Friday. Our second to last day in Paris. What to do? We'd been to most of the good playgrounds, and the last couple of playground trips had been a bit of a bust, with the kids all complaining that they weren't nearly as much fun as they remembered. No one wanted to go to an art museum (though there were certainly lots of those to go see). We'd toyed with going to the Égouts de Paris, but they weren't open on Fridays, so that was out. Naturally, we could just sit at home and do nothing but watch TV and play video games, but that somehow didn't sound all that appealing. Oh, and we had to be home no later than 6:30 in order to pick up the picture from the framer's shop.
Blaise, naturally, said that he had a lot to work on and that he'd prefer to just do that, which left it up to the kids and me, so I asked them what they wanted to do. Sapphire shrugged. Cherry shrugged. Ezio said that he really wanted to go and see armor, and thus it was that we ended up at the Musée de l'Armée after a bus trip that ended up being significantly longer in practice than it appeared on my iPhone app, since we ended up getting caught in a shift change. (In Paris, this results in everybody being ordered off the bus to wait for the next bus of that particular line. In theory, the replacement bus is supposed to be following directly behind the first bus, and the entire procedure takes about thirty seconds. In practice, that doesn't always happen, and so this time we were forced to wait for ten minutes at a random bus stop for the replacement. Also in theory, the 68 bus is supposed to follow the 24 bus, not be in front of it. There went another 10 minutes at the transfer.)
In any case, after the griping about the buses, we did eventually end up at the museum, where they had moved the ticket office to the front of the complex instead of the back. (These details, incidentally, are the reason that I don't have space in my brain for the important things, like which of my kids' names goes with which of my kids.) We bought tickets and started in the Arms and Armor section of the museum. Then, at Cherry's request, we headed to Napoleon's tomb. And at my request to the Église de Saint-Louis des Invalides which has never before been accessible when we've been at the museum. Then Cherry wanted to see Napoleon's horse, which is stuffed and in the modern department (which incidentally goes from 1643 to 1870). The original plan was to just walk through that section and see the horse and then get out and go to the World War I and World War II exhibit, which nobody had really shown all that much interest in, but of course the kids got distracted by the tactical reenactments of the battles and so by the time we finally left it was was only about 20 minutes before I had said we needed to think about leaving.
Naturally, at that point Ezio announced that the real reason that he had wanted to go to the museum was to see the exhibits on the World Wars and that he was very upset that we only had 20 minutes left, and so I agreed that we could leave a bit later than we'd been planning to, say 5:20, so that we would have somewhat more time in that exhibit. I told Ezio that he was in charge of pacing our trip, and that until my alarm went off, he could spend as much or as little time in any part of the exhibit as he wanted. He rushed through the entire thing (which still took us nearly the entire 40 minutes) and then burst into tears because he had felt rushed and didn't get a chance to really look at the weapons, which were, evidently, the things he most wanted to see. Also, Paris sucked and everything was stupid and boring and he wished he had just stayed home and played video games. And I always did everything that Cherry wanted. And nothing that he wanted. But of course none of that changed the fact that we really and truly needed to leave at that point or we wouldn't be in time to pick up the picture, so I hugged him until he stopped crying and then we headed for home.
Friday, July 5, 2013
Thursday, July 4, 2013
In which the Parc Floral is mobbed with school kids
And, well, there isn't all that much to say here either. Except that I had forgotten that the last week of school involves lots of trips to playgrounds for Parisian children. Which means that the Parc Floral was mobbed with school kids. Who were, in general, somewhat less well behaved than the ones at the Jardin de Luxembourg, perhaps because one teacher and thirty kids is a somewhat lower level of supervision than one parent and two kids, especially in a space that large. The consensus among my kids was that it was not as cool as they remembered it being. Alas, I think Sapphire has aged out of the playground scene, and that Ezio is well on his way there.
In which we go to the Jardin du Luxembourg
Sometimes there just isn't all that much to say about a day. The Jardin du Luxembourg has a pretty cool playground, which you have to pay to get into. The kids and I spent a good chunk of time there last Wednesday. It was pretty busy, though most of the kids were fairly well behaved. And then we went home and had cookies. Pretty dull, eh?
