Our week in Paris ended at an obscene hour as our alarm began its painful chime at 4 a.m. We successfully navigated two bus transfers and managed to see a nearly-unobstructed view of the Arc de Triomphe (there’s still quite a bit of traffic on Champs-Élysées at 5 a.m.) en route to the airport. We watched the sunrise as we boarded our flight to Barcelona.
The early morning flight meant we had a few hours to pass before checking into our Airbnb. We stashed our bags in a local locker facility, grabbed lunch and headed out on the town, starting on La Rambla.
La Rambla is the main drag for tourists in Barcelona. The tree- and vendor-lined pedestrian street runs for a mile from Plaça de Catalunya to a monument of Christopher Columbus looking out over the Mediterranean Sea.
Our first stop was the La Virreina Image Centre. We lucked out in our timing, arriving on the weekend of the hugely popular Festival of Saint Eulalia. The center was displaying the giant puppets that would walk the streets of Barcelona’s Gothic Quarter in just a couple nights. Upstairs, an exhibition of Albert Serra’s SINGULARITY featured eight rooms, each with part of a film playing. It was weird…
Along the way, we stopped into the Mercado de La Boqueria, a sprawling food market with butcher shops, seafood stands and sit-down restaurant stalls. If you can’t find it here, you probably don’t need it.
By early afternoon, our apartment was ready and we met our host in the El Rambla neighborhood near the El Gat sculpture by Fernando Botero. Botero’s fat cat has been a Barcelona mainstay since 1987, but moved around town trying to find a home. The statue, which is the size of a midsize sedan, finally found its permanent place in 2003 and has become a popular meeting place for the locals.
The early flight caught up with us and we bookended our day by watching the sunset from our balcony before calling it an early night… the only one we would have in Barcelona.
Sunrise at Paris’s Beauvais Airport.The gigantes y cabezudos (giants and big heads) of Barcelona would be featured throughout the weekend during the Festival of Saint Eulalia.Me and the giants for some perspective.The banner for the Festival of Saint Eulalia.Barcelona loves its futbol team! Barça, Barça, Baaarça!The entryway to Mercado de La Boqueria.A small fruit and vegetable market set up behind Mercado de La Boqueria.El Gat, Barcelona’s favorite fat cat.Sunset on our first night in Barcelona.
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On our last day in Paris, we had to work up the courage to brave the worst weather we’d had in the first two weeks of our trip. Heavy rain and high winds were in the forecast and would play a part in the day.
We started by heading way out to Paris’s 11th arrondissement for what might be the city’s best crepes at West Country Girl. The set menu offers a savory crepe and a sweet crepe, both made with buckwheat flour, and a cider for a reasonable price. We both had variations on an egg and cheese crepe for our savory choices and chose blackberry jam and WCG’s homemade salted caramel for our sweet crepes. Everything was excellent, especially the salted caramel, and the dry crisp cider was the perfect side.
After lunch, in which we dodged most of a passing storm, we headed back to the metro station when we accidentally stumbled on Père Lachaise Cemetery, the famous final resting place of author Oscar Wilde and The Doors frontman Jim Morrison among other notables. The cemetery is usually open to the public, but entrance was restricted to funerals only that day due to the high winds creating a danger of falling branches.
Thwarted by the weather, we took the train back into the city center to follow one of ChocoParis.com‘s walking tours of the city’s most popular chocolate shops. From the Louvre to Arc de Triomphe, we covered 2.6 miles visiting two chocolate shops and two macaron shops.
At Michel Cluizel’s shop we sampled a few of the single-origin chocolates. Cluizel has been making chocolate since 1948 and is one of the few chocolatiers in the world who processes its own cacao.
Our next stop was Jean-Paul Hévin’s shop. Hévin is widely considered as the top chocolatier in Paris and has five shops in Japan and a pair in Hong Kong in addition to his four Paris locations. The two-floor flagship store features a variety of pastries and chocolates downstairs with a tea room serving his famous hot chocolate upstairs. We bought a sampling of chocolates infused with Earl Gray tea-infused, pistachio and coffee and headed upstairs. We skipped the hot chocolate since the heat was cranked up way too high in the tea room, but the chocolates were delicious.
