Three Days in Paris

We spent a few days in Paris a week ago and had a really nice time. We went on a canal boat ride, saw an excellent art exhibit, had some bus rides with adventures and just generally enjoyed ourselves.

"Interesting" Bus Rides

We’ll start with the bus rides. Paris has an amazing subway system - the Metro. But Laurie and I prefer to ride the buses if possible. They are, of course, slower, but it’s nice to be above the ground and see the sights. I will point out that the benefits diminish if we board a bus that is jammed full of folks with baby carriages, shopping carts, no available seats and the air conditioning absent or broken, but that’s a chance we’ll take.

Our first bus ride this trip was going to take us the the Musêe Luxembourg - a trip that actually required two bus rides and probably 45 minutes total. We piled on the first bus and settled into a couple seats to enjoy the sights. For seven or eight minutes, that is. Then came an announcement saying, in French and then English, “This bus terminates at this stop.” Say what? No explanation. We aren’t even close to where we get off. Oh well, with all the other riders, we get off and wait for the next bus to come along. Which, when it arrives, is full. So we stood to our stop.

Returning from the Musée Luxembourg, we climbed aboard the bus right outside the museum. Off we went, for about 100 yards, at which point an announcement in French (unintelligble to us, for sure) was made, and most of the people got off. Up ahead we could see that police had blocked the road - this is outside the French Senate, so something must have been going on there. About six people stayed on, and Laurie asked two young girls what was going on. Fortunately, they spoke enough English (more than we speak French, that’s for sure) and one said, “The bus continues, but no stops for a long way.” Well, what the heck, we’ll just see where we go. The bus turned off the route, found its way along some different streets and ended up right at the stop we needed. We must have skipped eight stops, so it was a pretty quick ride - excellent.

An Exhibit at the Musée Luxembourg

The best-known Impressionist artist, Claude Monet, had a brother - who knew? Léon, 4 years older than Claude, also dealt in colors; he was a chemist specializing in the creation of commercial colors - paint colors, textile colors, glass colors, etc. He seems to have had little influence on how Claude Monet used and painted colors as an Impressionist.

Léon Monet still had a significant effect on the Impressionist movement, because he bought many paintings of the artists associated with that movement: his brother, Camille Pissaro, Alfred Sisley, and particularly Auguste Renoir, who became a close and life-long friend of Léon. This show was largely a display of paintings from Léon’s private collection, the result of buying works from the Impressionists over the years that they were often struggling to sell a painting and obtain the funds to continue their work.

Also exhibited was a painting by Claude Monet of his brother - a painting with a story. Claude gave the portrait to Léon when it was done; Léon did not care for it at all and stuck it out of sight somewhere in his house, where it remained until this exhibition: a Monet painting displayed for the first time 149 years after its completion in 1874!

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Monet's portrait of his brother, Léon, painted in 1874 and hidden until 2023.
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Loved this: Monet's palette.

This was an enjoyable and interesting exhibition - we’re glad we perservered on the bus and got to it.

A Boat Ride on Canal Saint-Martin

Both readers of our blog will remember that Laurie and I like canals - we like to walk along them, watch boats go through canal locks, and when we can, we like to float on them. In our first visits to Paris we found that a great first-day-in-Paris activity was to take a tour-boat ride on Canal Saint-Martin, right in the heart of Paris. Later we learned that we could take a longer float, starting on the Seine near the d’Orsay museum, going upstream a couple kilometers before going into the Canal. On this Paris visit, we decided to take that ride. It was a relaxing ride through a part of Paris history.

About that history: Canal Saint-Martin was built at the direction of Napoleon when he had taken power in France. There were a number of reasons to build the canal: it would bring fresh water to Paris; it would shorten the time of boats and barges going to and from the north. Another not-so-loudly-proclaimed reason is that the canal put a physical barrier between Paris and Faubourg Saint-Antoine; Faubourg Saint-Antoine was a working-class neighborhood from which rebellions arose. Napoleon wanted the canal to prevent a rebellion against him from arising in the the Faubourg.

Today Canal Saint-Martin serves none of those purposes. The neighborhoods through which it flows have gentrified over the years, so it’s unlikely a rebellion will come from there. Fresh water comes from a variety of other sources; there is almost no commercial traffic on the canal. One time several decades ago there was some thought to closing it and using its route to create a new route for cars through this district. Fortunately, cooler heads prevailed and the benefit of having a beautiful stretch of water and trees and embankments for the people of Paris to enjoy. It’s one of our favorite walks, and floating up the canal was definitely an enjoyable way to spend a morning.

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Away we go! Up the Seine, we see the towers of Notre Dame.
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A rather less-beautiful view of Notre-Dame, but impressive nevertheless. Lots of work going on here, trying to get the Cathedral re-opened for next year's Olympic Games visitors.
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Turning into the first lock of the trip, from the Seine to Bassin Arsenal, from which Canal Saint-Martin begins.
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A number of these beautiful bridges cross the canal. This is a working part of the city, so bridges for cars and walkers exist along the route. There is always someone on the bridge, watching us go under.
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The boat passes through nine locks. Canal Saint-Martin drops about 60 feet from its terminus at Bassin de la Villette to its entry into the Seine, so one single-lock and four double-locks lift and lower boats on the canal. Each lock takes from five to ten minutes, so we had lots of relaxing time...
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I took a similar pictures of these colorful buildings on our first ride on Canal Saint-Martin, twenty years ago. I still love the splash of color they provide.

You can see that much of Canal Saint-Martin is lined with trees and walking paths. It is an enjoyable ride on a boat and is just as enjoyable walking along it. This is a calm oasis in Paris, a large and often noisy city.

Fête de la Musique

On the longest day of the year - June 21st - Paris erupts with music. The Fête de la Musique brings hundreds, maybe thousands, of musical performances onto the streets and squares and bridges of the city. There is every kind of music: choral, percussion, singing, dancing, every kind! There are formal performances, scheduled for certain places, and there are hundreds of informal performances, where musical folks find a place and start playing. It is great fun.

This year we took a very laid-back approach. At about 9 pm we walked out and around Place Nation, near Mary and Gilles’ flat, where we were staying. We saw some fun things:

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This little girl was so fun to watch. She's with a group of about twenty folks playing drums and singing African songs. She and about five other folks were shaking gourds filled with something in different ways to set and change the rhythms of the music, and she knew every move. The music here was hypnotic.
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This fellow was making his own contribution to the Fête de la Musique, making some amazing music on a synthesizer. This captures the feel of much of the Fête: Want to make some music? Find a place and do it. People will find you.

France operates on what is essentially double-daylight-saving time. Year round France is an hour later than it should be, to keep it in sync with other European Union countries. On June 21st, the night of the Fête de la Musique, the sun set in Paris at 9:57 pm. This means that it’s light until close to 11 pm, which makes for nice walking to see and hear all the music.

After three days and nights in Paris we climbed aboard a very crowded train and headed back to Bois-le-Roi. A great advantage of having the good fortune to spend quite a bit of time in Paris is that we can take it easy - we don’t need to do the big tourist things (Eiffel Tower, the Louvre, Musée d’Orsay, etc.) and can take things easy. We’ve pretty much said, “One big thing a day, take a walk or two, have a nice dinner in a casual place, and enjoy every minute. We did just that on this stay in what is still our favorite city in the world.


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