This was the first time in a week that we were in a hotel for more than one night, so we needed desperately to get laundry done. The hotel laundry service is always expensive, but it's just part of the cost of the trip. I might have saved some dollars by sitting in a hot laundromat for half a day, but I had no desire to waste prime vacation time in Paris waiting in the laundromat to save a few dollars!
I got an early start, so I delivered the laundry to the front desk and set out for some early-morning reconnaissance. It was a cool morning and light rain was expected.
Right next door at the excellent Paris Baguette-Paris St Michel I discovered Lorna's favorite French pastry, the unassuming canneles, and a wealth of other fresh-baked Parisian pastries; the day was off to a great start! I had some leftover sweets from The Ritz, so I got a Cafe au Lait with cocoa-powder on top and I grabbed an outside table where the countermen couldn't see my contraband.
Then I walked to the Louvre and had my Tammy-to-the-Mona-Lisa adventure:
When I arrived at the Louvre before opening time, there were already lines forming. I had no ticket, so I was directed to another line, where I got to talking to Tammy from Philadelphia. She was on a mission to get a selfie with the Mona Lisa for her daughter before catching a noon flight to Rome.
Speed was critical. We eventually got in and I helped to maneuver her through the crowds, down long halls and up stairs and from room to room until we finally reached the room with La Gioconda. It was chockablock with tourists armed with cellphone cameras and intent upon their goal, mindless of the gorgeous Italian art surrounding them. It was daunting. At that point Tammy from Philly took control of her own destiny, elbowing through the crowd like a pro to finally get her selfie!
I must say some unkind things about the Louvre.
In my opinion, the Louvre is a brilliant world-class collection trapped in a bad museum. Of course they have unique challenges managing the crowds, not just individual tourists like Tammy and me, but whole busloads of schoolchildren and retirees and whatever tourgroup somebody signed up for with the primary objective of getting a selfie with the Mona Lisa and the Eiffel Tower to go with last year's Tower of London and next year's Colosseum.
One way to do it would be to put the Mona Lisa (and the Winged Victory of Samothrace, her runner-up in the selfie races) in a separate area optimized for crowd control. It doesn't have to be far out of context, it could be in an adjacent room with a door that can be opened at times of low traffic. Context is important, that's why the paintings are grouped by when and where they were painted. But this gorgeous, intricate, huge canvas (Jupiter Hurling Thunderbolts at the Vices) by Venetian master Paolo Veronese is not only hung too high and too poorly lighted to appreciate, but you cannot step back enough to view it because the Mona Lisa throng fills the middle of the room. After all, she was painted in Florence during the High Renaissance when Veronese painted Jupiter, so they're in the same room for context with only the simplest inadequate steps for crowd control. This was my chance to compare the best of the Florentine and Venetian High Renaissance masters, and I couldn't. The rest of the museum is still very crowded at leak times, but this, the salon that I most wanted to see, was the most disappointing.
By this time Lorna and Melissa were back on duty. The goal of the day had been cathedrals and the Louvre, but even in May the lines were too long at Notre Dame de Paris and Sainte-Chapelle, so they had breakfast and we met up in front of the Louvre on the edge of the Tuileries Gardens. Our revised itinerary included the exploring the impressionist paintings at the Musee d'Orsay (the biggest collection) and the Musee de l'Orangerie (deep-dive collection of Monet, including the Water Lilies series, and others). Then we'd keep it loose with some walking around and shopping the right bank. By this point it was raining, lightly and getting heavier, so we expected more shopping than walking. We'd finish with dinner at a restaurant that Melissa fondly recalled from a visit some years ago.
As luck would have it, a crisis came up at work, so they explored the Musee d’Orsay while I worked in the cafe, sustained by a cup of green tea and a madeleine. I'm not a fan of green tea, but it was on the menu and the madeleines were fresh, so I took the opportunity to relive a key moment from Proust's sprawling work: It was over green tea and a madeleine that he slipped into his reverie about his childhood in Combray, and the reminiscences that grew into seven volumes. But I had no time for reminiscing, there was work to be done. I don't normally work on vacation, but I had lost my colleague so I was the only person who could do some things that needed doing for an important release.
So when they finished, we all went to the Musee l’Orangerie, and then I left them to go to the Google Paris office for a loaner laptop and a desk to get some work done.
The Paris office is not very far from where we were, but too far to walk in the rain. We were in an area with no taxis, so I got a ride in a pedicab. My hardworking pedaller brought us along the river and then up a shallow slope about 2km to the office. As he huffed and puffed, I gazed out at the dreary day and felt a little guilty until I remembered that he was working on a work day and I was going to work on a hard-earned vacation day.
The work was straightforward, but for security reasons it had to be done a certain way. When I got to the office I authenticated and then was able to get a loaner laptop to do the work on. I found a tiny cell to use for an office for the afternoon, and was finished in a couple of hours. The people were friendly and efficient, and I was glad that it was so easy to resolve the issue without holding up the product release.
Then I got a regular taxi back to the hotel to meet up with Lorna and Melissa for dinner. The laundry was ready so things were looking up.
The rain had stopped, so for dinner we walked to a fancy place that Melissa remembered near Notre Dame called Au Vieux Paris d’Arcole.
I ordered their seven-veggie pancakes for the table as an appetizer, partly to be sure there was anough vegetarian food for Melissa. For mains, I had their special braised beef cheeks and Pomerol (a very good Bordeaux); it was wonderful, especially after a cool, wet day full of frustrations!
Lorna started with the onion soup, which was excellent, and for a main she had scallops, but they were prepared with pesto, which she wasn't expecting in Paris and which she doesn’t care for in any event.
Melissa also started with the onion soup, and then she had a pasta with two excellent toppings.
The Sauvignon blanc was a disappointment. We were tired and no longer hungry, and we still had goodies from the Ritz at the hotel, so we got no dessert.
Instead we took a little post-prandial peregrination past Charlemagne (748-814), who pretty much invented France by uniting western Europe after the fall of Rome three and a half centuries earlier, and being crowned as the first Holy Roman Emperor. We finally returned to the hotel ready to rest up for the morrow's adventures, which we expected would not be as arduous or as important as those of Carolus Magnus!