A year ago, when planning our move to Belgium, I said to Jon that he needed to take me to Paris for our anniversary. What a man... he did it! So on Tuesday night we drove the 3 hours to Paris and checked into the Hotel Leveque on Rue Cler.
It was a good thing we planned to drive because the Paris public transit workers are on strike. This is major because the metro (subway) is generally the efficient, quick first choice of travelers and Parisians alike for navigating Paris. Taxis were highly impacted and a lot of stuff was basically shut down because employees could not get to work.
Night one we wandered into a restaurant called "Pasco" and enjoyed risotto (me) and fish and eggplant (him). In France eggplant tastes better because it is called aubergine, mushrooms taste better because they are champignions. Just my opinion.
The next day we ate crepes (with champignions) and then went to rent some bikes. Paris has a great self-checkout bicycle rental system, with over 750 kiosks; unfortunately for us, none of them were working that day. So we climbed into the car and drove to the Pompidou Museum (Arts Moderne) and had a fabulous time.
The Pompidou is a crazy structure. Take a regular building, turn it inside out, and you have the Pompidou. All the ducts and plumbing are proudly displayed on the exterior. The inside is even crazier and more wonderful- one floor is full of Picassos, Dalis, Matisses, and Pollacks- another full of contemporary pieces, including a Basquiat and a ton of people I've never heard of. The people I've never heard of were given whole rooms to install their art.
My Favorite: A dark room containing a desk with a single bare light bulb and a chair. On closer inspection, the desk was all Alice and Wonderland and missing its 4th leg. The chair (equally weird looking) was where the 4th leg should have been. The light bulb was actually a projector and was displaying a film on the seat of the chair through a hole in the desk.
That night we went on a dinner cruise of the Seine which was really the best way to get around Paris as the boat workers were not striking. The food was good and the wine was plentiful. We ambled back from the river to our hotel under the light of the Eiffel Tower. It was very romantic and a perfect anniversary.
It was a good thing we planned to drive because the Paris public transit workers are on strike. This is major because the metro (subway) is generally the efficient, quick first choice of travelers and Parisians alike for navigating Paris. Taxis were highly impacted and a lot of stuff was basically shut down because employees could not get to work.
Night one we wandered into a restaurant called "Pasco" and enjoyed risotto (me) and fish and eggplant (him). In France eggplant tastes better because it is called aubergine, mushrooms taste better because they are champignions. Just my opinion.
The next day we ate crepes (with champignions) and then went to rent some bikes. Paris has a great self-checkout bicycle rental system, with over 750 kiosks; unfortunately for us, none of them were working that day. So we climbed into the car and drove to the Pompidou Museum (Arts Moderne) and had a fabulous time.
The Pompidou is a crazy structure. Take a regular building, turn it inside out, and you have the Pompidou. All the ducts and plumbing are proudly displayed on the exterior. The inside is even crazier and more wonderful- one floor is full of Picassos, Dalis, Matisses, and Pollacks- another full of contemporary pieces, including a Basquiat and a ton of people I've never heard of. The people I've never heard of were given whole rooms to install their art.
My Favorite: A dark room containing a desk with a single bare light bulb and a chair. On closer inspection, the desk was all Alice and Wonderland and missing its 4th leg. The chair (equally weird looking) was where the 4th leg should have been. The light bulb was actually a projector and was displaying a film on the seat of the chair through a hole in the desk.
That night we went on a dinner cruise of the Seine which was really the best way to get around Paris as the boat workers were not striking. The food was good and the wine was plentiful. We ambled back from the river to our hotel under the light of the Eiffel Tower. It was very romantic and a perfect anniversary.
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