We were keen to make an early start despite the drizzle that caused me to take an umbrella as I zipped around the corner for bread. I also had in mind to try the flan I had seen the day before, ensuring that we had a delicious and decadent Parisian breakfast. Incredibly, the shop was shut on Saturdays - the one day that we would have thought would have been booming for a boutique boulangerie. Not trusting the bread at the supermarket, I invested in some dry biscuits and the whole tone of the morning changed. We guzzled down a quick breakfast, and set off into the grey, drizzly, empty streets.
A quick metro ride took us to St Michel, where we set about exploring that side of the Seine and looking for the rue St Germaine, where the 1968 student protests took place. In May 1968 there were student protests and a general workers strike, with violence by and against the police. We knew that we couldn't do everything but we did want to get a bit of a sense of this part, which is the student quarter, before crossing to the major tourist sites. As we wandered around we came upon a statue of Danton, one of the early revolutionary leaders, who was Minister for Justice from 18th of August until the 9th of October 1792 and a Deputy for Paris in the National Asssembly. He was guillotined for leniency by other revolutionary leaders who did not like his more moderate approach and his opposition to the proposed reign of terror. The statue was a sober reminder that these streets have been barricaded more than once and that blood has flowed and many, many lives been lost.
We passed the Odeon Theatre, which commands its own square, with all streets seeming to lead to it. Closed on a Saturday morning, we gave it a glance and noted its dignity and lack of ostentatious decoration, which seemed an opportunity lost to sculptors. Almost immediately we came to the gates of the Luxembourg Palace and the fence that surrounds its amazing and beautiful gardens. While I read the signs (in French and then noticed it was in English too), Keith observed a man with a large, unlit cigar in his mouth walking out of the park. By the luckiest of coincidences, at that very moment a man smoking a large cigar approached from the opposite direction. Unlit man approached lit man, a few words were exchanged and the unlit cigar was lit. The men parted. Keith thought it was an amazing coincidence that the only two men we had seen with cigars in Paris happened to meet, but I thought that they must have been spies exchanging information with a way to recognise and approach each other, or members of some sort of Masonic brotherhood with a substitute for the secret handshake. If spies, then they were gravely out of date or misinformed on what would go unnoticed.
When Henry IV was assassinated, his widow, Queen Maria de Medici, decided to have a new home. She bought up land and residences and had a palace built and gardens designed and laid out. The current gardens are only a fraction of the original size due to various economic needs of later generations but, even so, they are vast and magnificent. If the Odeon lacked statues, this garden and building certainly do not. Many more sculptures have been added over the years. The garden is a mix of formal gardens, walks, an orangery, a decorative lake, games and sports areas, a restaurant and everywhere there are lightweight green metal chairs for walkers and dalliers to use and move about at will. The upper terrace that surrounds the lake garden has so many statues of queens throughout history that I think that Maria more than made her point that royal women have been important and have made vital contributions. The lake has sailing boats on it and children were using sticks to re-direct them and send them scudding back across the lake each time they reach the shore.
Sculpture dedicated to the students in the Resistance movement of World War IICertainly Maria was not settling for the granny flat in the back yard. The magnificent palace, which she felt was appropriate to her needs, is now the home of the French Senate and as such, is surrounded by police. None of them seem to be fully employed, unless you count chatting to walkers, moving the chairs about a bit and cautioning people walking their bikes that if they are tempted to ride, they must remember not to, but of course this is what an effective police presence is supposed to create – goodwill and keeping of the peace. The palace was not open to the public, although sometimes there are exhibitions, but the gardens were a sheer joy to stroll in. Up one walkway we could glimpse the dome of the Pantheon so naturally we just had to go over and have a look. Truly you could see Paris just by letting views draw you on.
The formal buildings of the Faculty of Law for the University of Paris and the Mairie (Mayor’s and Commune offices) flanked the Pantheon, which is described in a contradictory way as a ‘civic temple’. Originally a basilica built in 1774 to honour St Genevieve, the patron saint of Paris, once the revolution came it was taken over and altered to become the place where great men (and women) are commemorated. Some famous people buried here are Victor Hugo and Pierre and Marie Curie. Over the shoulder of the Pantheon a beautiful church could be glimpsed, but we turned our backs on it and marched back to the Luxembourg Gardens. A patisserie specialising in gateaux and high prices had the most delectable cakes in the window and a large sign encouraged the French to flock over to England to the Notting Hill Festival.
Back in the gardens we were conscious that time was racing by so, after lunch, we left and followed the Rue de la Seine, back to the river. There were many stalls along the river wall, displaying a wide range of postcards, prints, books, records, old magazines and newspapers and all sorts of souvenirs and bric a brac. The atmosphere was light and friendly, with stall keepers chatting and greeting each other and regular customers. All it needed was a mouth organ or an accordion, with buskers being in short supply it seemed in the places we went to.
Later we saw the police moving on not only beggars but a couple of artists who presumably did not have licences for selling the portraits that they were drawing. Perhaps the illegal buskers had been swept out before we appeared and the licensed ones like a long lie in on a Saturday morning.
