Get lost, Paris

I am glad you were not trailing along behind us yesterday as we went about our touristing business. Had you been there, you would intuited the speedy demise/need for mediation of our relationship. The problem is, as always, Ron and his heartfelt belief that he knows where we are when there are really no facts to support that.

I want to make it clear that I am only minimally more competent, but what I WILL do that Ron will not do is consult my GPS over and over again. While you would assume this would keep us on track, it really leads to a lot of time, hunched down over my phone on a street corner, telling Ron we’re only 30 meters away, 20 meters, 10 meters…until you would think we should be literally banging into whatever site it is…except of course we’re not. An added wrinkle for me as I age is that I can’t read the GPS map on my phone anymore and so, if someone made of movie of Tourist Valerie, it would be: walk 5 minutes, stop to consult phone, take off sunglasses, find reading glasses, drop down on curb to alleviate back pain, argue with Ron about location, stand up, walk 5 minutes etc. etc. etc. When things get too bleak, I try to find Ron a doughnut so he’ll keep walking.

With these sharp skills, we set out today with a big agenda and managed to cover it all on foot. Our original plan had been to transit between sites via cab but people those cortisone injections I had just before I left have kicked in and I am feeling more and more like the late 40s version of myself, just with way weaker eyesight. We were also motivated to walk as much as possible after our ride into town from the airport – highlighted by a cab driver with a trigger temper, who was continually insulted by other cars’ movements (i.e. forward). He would speed up, parallel the offending driver, roll down his window and start an argument – over and over again in the bottlenecked Paris traffic. We even got to tangle with a nice black Tesla at one point.

We started out at the Catacombs, which hold the remains of 6 million people. Ron, above, is just getting started on our underground stroll. The Catacombs were put into use in the late 1700s, when the cemeteries began to overflow. There were mine pits in the city – limestone had been pulled from these pits for centuries – to be used in building – leaving a warren of tunnels. The tunnels were later used by the Resistance during WWII and apparently, in 2004, someone even built an illegal movie theatre in a tunnel out near the Eiffel Tower.

Here’s me down near one of the bone piles. It’s all femurs and skulls in front because they stack nicely – the other bones are piled in back.

From the Catacombs, we went to the Liberation of Paris Museum and continued our theme of doing as many stairs into the underground as possible. I definitely make the people in charge of monitoring all of these stairs a little nervous when I approach with my cane but I give them a little smile and wave the cane around a bit cheerily to show my agility and they let me go.

The bunkers Ron is entering above were used as meeting spaces by the Resistance and then, during the Paris Uprising, the leader of the French Forces of the Interior masterminded the liberation of Paris from there.

From our two underground sites, we headed to the Louis Vuitton Foundation museum – 5 miles away and I managed to make the entire route on foot – navigating with the Can you still see the Eiffel Tower? method and then switching to the Can you see the Arc de Triomph? Photo aside: here is the Arc, wrapped in fabric for just this week:

The Louis Vuitton Foundation is a modern art museum that we strode through without soaking up any art information whatsoever. (Wait – a lie. Van Gogh’s The Prisoner was set all by itself in a top floor room and I enjoyed looking at that bleak and anguished picture! But I hauled us out there to see the building itself, art inside be damned. Look at this place!!!

By the time we finished with Louis Vuitton, we were due for a meet-up dinner with two Rick Steves’ Helpline posters I have been emailing. I don’t know how I make those work out so often, but they are always just a blast – despite how much all of you think I travel, I am always the newbie at these meetings.

It’s time for us to pack up and head out of Paris. I did 12.2 miles yesterday and about 7 miles today and I am so ecstatic. It’s been about 3 years since I’ve been able to do mileage like that.

We snuck in a quick visit to the Musee Carnavalet today. It’s devoted to documenting the history of Paris. It was closed for many years because the collection had gotten so unwieldy that the museum became too hard to tour. Well they are just open again now and people are raving about the layout and I hate to be a Negative Nelly but we were constantly lost in that museum. Don’t get me wrong – it’s really interesting – but we passed by Voltaire’s chair about 8 times while trying to find a staircase to exit and only finally got out of there when some docent literally walked us the entire way to the stairwell. You might as well have a look at Voltaire’s chair:

And one more on the chair theme: a wheelchair from 1780:

Here is one of the stairwells we could not find when ready to leave. This one was in a hallway dedicated to the 3D signs that shop owners used to put on their Parisian shops and it made me itch to transport myself back to the 18th century to have a stroll around.

Here’s me. We’re not lost yet but it’s imminent.

I’ll leave you with two shots from our wanderings. One building and one of the many churches we popped into. We have a rule we try to honor; any church we pass by gets a quick visit.

I’ll talk to you in a couple of days from Amboise. It’s my turn to pick dinner tonight – for my first pick I hauled us over to McDonald’s for my requisite Travel Filet-o-Fish. It was extra-special because it was our 17th anniversary and I am sure you can imagine the romantic ambiance. Ron is not aware yet but there’s a Chipotle around the corner and his destiny this evening lies in a big taco salad. Cringe all you want – there’s just no teaching me to appreciate fine dining but I’m a cost effective diner!

Goodbye to Paris – truly one of the world’s greatest cities!!! We never get tired of our visits.