Sunday, March 16 – Pens and Marmots and Sparkly Things

It all began, innocently enough, with a desire to go see pens. Min, Chris, and I had our already-traditional breakfast croissant and café crème (I believe still acquiring both at a café — a practice we abandoned very quickly since a wider variety of pastries were available and much more cheaply at a selection of patisseries leaving us to only pay for the privilege of sipping our coffees in a leisurely fashion while sitting at one of the thousands of possible cafés we had to choose from).

A Dark and Stormy Tour	The Muses... I think.	A yellow-bellied marmot, native of Yellowstone National Park

We decided to go look at La Tour Eiffel as one must in Paris, and so to the Metro station we went. After mucking about with the ticket machines and eventually having to get help from the station staff, we were on our way!

It was on this day we learned we'd been fooled on Saturday. This was to be the weather we would have for most of the trip — cool-to-cold, often drizzly, kind of windy — but there were some sunny moments and the few times it really poured down, we were in cafés, so *shrug* whatever.

There was quite a bit more agressive begging and shilling in Paris than in London where, at least in my two visits, it was nearly nonexistent or in the subtle busking form that most people actually like to encounter. On the train from the airport, two teenagers had wandered down the line of cars, hands outstretched and attitudes impudent. I gave them my librarian, "You've got to be kidding me look" and they huffed, offended, and disappeared into the next car.

At La Tour Eiffel, however, it was just CONSTANT offers of tacky souvenirs. And the guy who, while we were looking at the Seine, came up to us, pretended to find a gold wedding band on the ground beside us, and the proceeded to try to make us take it. This elaborate ploy was apparently so we would then, sharing in our newfound wealth, give him money for un café... Uhm, non. I do wonder if this works for him. We did spot him trying it with some other people later on.

After looking at the tower for a bit, walking around it, waving the hordes of souvenir salesmen away, we crossed Pont d'Iéna (I think we had to break out our parapluies for a bit) to the other side of the river and walked through Place de Varsovie where there are lovely statues of the Muses. The impressive buildings you reach at the other end house the Musée de l'Homme and the Palais de Challiot, but we didn't go into either. The exteriors were gorgeous and no matter which way you look while standing on the massive plaza between the two buildings, there's a great view.

At this point, we needed food, and before us, spiraling out as many intersections in Paris do, were many streets with many dining choices. We wandered around the curve of the spiral and picked one, we thought, but ended up in its rather more expensive neighbor by accident. Which turned out to be *FINE* because the food was fantastic. Min and I both ordered a very simple, light vegetable platter with haricot verts, potatoes, and other things, a bit of hollandaise sauce drizzled over, café crèmes all around, and later, dessert, but I still remember the veggies. I've been buying French-style haricots verts ever since I got back because of this restaurant's simple but perfect presentation. And our waiter was a delight. This was a nice restaurant, and he had the dark trousers and white shirt and little apron and almost Jeeves-like correct bearing, but he was friendly, attempted English when we bungled the French, and made us feel welcome and relaxed.

We were there for a good while, and afterwards were ready to continue on the way to our intended ultimate destination. I know you've been wondering (if you've read this far), "But Jen? What about the pens?!"

I'm getting to that. Don't rush me.

Chris, our intrepid navigator, might as well as I could tell, have been leading us around on a wild pen chase. The museum was tucked away several blocks from our lovely luncheon restaurant. But, of course, he knew where we were going, and the walk was charming. Parisian architecture is scenic as all get out, so even walking through a residential neighborhood, there were a lot of things to admire.

At last, we arrived at our destination! La Musée du Stylo et de L'Écriture (The Museum of Pens and Penmanship)!

And it was closed pending a move.

Damn it.

"But Jen? Didn't you say something about marmots? Did you end up going to a zoo?"

Geez! I said, don't rush me!

Disappointed, we pressed our noses to the windows and stared longingly at all the pretty, pretty fountain pens and fancy non-fountain pens just beyond the glass in a small but interesting-looking space, and then we had to figure out where the heck we were going next.

