DeGaulle Arrives in Algiers

The hotel we are staying is in the Marais area of Paris, and we have walked through the area to get to the Metro and to get to places to eat, but we hadn't really taken a tour of the area. So today we decided to do the Marais walk in the Rick Steve's book. We walk through the yard of the Hotel de Sully and it is at this time that we realize that all the big hotels on the map and actually former residences of the big shot noble families in Paris. That makes the Hotel de Ville make much more sense. Anyway, we walk around a square called Place des Vosges, and pass by Victor Hugo's house. Thinking about him living there writing Les Miserables and imagining it taking place in the streets around us was pretty damn cool. Next we walked over to the Picasso museum and spent a good hour in there. The museum does a good job of giving you an idea of the progression of Picasso's work through his life. Right around Picasso is when I check out of art, but Picasso I can still appreciate. Some of the sculptures were pretty impressive. After the museum we walked trough the Jewish Quarter area and then down the main drag in the gay area of town. Not too many sights to see and a good bit of walking so we were ready for lunch and stopped at a cafe and just grabbed some sandwhiches.

With some food in us and feeling refreshed after sitting down, we hopped the Metro over to the Hotel des Invalides to check out Napolean's tomb and the accompanying war museums. The whole area around the tomb is interesting. The tomb itself is a level below the area you walk in on, and all around the main level are other tombs and monuments to people like Foch and other Lakeview streets. They also had a number of items that Napolean actually used including swords, an overcoat, and a hat. That gave me goosbumps. We were intending to only walk through the WWII part of the war museum, but they had recently rearranged it to make it one big walk through, so we started in about 1870 and worked our way through. We didn't want to spend all day here, so we breezed through, stopping to read some interesting things about trench warfare in WWI, and spending more time in the WWII area. For me it was a little weird to see WWII presented from the the French perspective. They upplay their role in things and seem to downplay everyone else's. But it makes you think how much our own museums, such as the D-Day museum, do the same thing. We left the museum for a nice snack and break at a cafe in the Tuileries Gardens. I really enjoyed this break. Nice scenery, good coffee, just all around pleasent.

From the Gardens we began the long walk down the Champs-Elysees. We walked past where all the people were guilloteened, through the opening garden area, then down past all the shops. Melissa restrained herself and only went in to one. Of course most of the shops were pretty expensive so that likely helped. The finale was the Arc de Triomphe. It's huge. I'm not sure what I was expecting, but it was way larger than I thought. We didn't walk up it, because we are wussies, but we spent a good bit of time looking down the Camps-Elysees and admiring the Arc itself.

Our plan for the remainder of the day was to grab some food to eat in the park and watch the Eiffel tower light up as the sun went down. That proved a little more difficult that we thought. It took a while to find a bakery, then it took a while to find a bathroom, but we finally made it to the park with about thiry minutes to watch the show. I know it seems silly to watch a building for thirty minutes, but if you have a chance to do it, try it out and tell me what you think. After the twinkling ended, we caught the #69 bus to get a above ground view of Paris at night. It was less impressive than I had hoped but we still had a few good views.

For dinner we walked over to the square where Melissa and I had dinner the first night and sat at an outside table at LaMarche. The food was tasty, and Jerry had creme brulee again, but too much time has passed and I can't remember exactly what we had. After dinner we went back to the hotel, getting there around 12:30. Long day.