Closing Out Our Adventure (in Paris)

A year in France would not have been complete without a visit to Paris, the capital city that tends to leave indelible impressions on its visitors. Although Our Provençal Year did commence with a flight to Paris (just about a year ago), we had decided to skip visiting the city and start making our way southward (towards Provence). I wouldn’t say it was a calculated move, at the time it just felt like the right move. Somehow we must’ve sensed that Paris would be best savored towards the end of our trip, our final stop before turning back to New York, where everything had started.

One thing about Paris is that it stays true to its form. How exactly? Well, it’s still one of the most visited places in the world, still most beautiful in its rich architectural and urban style and still as vibrant as ever. Lofty boulangerie and café smells that fill the sidewalks every morning, endemic sounds of mopeds rushing by or occasional ambulance sirens, building facades that rival one another for aesthetic supremacy, this was Paris, 100% unequivocal Paris. This is the Paris I knew with each trip, and now the Paris Brigitte and I had to share with our girls. In all, we spent 4 days in the City of Lights and illuminated our cultural sensors with art, architecture and design, carnival-style fun and friendships.

When in Paris, one has many choices in what to do and see. As the Musée de Louvre was already sold out (booking weeks ahead is advisable especially in summer), we opted for Paris’ other most renown museum experience, the Musée d’Orsay. There we perused the former train station turned museum’s galleries filled with numerous masters, particularly those of the impressionists (one of our favorite highlights). The museum is well balanced with paintings, sculptures and photos, a bit of everything for most art enthusiasts. The audio guide, there’s a kids version too, kept us busy and well informed on some of the featured works. The girls were very excited about it too, and rushed to each artwork bearing the little “bear” sign indicative of the kid’s audio version. It was fun to see them get into it.

With a beautiful day at hand (in Paris, never a given), the Jardin de Tuilerie lured us over, where a carnival fair offered all sorts of games, rides, and attractions. For the girls it was a no-brainer, but all four of us ended up digging into our childhoods and thoroughly enjoyed the moments.

Museums galore is just one of Paris’ faces, there are over 130 in total. Perhaps an adventure dubbed Our Parisian Year would afford us the opportunity to visit most (some food for thought). Another big, in fact biggest (literally and figuratively), touristic highlight and most visited, is La Tour Eiffel (or the Eiffel Tower). Standing at 1,083 feet since it’s opening in 1889, the tower is Paris’ most defining landmark and offers unobstructed views of the city at 360-degrees. Online tickets were sold out but as it turned out, it paid to go and wait on line for our chance to take a ride up to the top. The earlier you can get there when the tower opens, the better as lines can get quite long. Less than an hour later with tickets in hand, we mounted to the top (utilizing two elevator systems), and some patience along the way, blending into the myriads of tourists doing the same exact thing. The zenith was worth it for the views, for the gentle silent breeze and memories of Rusty Griswold having lost his beret from that very platform. As cliché as it were, we saw dozens of berets capping many heads, which prompted the memory of the film.

From the tower it was only a natural progression to a boat ride on the Seine, or the Bateaux Mouche, as one of the more popular companies offering the water tour and a different perspective of the city.

Our last foray in Paris’ art scene was to pay visit to the Centre George Pompidou, Paris’ home to Europe’s largest collection of modern and contemporary art. Built in 1971 and opened in 1977, the center boasts a funky architectural style, essentially exposing the guts of its mechanical interior on its facades. Massive and color coded are its ventilation and circulation pipes which run on the exterior and distinguish the building from more mainstream Parisian construction styles. Inside, the center was replete with art spanning various genres, time periods and masters. From Matisse to Warhol, Kandinsky and Brancuși, myriads of works are there to be savored and inspire the hundreds of thousands who visit annually. The art itself in some parts was reminiscent of stuff you’d see at the MOMA in New York City, the Dia Upstate NY or at the Mass MOCCA in Massachusetts, if I were to draw any parallels. The girls found the interactive installations to be most fun, and were awed by the some of the other pieces which stretched their levels of interpretation.

With getting some of the touristy stuff out of the way, and having only a couple of days left, we benefited from catching up with friends who either live or happened to be visiting Paris too. We crossed the town on foot, by metro, and Uber on different occasions to various arrondissements to hang out at birthday celebrations, afternoon drinks, and a last supper. Auspiciously we got to see friends from near and far, friends we had seen recently and friends we had not seen in over 10 years. Paris seemed to bring us together under the umbrella of its splendor and also gave us a chance to rediscover it with our girls.

The next morning saw us off to Paris’ Charles de Gaulle Airport where the reality of our return to the US was inescapable and the official close of our Our Provençal Year seemed incredible. Au revoir et merci belle année, inoubliable expérience, et magnifique France!