Vacation 4: The Last Day In Paris

(A café in St. Germain des Pres)

Saturday. We had only two things on the itinerary for this, our last full day in town before pushing off for Amsterdam: tour the Musée d'Orsay (since we already paid for it with our little museum passes), and see the cathedral St. Eustache up by Les Halles. I was fearful that the Orsay museum would be impossibly crowded, but when we arrived about 10:30 it had almost no line. This turns out to be the museum to see, as it specializes in Impressionism, and on the years immediately preceding and following the movement. Finally, this turned out to be a collection that I found to be accessible and consistently moving (which is not to say I understood it or would pass a test telling you all why I found it so). And the space itself is really fabulous: soaring and open and flooded with sunlight, it was worth the admission just by itself.

(The inner city in exquisite model.)

We spent a couple hours at the museum, and then wandered haphazardly over toward St. Eustache, where we stopped and took some pictures. This building seems to me the equal of Notre Dame (well, maybe not in its setting on the river), but it seems to play a distant second fiddle when it comes to publicity. Last time Chris and I visited both places during mass and St. Eustache was half full while Notre Dame was standing room only. But St. Eustache has the highest nave in Europe and a new and spectacular organ (by *gasp!* a Dutch builder!). This is where I personally would go to feel guilty and insignificant, or at least to hear good music (last time it was a concert by the near-superstar Jean Guillou, though today the organ was silent).





Still, there was a busy public square with fountains outside, and we sat for a while and watched a little Jack Russell terrorist repeatedly fetch his rubber football out of the fountain and thrash the shit out of it before taking it to mommy for another go. Good times. Enroute from the Musée d'Orsay to St. Eustache, Susan found a Godiva chocolate store for a fabulous icy-chocolate concoction called, I think, "Chocolate seizure" or "Choco-Whack" or some such. It was quite decadent and good, and warranted a picture.



From there, another hour of walking the streets before we decided we were about walked out. We took a train back to the hotel and, after a short nap, took a load of laundry downstairs before tomorrow's train to Amsterdam. Then a stroll over to the Champs Elysees for pizza, and we're in for the night.

We both commented that we're nowhere near ready to leave Paris, which is maybe not a bad way to leave things. It reminds me of New York in its endlessness, but I think it would be a friendlier place to live. There's lots more to say about this part of our journey, but it'll have to work itself out in later posts.

Tomorrow we're off to the train station by about 10:am.