Day 2

Arrival in Paris

I arrive in Paris as scheduled, at about 9:20am Paris time. Immigration is a breeze, and I'm excited for a new stamp in my passport. I follow the signs and easily find the train station at the airport, get a seat on a train that's getting more and more crowded with every stop, and finally I emerge from an underground station.

Paris is resplendent today. I dig out my camera to catch the beautiful light and buildings that I pass on the way to the hotel.

At the hotel, all I have to say is that my name is Marjorie. Everything else is waiting for me. The girl at the desk points to Virginie's sign (and there's a page to make choices for our next dinner). She hands me my key and two envelopes. One envelope has a note from Virginie, a pass for the metro, a 2-day Paris Museum Pass, and a timed Louvre ticket (tomorrow 1:00pm). The other envelope has my whisper system (you'll sound more like Virginie if you pronounce it wheesper seestem), a magical box that lets us tour members hear our tour guides, even if they're whispering. I text Virginie using WhatsApp, but she doesn't reply right away.

Virginie's WhatsApp Photo :-)

The timed ticket for the Louvre makes me realize that I'll need a new plan. I wonder if other museums require a timed ticket, and sure enough, the Orangerie does. And there's only one spot left, for 90 minutes away. Nothing for the next day, nothing for the last day of our tour. So I guess it's now or never.

Today's highlights:

arrival in Paris
a self-guided walk
Orangerie
Meeting Virginie
Pompidou

A letter! I feel like I've already made a new friend!

"It might be hard to find us"

I guess I'll have to be my own tour guide today, and I'm ready for the challenge. I start with the hint Virginie provided and chart a route to the Latin Quarter. I wander through the Luxembourg Gardens, down Blvd St Michel past the Pantheon and the Cluny museum, and I wait for a bit outside Notre Dame.

In front of Shakespeare and Company, I find a group of people wearing a whisper system just like mine and speaking English. I'm thinking this might be my group, but they're breaking up for lunch, and I'm not brave enough to talk to them. Besides that, I don't see anyone who looks like Virginie's WhatsApp photo and there are a lot of young people. (In a couple days we'll run into this group at Guedelon. They're on a Rick Steves Family Europe tour!)

I continue my scenic walk along the bank of the Seine, past the Louvre, into the Tuileries Gardens, and finally arrive at the Orangerie, just 4 minutes after the time on my ticket. An excellent self-guided tour of Paris if I say so myself. I've seen so many of the most beautiful things in Paris. I'm so glad I'm here!

This map is interactive! Feel free to zoom and pan to explore my route!

Scroll through my self-guided Paris walk >

Orangerie

Why is the Orangerie at the top of my to-do list? While Monet's Waterlilies are beautiful in photos, they really need to be experienced in the two elliptical rooms of the Orangerie that Monet designed at the end of his life to hold them. So even though I've seen them before, I need to experience them again.

I do a lap around each room. I'm thrilled that I don't have to elbow through the crowd, yearning for the best spot for a photo. In Paris 5 years ago, our group had the place to ourselves early in the morning. I already have lovely photos. Today, all I need to do is find a seat.

It's time to introduce Claude:

Claude is a cross stitch kit I bought about a year ago. I thought it was pretty and would remind me of my 2018 visit to Paris. But I had other projects going then, so I didn't start working on it...until I booked this trip and discovered that I would see the waterlilies again and spend time in Monet's garden at Giverny! I put in a few weeks of work on it at home, and got a lot done on the flight to Paris, but I'm so excited to work on it while surrounded by an ellipse of waterlilies. But I wasn't really counting on how hard it would be to take my eyes off the paintings and focus on my work.

A couple of people ask me about what I'm doing, but I have to give all the credit to Monet. I'm just following a chart. As I cut off a piece of each color of thread, I have a new appreciation for Monet combining just the right colors to capture the light and the monent.

I hear from Virginie once I connect to the Wifi at the Orangerie. I give her an estimate of the time I'll be back, and I'm surprised how close I get in reality. I spend about 2 hours at the Orangerie, stitching and admiring. I say a quick hello to the art downstairs, then walk back to the hotel.

Meeting my guide...and more art!

What can I say about meeting Virginie? It's...pretty awkward. I'm shy, and she's delivering a speech that she gave yesterday to a full room. As she stresses the importance of punctuality, with a wink she scolds that I've already blown it. This is going to be good--I can already see the joie de vivre inside her. But I don't think she can see my joie de vivre--I'm way too tired. It's naptime. Naps are discouraged when you're trying to avoid jetlag, but I think as long as I go on another walk around dinner time I'll be good.

But what's better than dinner? Art! The Pompidou is open late every night! So I hop on the metro and head to the modern art museum.

The first room I pay attention to is for the cubists. I've seen a lot of Picassos before, but after seeing a few pieces by French artists Robert Delaunay and Fernand Léger, I finally get cubism!

Here's what Rick Steves's Paris guidebook has to say about cubism:

"[Picasso and his Paris neighbor Georges Braque] show the world through a kaleidoscope of brown and gray. The subjects are somewhat recognizable (with the help of the titles), but they are broken into geometric shards (let's call them "cubes" though there are many different shapes), then pieced back together.

"Cubism gives us several different angles of the subject all at once--say, a woman seen from the front and side angles simultaneously, resulting in two eyes on the same side of the nose. This involves showing three dimensions, plus Einstein's new fourth dimension the time it takes to walk around the subject to see other angles. Newfangled motion pictures could capture this moving 4-D world, but how to do it on a 2-D canvas?"

The cubists had the solution.

I type into my journal that modern art is food for thought. Why do I like this? Why did the artist create this? What does it remind me of? What does it make me think about? This is what fills my head for the 90 minutes I spend at the museum. My mind and soul are full and happy as I spend a restful night after a great first day in Paris.