Day 2 - Paris

Day 2—Monday, May 11, 1992

Although sleep did not clearly differentiate day 1 from day 2, because we didn’t get any, landing at Orly Airport did. We touched down at about 7:30 a.m. local time, cleared customs in a jiff, and then tried to get our bearings. I had previously reserved a car with Thrifty Car Rental for May 14, but went ahead and made another reservation with Europcar for that date because the service agent quoted a cheaper rate than Thrifty and because Europcar had an airport location.

After a cup of coffee and a failed attempt to get a metro into the city, we went to the information desk. The advice was to take a bus, the Air France bus. We also got a map of Paris.

After a spell of lost-in-a-foreign-land, we caught the Air France bus to the Air France bus terminal near Invalides and the Rue Cler area, an area recommended by Rick Steves in his book 2 to 22 Days in France as a good place to stay in Paris. (This book was intended to be and proved to be our primary guide during our travels.) The walk from the bus terminal to Rue Cler and our subsequent wandering in search of the ideal hotel was a grueling ordeal, what with our luggage and the lack of sleep. We checked out a room at the Hotel Leveque, recommended by Rick Steves, but for some reason (e.g. no vacancies or it being too expensive) we continued our search. As total exhaustion set, we chose to stay at the nearest lodging available, that being the Hôtel de La Motte Picquet on the street of the same name.

We had a cup of coffee at the hotel while waiting for our room to be cleaned, then moved our bags into the room and set off to explore Paris. We walked back toward the bus terminal near Invaldes, crossed over the Seine, where we got our first sight of the Eiffel tower and I took some video, then down along the Seine to the Louvre. Sharon felt nauseated and faint during the hike, but we made it to the museum, and although it took some doing, we eventually found the entrance, the one under the famed I. M. Pei glass pyramid amidst massive construction.

We had intended to take the 90-minute English tour of the Louvre, but after waiting over an hour for it to begin, we decided to explore the place ourselves instead of shelling out the additional 60 francs for the tour. The Louvre was fantastic—the Mona Lisa (it looked smaller than expected in real life), Venus de Milo, Nike of Samothrace, Odalisque, Liberty Leading the People, Rembrandt, lots of Greek statues, a pair of tigers by Delacroix, an enchanting painting above the tigers, and much, much more.

After the Louvre we walked over a pedestrian bridge with a great view of the west end of the Ile de Cite, then along back streets to the La Pallette Cafe (recommended by R. Steves) for a beer in the open air café. It was a lovely spot to take a breather, and I even understood the waiter when he said how much our bill came to, but the weather was chilly and damp. On the move again, we traipsed up and down Boulevard Saint-Germaine a block or so, cut up to the Odean Theatre, and then into Luxembourg Gardens for another brief rest. Rick Steves suggests in his book, writing about Luxembourg Gardens, to “grab a chair by the center fountain and contemplate where you are,” and that’s what we did. Luxembourg Gardens is beautiful and affords a grand view of Paris, particularly grand were the rows of hedged trees at the far end of the garden. It was sunny by this time, but still rather chilly.

Then we headed back to our hotel. By the time we arrived it was time for dinner. (We hadn’t eaten since breakfast on the plane.) We stopped at several shops, four I believe, along Rue Cler, picking up a baguette, two kinds of cheese (one a rather good goat’s cheese), four Kronenbourgs, and a hot quiche Lorraine, which contained the first morsels of meat we’d eaten since January. We ate and drank and made merry in our hotel room.

By this point we were dead tired but managed to stay up until about 8:30-8:45, watching some French television, mostly about the Cannes Film Festival underway in the South of France. Then we crashed after a bit of ooh la la.

HIGHLIGHT: The Louvre.

LOWLIGHT: Extreme fatigue.

NOTE: Orly International is a busy unglamorous airport.

REFLECTIONS FROM 2020:

For years I had attempted to identify the painting above the Delacroix in the Louvre with no luck. Then while reviewing this account, I tried again using the key information that the Delacroix painting was of two tigers. That information led me to this site and this one, where the painting in question is identified as Susanna at Her Bath aka Susanna and the Elders by Théodore Chassériau. Looking at it now, it’s hard to figure out why the painting appealed to me so at the time. It’s not bad, just nothing special. At any rate, it’s nice to have that little mystery solved after 28 years.

Per this source, the rate of exchange during the trip was about 5.5 French francs or slightly less to 1 USD.