In which there is a disaster
To begin with, you have to know that the walls of our apartment in Paris were completely covered with art: big pieces, small pieces, originals, prints, sculpture, it was probably on our walls somewhere. Also, you need to know that our apartment was quite small (though not by Paris standards) and so all three kids were sharing the bedroom on the bottom floor of the apartment, with Ezio sleeping on a trundle bed and Cherry on an air mattress. But this room was also fairly small, and also served as Blaise's office, and so every morning Ezio's bed was shoved under Sapphire's bed then Cherry's air mattress was balanced on top in a giant mattress and bedding tower. Furthermore, since the washing machine was in a relatively inaccessible location, their dirty laundry tended to end up in a pile on the table at the end of the bed. And now the scene is set: a big framed picture at one end of the bed, a pile of laundry that needed to be brought to the washer at the other end, and, in between, an air mattress balanced atop a pile of blankets and pillows.
Sapphire was given the job of collecting the laundry that had collected at the end of the bed and bringing it to me for washing, while I loaded the kitchen towels and the laundry from our bedroom upstairs. In doing so, she bumped one end of the air mattress, which shifted, knocking against the bottom edge of the huge (45 x 50 inches) picture, which turned out to have been precariously balanced on the top rail of its frame, and knocking it onto the bed. The glass shattered. Sapphire screamed. And I dropped the laundry and came rushing into the room.
First things first. Get some shoes on. Is anyone hurt? Sweep up the glass that is on the floor, and then vacuum to get any stray pieces. Now take a look at the picture. What to do? Replace the glass, obviously, assuming that we can figure out how. Searches for "framing Paris" yield a bunch of do it yourself places, but none of them are close, and I don't exactly relish the idea of getting a massive piece of glass home on the Metro, nor do we have the tools to handle it. A search for encadrement near Place Maubert leads to professional framers in the area, one perhaps 50 meters away as the pigeon flies (there are no crows in Paris), and five times that by foot. Maybe they could help us?
Sapphire and I set out. The shop is closed until 2:00. Back home to wait until 2:00. Then back to the shop. I explain what has happened, and that we are leaving Paris on Sunday morning. She asks if we can bring the picture. Of course. We go back to the apartment to remove any pieces of loose glass from the frame and somehow maneuver the picture down our tightly twisting apartment staircase and the quarter kilometer to the framer's workshop. She looks at it. The frame is also broken, since it was too light for the picture and the glass was too big. It was a disaster waiting to happen. She can fix it, she says, but she will need to use acrylic glass, and a wooden frame, which will be much sturdier. She does not understand how they managed to even get the picture hung in the first place without breaking the glass. She promises to email an estimate and we leave the picture there. Sapphire is full of self recrimination. I assure her that it was an honest accident and that we are not angry with her.
The estimate comes that evening, and we contact the owner through the service. Does she want us to deal with this? We don't hear anything until Wednesday afternoon. Yes. I go back to the framer's and pay the deposit. She can have the picture ready at closing time on Friday.
Friday evening Sapphire and Cherry and I go to the framer's workshop to pick up the picture. It looks beautiful, and feels much (much, much) sturdier than before. It is also much lighter. She wraps it in bubble wrap and Sapphire and I carry the picture while Cherry carries my purse and opens the doors for us. We put it in the corner, underneath where it had been before, still in the bubble wrap. I am not going to rehang it, especially when we discover that 3 out of the 5 hooks that had been supporting it are in fact loose.
At check out on Sunday, the rental company reminds Blaise that we have insurance on the apartment, and so we should be able to get back at least some of the cost of the framing. And finally, because she rearranged her schedule in order to deal with our emergency and need for a quick turn around, our framer was
4 Rue Maître Albert
75005 Paris, FRANCE
who was truly wonderful and much appreciated.
In which the magic is tarnished
When we were in Paris three years ago, we all got annual passes to Parc Disneyland as our birthday present from my in-laws. As a result, we went to Disney at least monthly during our stay, and often more frequently than that. We would go on Wednesdays (a no school day in France, though that seems to be changing) in February and the park would be almost deserted so that we could walk through the lines with a 5-10 minute wait. We'd be home in time for me to cook dinner, having ridden everything (that we wanted to) in the park multiple times. Naturally, we knew the rides in the park really well after all of that, and could have conversations about what special effects were and were not working on Pirates of the Caribbean, for instance.
