Paris On Our Own

For the final leg of this trip, we spent four more action-packed days exploring Paris. We stayed at a different hotel this time, in the Latin Quarter/5th Arrondissement. First up on Saturday morning was checking out the recently restored Notre Dame cathedral, just a short stroll from our hotel.

I very distinctly remember watching the news in horror on April 15th 2019 and seeing a clip of the cathedral engulfed in flames. It took over 5 years, a team of 1000 workers and artisans, and $928 million to restore it to its former glory. In most cases, the artisans attempted to use the same materials as those of the original construction. The roof was rebuilt using 100-year-old oak trees, for example. Restoration is mostly complete but still ongoing for the spire. The building re-opened to the public in December 2024.

The stained glass windows survived the fire but suffered smoke and heat damage. They have been cleaned and look more vibrant than ever. In fact the whole interior of the church was cleaned by the preservation team during the restoration. They removed centuries of soot and dirt and the walls are almost sparklingly white. I know it had to be done, but to be honest I find it too glaring and pristine now. Sort of like an 800-year-old lady that had a facelift to look like a ten-year-old. It just looks too new!

We walked over to the Île Saint-Louis for lunch at a very nice brasserie, then strolled back to get in line for our timed afternoon entry to the Sainte-Chappelle. Like Notre Dame, this beautiful chapel was built in the Gothic style. This church was used primarily by the French King and his court so it has a smaller, more intimate feel.

There are two levels for worship. The lower chapel with the painted starry sky was used by the palace staff and servants. The upper chapel was strictly for the king and royal family, along with his guests and noble courtiers. Sainte-Chapelle was completed about 100 years after Notre Dame, and gothic technology had advanced by that time to allow larger windows to let in more light. I've always thought this church was the prettiest one in Paris - the soaring ceiling and rays of colored light give it a delicate ethereal feeling unlike any of the others.

We dedicated Sunday to the Impressionists, starting out at the Musée d'Orsay. This railway station-turned-museum offers the most complete collection of Impressionist art. It's the second most-visited museum in Paris, after the Louvre. We had tickets for the 9:30am time slot and were glad to get to the Impressionist gallery early before the crowds.

We spent several hours wandering the floors of the museum, then had a very nice lunch in the beautiful restaurant that looked like an elegant Belle Epoque ballroom.

In the afternoon we spent some time with Monet's large-scale water lily paintings at the Orangerie museum. During his time in Giverny, Monet became devoted to capturing the water lilies in his garden in various lights and from many angles. He gave eight enormous multi-paneled paintings to the people of France and during the last few years of his life he helped an architect design and arrange these oval-shaped rooms to display them.

In the evening on Sunday we stopped into the Église St-Eustache to hear an organ concert that included Ravel's "Tomb of Couperin" and Saint-Saëns "Danse Macabre". St. Eustache is one of my favorite churches in Paris, mostly because we walked past it almost daily when we were here during the summer of 2011, so it has a special place in my heart. Notice how dark the walls are -- this is from centuries of candle soot and incense smoke, and it looks similar to how the walls of Notre Dame used to look before they were restored. I prefer a church that's not afraid to show its age.

Since we were in our old neighborhood we decided to take Delaine on a stroll up Rue Montorgueil, the pedestrian-only street where our 2011 apartment was located. I still think it's one of the most vibrant areas of the city.

Monet painted his version of the Rue Montorgueil in 1878, festooned with French tricolor flags. It's hanging in the Musée d'Orsay, of course.

It was raining on Monday morning when we headed over to the Louvre museum. Even though we had tickets for right when it opened, we still had to fight the crowds to see the famous Mona Lisa. This is about as close as we got.

For my taste I prefer Leonardo da Vinci's La Belle Ferronnière. I think it's a more interesting painting (like, "what is she looking at?!") and also it's no problem to get right up close to it.

One of my other favorite works (Johannes Vermeer's The Lacemaker) was upstairs in the Dutch gallery. After the chaos of the Italian galleries this room was not only an oasis of calm, it was completely empty when we got there!

After lunch at the museum cafe, we toured the Napoleon apartments. In this case the Napoleon in question was not the short warmongering guy with the funny hat but the other one: Napoleon III (a.k.a. that guy's nephew), who ruled France from 1852 to 1870. Napoleon III and his wife Eugénie lived in the nearby Tuileries Palace but used these lavish Louvre apartments for state receptions, meetings, and functions during his reign.

By the afternoon, the weather had cleared up so we walked up the hill from our hotel to the Panthéon and went inside for a look around. This monument was completed just before the French Revolution. It was intended as a church but is now a mausoleum for the greatest citizens of France.

We took a breather and enjoyed sitting on a bench in the sunshine with a view of Saint-Étienne-du-Mont church and a statue of playwright Pierre Corneille.

Tuesday was our last day for seeing the sights in Paris. We started early with a visit to one of the city's prettiest squares -- the Place des Vosges.

