I love Paris in the Wintertime!

Janet and I went to Paris for Christmas.I highly suggest visiting this wonderful city during off times of the year. The lines were short, the streets were reasonably empty and the metro allows you to avoid the cold while travelling underground.

We arrived on a Thursday after a rough day of travel. Normally it takes 1.5-2 hours by train to get from Buehl to Stuttgart. Unfortunately, we took perhaps the slowest train on record and sat on the track for over an hour. This made us have to sprint to the ticket office and through security to find out that there was no line whatsoever, and we ended up waiting at the terminal for a half an hour. It felt very military to hurry up and wait like that, but at least we got onto the plane, right? Anyway, during the flight, Janet started to feel under the weather and the poor girl was pretty out of it by the time we got to Charles de Gaulle. Fortunately, Janet's friend Gina had supplied us with a wonderful set of directions from the airport to our hotel (Thanks Gina~) and I was able to piece together enough French to find the ticket lines, purchase our Carney (10 pack) of Metro tickets, and find our hotel.

We stepped out of our Metro Station and I saw our first Parisian monument, L'Hotel des Invilides, which lay two blocks from our hotel. We could also see the lit up top of the Eiffel Tower as we walked in our neighborhod. We decided to take a nap and then go hunting for a late dinner. After a short walk up Rue Cler (a famous open-air market a few blocks from our hotel) we found a local resturaunt and sat for dinner. It was by far the smokiest restaurant I have ever sat in. We also shared one of the best meals of our lives in there--I had a venison cream stew served with a salad and rice... unbelievable... Janet had a similar experience with her French Onion soup! After the smoke-infused meal we decided to take a walk and found the Eiffel Tower and explored the night photography feature on Janet's camera. It was pretty windy underneath the tower (as you can tell from Janet's wicked hair-do.

The next morning (ahem, afternoon) we decided to have a culture day. We hopped westbound on the metro and 10 minutes later we were looking out over the Seine. From there, we turned, crossed the street, popped into Musee d'Orsay. I had been a little worried about long lines, but as I said, Paris was quite empty and we easily slipped in to the beautiful museum. For those who do not know, Musee d'Orsay was once a major train station in central Paris and it still has two massive clocks on its North-(Seine facing) facade. Some people (including Rick Steves) contend that Musee d'Orsay offers the most pleasing experience of all of the Parisian museums and I would certainly agree. The collection itself is breathtaking and includes many important impressionist pieces by Matisse, Manet, and Monet, as well as the post-impressionists Van Gogh, Henry Toulouse Lautrec, and my personal favorite Paul Gauguin. The vaulted ceilings, the luxurius and spacious layout, and the seperated impressionist section (which lies on the fifth floor) allows the museum-goer to enjoy the paintings and roman-esque sculptures on the main floor (pictured here)and then head upstairs for the impressionist "all-stars" wing. What was pretty entertaining about Janet's and my visit is that originally we were unaware of the scope of the impressionist wing. We spent about two hours on the first two stories of the museum and even went upstairs to look through the impressionist section, and then continued into the the gift shop. I noticed aloud that in the gift shop there were a rediculous number of Van Gogh prints, but wondered why we hadn't seen any in our tour. Janet and I simultaneously grabbed for the museum map and realized that we had skipped the crowned jewel of the museum. There were entire rooms dedicated to Lautrec, Monet, and Van Gogh, that we had skipped! We practically ran up the escalators into the halls and then spent another two hours in this section alone. Needless to say it was worth it and transformed what had been a very pleasant museum experience into my all-time favorite. Simply wonderful.

After we finished Musee d'Orsay we crossed the Seine, glanced over the Tuileries garden and walked over to the Louvre. After taking one look at the largest museum in Europe, we decided that we needed a to eat some crepes or we would die. One hour and two crepes later, we walked in the museum and bought tickets. While we were there we chose to take an English guided tour. I highly suggest it. In total, the tour took 90 minutes and walked us from the foundation of the "Castle of the Louvre" (the original walls of the castle built under Philip Augustus in the 12 century), up to the Grande Galarie, and eventually into the world famous Denon wing (which holds the Mona Lisa, among many other important pieces listed in "The Da Vinci Code"). We also were able to check out the roman-esque sculpture collection which includes Venus de Milo among others. After the tour, Janet and I were exhausted, but we powered through and walked all the way to the Place de la Concorde and then back to our hotel for a long night of sleep.