It makes sense then, that Disney would be very high on my kids' list of things that they wanted to do while we were in Paris, but we had to defer the trip until we were confident that Ezio's ankles could stand up to the punishment of 14 hours of walking and standing, and then we needed to wait until Blaise was back from Pisa, and then, naturally, we wanted to avoid going on the weekend because experience has taught us that the Parc is at least twice as busy on weekends as it is during the week. So it wasn't until the very last Monday that we were in Paris that we headed off to Disney, catching the A line at Chatelet (a stop to be avoided if at all possible) and riding it past our old RER stop at Val de Fontenay and all the way out to Parc Disneyland. After we cleared the long bag check line, Blaise and the kids got in line to wait for tickets while I rushed for the nearest bathroom. Maybe I shouldn't have drunk the second cup of coffee? I rejoined them before they made it all the way to the ticket window, we bought the tickets (the annual pass is clearly a much better deal) and waited to scan the tickets and go into the park.
We, naturally, headed straight back to Big Thunder Mountain, only to discover that it was broken, they didn't know when it would be fixed, and even the FastPass kiosks had been shut down, so we headed to Phantom Manor, where we observed that they seemed to be cutting costs by turning the lighting way down (read, off). Note to Disney: Spooky effects are far spookier when you can see them. We headed back to see if Big Thunder Mountain was open yet. No, but they did manage to get a train around the coaster, and we could hear the lift hill working. Blaise decided that we should wait. Forty minutes later, the coaster was opened, and everyone rushed into the queue while the Disney employees pleaded with people to "Watch out for the children." (Is this what Black Friday shopping feels like? If so, I'm very happy that I've never participated in that particular ritual.) We rode, got off, and went straight to the FastPass kiosk to get tickets and decided to use the intervening time to get lunch, and then see what else we might ride. The restaurant across from the ride? Closed. Along the path to Adventureland? Closed. But the line for Pirates of the Caribbean was only half an hour, so we decided to wait (sliding pirate—not working, splashing cannonballs—not working). Finally found a "fast food" restaurant that was open, and spent nearly an hour waiting in line for food (behind 4 other groups) only to discover that they didn't actually have half of the stuff on their menu.
By the time we'd eaten it was nearly time for our FastPasses, so back to Big Thunder Mountain. Rode. Then, Small World (which seemed to actually be working normally. The teacups. Ditto. Alice's Curious Labyrinth, where some of the special effects were working, and some were not—the queen of hearts is far less intimidating when she doesn't come out of her cage. Pinnochio, where the supposed 10 minute line took nearly 40 minutes (and where we discovered after waiting all that time that the ride that Ezio had actually meant to request was Peter Pan, which had a 70 minute wait). Then, Cherry and I went to Buzz Lightyear where the wait was lengthened substantially by the fact that 20% of the carriages were broken and Sapphire and Ezio and Blaise rode Space Mountain, where the ride no longer shoots of a puff of steam when the rocket launches, and then headed back to Pirates.
By the time we left when the park closed, Space Mountain had broken down (while Blaise and the kids were in line to ride it a second time) and Cherry and I spent forever sitting on our horses on the Carousel because there was only one person walking around and checking seatbelts instead of the previous four. We also managed two more rides on Big Thunder Mountain, and another ride on Phantom Manor and saw part of the fireworks show at the end.
Ezio's assessment of the day: "That was fun, sort of. I think it was more fun before though."
It makes sense then, that Disney would be very high on my kids' list of things that they wanted to do while we were in Paris, but we had to defer the trip until we were confident that Ezio's ankles could stand up to the punishment of 14 hours of walking and standing, and then we needed to wait until Blaise was back from Pisa, and then, naturally, we wanted to avoid going on the weekend because experience has taught us that the Parc is at least twice as busy on weekends as it is during the week. So it wasn't until the very last Monday that we were in Paris that we headed off to Disney, catching the A line at Chatelet (a stop to be avoided if at all possible) and riding it past our old RER stop at Val de Fontenay and all the way out to Parc Disneyland. After we cleared the long bag check line, Blaise and the kids got in line to wait for tickets while I rushed for the nearest bathroom. Maybe I shouldn't have drunk the second cup of coffee? I rejoined them before they made it all the way to the ticket window, we bought the tickets (the annual pass is clearly a much better deal) and waited to scan the tickets and go into the park.
