Fermée ou ouverte? Paris is old, founded sometime around when cavemen discovered that bones look like baguettes, but that baguettes taste better. Thus, at any given moment, many buildings and areas are undergoing total renovations and are closed (fermée). For example, this is my 3rd trip to Paris, and I have yet to visit the allegedly-gorgeous Sainte Chapelle; it is closed for renovations, this time only for the three days we were in Paris (I’m not kidding!). Also, we went up to the Musée Picasso, and inexplicably it too was closed. But I’m not sad about these things: I’ll just have to go back to Paris every chance I get…
Additionally, at the risk of making the reader barf when I say the following--a closed door really does mean that sometimes there's an open window nearby. Because we went out of our way to go to the Picasso Museum and because it was closed, we wandered nearby and found the Musee Cognacq-Jay, which gets me to my next harangue, I mean topic.
How much things cost: In life, nothing costs exactly what it should/does in my head; everything costs either WAY too much or WAY too little. For example, the exchange rate in Europe at this time favors only around a dozen people in the world, all of whom have the last name Rowling, Gates, Hilton, or II. For the rest of us, here is some good advice: get out your ATM card when you arrive in Paris and keep it out until you leave. It costs 9 euros for a 1-hour boat ride on the Seine or 11 euros for all day; it costs a mere 6 euros to see the unbelievably great Rodin museum, but it costs 2-and-a-half euros for a teeny-tiny bottle of water there.
But there are things that cost shockingly little as well: we stumbled upon the aforementioned Musee Cognacq-Jay, a museum dedicated to the 18th century in Paris, and it was completely FREE! Ken and I would have loved it, even if it hadn’t had a single Fragonard or Renoir (which it did). The house itself was beautiful, with two courtyards and gardens, a study area, and the cleanest, nicest, free bathrooms in Paris. There are jillions more of these (often free) little, out-of-the-way museums in Paris--or sometimes, they're big, right-there places. The Petit Palais (which is very large, but dwarfed by the HUGE Grand Palais across the street and which is my favorite building in Paris) is COMPLETELY FREE and gorgeous and houses the Musée des Beaux-Arts, which has a fantastic collection of old beautiful glass objects (think Tiffany), among other art treasures.
More about prices: I’m shocked that I could get free internet most places on the Metro, but I would have had to pay around $20 every day for that privilege at my overpriced-to-begin-with hotel. My thought is that, not only am I cheap because I have to be because we don't make all that much money, but that it's responsible and even FUN to try to "do Paris" on the cheap: run into the Musee Cognacq-Jay and other places, take a bottle of water and refill it, take the Metro or even better, walk along the Seine. End of harangue...
2 comments:
I feel you on the money thing, Karen. Europeans do like to rip off tourists (not that I blame them, since most American tourists ARE loud and annoying), but like you said, there are also a lot of amazing, cheap/free things to do in Paris as well. It's a lot of fun to wander off and try to find non-tourist trap things to do, and usually these things are not only less expensive, but more fun.
I'm glad to hear from you guys. I miss you both!
Bummer about Saint Chappelle. The best, biggest, oldest stained glass cathedral in the world. Blows Notre Dame outta the water. But then, for real beauty, go to Mintner Lane COC...
Second best stained glass church (in my opinion) is a Lutheran church in Zurich, Chagal made all the windows.
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