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what a busy day!
Apr. 23rd, 2008 10:57 pmWe left around 10:30 this morning and headed out to Invalides, where we viewed Napoleon's tomb (every bit as impressive as Joel said it would be), the relief map room (even more impressive than Joel said it would be), and the arms and armor from the 13th to the 18th century exhibit. After we saw the relief maps Joel was thirsty and I was hungry so we ducked into the museum cafeteria where we were able to split a sandwich and a piece of lemon pie quite adequately for two people. (The lemon pie was one of the best I've ever had, extremely tart and lemony). We finished up there around 3pm, and decided we were within walking distance of the Orangery, though when we got there we decided to first find a cafe and sit down a bit. So we went into the Orangery around 4:30, and the Monet exhibit was worth every penny. I had no idea that the water lilies paintings were so long! There's no way that a picture in a book could ever give an impression of the scale. They're also rather mesmeric to look at; you keep seeing new things and your eyes keep being drawn further in.
By this time in the day I'm feeling like a horrible wimp because the back of one of my thighs was beginning to seize up and my feet get sore. (It used to take more than two days hard walking for my legs to give out! I'm getting out of shape.) But Joel convinced me that the walk to St. Eustache from the Orangery was only about as far as the walk from Invalides to the Orangery (a bit of an exaggeration, but I'll forgive him, because the park between the Orangery and the Louvre was pleasant to walk through, and we reached St. Eustache right when the sun came out for the first time in the day, making the stained glass inside absolutely lovely). It's now around 6:30 and we're both getting pretty hungry, but again Joel said "It isn't that far" to the Ile St-Louis, where there is a crepery which he'd been to before and said it was really really good. So we walked there...and walked up and down every street, nearly, of the island, before we found the crepery and it was closed. We'll just have to try going back another day, and we backtracked to a different crepery we'd seen earlier, with a minor detour along the way. About three shops from the crepery we were aiming towards I saw a chocolatier on the other side of the street, and joked to Joel that "you could just buy me chocolate" instead of dinner. So he took my arm, marched me across the street, and bought me chocolate. :) We got our crepes and cider and went down the stairs at the edge of the isle to the quay on the Seine that runs around the entire island, and we sat there for a long, lovely time. I had planned to have a taste of my chocolate, and then save the rest, but once I tried it, I changed my mind. :) It was a roll of pistachio marzipan (I didn't know you could do marzipan with pistachio, but it makes sense) coated in milk chocolate with crushed pistachios in it. Very fantastic.
Once it started turning a bit cool out, I made the snide remark that "Oh, by now we've walked so far back east, we could just walk to the apartment!" but thankfully he took no notice of me and we walked over to a metro stop.
All in all, a busy and exhausting day, but I'm loving it!
By this time in the day I'm feeling like a horrible wimp because the back of one of my thighs was beginning to seize up and my feet get sore. (It used to take more than two days hard walking for my legs to give out! I'm getting out of shape.) But Joel convinced me that the walk to St. Eustache from the Orangery was only about as far as the walk from Invalides to the Orangery (a bit of an exaggeration, but I'll forgive him, because the park between the Orangery and the Louvre was pleasant to walk through, and we reached St. Eustache right when the sun came out for the first time in the day, making the stained glass inside absolutely lovely). It's now around 6:30 and we're both getting pretty hungry, but again Joel said "It isn't that far" to the Ile St-Louis, where there is a crepery which he'd been to before and said it was really really good. So we walked there...and walked up and down every street, nearly, of the island, before we found the crepery and it was closed. We'll just have to try going back another day, and we backtracked to a different crepery we'd seen earlier, with a minor detour along the way. About three shops from the crepery we were aiming towards I saw a chocolatier on the other side of the street, and joked to Joel that "you could just buy me chocolate" instead of dinner. So he took my arm, marched me across the street, and bought me chocolate. :) We got our crepes and cider and went down the stairs at the edge of the isle to the quay on the Seine that runs around the entire island, and we sat there for a long, lovely time. I had planned to have a taste of my chocolate, and then save the rest, but once I tried it, I changed my mind. :) It was a roll of pistachio marzipan (I didn't know you could do marzipan with pistachio, but it makes sense) coated in milk chocolate with crushed pistachios in it. Very fantastic.
Once it started turning a bit cool out, I made the snide remark that "Oh, by now we've walked so far back east, we could just walk to the apartment!" but thankfully he took no notice of me and we walked over to a metro stop.
All in all, a busy and exhausting day, but I'm loving it!