We, naturally, headed straight back to Big Thunder Mountain, only to discover that it was broken, they didn't know when it would be fixed, and even the FastPass kiosks had been shut down, so we headed to Phantom Manor, where we observed that they seemed to be cutting costs by turning the lighting way down (read, off). Note to Disney: Spooky effects are far spookier when you can see them. We headed back to see if Big Thunder Mountain was open yet. No, but they did manage to get a train around the coaster, and we could hear the lift hill working. Blaise decided that we should wait. Forty minutes later, the coaster was opened, and everyone rushed into the queue while the Disney employees pleaded with people to "Watch out for the children." (Is this what Black Friday shopping feels like? If so, I'm very happy that I've never participated in that particular ritual.) We rode, got off, and went straight to the FastPass kiosk to get tickets and decided to use the intervening time to get lunch, and then see what else we might ride. The restaurant across from the ride? Closed. Along the path to Adventureland? Closed. But the line for Pirates of the Caribbean was only half an hour, so we decided to wait (sliding pirate—not working, splashing cannonballs—not working). Finally found a "fast food" restaurant that was open, and spent nearly an hour waiting in line for food (behind 4 other groups) only to discover that they didn't actually have half of the stuff on their menu.
By the time we'd eaten it was nearly time for our FastPasses, so back to Big Thunder Mountain. Rode. Then, Small World (which seemed to actually be working normally. The teacups. Ditto. Alice's Curious Labyrinth, where some of the special effects were working, and some were not—the queen of hearts is far less intimidating when she doesn't come out of her cage. Pinnochio, where the supposed 10 minute line took nearly 40 minutes (and where we discovered after waiting all that time that the ride that Ezio had actually meant to request was Peter Pan, which had a 70 minute wait). Then, Cherry and I went to Buzz Lightyear where the wait was lengthened substantially by the fact that 20% of the carriages were broken and Sapphire and Ezio and Blaise rode Space Mountain, where the ride no longer shoots of a puff of steam when the rocket launches, and then headed back to Pirates.
By the time we left when the park closed, Space Mountain had broken down (while Blaise and the kids were in line to ride it a second time) and Cherry and I spent forever sitting on our horses on the Carousel because there was only one person walking around and checking seatbelts instead of the previous four. We also managed two more rides on Big Thunder Mountain, and another ride on Phantom Manor and saw part of the fireworks show at the end.
Ezio's assessment of the day: "That was fun, sort of. I think it was more fun before though."
Monday, July 1, 2013
In which we visit the source of whipped cream
Famous chateaux in the Paris region are fairly common: Versailles (been there, done that, at least three times), Fontainebleau (which always makes me think of Madeleine and the Gypsies), and Chantilly, which has as its claim to fame that chantilly, or sweetened whipped cream, was invented there. (There are, of course, others, but that will do to start with.) Of course, there are all sorts of places claiming credit, and I suspect that the real inventors of the stuff will probably never be known, but at any rate the people at Chantilly made the stuff famous, and that is good enough for me.
Since we'd been to Versailles before, and we'd all been to Fontainebleau at various points, we decided that our chateau of the year would be Chantilly, which is actually not in the Île-de-France at all, but rather in Picardie (which seems like it would be a lovely name for a pet of some type) which means that you have to take a real train (instead of a metro or RER or Transilien) for an entire 19 minute ride in order to get there.
But I'm getting ahead of myself a bit. Here is how we ended up at Chantilly.
