Paris Jour 6

It was our last full day in Paris... we felt like we had seen most of what we wanted to, so we did a few miscellaneous things...

We returned to Montmartre so I could look in the fabric and linen stores (they were closed on Sunday). I had it in my head that I wanted to take home a tablecloth and dishtowels made of toile fabric. Of course I didn't find any... so then I got the brilliant idea to purchase fabric and make my own... and I loved what what I found in the fabric stores.

It was all so beautiful... and so expensive...

...and I made the mistake of looking online at a local fabric store (local-close-to-my-house) and found similar fabric for a much cheaper price and I just couldn't justify the extra cost just to say I had bought it in Paris... but I did love looking and feeling all of these gorgeous fabrics. In 2005 my dad and sisters and I found so many neat tapestries, but that store had closed down so I was really glad that I had purchased the ones I did then.

We debated about taking a day trip to see anothe chateau such as Fontainebleu or Chantilly. We decided to stay a little closer to Paris and see Vincennes because they described a mote and dungeon which we thought would be neat (and might buy some sympathy from Coleman who still wished we had gone to the catacombs).

It was very old--maybe built in the 1300s--and really cool. It had been closed for many years for restoration.

I was a little disappointed that the mote didn't have water (or alligators for that matter).

There was a Sainte Chapelle here too, patterned after the Sainte Chapelle near Notre Dame. It was closed for restoration, but I loved the way it looked from the outside.

Don't you think it looks like a real authentic castle? I half-expected to see Rapunzel letting down her hair out of one of the tower windows.

This was by far the most sunny day of our trip. The weather was beautiful!

This view of the mote shows the water line.

I liked this view of the black turret.

There were some really neat doors inside... I loved these.

We took a walk in a hallway that overlooked the mote. We think it's where they'd shoot arrows at enemies trying to break in.

Another view that shows the water line.

After a nice tour of the chateau we went back to Paris and went to Tuileries (where we had been kicked out before closing time on our first day) so we could go to Musee L'Orangerie. I laughed at this sign too... you must NOT walk on the grass.

I loved the outside of the building. Downstairs they have many paintings by Picasso, Renoir, Cezanne, Matisse, and others. I wished (again) that I had taken an art history class so that I could appreciate the art that I saw.

In the upstairs L'Orangerie houses the large water lily series by Monet called Las Nympheas. Before donating them to France, he required that they be displayed in an oval shaped room and this museum was built. I thought they were lovely!

Outside the museum was another of Rodin's "The Kiss" statue. We were going to try to take our own picture kissing in front of "The Kiss" but a nice American couple stopped and offered to take a picture of our cheesiness. Interestingly enough, the same couple was on our flight home. I saw the wife by the bathrooms on the plane and she said, "Hey, weren't you at L'Orangerie yesterday?" Small world!

We walked over to Ile St. Louis and got our last ice cream treat... I had vanilla and raspberry and Ryan had peach, banana, and raspberry. The vanilla seriously had so much real vanilla bean in it that it was light brown. It was amazing!

We walked back through Notre Dame's courtyard and decided to try La Conciergerie one more time. They were open!

This was the women's courtyard area... I imagined Marie Antoinette strolling around during her incarceration, but more than likely she stayed in her special quarters. It wasn't as amazing as some of the other things we saw, but it was interesting (and included in our museum pass :)).

We loved the metro signs that were all over the city.... as a funny side note when I was there with my dad he told us that those metro signs were pretty rare and then we saw them all over the place. Common or not, they were very cool.

We spent some time in the Cite metro station snapping photos. This was by far the best metro station with all of the hanging light fixtures and tiled walls.


We went and saw the Madeleine...

The sign told us we had missed a concert (darn it!) but at least we got there before closing so we could see the inside.

...inside the cathedral there were more mosaics but the lighting wasn't great.

We walked a block over to see the Opera, but we didn't go inside.

On our way back to the hotel we purchased this lovely eclair in Sally's honor--it was her birthday and we had already eaten a baguette in her honor, but we decided she needed an eclair too. It was filled with chocolate cream and was delicious! I was glad Sally had a birthday so we could eat yummy things while we thought of her.

It was a great day to end a fabulous week in an amazing city! We got up early the next morning for our adventure in getting home. I have to say, the Charles de Gaulle airport is my least favorite airport in the world... I'll share the 2005 and 2009 dramas in my next post... another day... I'm sure you can't wait!