Vignettes from Paris #4
While in Paris last week and the week before we walked. A lot. Occasionally we took the Metro. We never took a single taxi the whole time. We used the Air France airbus to get into the city from Charles de Gaulle and a shuttle service to get back to the airport at the end of the trip.
We also climbed a lot of things. Everything we could. We walked to the top of the towers of Notre Dame, up narrow, windy stone stairs for our first great view of the city. We climbed more stairs to get to the top of l’arc de triomphe for a view of the Champs Elysees and l’etoile. We took the elevator to the top of the Eiffel Tower and walked from the second level down to street level on the return trip. (We also toasted the heights with champagne at the top of the tower.) We took the escalator through the madhouse that is Galeries Lafayette to the seventh floor where we got our closest look at Sacre Couer and enjoyed the relative calm compared to the chaos in the department store below.
One of the things my wife wanted to do in Paris was go to a revue. She suggest the Moulin Rouge and we also found out about the Lido on the Champs Elysees. However, when we read the online reviews of these places, we weren’t encouraged. They were quite expensive and most of the reviews called them tourist traps, cramped places with poor vantage points, cheap-o champagne and bad food, and performers who were just going through the paces. We read about another one, Paradis, in the Latin Quarter that was much better reviewed. However, on Saturday, after our trip to the top of Galeries Lafayette, we went to La Madeleine church and found out there was going to be a classical concert there that evening. Les Violons de Paris were going to play Vivaldi’s Four Seasons, along with some other pieces. The admission price was about 1/6th of what we would have paid for a revue show, and it was fantastic. First of all, the venue was terrific — this old cathedral that looks like a Greek temple from the outside. Then there were the musicians, four violins, two violas and two cellos. An opera singer did Ave Maria (two versions). And then the virtuoso violinist Frederic Moreau came on stage for the Vivaldi. Absolutely wonderful. We bought one of his CDs afterward.
The only thing that might have made it more amazing would have been if it had been in Sainte-Chappelle (picture above). Apparently they are going to be performing there in October. If you’re in Paris, check them out. I’ve always wanted to see Sainte-Chappelle (inside the Palais de Justice near Notre Dame), having heard raves about its stained glass windows, and this trip we finally managed to get there. When you walk through the door you see a few windows, nothing spectacular. Then you see these little staircases in the corner and you go up to the second level and…wow.
