Versailles

Still no almond croissants at breakfast today, but there was a fabulous apple pastry, which I've already forgotten the name of.

Today's adventure was Versailles. We managed to make our way to an RER station via the Metro (a large chunk of the RER is closed this summer, including the station that would have been the most convenient).

Once we reached Versailles, we stopped at a Monoprix and picked up some food for a picnic. We ended up with a baguette, some Brie (Coeur de Lyon--it was very tasty), potato chips, chocolate/hazelnut cookies, cinnamon cookies, and sodas. Here we are picnicking:



The Chateau was amazing (like almost everything else we've seen this trip):








For some reason, John and Beth decided to photograph each other's nostrils in the gardens. Here's John taking his photo:



The result:



Since it's a weekend, the fountains in the gardens were running, with Baroque music playing in the background:






We also went to the Grand Trianon:





We lucked out when it was time to return to Paris. The gardens closed early today, at 5:30, because of some evening event, so when we left around 5:00, the streets were filled with people streaming towards the train station. We went through the turnstiles, and discovered a nearly empty train waiting for us, so we got on and settled ourselves into the comfy seats. The train filled up within minutes, with people standing in the aisles. We got to rest our feet on the way back to Paris.

I decided that since we had to get off the train, anyway, we might as well have dinner in the Rue Cler neighborhood before getting on the Metro. We settled on Cafe du Marche, another Rick Steves recommendation. As the review said, service was slow, but we had a delicious, reasonably priced dinner.



John had the grilled entrecote (steak) with sauteed potatoes and a green salad:



Beth had the chicken burger with fries (because she thought a cheeseburger was just too American):



Matt and I had the duck confit with sauteed potatoes and green salad:



After dinner, we returned home on the Metro, and had our daily Berthillon ice cream for dessert. I had cherry, John had cherry and chocolate, Beth had mango and pineapple, and Matt had praline and caramel.

Paris, Day 3: The Louvre

Another delicious breakfast today, although, sadly, there were no almond croissants. We did finally meet the mother and daughter who are staying in the third bedroom--Kelly and Samantha, from St. Louis.

John and I went to the internet cafe after breakfast, where I was able to upload the first two blog entries in the queue (Rome, Day 4 and Pompeii & Naples).

When we got back to the apartment and got ready to leave for the day, Beth discovered that she had left her purse at last night's restaurant. Fortunately, the restaurant was just opening for the day, and they had her purse safe and sound. Nothing too valuable in it, but it was her Italian purse, and had her camera with all of her photos. Whew!

We strolled down the river towards the Louvre in a leisurely fashion. Once we arrived, we took a few photos in the Cour Carrée, then headed downstairs to Le Carrousel de Louvre for lunch and a quick wifi fix at the Apple Store. John also bought an Airport Express, in hopes of fixing Carol's internet problems. For lunch, I had French "fast food": quiche lorraine, a green salad, and a Coke Light from the food court. The rest of the family opted for Big Macs and fries.

The Louvre is another amazing museum that's not possible to see in one day, or even one week. We started by visiting the Egyptian antiquities section, since we had missed those sections in both Vatican City and Naples.



Next, we went through Oriental Antiquities. I really liked the mosaics from the reign of Darius I (whom Matt tells me was a Persian king):



Beth liked the column heads from the same era:



Here's a detail of the Code of Hammurabi:



A little Limosin portrait:



One of the many stairways in the palace:



The Hall of Rubens:



A door:



Bronzino's La Sainte Familie:



I love how the "no food or drink" pictographs represent food with a baguette:



We took the Metro back, and stopped for our daily ice cream. This time we tried a different shop on our street, one that had a few more flavors. I had caramel beurre sale, Matt had caramel and dark chocolate, Beth had mandarin and pink grapefruit, and John and peach and dark chocolate.

Once we got back, we finally got Carol's wireless working by adding the Airport Express to the network. We are still mystified by some of the boxes: what we think are the cable modem and the router each have a secondary white box between them and their power supplies, with Ethernet connections coming out of both. We thought that the router was dead, and bypassing it would fix things, but the Airport and modem don't work unless the router is connected between them! Essentially, it works now, but we have no idea why...

For dinner, we opted to get some sandwiches. John and I had chicken on baguette, Matt had roast beef on a baguette, and Beth had salmon crudites. We shared a brownie and a coffee eclair--yum!

Paris, Day 2

Breakfast today was fabulous. Fresh croissants (plain, chocolate, and the best almond ones we've ever tasted), baguette, wonderful fresh fruit, coffee, and tea. And more of those little puffs that the kids liked so much.

After breakfast, we walked through the Tuileries Gardens:



on the way to the Musée de l'Orangerie (home of Monet's Water Lilies):




This was a nice change from the Roman and Greek sculptures we've been seeing recently. The first floor was dedicated to the Water Lilies, and the lower floor had an interesting collection of more modern art (Impressionist, Cubist, etc.). I liked the Renoirs a lot, and Beth and I both enjoyed Marie Laurencin's paintings.

For lunch, we walked down Rue Cler and picked up a variety of things for a picnic. Matt had a salmon & spinach quiche, Beth a quiche Lorraine, I had a feuilletine (layered pastry with ham and bechamel), and John had a chicken sandwich. We ate at a little park just outside the Army Museum. Everything was delicious, and we finished up with some currants and wild strawberries:





Next stop was Napoleon's Tomb and the Army Museum, housed in the Hôtel des Invalides:





As usual, there was a long line for the ladies room, and just like yesterday at the train station, it turned out that only one of the stalls was available--the rest were locked.

After the tomb, we went to the Arms and Armor section of the museum. The armor was fabulous, but it was all housed in glass cases with too many random reflections to take good photos. They had an entire armory in one section, with row upon row of armor and weapons.



Beth and I had had enough of the Army Museum by this time (which we had predicted), so we left John and Matt there and took off for Le Carrousel du Louvre, the mall under the Louvre Museum. We were rather disappointed at what we found--only one small clothing store, a nature store, and a bunch of jewelry and whatnots. Oh, we did come across the Apple Store, which had free wireless, so I checked my mail there. Still haven't been able to upload the last four blogs, but I hope tomorrow morning we'll be successful! (Our hostess is having Internet problems, and hasn't been able to get online either.)

We stopped for our customary afternoon ice cream on the way home. I had peach today, and Beth had peach and pear.

For dinner, we went to L'Ebouillanté, just across the river on the Right Bank. We had delicious crepes (Les Bricks). John had egg, gruyere, tomato, and ham:



Matt had egg, tomato, gruyere, onions, chevre, creme, and coriander:



Beth had eggs, fromage blanc, sweet peppers, onions, and parsley:



and I had egg, tuna, tomato, sweet peppers, onions, olives and capers (okay, I picked off the capers, but the rest was delicious):



For dessert, we had chocolate gateau (John):



tarte tatin with caramel (Matt):



crumble with apricots and red berries (Beth):



and cake with cinnamon and walnuts:



The sunset was lovely on the way back to the apartment:



John and I tried to go to the internet cafe nearby, but discovered it had closed at 8:00 pm. We'll try again in the morning, so you can read this!