The writer Victor Hugo lived in one of these houses for a time, and his residence has been turned into a museum. I know tastes have really changed since the 1860s, but Hugo's house sure had a lot going on pattern-wise. Every room was a gloomy mishmash of somber colors, clashing carpet, and aggressive wallpapers. I can't imagine getting anything done in a house like this, let alone writing a literary masterpiece or two.

I guess we did miss cruising a little bit because we headed over to the Port de l'Arsenal to take a cruise on the St. Martin Canal. This historic shipping canal leads from the Seine to the River Ourcq just north of Paris. Napoleon I (yep, that one) had it constructed in the early 1800s. Decades later when the city was redesigned by Baron Haussmann and Napoleon III (nope, the other one), the canal was covered over to make room for wider tree-lined boulevards. The tunnels are lit by skylights so that they could navigate without gas or torches (remember this was years before the advent of electric lighting).

Once through the tunnel section, the boat emerges into a series of locks. It's quite a spectacle to watch the water rush through the little openings in the lock doors while the boat is raised.

The canal runs through a pretty neighborhood and the walking path on either side of the canal is lined by huge mature trees.

Our canal tour let us out at the Quai de Valmy and from there we took an Uber to the Rodin Museum where we had lunch at the cafe and then walked around the house and garden, thoughtfully.

From there we walked over to the Hôtel des Invalides. This complex of buildings was originally conceived by the sun king Louis XIV in the late 1600s as a hospital and a place to house aging and disabled soldiers. The golden-domed church is one of the most recognizable buildings in Paris.

Inside is the tomb of Napoleon (yep, that one). The sarcophagus is massive, just like that guy's ego.

Well, it was a whirlwind tour but we managed to show Delaine most of the best of Paris. We even managed to avoid the tourist crowds too. (For the most part, anyway.) Time to say "Au revoir" to the crowds, the city, and this gal:

Seine River Cruise - South to Rouen and Giverny

The turn-around point for the cruise was the port of Le Havre at the mouth of the Seine. So we are now headed back in a south-easterly direction, although the river meanders in a repeating s-shape up and down and back and forth. Interestingly, if we had just chosen to drive between Le Havre and Paris, it would've only taken about 2 hours and 20 minutes, according to Google, instead of three days by ship. After cruising overnight from Le Havre, we arrived at the well-preserved medieval city of Rouen. Among other things, Rouen is known for: the burning alive of Joan of Arc in 1431, the Gros Horloge (town astronomical clock) dating from the late 1300s, and the three-towered Rouen Cathedral de Notre Dame constructed in the 1200s.

Kevin and I visited Rouen in 2014 but unfortunately at that time the entire facade of the Rouen Cathedral was covered in scaffolding for refurbishment. This time around it bears much more resemblance the to famous series of Monet paintings.

We split up again for the walking tours -- Delaine did the main guided tour of the city center. Since Kevin and I had been to Rouen before, we opted for the "Taste of Normandy Tour", which included stops to taste some local cheese, apple cider, and chocolate. 

We watched the chocolatier making some of the delicious treats, then got to sample a few pieces for ourselves. We also made sure to hit several of the local patisseries for delicious pastries. What else were we going to do on a rainy day in Rouen?

Even with the drizzly rain, the city was very pretty.

Later in the afternoon, Kevin and I had some free time to take a walk over to the city's fine art museum. Meanwhile Delaine was having adventures of her own on an afternoon tour to Chateau Bonnemare, a 16th century manor house turned bed and breakfast.

Between the ports of Le Havre and Rouen, the river Seine is a tidal estuary meaning that the river free-flows on that section and is subject to tides. But once you get to the section of river between Rouen and Paris, the ship goes through a series of locks that control the flow of the river and eliminate the tidal differences. The locks allow ships to be raised and lowered to various levels of water as they make their way up- or down-river. Many of the locks were only just wide enough to accommodate the AmaDante.

We did make sure to get up to the sundeck one night after dinner to watch the sunset over the countryside.

All three of us took the tour excursion to Claude Monet's garden at Giverny. This is something Kevin and I missed on previous trips to France, so I was excited to finally have a chance to see it! The artist and his family first moved to this house in Giverny in 1883. The gentle downward slope of the surrounding hectare of land invited Monet to try his hand at gardening. He remade the slope, cutting down the border of pine trees and planting a luscious landscape full of colors and textures. He made it into a haven where he could paint his impressions of nature focusing on light and color. In Monet's own words: "My garden is my masterpiece".

Ten years after moving here, Monet purchased the neighboring piece of land with a small brook running through it. Inspired by Japanese gardens that were in fashion at the time, he dug and enlarged a small reflecting pond and planted wisteria, weeping willows, bamboo, and the water lilies (nympheas) that he would paint repeatedly, in all lights and seasons, for the rest of his life.

His garden provided him endless subjects for his art, including the green Japanese footbridge that featured in at least twelve of his paintings.