Ezio decided that he wanted to go to a castle or palace or something like that while we were in France. I think that in his ideal world, we would probably have gone someplace like this, but castles dedicated to the art of medieval warfare are somewhat rarer in Paris, and so we ended up on Saturday evening after the kids were in bed, having a discussion about where we should go the next day. Naturally, the first place that was mentioned was Versailles, but we've been there quite often, as have the kids, and the weather was supposed to be sketchy, sort of, and we didn't really want to be walking between the main house and the Petit Trianon in the pouring rain, so that was out. Then we talked about Fontainebleau, which the kids had been to with me six years ago, when they were really quite young, and decided that it sounded like too much of a hassle to get there, what with needing to take a bus to the Gare de Lyon and then buy tickets to Fontainebleau and then take a train there and then catch a bus from the Gare de Fontainebleau to the chateau. So, Chantilly it was. Of course, that required taking a metro to a train to a bus, and the train that we wanted only ran every two hours in the morning, and there was the issue of getting to mass at some point during the day. (Is this seeming overly complicated yet?)
At last we determined that if we took the 9:10 train to Chantilly we should get there around 9:30. We would be able to get breakfast there from a bakery and buy our tickets to the chateau before we went to 11 AM mass at Notre Dame de l'Assomption de Chantilly and then we could go into the proper grounds of the chateau after mass and see the house and the grounds and maybe we would also see the Musée Vivant du Cheval (Living Horse Museum) at some point. So we went to bed and dragged the kids out of bed at 8:00 and made them get dressed so that we could trek to the RER station at Notre Dame and ride to the Gare du Nord where we would buy Transilien tickets to Chantilly. Of course when we got there, we discovered that Chantilly is not on the Transilien and that we would have to go to an actual ticket counter and get things figured out, but not until after a great deal of silently cursing the ticket machines that refused to show Chantilly as a possible destination, then arrived in Chantilly to discover that hardly any of the buses were actually running, which I guess shouldn't have been a surprise on a Sunday morning, but somehow was. We did eventually find a bus that took us to the chateau, and a bakery that was open and managed to buy our tickets into the chateau and see the horses in the museum and make it to mass, more or less as planned.
After mass we headed back to the chateau grounds, and toured the chateau itself. Think art, lots of art, and ornamented ceilings and stuff like that. Then back to the bakery for sandwiches for lunch, which they made after we ordered them (much, I am sure, to the chagrin of the people waiting in line behind us). And then it started to rain. While, I might add, we were sitting outside in a courtyard eating our sandwiches. With no sign of shelter in sight. Mmm, soggy bread and ham.
So we finished our sandwiches and went back to the horse museum and learned about the history of horses and hoped that it would stop raining so that we could go out and explore the gardens. And it did stop raining. Four times. (Maybe more, there weren't a lot of windows.) Once, it even stopped raining for a whole minute. So, back into the museum we went, and learned about spurs. And bits. And the use of horses during Napoleon's campaigns. And carousels. And did I mention spurs? (By this point I would have welcomed some trebuchets or bombards almost as much as Ezio would have.)
It did, eventually, stop raining and we wandered through the English garden, only to discover (as it started raining again upon our departure) that the buses might or might not be running that afternoon and that if they were we would have a significant wait (in the rain) for them to arrive and so we ended up walking the 2 km back to the station in the rain.
Since we'd been to Versailles before, and we'd all been to Fontainebleau at various points, we decided that our chateau of the year would be Chantilly, which is actually not in the Île-de-France at all, but rather in Picardie (which seems like it would be a lovely name for a pet of some type) which means that you have to take a real train (instead of a metro or RER or Transilien) for an entire 19 minute ride in order to get there.
But I'm getting ahead of myself a bit. Here is how we ended up at Chantilly.
Ezio decided that he wanted to go to a castle or palace or something like that while we were in France. I think that in his ideal world, we would probably have gone someplace like this, but castles dedicated to the art of medieval warfare are somewhat rarer in Paris, and so we ended up on Saturday evening after the kids were in bed, having a discussion about where we should go the next day. Naturally, the first place that was mentioned was Versailles, but we've been there quite often, as have the kids, and the weather was supposed to be sketchy, sort of, and we didn't really want to be walking between the main house and the Petit Trianon in the pouring rain, so that was out. Then we talked about Fontainebleau, which the kids had been to with me six years ago, when they were really quite young, and decided that it sounded like too much of a hassle to get there, what with needing to take a bus to the Gare de Lyon and then buy tickets to Fontainebleau and then take a train there and then catch a bus from the Gare de Fontainebleau to the chateau. So, Chantilly it was. Of course, that required taking a metro to a train to a bus, and the train that we wanted only ran every two hours in the morning, and there was the issue of getting to mass at some point during the day. (Is this seeming overly complicated yet?)
