Thursday
After all the drinking and the late hour getting in last night and, no doubt, the lingering effects of jet lag, I couldn’t sleep. We got in bed around 1:00, and I was probably asleep by 1:30. I woke up at 3:45 and, despite how hard I tried, I could not fall asleep again. I got up and wrote e-mails and posted to my blog. I lay down again around 7:00, and I slept until roughly 9:00am. Wife hadn’t slept well, either, so we sort of just dragged through the morning.
After a breakfast identical to the one we had yesterday, we went down to the Saint Germain des-Pres Metro station and bought a carnet and two three-day museum passes. We rode the Metro to the Saint Michel stop where we walked through the underground correspondences to the RER C line, where we boarded for L’Hotel des Invalides. The weather was pretty darn cold, and we were a little disoriented when we came up to street level. Once we got our bearings we found Invalides pretty quickly.
L'Hotel des Invalides. When a soldier's career was over, he had little to do but beg for money on the streets. One of the French kings (Henry VIII, I think the literature read) grew tired of seeing them on the street, so he built this as a retired and disabled soldiers' home. (Photo credit: Farrago)Inside we visited the war museum. The first wing consisted of tons and tons (and I mean that literally!) of suits of armor that have been preserved through the centuries in the collections of kings and noblemen. Some were fairly basic, but others were quite ornate and beautiful and HUGE! This wing also included early firearms used in battle. Some of them were quite ornate, as well. One wouldn’t think anybody would want a “pretty” rifle, but apparently kings couldn’t fathom the use of such a weapon that came from a run-of-the-mill mold. Some of them were actually quite comical. Unfortunately, the museum displayed a sign that forbade photography, even though other people were snapping happily, so I guess that’s just “unfortunately” for me, a rules snob. So no photos.
Because of our mutual sleep deprivation, wife was not feeling too well, and we moved on. We discovered a World War II exhibit that was really pretty neat-looking. It started on the fourth floor and viewers made their way through one level to the stairs and then down a level to the next one, and so on. We managed to get through the second level down when I, too, started feeling a little off. It was very warm in the building, and I had my coat on but unbuttoned. Suddenly I got very warm, and taking my coat off wasn’t enough. It was getting late, anyway, so we decided to leave. Getting back out into the cold air was actually good for us, as we both began to feel better immediately. We took a couple of silly photos with a cannon and a forced perspective (See Keeping a Low Profile in Paris), and then we went “home” to get ready for dinner.
An Enigma encoding machine used by the German Wehrmacht during World War II. The codes generated by one of these machines were broken by the Allies who kept the breakthrough a very tightly held secret, thus enabling them to fool Hitler's generals into thinking the Allied invasion of France would center on the narrowest point in the English Channel, at Calais, France. (I'm a bit of a WWII buff, so I broke the rule and snapped this photo!) (Photo credit: Farrago)Georges is the restaurant on the sixth floor of Centre Georges Pompidou, home of the Musée National d’Arts Moderne. It fits the motif of modern art with its rubber, steel, and plastic décor. We sat down to dinner with Mr. & Mrs. Co-worker Number One, Mr. & Mrs. Supervisor, and Mr. and Mrs. Polish Co-worker, who brought along their 19-year-old daughter, who is just too old to be stuck with the kids, dammit. We were served by Julian, a young man who had a very good command of English, and who was, on top of that, a great waiter. He suggested the wines, and we had a very nice Bordeaux. With interest in refining our wine choice, he next suggested a Margaux. I don’t know if that’s a region or a vintner, but it was nice and smooth, and we will look for it at the local wine store near us. I had two appetizers: the soupe crème de légume, and the raw oysters. Wife had an appetizer of finely sliced scallops and smoked salmon.
My oysters. I guess it's a rare occurrence for someone seated at a table to take photos of his food. Others in our party thought I was weird to do this. Oh, wait. They think I'm weird, anyway. (Photo credit: Farrago)My appetizer(s) was followed by a very thick veal chop which everyone said was the largest veal chop they had ever seen. I don’t do veal all that often, so I couldn’t add comment. Wife's main course was lobster claw meat in a curry sauce. My meal was complemented with a dessert of a very fine chocolate cake, almost molten in the middle.
A shot of my dessert, catching wife in the act of trying to steal a bite! (Photo credit: Farrago)
Wife's dessert was a very sweet pink raspberry foofy meringue thing. I tasted it and thought, This is one time I DON'T wish I had ordered what she ordered! (Photo credit: Farrago)It was another night of eating too late, drinking a little too much, and going to bed on a full stomach.
dassall! More later!
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