I think earlier Min had mentioned the Musée Marmottan, and I'd made a joke about marmots which was actually somewhat funnier since neither Chris nor Min knew what a marmot was [Min and Chris? Please see picture, above]. From then on, I referred to the museum as the Marmot Museum, and we decided we would go there!

Lay on MacDuff— er, Chris!

Another long wandering through interesting urban terrain followed, and at last (in a much classier-looking and very upscale residential area), we found the Marmot Museum, better known to cultured people as la Musée Marmottan Monet. According to my Lonely Planet, it has the largest collection of Monets (about 100) -- in the world is implied, but they don't finish the thought properly, so I'm going to infer that they meant "in the world."

It's a lovely, lovely place just packed with fantastic art. A very large percentage of the collection is devoted to the Impressionists, Monet particularly, of course, but there is an enormous number of excellent works by female artists who were working in the same style or were contemporaries. Much of the collection was put together by Paul Marmottan, and we came to admire him very much as an adventurous and forward-thinking art collector, indeed. The Monet chunk was (from memory) given to the Marmottan by an heir of Monet's though I think M. Marmottan did collect some himself.

We spent quite some time there before wandering back outside, blinking and very, very impressed and pleased with ourselves for on a whim deciding on "the Marmot Museum." Not far from the museum in a little neighborhood park, there was a Punch-and-Judy style puppet show going on, but we couldn't see any of it. They made sure you *had* to pay to see any of the outdoor theater space by completely walling it off with... canvas or box hedges or both? We went all around hoping for a peek, but alas. It sounded wonderful, and I wanted to see it in order to pretend it was Magicians of Caprona and Chrestomanci might show up at any moment, but the next show wasn't for a couple of hours and we were tired and needed a break.

More walking took us through another little park with a naked statue I believe Chris photographed extensively. I don't know why I didn't take any pictures most of the day, but I only have a few very bad ones (even for me) from Sunday.

We wandered back into shops and dining establishments territory and tried out a marvelous patisserie. I don't remember what I ordered there, but it was (as all food was in France) exceptional. More sitting, talking and sipping of café crèmes ensued, and then we felt up to going back to the Eiffel Tower to see it at night.

If you aren't tired of all the walking by this point, I can assure you, I was. My feet were KILLING me and my back was killing me from lugging my over-packed purse all over the place. But I was not going to be stopped by a little thing like that, so on we went. I did vow not to bring so much stuff with me from then on; a vow I kept which led to occasional swearing but overall worked out fine.

We ended up outside a Metro station just as twilight settled over the city, but we had an unclear path to the river, though we could see it from where we were and the tower. This neighborhood was really lovely, and we wandered around a much more circuitous route than it turned out was necessary before we made it down to the river and a bridge which I'm pretty certain was le Pont de Bir Hakeim. The view of La Tour from the opposite side of the Seine there on the bridge was fantastic, and it was full dark by the time we'd reached the bridge so we took some pictures. Mine are crap, but Chris took bunches, and I'm sure his are great.


As we reached the corner to cross to the Eiffel Tower, an hour struck (it would have been 8p or 9p), and the tower burst into sparkles! All the tourists gasped and squeeed and pointed and the veterans and natives laughed at all of us -- apparently because they have no souls ;) It was BEAUTIFUL. Being me, I just couldn't believe the time it must've taken to deck the entire tower out in bazillions of little blinking lights. The lights blinked randomly in a constant sparkling non-pattern for a good chunk of time -- at least ten minutes though maybe longer.

We wandered around, and Chris took pictures, and we waved away souvenir salesmen until we about wanted to murder one of them as a warning to the rest, and at last we went in search of supper.

A lovely little creperie was located, and we all had dinner crepes and café crème and then dessert crepes and more café crème. Completely exhausted, we shuffled to the nearest Metro station (the same one we took to get to La Tour many, many hours earlier as it turned out), trundled our way back to our home station, and dragged into the hotel and off to bed.

Next up: Day Three — In Which We Don't Go to the Louvre or La Musée D'Orsay