Further down the road, we walked into Pierre Hermé. The vibe was more high-end jewelry shop, but the diamonds were replaced with chocolate and macarons. Hermé, a fourth-generation pastry chef, is famous for macarons, a multi-layered, cream-filled, merengue cookie. We went with the favorites—milk chocolate and passion fruit, pistachio and raspberry and a salted caramel. These were my favorites of the day thanks to the light, fluffy cookie layer and rich fillings.
A short walk away is Hermé’s competitor for macaron dominance, Ladurée. The shop has been a mainstay in Paris since the 1860s. Credited as the inventor of the macaron, the shop offers a variety of different flavors. We tried the cherry almond, pistachio, rose and salted caramel. Viktoria favored these over Hermé’s, so I guess the macarons war will continue to rage on.
Unfortunately, the weather turned to a steady rain as we left Ladurée and we missed the final two stops—Patrick Roger and La Maison du Chocolat—as we ducked for cover from the rain. We did eventually reach our end goal, the Arc de Triomphe. A memorial to France’s soldiers in the Revolution and Napoleonic wars, it marked the end of our battle vs. the weather and our time in Paris.
Michel Cluizel’s shop on Rue Saint-Honore in Paris’s upscale shopping district. The chocolatier specializes in single-origin chocolate and is one of the few chocolate makers in the world to process its own cacao.The single serving chocolates at Jean-Paul Hevin.Macarons at Pierre HerméMacarons at LaduréePhotos of the Arc de Triomphe are always tightly cropped because it sits in one of Paris’s busiest intersections. All our photos are filled with cars and white delivery vans!
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For us, traveling is about trying to find a balance. You can’t go to Paris and not see the Eiffel Tower or the Louvre, but our favorite days are when we get off the main tourist trail and into the cities we visit.
On day 14, our fourth full day in Paris, we walked through the Montmartre neighborhood near our apartment. The area is best known for the long, winding hill leading through a historic district up to the white-domed Basillica of Sacré-Cœur (pictured) or as home to the Moulin Rouge cabaret club, featured in the film of the same name.
We started from our apartment at the bottom of the hill, making a quick detour for lunch and sweets along the way. The first stop was the Cafe des 2 Moulins (Two Windmills Cafe) named for the famous Moulin Rouge and Moulin de la Galette nearby. The cafe had become a favorite tourist spot since being featured in the movie Amelie.
Further up the hill, we passed the former apartment of Theo van Gogh. Theo allowed his brother Vincent, at the time a struggling artist who couldn’t afford his rent in Belgium, to live and work in the apartment. Vincent developed his signature style during his time in the Montmartre apartment.
Today, the most famous windmill in Paris is the neon one above the Moulin Rogue, but in the 1600-1700s, more than 30 windmills powered the flour and grape mills on the hill. Built in 1622, Moulin de la Galette is the last remaining functional mill. Just down the hill, Le Moulin du Radet, built in 1717, has been converted to a restaurant.
We turned the corner past one of Paris’s oldest cabaret clubs, Au Lapin Agile where Picasso hung out at the turn of the 20th century, and came upon a small vineyard. Clos Montmartre produces enough grapes for about 600 bottles of wine annually, but was originally planted to stop the growth from urban development in the surrounding area from creeping further into the residential property.
After running a gauntlet of caricature artists on the souvenir shop-lined street of Rue du Chevalier de la Barre, we finally arrived at Sacré-Cœur. The highest point in Paris, the 100-year-old church offers sweeping views of the city below. We ducked inside the cathedral for a look around just as a huge wind and rainstorm passed through, the clear blue skies we’d enjoyed just moments before replaced with menacing, dark clouds.
After the weather passed, we began our descent down the hill. We walked through the small Place du Tertre where Picasso and Renoir honed their crafts as starving artists. Local artists can still be found in the area now populated with cafes and shops.
As we returned to low ground, we made one last stop near the Abbesses metro stop. Many of the city’s metro stops still have the Art Deco-style signs indicating the entrance to the underground, but Abbesses is unique. Its canopy is one of two remaining glass and cast-iron designs of Art Nouveau architect Hector Guimard from the early 1900s.
