In which we find good museums and do not take pictures of the police

I need to start by mentioning 2 things I’ve forgotten to mention. 1. None of our hotels have had even the tiny equipment filled closets that they call “fitness rooms” in the US and 2. Before the air conditioning comes on in our room here at the Victoria Palace, there’s a noise that makes you think something has gone wrong with the fan or hard drive in your laptop. Then we both have to think, “the air conditioning is about to come on.” Sometimes we have to say it out loud. Also a 3^rd thing, which is the huge variation in metro trains and stations. Each line has its own idiosyncrasies. For example, the line that runs out to the Eiffel tower is, as I’ve mentioned, a little run down. You also need to turn a handle to open the doors, and it runs on rubber tires. The 13 line has automatic doors on the platform that keep you from falling on to the tracks when no train is there, and it runs on metal wheels. It’s just weird.

Anyway, we slept in this morning until almost 9, which was nice, especially since I hadn’t gotten to sleep until almost 2 last night. I would have slept longer, but today was the day in Paris I’ve been looking forward to since we got here – Nia with black belt Regine Petit. Dave and I headed out together, because the Paris Meridian is close to where I was going. We walked around a little – there were amazing food shops near the Nia studio – and then he headed off and I went to class. It was down some stairs, and then there was a sort of waiting room for sitting in until the 5 stages class got done. At one point they were all laughing loudly for an unusually long time (I know why!), and I could see some other people in the room giving each other nervous glances. I was wearing my red fairy pants, so people kept asking me questions in French.

Eventually the door opened and we went in. It felt good to be barefoot again, especially to do some squish walk – we’ve walked a very long way in shoes in the past week! Eventually Regine started talking, and I caught the word “Sexi”, so at least I knew we were doing a routine I’m pretty familiar with. Because here’s what the class sounded like to me – “le blah, blah, blah, cross front, blah, blah, blah”. I stayed in the front row because I always do, but also because I wanted to be able to see what she was doing, since I couldn’t understand a word she was saying. I had a great time, and of course had my giant Nia smile on, and at one point she nodded at me and said something about “joie” and everyone laughed. It was a pretty big class – at least 25 students – in a pretty small space, so it was tight Nia. It was the best sight in Paris, for my money.

Meanwhile Dave had found the Paris Meridian and headed back to the hotel, so I joined him there & after a much needed shower (it wasn’t just a small room, it was a hot room!) we headed out. By now it was 1:30 and we made an error. We should have eaten lunch before we left, but we figured we’d eat there. When we got to our destination – the Cité de l'Architecture et du Patrimoine – there was a giant demonstration going on – people with signs and balloons and marching and shouting slogans. We’d planned to eat in the café at the museum, but it was cafeteria style and a little intimidating, so we went to a restaurant with a view of the parade instead. A brief digression here – when I was last here some 25 years ago, there was a distinctly anti-American vibe. No one would speak English to you, and if you spoke English to them it seemed to infuriate them. That has very much not been the case this trip until today, when we could not get served at the restaurant. The waitress would look at us, but except for one time when she dropped of menus would not come near us. After about half an hour of breathing the cigarette smoke from the table next to us, we went back to the café and and had a very tasty lunch, but by then it was almost 3 and I was struggling with crabbiness.

Then we headed into the museum, which is both the most interesting and strangest museum in the whole world. It’s focused on pre-1700s French architecture, and what they’ve done is taken casts and made models of all sorts of doorways and windows and archways and statuary from all over France – so you can see all these cool things all in one place. And upstairs they have models of lots of modern architecture and also they’ve recreated all sorts of alcoves and rooms from cathedrals and churches, down to copying the painting. So it is a museum full of forgeries, and then there are also people sitting and making drawings of forgeries. It made me incredibly happy to walk through it. Then we went next door to the maritime museum, which is full of models of ships and things from ships and other naval things, and it’s very fun. The museums are both in curved buildings with fantastic views of the Eiffel Tower. They are just the right size, too. Can you tell it was a good museum day?

We walked down from there through the plaza-where-you-take-pictures-of-the-Eiffel tower, under the Eiffel tower and past the Ecole Militarie and past les Invalides to the Invalides metro station which goes right to Montparnasse. And when we got off it, that’s when things got interesting. The end of the big demonstration/march that we’d seen at the Trocadero was at Montparnasse, and the street we usually walked down was blocked off, as it had been when we left. But now our whole little side street was filled with police vans, and there were riot police dressed in black turtle riot gear everywhere. We’d planned to take the bus to dinner, but it wasn’t clear if the bus was even running.

Our hotel is at the end of the street. The police vans continue around the corner.

We went up to the room for a bit, and when we came down the vans were all gone from our street. But we still weren’t sure the busses were running, so the concierge sent us to a different metro stop about 5 blocks from the hotel. It was the scariest 5 blocks I’ve ever gone – the riot police were everywhere, groups of 10 or 20 of them. In one place they had lined up across one of the streets two deep, the first with the riot shields. And they stared at us as we walked past – they all stared at us. It was very disturbing. I wanted to take pictures of it, but Dave and I both felt that was maybe not the best idea, so I didn’t.

Eventually we got to the metro and once we went underground it was all fine. We got to the restaurant without any trouble, but then there was trouble, because they said we didn’t have a reservation. We called the hotel, the hotel called them, and they found us a table. The restaurant is called Le Fontaine de Mars, and apparently President Obama at there when he was in Paris. One assumes they found his reservation without difficulty. It was full of Americans and Brits, and although they were very welcoming and friendly once they found us a table (inside, even though our reservation had been for outside, which was good because it was Very Cold outside) I just never got comfortable. The food was good, but not the kind of wow, we can’t get this at home French food we were hoping for. One thing that was outstanding was the bread and butter – no place has served butter except this one, and French butter is one of my favorite things. We skipped dessert because I’d eaten an entire pot of butter and Dave didn’t want any either.

We went back to our hotel and the police were all gone. It was a very exciting day, and now we’re exhausted.

Most angels are pretty serious, but this one looks like me eating French butter, so I had to include her.