the Beijing Circus. Red Big-Top tent. Perhaps when they finish building it, they can help out over at the aquarium -- I'm concerned the fish aren't being regularly fed.

From there, it took almost no time to realize there was nothing nearby.

Well, on Kelli's "I could care less" list was the Musee Publicite, the history of advertising in France. Now, that might sound like a really boring afternoon to you, but I've been buying and using calendars with the fabulous art-Deco posters from France in the 20s and 30s, and I've really come to enjoy the caricature-like style of those posters.

The booklet says to exit the Metro at Louvre Rivoli. The museum is at No.117, Rue du Rivoli -- you can't miss it, really.

I could.

The Louvre is allegedly the largest palace in all of Europe -- in the fashion of French palace contstruction, it has a central building and a pair of insanely long wings. One of those wings abuts the Rue du Rivoli, for about a mile, it seems, though probably not really for more than 1200 yards or so.

You know it's the Louvre -- it says so everywhere.

What you don't know is, the Louvre Museum does not occupy the whole building (no matter what you might think after spending a week trying to become the first human ever to see the entire contents of the building).

Also: Addresses in some parts of Paris don't quite make sense to Americans. Odd numbers on one side, evens on the other, sure. It's just that, well, each side of the street issues out addresses as they are needed -- so the side OPPOSITE the Louvre, under the arcade, has a lot of shops, and a lot of addresses -- it says 172 right across the street, and the addresses get smaller as you head toward the Hotel d'Ville. So, 117's gotta be that same direction, right?

The Louvre, as mentioned earlier, is approximately 6 miles long on this side, and it has no doors. Hence, why waste any address numbers? The first number I come to, which is (truly -- no exaggeration for effect her) at the NEXT Metro stop, is No. 97. Next door is No. 95. Well, 117 isn't THAT way.

Not being terminally stupid, I used my Metro pass to ride one stop, back to Louvre Rivoli, exited at the far end, and began walking along the Louvre, in the direction of the Tuileries. And, aha! There's No. 117, on the outside of the building. It says it is the Museum of Fabric and Fashion, but I am undeterred by this sophomoric attempt to fool me! Nosireebob, I've done enough French museums now to know that they hide what you want to see behind some crap you have no interest in. By the way, that crap turns out to be on Kelli's "want to see this one list".....

Hey! It's OPEN!

The museum is 4 stories tall. Shop on the ground floor, the fabric stuff is next (probably pretty interesting, really -- it has no permanent collection, but does display haute couture from days gone by -- extravagantly beaded Balenciaga gowns, etc. I blazed past that, shot up the next flight of stairs past the jewelry museum, to the top floor, where the Publicity Museum used to be.

And, in fact, it will be there again, soon. It's just that, dreadfully sorry, old chap, stiff upper lip and all, eh?, it's closed TODAY. There is a special exhibit that opens Thursday. After my pass expires. Not that the people in the space told me that -- they said it was closed, please go away. When I asked if it would be closed next week, they said "yes, closed toujours", which sorta means "forever". Turns out, forever is two days in Paris. It's always good to have your temporal frames of reference.

Well, no big deal, right? I mean, I'm at the Louvre. For cryin' out loud, if you can't piddle away a few hours there, you have no pulse. Breezed through the jewelry museum, back onto the street, and to the Carrousel du Louvre, I.M.Pei's masterful glass pyramid.

It's November. The fountains of Paris are turned off from January through March so they don't freeze. Seems fair. What they don't tell you is, they are closed from April through December for repairs.....the great fountains in the Carrousel are dry, and there are covers lifted and pipes being worked on and dirt being transferred in a desultory fashion (that's actually from the Department of Redundancy Department -- most all work in Paris is "performed" in a desultory fashion). There's a line at the Pyramid, but I have no fear in my heart, for I have a Museum Pass, one of the most incredible things known to mankind! It gets you past queues and into museums, and for this, alone, it is worth its cost.

Not this queue. You see, the Louvre is closed on Tuesdays.

At this point, I was so disconsolate, I went back out through the Porte du Cardinal Sully to the Rue du Rivoli, crossed the street to McDonald's, and ordered two Big Macs, one on le formule super size, paid my 11.35 Euros, brought them back to the fountains and ate them while blubbering unconsolably.

No, wait. That's just not true.

I did go to the r Rivoli, walked several blocks until I found the boulanger with the line out the door, and got a ham and gruyere sandwich on a baguette traditional -- ham, cheese, and sweet butter on bread to die for. I did not blubber, I marched through the 1er Arrt. looking like the cat that ate the canary - une sandwich fabuleuse for the price of one Big Mac

And then I said "the hell with it, I'll go someplace I know is open, even though I've been there before." And I headed for Arts et Metiers. There's an Arts et Metiers Metro stop, thoughtfully placed away from the museum in such a way that you get to know all the businesses in the neighborhood before you actually find the museum, which has a church attached to it (now deconsecrated).

One of my favorite museums in the whole darned world. The history of science, in both French and English, with an understandable accent on French accomplishments, of which there are many -- the speed of light was discovered by a French physicist. That's the next photo -- the display of the actual instruments used, and how it was done.

When I left the museum, it was nightfall, but that wasn't night that was falling on me, it was rain. Pretty serious rain, too. Turns out that the weathermen here are somewhat less accurate than ours at home. I say "somewhat", because there is not room to be a LOT less accurate.....

Had a nice evening at home. Made some "soupe au Pistou" , a Provencale take on minestrone, and heated up a Croque Monseuir from the bakery downstairs. A Croque Monseuir is just a sandwich, except it has ham and butter inside, is made from what we think of as "white bread", and has sauce Bechamel ladled over the top, which is then covered with grated Gruyere cheese. They pre-bake them at the boulanger, so I brought it home cold and heated it in the oven to go with my soup. There's a lot to be said for simple pleasures.

Wednesday, I was domestic -- did laundry, changed the sheets (that's an experience -- it takes 2 2-hours washing machine cycles to do a set of sheets), vacuumed the house. Got ready to go out for my walk after lunchtime, and it was pouring down rain all of a sudden. One of the (few) benefits of living on the top floor is, there's a skylight right outside the front door, so I didn't even descend a single one of the 85 Stairs to Hell. Instead, I came back into my clean apartment and wrote this. Now, it's stopped raining, so I'm going to stop writing.

Until next time.