Some epic street art at the foot of Monmartre.Amelie’s workplace, Cafe des 2 Moulins, on Montmartre’s Rue Lepic.House 54 on Rue Lepic once belonged to Vincent van Gogh’s brother Theo, who allowed the struggling artist to live and work there while developing his signature style.Moulin de la Galette, built in the 1600s, is Paris’s last functioning mill from the era.The neighborhood vineyards at Clos Montmartre were planted to keep urban sprawl away from the homes. It produces just a few hundred bottles of wine, most sold at an annual festival.A view of Paris from the base of Sacré-Cœur.The shops of Place du Tertre. Folklore says the word “bistro” was coined here by Russian soldiers ordering food at the cafe who would shout “bystro,” the Russian word for “quickly.”The glass canopy at the Abbesses metro station.The Wall of Love is an art installation near Abbesses. It features the phrase “I love you” 311 times in 250 languages.
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Paris can be an expensive city, but if you look hard enough, there are deals to be had. On day 13, we set a goal of touring the city without spending any money, just to see if it could be done. We cheated a bit going in knowing that the first Sunday of the month is free museum day!
We started at the Louvre, the world’s largest museum best known as the home of Leonardo Da Vinci’s Mona Lisa. We arrived just before opening and only had to wait 10-15 minutes to get through the queue. You don’t really “do” the mega-sized museum in a day… you have to have a plan. Our plan was to head straight for the Mona Lisa along with everyone else.
Most photos of the painting in the museum are taken from behind a large group of other visitors, but after a couple minutes of patient waiting, we worked our way right up to the rope that separates the masses from the masterpiece. It’s smaller than I expected, made more so by being the only item on the giant wall in the middle of the room. Yet, the sense of seeing something special looms large.
The Louvre is packed with works by great artists, but the creator of its second-most famous work is unknown. Venus de Milo was crafted in Greece somewhere around 130-100 B.C., likely in one of the sculpture workshops of the time. It was discovered in the ruins on the island of Melos in 1820 by a peasant and gifted to Louis XVIII the next year. Theories abound to who might have created it, but the answer is still a mystery.
We had a quick picnic in the park, basking in the first decent weather day since we’d arrived in Paris, then trekked across the Seine River to the Rodin Museum, an indoor/outdoor collection of the sculptor’s best-known pieces. Perhaps his most famous piece is one of my favorites, Le Pensuer or The Thinker, simply a man with his chin rested on his fist, deep in thought.
There are two versions at the museum and 28 castings around the world. Here, the largest is located outside in the sculpture garden while a much-smaller version sits inside the museum. I was actually quite disappointed by the small version and the rest of the museum didn’t do much for either of us. Seeing the outdoor version was definitely worth the trip though.
Worn out, but determined to take full advantage of free museum day, we walked back toward the river to Musee d’Orsay. With all due respect to the Louvre, the Orsay is Paris’s finest museum. It’s a perfect size with a well-balanced collection of old and new works from some of history’s greatest artists.
The second and fifth floors are the highlight, featuring a large collection of works from Monet, van Gogh, Degas, Manet and Cezanne among so many others. It’s organized by art movement, complete with descriptions in English—something the Louvre sorely lacks.
The center gallery on the main floor is lined with sculptures, including a prominently-placed version of Auguste Bartholdi’s Statue of Liberty. The statue would be gifted in large form by France to the United States in 1885, placed at New York’s Ellis Island to welcome immigrants from Europe to America. The Orsay’s version was commissioned by the artist himself in 1889 in hopes it would be sold as a museum piece.
We made it back to our apartment after a long day with exactly zero euros spent while seeing some of the world’s most famous artwork in some of its most renowned museums. Not a bad day’s work!
Looking back at the Louvre from the left bank of the Seine. The museum was originally a fortress and the center of French politics until Louis XIV moved the government to Versailles.The glass pyramids outside of the Louvre were designed by I.M. Pei as a way to move the museum’s entrance underground and alleviate the masses of people flowing through the old, small entrances. They are now works of art in their own right.The Mona Lisa has been behind bulletproof glass for several decades due to multiple attempts at vandalism. The painting has been at the Louvre since the end of the French Revolution but for a brief time spent hanging in Napoleon’s bedroom.Leonardo Da Vinci’s famous Mona Lisa.Venus de Milo at the Louvre.A re-creation of several rooms of Napoleon’s apartment has been built in great detail at the Louvre. The parlor was among the most ornate rooms on display.Looking up at the Louvre’s Richelieu wing through the glass pyramid.Neo-impressionists used a style called Pointillism, combining several small dots or very short brush strokes to create an image that lacks detail up close, but becomes sharp and luminous from a distance.One of two self-portraits by Vincent van Gogh on display at the Orsay. The museum has 25 of the artist’s pieces, including one from his Starry Night series.The naturalism movement created photo-realistic paintings in large-scale. Some were so lifelike, the brush strokes weren’t visible until you were right up on the painting.One of Claude Monet’s famous Water Lillies series at the Orsay.Monet’s Poppy Fields is one of Viktoria’s favorites.Post-Impressionist Paul Cezanne was famous for his still-life works, often involving food. Many of his works are on display at the Orsay.Edgar Degas was both a talented painter and sculptor. Degas’s three-foot tall bronze sculpture of a young ballerina stands near this painting of young dancers. More than half of his works featured dancers.
