Paris: Leap Day The Right Way

When megalomaniacs build monuments, they dream big. Welcome to the Arc de Triomphe. Napoleon's monument to the victory  at the Battle of Austerlitz, not completed until after his death, is now a monument to military victories of the French.

I know someone is making a joke about this right now, but before 1914, France was a major military power in the world, never more so than under Napoleon's rule. Many battles of WWI were fought on French soil. Fully half of the men of France lost their lives in that war.

When Napoleon's body was brought back from exile for burial, the funeral procession passed under the now completed arch and the little emperor was finally laid to rest at Les Invalides (see previous post). Let's take a closer look...

One can reach the top of the arc on a seemingly never ending spiral staircase. inside the arc there are a few displays, toilets, gift shops, the usual monument accoutrements. Up on top there is the view!



 

Straight down a grand boulevard you can see La Defense, the more modern great arc that dwarfs Napoleon's. It is something like 36 stories, office space fills the interior.

And there is far off Montmartre, crowned with the great Basilica of Sacre Coeur. We will take a closer look at this in another post.

Another windy view. You think I would learn and stop wearing my hair down, but no. I guess I'll just look like this in all my photos.



 

From underneath the Arc is very impressive. From every angle, really, and one can easily imagine some of the remarkable events that have played out here. An early aviator flew his plan through the Arc as a stunt. Under this monument rests the tomb of the Unknown Soldier, guarded by an eternal flame.

 

We left the Arc de Triomphe, but that wasn't the last we saw of it. We got a final glimpse as we strolled down the Champs Elysees.

I snapped this photo while cross the street (don't worry, we used the cross walk and obeyed all traffic signs). The Champs Elysees is a nice place to walk, but it is an even nicer place to snack.

 

LADUREE! The famously posh tea house on the Champs Elysees is most famous for it's macarons:

Flavors from left to right: Praline, Chocolate, Pistachio, Lemon, Green Apple, Caramel

I am not the type to take pictures of all my food, but macarons are pretty, they came in a pretty bag, and they taste even better than they look. We tried some run of the mill macarons earlier in our trip that were good, but they weren't this good. These were other worldly! I voted we spend our entire food budget for the rest of the trip on macarons, but Lee shot me down. I guess with Laduree's prices we would have only been eating a couple cookies a day. While that may have been enough calories, we would have been malnourished.

 

We continued towards our next destination with a brief detour to Pont Alexandre and a rest at Place du Concorde.

The Obelisk of Luxor was a gift from Egypt to...Napoleon?...it now rests in the very square where the guillotine severed the necks of the revolutions most high profile victims: Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette.

Our next stop was a small art museum at the edge of the square called the Musee de L'Orangerie. It houses the greatest work of one of the greatest artist in history: Monet's Water Lilies.

These enormous canvases--over 1,000 square feet altogether--were Monet's final great creation. By this point in his life he had cataracts. With his dimming sight he worked all day, working on each canvas in turn depending on the time of day.

Monet designed the space inside the Orangerie for his painting to be displayed though he didn't live to see them hung here.

I think this water lily is my favorite. Especially up close when you can hardly tell what it is.

There are two rooms, each with a 360 degree view of Monet's garden at different times of day. The second room features the willow trees by the pond. It's amazing how clear these paintings look through the camera when I had difficulty deciphering some of them with my own eyes.

We walked back to our hotel and as we were resting up we decided to visit the Cluny again as our museum passes would no longer be valid the next day. Might as well take advantage of the free admission! We did some more thorough exploration, so we were able to see the lower part of the building which used to be a Roman bath. The upper floors were a Catholic Church, now the whole of it is a museum of medieval art.

The Roman Bath behind me is probably near 2,000 years old.

Perhaps the Cluny's most celebrated treasure are the six tapestries known as The Lady and the Unicorn. The first five each represent one of the five senses. This one represents touch:

The sixth tapestry says "Mon Seul Desir," or "My soul's desire" on it, but scholars have argued about the ambiguity of what that desire might be for centuries. 

Apparently for many years the myth of unicorns was perpetuated by the sale of Narwhal horns as "unicorn relics." This horn is one such relic.





feel the power of the mighty Narwhal!

 

This ancient well is pretty cool!

 

Lee found some kind of sundial etched into the wall.

 Another successful, exhausting day! The only things I would have done differently would be to wear my boots all that day instead of trying my tennies shoes. One day of tennis shoes gave me blisters that I was feeling for a week. I threw the tennis in the trash that night, never to curse the feet of human kind again. But as they say, that which doesn't kill you will still make it really hard to walk around for the rest of your vacation!