The first monument on our list was the Arc de Triomphe - Danielle's idea, as it allows you to get a bird's eye view of the city. As it turned out, the crowds were pretty light. We made our way to the top of the 280-something stairs and took in the view of the city.
From the viewing platform at the top, you also get a view of the insane traffic in l'Etoile (the enormous circular intersection that surrounds the Arc de Triomphe). I was going to say that it's a ten-lane interection, but that's not quite accurate - there are both no lanes and infinite lanes.
Public washrooms are a rarity in Paris, but luckily, there are some at the top of the Arc de Triomphe.
After reversing descending from the top, we checked out the details on the outside of the huge structure. The intricacy and scale is really impressive.
We decided to head over to the Musée de Cluny (aka Musée du Moyen Age) on the Left Bank. One our way there, we stopped at a café for lunch. I was a little bit adventurous and ordered "Andouillette". The waiter aked me if I knew what it was, and I replied "c'est une saucisse, non?". He said: "non, c'est le tripe". Which it was... Not bad, but I think the "unusual" smell will stay with me for a while. Now I know why Winston can't stomach tripe, or even the smell of it. It looks good though, doesn't it?
The Left Bank is a much tighter scale than the area around the Arc de Triomphe. The streets are narrow and crooked and clearly not made for cars. Not that that stops anyone...
Musée du Cluny was very interesting. The collection is of medieval artifacts, and it's housed in the XVth century Hôtel de Cluny. This also happens to be the location of some roman bath ruins.
The museum has an impressive array of tapestries, paintings, sculpture, stained glass, etc.. My favourite sculpture was of St-Denis. Mostly because I love the story. From somewhere on the Internet:
"According to the legend the prefect, Sissinius, condemned Saint Denis. After Denis' head was chopped off at Montmartre, Denis bent down, picked up his head, carried it two miles, to where he wanted to be buried and then fell down dead."
As an aside, on of our reasons for choosing to visit museums during this part of our trip was the heat wave Paris is currently experiencing (30+ degrees everyday so far). We (apparently naively) assumed that museums would be air conditioned, since excess heat is probably really bad for the artifacts. Wrong. Also, if you thought that XVth century buildings have any significant insulative value against heat, think again. In other words, it was almost as hot in the museum as it was outside.
After Musée de Cluny, we meandered up to le Centre Pompidou, which is mostly air-conditioned, but not the glass tubes you travel in on the escalators on the outside of the building. I'm pretty sure we could have steamed something in these things. And I'm sure they're freezing in January. But I digress....Pompidou was good, but we were both too tired by this point to appreciate much, so we abandoned it after about an hour.
On our way home, we stopped briefly at the BHV department store which has started its huge "solde". It was a zoo in the men's store (yes they have a separate store for men) full of well-dressed men of all ages looking for a bargain. We were both waay too tired to deal with this madness, even in spite of the good deals, so we made our way home as quickly as we could, ate our now-standard salade composée and flopped into bed.
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