After Monet's death in 1926, the garden and house were inherited by his son Michel. But Michel didn't live there, and over the decades the site fell into disrepair. When Michel died, he willed the estate and his father's valuable art collection to the Académie des Beaux-Arts. It took more than ten years to restore the house and gardens to the state they were in during the artist's lifetime. Basing their renovations on photographs, curators have styled the house interior as it would have looked when Monet lived there, although the art pieces on the walls are all replicas. (The originals are on display at the Marmottan museum in Paris).

Never one to shy away from bright colors, Monet's house had an intense lemon yellow dining room and this vivid azure blue kitchen covered in hand-painted antique tiles sourced from Rouen.

After the garden tour, we had an hour or so to wander on our own through the small village of Giverny. Of course this pastoral haystack scene caught my eye; Monet painted a series of haystacks here in Giverny and one of those paintings sold in 2019 for $110.7 million, a record for an impressionist painting. If you're interested, I'd be happy to sell you a print of my haystack photo for the low, low price of only $1 million...what a bargain!

The village of Giverny is small but enchanting. It has an impressionist museum, a historic hotel, several B&Bs, and of course gardens, flowerbeds, and flower boxes galore. As Monet said, "What I need most are flowers, always. My heart is forever in Giverny." Mine too, Claude! 

The AmaDante continued its slow journey back to Paris. On the last day of the cruise, Kevin and Delaine went on the morning excursion to the Château de Malmaison. This chateau was the residence of Joséphine de Beauharnais, who purchased it in 1799 and spent a vast fortune renovating it to be the most beautiful estate in France at the time.

Château de Malmaison was also the home of this guy:

Yes, Josephine was the first wife of that guy -- Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte. It was actually his vast fortune that she spent while renovating the chateau and he was quite furious about it! He had hoped to spend the money on fighting a war instead. 

Honestly I guess he wasn't too mad about it in the end, since they lived together at Malmaison pretty happily for a decade. Josephine was the love of Napoleon's life but she was unable to bear him any children. When he divorced her to find a wife who could give him an heir, he gave her Château de Malmaison and a generous pension. She lived in the chateau until her death in 1814.

Meanwhile, I took the tour excursion to the appealing town of Auvers-sur-Oise. In the late 19th century, this tiny town about an hour outside of Paris was a favorite hangout of painters like Paul Cézanne, Camille Pissarro, Camille Corot and others.

One of the "others" was this guy:

Vincent Van Gogh spent the last two months of his life in Auvers-sur-Oise. All his life he had been a little bit aimless, trying his hand at various teaching and art-adjacent professions (boarding school teacher, bookshop clerk, apprentice art dealer). His very intense personality made him a bit of an outcast and it was hard for him to settle into professional life. It wasn't until he turned 27 that he started to paint seriously. Despite lessons and some professional art instruction, he had a style of painting that was all his own, different from the mainstream and -- unfortunately -- unmarketable at the time. During the decade that he spent painting he was financially supported by his younger and more successful brother Theo, who worked as an art dealer but could not find buyers for his tortured brother's paintings.

Most people know that Vincent Van Gogh was the artist who cut off his own ear (and made a self-portrait to prove it). Other than Theo, the rest of his family was estranged from Vincent because they did not approve of his disordered lifestyle and lack of direction. This made him feel incredibly alone in the world. He was at times delusional and mentally unstable and he spent time in asylums in a desperate effort to feel better. When he moved to Auvers-sur-Oise in May 1890, he finally found in this charming village a brief respite from his unhappiness. He made a friend (his doctor) and began a manically prolific period of work - finishing 80 paintings in just 70 days.

But Vincent just couldn't overcome the darkness and difficulty he found in life; he shot himself in the chest on July 29, 1890 and died a few hours later in the arms of his brother who had rushed to his bedside from Paris. The only reason we know so much about Vincent and can appreciate his art today is thanks to his devoted brother Theo and Theo's wife Jo. Theo and Vincent kept up a detailed and regular correspondence and most of what we know about the inner workings of Vincent's mind come from the letters he sent to Theo. After both of them passed away, Theo's widow Jo meticulously assembled all of Vincent's work into one collection that she exhibited several times. She also later edited and published a volume of Theo and Vincent's letters which increased interest in his paintings. Because Theo supported him financially throughout his adult life, Vincent was able to develop his art. Without Theo, Vincent's life would have been very different. The world of art would also have been very different. The brothers are buried side by side in the little cemetery in Auvers.

After our morning outings we were all taken by bus back into the heart of Paris for one final afternoon tour. What's the best thing to do as the final excursion from a river cruise? Take another river cruise, of course! We took the Bateaux Parisiens cruise along the Seine in the heart of the city. The bridges here are too low for the big cruise ships to pass under, but the smaller tourist boats have no problem navigating this part of the river.

From the boat we had great views of Notre Dame cathedral, Pont Alexander, Pont Neuf (the name means "new bridge" but go figure -- it's actually the oldest bridge in Paris), and of course the Eiffel Tower.

A river cruise was a fun way to see the sights along the Seine River, but all good things must come to an end. Although the cruise is over, we will still have a few more days to explore Paris on our own before heading home. So we'd better rest up while we can!