At last we determined that if we took the 9:10 train to Chantilly we should get there around 9:30. We would be able to get breakfast there from a bakery and buy our tickets to the chateau before we went to 11 AM mass at Notre Dame de l'Assomption de Chantilly and then we could go into the proper grounds of the chateau after mass and see the house and the grounds and maybe we would also see the Musée Vivant du Cheval (Living Horse Museum) at some point. So we went to bed and dragged the kids out of bed at 8:00 and made them get dressed so that we could trek to the RER station at Notre Dame and ride to the Gare du Nord where we would buy Transilien tickets to Chantilly. Of course when we got there, we discovered that Chantilly is not on the Transilien and that we would have to go to an actual ticket counter and get things figured out, but not until after a great deal of silently cursing the ticket machines that refused to show Chantilly as a possible destination, then arrived in Chantilly to discover that hardly any of the buses were actually running, which I guess shouldn't have been a surprise on a Sunday morning, but somehow was. We did eventually find a bus that took us to the chateau, and a bakery that was open and managed to buy our tickets into the chateau and see the horses in the museum and make it to mass, more or less as planned.
After mass we headed back to the chateau grounds, and toured the chateau itself. Think art, lots of art, and ornamented ceilings and stuff like that. Then back to the bakery for sandwiches for lunch, which they made after we ordered them (much, I am sure, to the chagrin of the people waiting in line behind us). And then it started to rain. While, I might add, we were sitting outside in a courtyard eating our sandwiches. With no sign of shelter in sight. Mmm, soggy bread and ham.
So we finished our sandwiches and went back to the horse museum and learned about the history of horses and hoped that it would stop raining so that we could go out and explore the gardens. And it did stop raining. Four times. (Maybe more, there weren't a lot of windows.) Once, it even stopped raining for a whole minute. So, back into the museum we went, and learned about spurs. And bits. And the use of horses during Napoleon's campaigns. And carousels. And did I mention spurs? (By this point I would have welcomed some trebuchets or bombards almost as much as Ezio would have.)
It did, eventually, stop raining and we wandered through the English garden, only to discover (as it started raining again upon our departure) that the buses might or might not be running that afternoon and that if they were we would have a significant wait (in the rain) for them to arrive and so we ended up walking the 2 km back to the station in the rain.
Thursday, June 27, 2013
In which we see monsters
Suppose, just for kicks, that you were an eighteenth century French veterinary student attending school outside of Paris. Naturally, you would be looking for fun, which would, naturally, lead you to want to go into Paris where there were interesting things happening. Equally naturally, the people running the vet school would want to keep you out of Paris, largely because of the interesting things that were happening there, and so they would attempt to provide you with entertainment options that kept you outside of Paris. And, naturally, the sorts of things that would keep you entertained would be things like this
and this
and this
and this.
All of which are housed in the Musée Fragonard at the École Nationale Veterinaire d'Alfort just outside of Paris. It is the oldest museum in the Paris region (housed in the second oldest veterinary school in the world), though it has only been open to the public for about 15 years. It is the ideal place to visit if you want to see the dried large intestine of a horse, or the bronchial tubes of a goat, or the uro-genital system of a bull. It is also the ideal place to visit if you want to see human bodies that have been dried out and then painted so that their entire circulatory system is visible, and want to learn exactly how to go about creating such scientific models.
And it is the place to go if you want to see monsters. Not, mind you, the Loch Ness Monster, or the Yeti, or the Kraken, but real monsters: calves with a single body and two heads, sheep with a single head but two complete bodies, calves with one head with two faces, lambs with a single body and head but eight legs and two separate spinal columns, a baby with legs fused together to make a tail, calves whose internal organs had not developed properly, and who as a result are hopelessly twisted, a pig with a single eye in the center of its bulging forehead, all preserved for the enjoyment and enlightenment of our veterinary student.
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