Today we experienced clashing museums — the Rodin museum in the morning, the Museum of the Army in the afternoon. The Rodin museum was interesting, set in a lovely large formal garden. Like most good museums, there was really too much to take in in one visit (at least with the boys along) … and that was with part of it being closed because too many of the staff were on vacation.
The Army museum, contained in the enormous old severe building called Les Invalides, was a little too much for me: too dark, too much not of interest (how many Napoleonic regimental flags, standards, and banners do you need?), and too glorifying of war (even in this middle-of-the-roaders view). Only the section on WWII put the whole idea of war in any sort of context. Having said that, the boys absolutely loved it … swords, armor, pistols, cannons, bullets, cannon balls, pikes, rifles, muskets, knives, they thought it all was cool, in part because of the lack of context (no blood, no decomposing bodies). We also visited as a part of that museum Napoleon’s tomb, housed in an incredibly overdone interior of an old church, the outside of which, however, has a enormous, beautiful gold dome. A whole lot of walking, we are all done in. I give my 80-year old mother credit for keeping up. She doesn’t seem appreciably more tired this evening than I do, which is really sad. Other random thoughts follow.
We have been surprised and impressed with how friendly everyone has been to us. Even my halting attempts at French have always been met with smiles and courtesy, almost without exception. We had lunch at a tiny little half-eat-in, half-take-out place (sandwiches on extremely delicious and fresh baguettes), and the young women behind the counter were all help and smiles.
Maybe for this reason, and maybe because we have our own apartment and thus have to do ordinary things like shopping, Paris seems much less foreign than I imagined it would be. That’s nice in a way, and disappointing in a way, too. It also seems much less intimidating than I expected. My son Will said today when he said, “Dad, this is just like a clean San Francisco,” and while it’s more than that, I understand what he meant.
I’ve heard people who have visited Paris rave about Le Metro, and now I understand why. So far we have found it to be completely efficient and easy to use. The longest we’ve ever waited for a train has been 2 minutes. The only negative is that it is hard to get an overall sense of the city while using the Metro, as you seem to disappear from one part of the city and simply pop up in another part, with no context of travel.
One of my favorite moments was when Suzie (who, sad to say, had a terrible night last night … she couldn’t sleep and was up repeatedly) was sitting by herself on a bench at the Army museum, looking very weary. I asked her to come see some Medieval armor (which was cool), and she just said, “I just don’t care about this stuff.” To which I replied, now you know how the kids felt in the Rodin museum.
Lastly, a weird aspect of our apartment is that it is in a 8 story building that is shaped in a large “U.” It’s been very windy since we arrived, and was hot the first day, so we left the windows open at night. In the middle of the night we were shaken out of sleep by what sounded like a huge explosion outside on the street. We sat bolt upright in bed wondering what was going on, when a second loud explosion occurred. By this time we were concerned, but when the third “explosion” happened we realized that they had been caused by a series of slamming interior doors, caused by a wicked cross wind. The windows have mostly been shut since then.
Categories: Travel -- France