The next morning, I was feeling a bit under the weather and convinced Janet to sleep in. Although l'hotel des invalides was only 500 yards from our hotel, Janet and I decided to skip military history and instead go to the Rodin Museum. For those of you who don't know, the Rodin Museum Gardin is the single greatest museum deal in all of Paris. For only 1 euro you can walk the grounds, which contain more then 20 pieces by the French modern master, including Penseur (The Thinker), Parcae (The Three Fates), and the massive La Porte de l'Enfer (The Gates of Hell). When we were cruising around, the temperature hovered around freezing, so we went ahead and spent the extra euros and went inside the hotel that sits on the grounds. Inside there were a number of wonderful displays (sorry no photos allowed) including a Van Gogh painting, and an in-depth description of the process behind casting bronze and marble statues. Very cool. After we finished with the house we checked out the gift shop and headed back home out of the cold. Us California kids do not love freezing weather!

On Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, Janet and I had made plans to meet with friends. This was the first time for both of us to spend Christmas away from home and away from family. Unfortunately, Janet's good friend Sim who actually lives and works outside of Paris, was quite sick and was unable to have visitors. A second bummer was that my friend (practically relative) Jenny Cornet also was in town, but her flight had landed on Christmas Eve and jetlag meant that she could not meet Janet and I at our planned time at the Tomb for the Unknown Soldier. So, Janet and I cruised Champs Elysees, did some shopping, and looked at l'Arc de Triomphe. Unfortunately, we were unable to walk up the stairs to the top because the monument had closed early on Christmas Eve, but it was really amazing to see just how enormous the structure is. Also at sundown there was some sort of ceremony were 12 people wearing official military uniforms playing bugle music were walking around and looking very serious. We watched for a while and I took a few crap photos using the night setting on Janet's camera but because of the wind it was friggen freezing out there and we left. We had dinner at a "Rugby bar". I had half a chicken and some Freedom Fries. Janet had a salad with mealie tomatoes... it was SUPER romantic, but our choices were limited late on Christmas Eve, so we took what we could get.

The next morning was Christmas! Janet and I had a very small gift exchange because most of the stuff we had gotten for eachother related to warm weather gear and was needed throughout the trip since the temperature was in the 20s (Farenheit). Janet and I agreed that the one place that was guaranteed to be open on Christmas was Paris's most famous church...Notre Dame. We slowly toured through the incredibly ornate cathedral, purchased one of those pressed coins, and then went hunting for food. We found a place called Quasimodo's and were served by a small, snooty French guy wearing a Santa Cap who had a sign taped to his back that said "I'm Quasimodo". He was kind of a wierdy. He seemed to like Janet a lot more then he liked me and actually asked her where she was from when I was downstairs in the restroom... smooth operator. Once again I ate the half chicken and Freedom Fries combo that is offered at every other bar and supplies perhaps the most food for your buck. After we left 'modo's' we walked around a bit and realized that there was an International Quarter just around the corner from the Cathedral filled with Greek, Thai, Persian, Chinese, and every other type of food you could possibly imagine. Understandably, Janet and I felt a little sheepish. Soon after our feelings of insecurity melted with every sip of hot chocolate and with each bite of the Palmier (a super-buttery pastry...mmm). I should note that this was in fact Janet's 4th dessert of the day... she was LOVING IT!

So that was about it... finally!

We had a wonderful time on the trip. We didn't get to hit several of the tourist attractions that we wanted to see (Montmartre and Moulin Rouge, Jim Morrison's grave, the Catacombs, etc.) and we somehow neglected to go up high on any of the tall monuments, but I would definately do that again!