We were seriously thinking about bypassing Versailles in favor of visiting the Loire Valley instead. The Loire Valley has about twenty beautiful castles. But after we saw photos of Versailles on the Internet, we decided to go to these very opulent quarters of King Louis XIV and his successors.

The Louvre and D'Orsay Museums

It may be disrespectful to lump the Louvre and D'Orsay museums together in this short narrative. But I confess that I have no more than a dilettante's knowledge and appreciation of fine art. In truth we rushed through both museums in an afternoon.The D'Orsay is housed in a smaller but very nice and modern building. I really enjoyed viewing the paintings of the famous impressionists, Claude Monet and Eduard Degas, at the D'Orsay.

The Louvre museum is just a short walk away from the D'Orsay. As with the Versailles Palace, the largeness of the Louvre museum and the surrounding grounds really impressed me. The Louvre reminded me a little bit of the Smithsonian museums in Washington, D.C. But I don't think we have anything quite like the Louvre. We did the obligatory viewing of Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa.I was surprised at the relatively small size of this most famous painting. There were signs leading to the Mona Lisa all the way from the entrance, down innumerable halls, and up various stairways to what seemed to be the very bowels of the Louvre. A crowd of people stacked several rows deep all vying to view and take photos of the Mona Lisa. I was quite surprised that we were allowed to take flash pictures of this painting.

A friend of ours raved about Saint-Chapelle. It is located within a couple of blocks of the Notre Dame cathedral, next to the Hall of Justice. We were quite surprised with the very tight security at the entrance of Saint-Chapelle, which was similar to that of an airport. Perhaps, this was due to its proximity to the Hall of Justice. We entered the lower sanctuary, which had walls covered with beautiful tapestry. We went upstairs to the upper sanctuary and understood what our friend was raving about. The upper sanctuary has spectacular high walls extending, perhaps, thirty feet with elaborate stained glass windows all around.

 

The Notre Dame cathedral evoked memories of an old 1950's movie based upon Victor Hugo's novel, "The Hunchback of Notre Dame" that I watched on TV as a kid. The story is about Quasimodo, a deformed man, perhaps, with spinal bifida, who lives in the cathedral and rings the huge bells in the towers. He gives sanctuary to a beautiful gypsy girl, Esmerelda, who is falsely accused of killing an army captain, and falls in love with her. The authorities storm the cathedral while Quasimodo (played by Anthony Quinn) tries to thwart them by throwing down large stones and hot oil from the upper level. But, alas, the authorities win out and kill poor Esmerelda. But at least Quasimodo kills the evil priest who falsely accused Esmerelda.

I went into the Notre Dame cathedral where there were parishioners worshipping. One of the priests chided me for wearing a baseball cap inside the sanctuary. My church at home is not that strict. I wanted to go up to the upper level. But the line was too long.

Pickpockets 

Encounters with pickpockets dampened our enthusiasm for this city. We were victimized on the Metro subway system on the way from Charles DeGaulle airport to our hotel. There were four of us, Gail, sister-in-law Pauline, mother-in-law Nana, and I on this trip. While we were on the metro, a young gypsy girl came pushing her way onto the train. She bumped into Pauline. A Frenchman started yelling at us. I thought he was trying to warn us about the girl who then started to work her way towards me. Pauline started to shout her warnings at me. As I shifted my focus, someone told Pauline that the drawstring to her backpack was open. Pauline found her purse was missing. In the meantime, the pushy young girl had started to make her way toward the front of train. I yelled at Gail to watch out. But she couldn't hear me over the crowd. The pushy young girl disappeared into the crowd and got off at the next stop. The Frenchman who was yelling at us also got off. Later, we reasoned that the Frenchman was, perhaps, in cahoots with the young girl. We spent two hours filing a report with the local police. Pauline had her passport, drivers' license, credit card, ATM card, and some travelers checks stolen. She was able to immediately cancel her credit card. She had a friend who worked at the bank in New York cancel her ATM card. travelers checks were fairly easy to recover. But she had to spend several hours at the American Embassy to replace her passport.

On the next day on the train towards Versailles, I lost the French phrase book that was in the front pants pocket. I didn't feel a thing. I don't know whether I was pick pocketed or not. However, on the day after that, there was another incident that was very obviously another pickpocket attempt. We were on the escalator inside the Chatelet Metro station, which is near the Notre Dame cathedral. It is customary in Europe to stand on the right side of the escalator to make way for the people to climb the escalator steps on the left side. So I was standing on the right side. A man in a denim jacket climbed the escalator steps until he got just ahead of me on the left side. It was strange that he stopped, because he was on the left side. As we approached the top of the escalator, he quickly shifted to the right side in front of me. At the top, he dropped his keys and stooped down to pick them up, extending his buttocks toward me. I came crashing into him as the escalator moved up. Another man came crashing into me from behind. I noticed the man from behind had his hand in my front pants pocket. It all happened so quickly that I didn't know how to react. I had only a Metro map in the front pants pocket where the man had his hand. But it may have looked like a wallet if only contour of the map could be seen through the material of my pants. The man from behind, who was incidentally nicely dressed in a jacket and tie, probably realized that all I had in my pocket was a paper map and quickly withdrew his hand. They quickly disappeared into the crowd. Although they made it seem like an accident, there was no doubt that this was another pick pocketing attempt with these two men working as a team.

We were never quite at ease for the remainder of our stay in Paris. At the Eiffel Tower and the museums, there were numerous warnings about pickpockets over the public address system and on posted signs.

Tips about Paris

Purchase some combination locks for your backpacks and fanny packs to prevent pickpocketers. We don't recommend ladies to carry purses. Be very careful in crowded areas such as long lines at the Eiffel tower, museums, and especially the metro station where there are many pickpocketers. Before the trip, we checked out some travel books from the public library. We particularly liked the books by Rick Steves. He highly recommended purchasing a museum pass which allows you to bypass long ticket lines for over 70 museums which also includes the Versailles Palace, Louvre, D'Orsay museums. Both 1-day and 3-5 day museum passes are on sale at any of the train stations. For the Paris subway, we purchased a week-long orange card pass since we were there for 5 days. The orange card, is a reusable pass that can be purchased from Sunday thru Wed. You must bring along a small photograph of yourself that gets affixed to the card. The cost of the orange card depends upon how many zones you wish to travel to from the center of Paris. If you purchase an orange card with zone 5, it includes full fare to the Versailles Palace. Purchasing a Carnet (pronounced kar-nay) or book of tickets is also recommended in lieu of purchasing individual tickets which turned out to be more expensive.

Make a photocopy of your passport and carry Traveller's checks. When my sister's purse was stolen, the photocopy helped her get the passport replaced at the Embassy quickly. Also, get a calling card - using a credit card does not work with the international phone system.