We, and thousands of others, were heading for Notre Dame, the first cathedral in Paris and the one from which all distances from Paris are measured. It was started in the 12th Century and was still being added to in the 19th century. What struck me most was how neat and orderly this building looked, with its tidy carvings, its saints in rows and even its gargoyles held in check. 
Many of the building's, details are not seen from the ground and the immediate surroundings, but from afar the design comes into its own. We joined the long, snaking queue to enter with the expectation of a long wait, but it moved quickly, with the enormous cathedral swallowing groups of ten or twelve at a gulp. Inside it was gloomy and it took some time for our eyes to adjust. The size and the windows are really impressive, particularly the ones set out like wheels that are seen looking north and south from the middle and the one at the back of the church. There are double rows of columns along the sides, so everything is fairly split up and, although the cathedral is massive, it didn’t feel like that because the open space is so compromised. Along the side of the choir there was an enclosing wall, and along its outer surface ran a series of wooden relief sculptures telling about the life of Jesus. This, and many other decorations in the church, served an educational purpose in times when the congregation could not read and when the Bible was in Latin anyway.I visited the Treasury, where there were the most beautiful embroidered robes, some so finely done that they looked like paintings. There were many relics of saints, with most elaborate caskets and holders, as well as relics of the crown of thorns and the cross. We had the option to queue to climb up to the roof and see where Quasimodo hung out but, with so little time, and lots of it spent in the gardens already, we decided not to. A ‘Liberty Tree’, planted in 1998 by the Archbishop of Paris, looked young and frail in comparison to the sturdy stone and dimensions of the cathedral. It was planted in memory of Monseigner Denys-Auguste Affre, Archbishop of Paris, who was shot as he approached a barricade as a mediator in 25th June 1848. We had not realised how anti-clergy and the church the revolutionaries were, nor had it sunk in fully that the revolutionary struggles continued with various major incidents over a long period of time.
We walked behind the Cathedral to see it from all angles and found some charming gardens, where a quartet was playing jazz in a band rotunda. During their performance, a girl of about twenty, who was sitting near me, was joined by a young man who was working hard to strike up a conversation, to gain her trust and interest and to pick her up. It sounded so much like the con jobs that we had experienced and yet it could have been a friendly guy and nothing more. She seemed suitably wary. Since we were off to the Louvre, we will never know what happened next.
The Conciergerie Museum was a little diversion that we had not planned, but it was right next door to Sacre Coeur, which was on our itinerary, but which we bypassed after a brief view from the outside. The Conciergerie was once a royal palace, with an enormous central hall for the ‘gens d’armes’ (the knights and soldiers, literally ‘the armed people’) to assemble in, with it just clicking for us why the word ‘gendarme’ is used for the police. From the time it was abandoned as a palace it has served as a prison and so the displays were quite macabre and told of tortures and misery carried out by kings and then by the revolutionaries, particularly during the reign of terror. A long list documented the people sent to the guillotine at that time; anyone could be dobbed in, or could have expressed a revolutionary but more moderate view, or simply seemed to have been the type of person ‘mistrusted’ by the revolutionary leaders. It was here that we saw how many clerics had been killed, as well as people from an incredible range of professions, often with an inadequate or non-existent trial and an execution the next morning. A painting depicted the Girondens, a group of deputies, supporters of the revolution, who spent their last night in the prison chapel, having a last meal before their early morning execution. With them in this vigil was the body of Dufriche Valaze, a member of the group who committed suicide with a stiletto rather than face the guillotine (photo below). It certainly looked as if things had gone crazy with Robespierre leading a group down an untried path that many had never envisaged at the outset of the revolution. Eventually Robespierre himself was brought here on the 28th of July, 1794, when enough revolutionary leaders rose against his ideas. After his death the reign of terror ceased.
Marie Antoinette was another famous resident and her quarters showed how she was guarded at all times, but in deference to her, the guards sat behind a screen to give her privacy.After this sobering visit we ate our tea beside the Seine. Groups of tourists sat chatting on the stone river’s edge without a care in the world, while a man slept with his belongings under his head, tucked in against the wall. We have seen the homeless in Paris, and here, as in other places, it seems that daytime is the preferred sleeping option, maybe for safety reasons or for social reasons. Beggars, of course, need crowds with easy money or kind hearts, so daytime near a cathedral is a good bet.
The Louvre was a fortress in the 12th Century, but since then it has been added to extensively in every era, with masses of buildings covered in sculptures and stone embroidery. Many of the effects are reminiscent of cake decorating, and you expect a curly wigged and satin coated king to strut across the courtyard to the Tuileries Gardens at any moment. Everything is so large and there is so much of it that the modern intrusions, such as cars on the roundabout, simply fail to create an impact that destroys the illusion of earlier and grander times. Unfortunately that can’t be said for the glass pyramid, which, while being a great idea in terms of uniting all the museum rooms underground and providing light, is either too big or too small not to create a jarring effect for me.