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Located about 11 miles outside of Paris lies a monument to the opulence of Louis XIV. The Palace of Versailles was built in 1623 for Louis XIII as a simple brick and stone hunting lodge. But during a 20-year period in the 1660s-70s, the son turned it into an ornate mansion with a very-roughly estimated budget of $2 billion US dollars in today’s money.
A simple self-guided tour is a whole day affair. In what’s becoming a theme for us, it was made longer by a morning train delay that left us stuck in Paris for an extra hour-plus. Arriving later in the morning, we joined the throngs of Saturday tourists awaiting entry.
An audio guide was provided for free, providing a lot of useful information about the various rooms while also painting a picture of what daily life might have been like for the royal family and the thousands of courtiers living on the grounds.
Versailles quickly became the center of French politics until the monarchy was overthrown during the French Revolution and upkeep of the palace was neglected. Various restoration projects during the early 1800s began to restore the palace, but it wasn’t until the efforts of King Louis Philippe I to turn the palace into a public museum that modern-day Versailles began to take shape.
Visiting Versailles from Paris
We had a hard time getting good directions from our apartment in Montmartre. Every website suggested heading to the nearest RER C station, which we did. However, the RER C line is a tangled web and our nearest stop required the aforementioned painful transfer at Champs de Mars – Tour Eiffel.
If you’re staying in one of the main tourist centers of Paris, head for one of the stations between Champs de Mars and Saint-Michel – Notre-Dame bound for Versailles Chateau – Rive Gauche. The palace entrance is a 5-10 minute walk from the station.
The gold-encrusted facade of The Palace of Versailles.Twin columned buildings stand on both sides of the courtyard at the palace’s entrance. The inscription reads “To All the Glories of France,” added at the request of King Louis-Philippe when the palace was converted to a museum in 1830.Prior to the French Revolution, it was believed that the king was chosen by God. Louis XIV had the Royal Chapel built to allow the entire royal court to attend daily mass.A bust of Louis XIV sits in the Bull’s Eye Salon of the King’s Chamber.The extravagant Mercury Salon in the Grand Apartment was more often home to gaming tables than sleepover guests.Looking up at the chandelier of the War Salon. The murals on the ceiling illustrate centuries of French military conquests.The Diana Salon, named for the goddess of hunting, served as Louis XIV’s billiards room. Two seating areas were reserved for ladies of the court to cheer on the king as he played.The 240-feet long Hall of Mirrors was a passageway for visitors waiting for an audience with the king. The ostentatiousness of the hall was intentional as visiting foreign leaders would have to make their way through this show of French power.Detail of one of the archways in the palace. The amount of work that went into just the decoration of the palace is mind-boggling.The Coronation Room holds three massive paintings, including a copy of “The Coronation of Napoleon.” The original once hung in Versailles, but is now installed at the Louvre. My favorite part of this painting is the depiction of Napoleon’s mother in the center. She declined to attend the garish ceremony, but was painted in at her son’s request.Looking at the palace over the gardens.A view of the massive property from behind the palace looking toward the Grand Canal.
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Our first real day in Paris was a full one. With some rough weather in the forecast, we wanted to get a few of the outdoor things checked off the list. We used Rick Steves Historic Paris Walk as a rough guide and started off at Notre-Dame.
One of the world’s most famous churches, Notre-Dame is more than a religious site. It’s dark, gothic 12th century architecture is considered to be one of the foremost examples of the style. The flying buttresses that support the east side of the cathedral were among the first of their kind. The various gargoyle and chimera statues served the dual purpose of gothic art and functional water spouts for rain runoff.