The Louvre inside is an absolute labyrinth of galleries heading off in all directions from the base of the pyramid. It has been a museum since 1793 and has extensive collections of Western Art from the Middle Ages to 1848, as well as collections of art works from ancient civilisations. We started with the Italian paintings and, of course, visited the Mona Lisa. She is protected behind glass and behind a barrier so that viewers are about six metres away. Two guards are on duty to control the crowd, which jostles good naturedly as people position themselves and their friends for photos with the painting in the background. In terms of an art experience, all this detracts from appreciation of what is certainly an intriguing and beautiful painting. In terms of a social phenomenon, it is certainly interesting to see a bee line being made to this one spot, while all around other wonders await discovery. Keith was more intrigued by the crowd than the painting. He believed that this museum, like every other museum displaying old paintings, had a ban on flash photography because it damages the paint and the materials on which the painting is done. Despite the presence of a museum guard close to the Mona Lisa, there was a constant barrage of flashes going off, at a rate of at least 40 per minute, with no attempt to control them.
I was particularly interested to see the paintings by Titian, an artist I have always admired. His ‘Femme au Mirroir’, painted in 1515, shows a young girl looking in a mirror. At the time there was rivalry between painting and sculpture as to which was the greater art form and the device of including mirrors in a composition gave the artist the opportunity to give a view from all sides in a painting. It was absolutely fascinating to visit the pre-renaissance paintings and to move forward chronologically, seeing developments in every single aspect, all of which must have been mind blowing at the time. 
We could not possibly visit everything in the Louvre in the couple of hours or so that that we had available, and that limitation, imposed by us because we wanted to see the gardens and the Place de la Concorde before it was too dark, acted as a dampener to me. We restricted ourselves to French and Italian paintings and the Egyptian collection. The Egyptian collection is very extensive and well organised. Napoleon was most interested in Egypt and its history and art works, and had no scruples about taking precious and rare items back to France after his military excursions there. He took scholars with him and much knowledge of ancient Egypt is due to their work. The museum houses room after room of items, with precious examples of hieroglyphics, mummies and sculptures, including distinctive ones of Akhenaton (the pharaoh who wanted sculptures to look like the subject), which suggested that he had a very unusual physique and face. It is possible that it was a very big ask to expect regular sculptors to make such a massive leap, and that these statues may have been the Egyptian equivalent of the early Renaissance paintings, many of which depict very strange looking people.
Many of the galleries were extremely elaborate in themselves, but nothing surpassed the Galerie D’Apollon, which was built in 1661 for Louis XIV, who was known as the Sun King. The room seemed to be completely constructed from highly ornate gilt frames and this is virtually the case. 41 paintings and 36 sculptures, along with 28 tapestry portraits of kings and great artists adorn the walls and ceiling. They were only completed in the 19th century. Crown gems and jewels, along with precious caskets, are on display in this room, but we barely noticed them in this dazzling context of artistic overkill.Outside it was still light and we marvelled at the Tuilleries Gardens, which extend from the end of the Louvre courtyard. Set out in formal style, they incorporate lily ponds, parterres (low hedged gardens in patterns), copses, vast stretches of lawns, flower beds and many statues. To one side we could see a lit up and light as air looking enormous ferris wheel. It is a beautiful area to stroll in and, combined with the Louvre, would have easily been sufficient to visit in a day to really enjoy them.
Finally, we reached the Place de la Concorde, just as night was falling, at about nine thirty. It is an open square, unusual for its times, but it was made this way to allow the view of the Tuilieries Gardens to be uninterrupted. A magnificent obelisk stands in the centre, with gilt paintings on it showing how it was brought from Egypt and raised on this spot. Apparently King Louis-Philippe wanted a monument that would not incite either revolutionary or royalist passions, and the Pasha of Egypt offered him a 3,300 year old pink granite obelisk. The king accepted the gift and set in place the four year process of transportation and erection. The two fountains in the square are extremely elaborate, contrasting with the simplicity of the obelisk.
A train trip back was a must after such a full day, with a little people watching in the carriage revealing more of the everyday side of French life. A woman struggled with an overtired toddler, while her four year old slept on, despite her hair being pulled by her brother and every jolt of the train making her position on the seat more precarious. Everyone else seemed to be in a private daze as the train slithered under the city, occasionally emerging to roar over metal coat hanger style bridges.
Having made plans until the end of September that we were very happy with, we have had to consider changes because our niece, Rosie, and her family have set a date to be in Tanzania which is earlier than we had thought. It is a possibility for us to visit them there and to stay in the fairly remote village where Rosie’s husband’s family live. It is a wonderful opportunity but we will have to think it through carefully, find out more details, costs and how our other plans will be affected. We need more hours in the day!
Pedal powered vehicles for hire at the Place de la Concorde
Paris is a very multicultural city.
We often saw homeless people sleeping during the day in public places.
There are many beggars and homeless people in Paris.
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