Inside, the church is nothing short of magnificent. The soaring ceilings in the center of the cathedral cover an active worshiping center hosting daily masses. The outside hosts several small chapels honoring various Catholic saints via ornate stained glass installations and impressive sculptures.
From there, we walked over to the left bank of the Seine River and through the Latin Quarter. The lively area is filled with small cafes offering full French meals as well as a lot of small Mediterranean food stands with gyros, kebabs and more. The quarter is also home to the Sorbonne (University of Paris) and was given its name during the Middle Ages when Latin was the primary language of academia.
Finally, we walked across Pont Neuf, where the seagulls were busy jockeying for position on the rail to prepare for food dives into the river, and along the Seine’s right bank. Along the way, we passed the Louvre and the Grand Palace before arriving at Paris’s ultimate landmark: the Eiffel Tower.
The Eiffel Tower is one of those things that lives up to the hype. We arrived just a few minutes before dusk, when the lights came on and began to twinkle. Built by architect Gustave Eiffel for the 1889 World’s Fair, it’s now the most-visited paid monument in the world, attracting nearly seven million tourists annually.
The front facade of Notre-Dame features 28 statues of the Kings of Judah, a sculpture of Mary holding baby Jesus in the rose window and the portals of Mary and St. Anne.One of the many stained glass windows depicting various biblical scenes inside the cathedral at Notre-Dame.A chapel behind Notre-Dame’s main alter.Notre-Dame’s South Rose Window tells the story of the New Testament. It’s considered one of the most important pieces of art in all of Christianity.Chimera statues on Notre-Dame’s north wall. The statues are part of the gothic-style decor while also serving a functional purpose as rain spouts.The east side of Notre-Dame’s cathedral is famous for its flying buttress supports, among the first of their kind when originally built in the 1100s.Notre-Dame’s most famous gargoyle statue is perched on the south side of the front facade.It’s hard to find a gate in Paris that isn’t full of locks placed by lovers.Pont Neuf is the oldest bridge crossing the Seine, built between 1578 and 1607. The seagulls were swarming the viewpoint, clearly very used to having people around.Approaching the Eiffel Tower from the northeast.The Eiffel Tower glittering at night as seen from Champ de Mars.
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The morning of day 10 seemed destined for good things. The sun had finally broke through after two cold and foggy days in Bologna. We headed to the airport and caught our flight to Paris relatively hassle-free. When we arrived at Charles de Gaulle Airport, a man filled the air with beautiful piano music in the arrivals lobby. We caught our train and headed for the city.
About halfway to Paris, the train stopped abruptly. An announcement repeated every 5-10 minutes indicating there was an “incident,” but that’s all. After 30 minutes, some passengers began to pry open the doors and make their way down the tracks. A few passengers near us spoke English and tried to keep us and the other new arrivals informed.
After nearly an hour, and many more people voluntarily disembarking, we were told to head for the door. The best information we had was that there was a train strike in solidarity of a few Goodyear Tire employees who were imprisoned for kidnapping their bosses during recent labor negotiations.
We sat at the edge of the opened doors with the other passengers and made the jump down to the rocks on the tracks below. We followed the crowd through the light drizzle to the next station. We caught a tram to another station where the trains were also stopped. As we received directions for a bus to the city, the trains began running again and we finally made it to our destination… about four hours later than we planned.
For us, it was an odd situation, a funny story from our travels. But for many of the Parisians who have suffered horrific things in their city over the last year, it felt like too much to bear. One woman near the door was assisted by other passengers as she suffered a severe panic attack. Other passengers cried openly.
It wasn’t a terrorist attack, but the disruption still provided heroes on the day. One man held back an opening in the fence until all of the passengers, ourselves included, could crawl through and get to the street. Another man led us and a pair of Russian tourists through the next train station, helping us get to the gates. Even the security guard at the station gave us written directions for an alternate route and made sure our tickets would get us all the way to the end. Over the hours, we worked with Italians, Spaniards and French passengers to make our way, piecing together our various languages to come up with a plan.
Blue skies at the airport in Bologna.Passengers making the few foot jump from the train to the tracks below, most packing luggage from the airport.Passengers walking alongside the tracks.A man holds the fence back so people can get out to the main road.Finally in our apartment with a view of the famous Moulin Rouge, the craziness of the day finally behind us.
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