Tuesday, July 16, 2024
We started at the Garnier Opera. It’s fancy (one of my favorite words; not one of my sister, Nancy’s, favorite words). It is gorgeous. The novel The Phantom of the Opera made a surge of interest in the opera house at the beginning of the twentieth century. The infamous box five, where the phantom would appear, was never booked, because no one wanted to encounter the phantom. I bet today it would be the most popular place. They had a great room called the ice room – meant for eating ice cream after the show. Keith was very enthusiastic about that.
I was sure 8675309 was in there somewhere.
Our first look after going up the stairs. It’s nice.
Box five is on the first level, next to the queen’s box on the end.
Marc Chagall’s painting on the ceiling features all sort of characters from ballets and opera.
These picketers had a whistle, and we listened to the whistle while we waited for twenty minutes to get into the opera building. Mike was writing a concerto for whistle and the rest of us were dancing to the whistle.
A cafe celebrating TB, I assume.
We had not been completely overwhelmed by over-the-top decorating, so we went off to Versailles. So much much!
We got back to the hotel about 4:20 and went to the mall that is next door to find something quick for dinner. We had snacked (chips, chocolate, and kool-aid) (oh my) on the bus ride back and only had until 5:30 before the bus left for Montmartre. The mall is underground. Huh. You walk in on street level and just start riding escalators down. We went down four levels – the levels are NOT small – it is a big mall. I saw a sign for “Nachos” the restaurant and that sounded so good. We hiked a ways and found it. There was an ordered kiosk in English, so we were set. There were no nachos on the menu! Hahahaha. Keith ordered a beef quesadilla, and I had three different kinds of tacos. DELICIOUS. We were set and off to get ready for the evening.
We stepped into the lobby and they gave us strawberry and vanilla soft serve, but waaaay better than soft serve at home. Like, can I have some more good kind of soft serve. We organized our stuff to go, then Dan texted that they weren’t bussing. They were going to go look at Notre Dame and St. Chapelle and a fancy department store. We were in.
The department store was oooh la la! There were sections for different designers. We looked at a $50,000 watch and I told everyone not to look so hard because we would set off alarms. We were up on the 5th floor, after perusing each floor on our way up escalators. I struggled to the scary edges to take pictures down. Stacy and I were creeping along, making sure Dan and Keith didn’t fall over the railings when we basically looked down at the same time and realized we were walking on a glass floor. We both just turned and scurried to the downscalator. Scary highness!
It was time for a crepe, to help recover from the high anxiety.
There is a lot of scaffolding and construction wall around Notre Dame. We looked at a bunch of pictures about the rebuilding. It is simply amazing what they are accomplishing. We are hoping that they are making a great documentary about all the work.
When we were here ten years ago, we saw SEVERAL people getting their picture taken while they were jumping up in front of the church. We did not know why. I told Keith to jump then. He did not jump very high. I told him to jump again tonight. He did NOT jump very high. I told Dan to jump, and he did GREAT. I told Stacy to jump. She had to do a pose first, because every, every, everywhere we go there are 8 women POSING. We do not want to be left out of the posing. Then she jumped PERFECTLY.
I got a text from Maren that said, “What are you doing?” I responded, “Jumping.”
I am going to watch the Olympics. I think this place will end up on camera.
We weren’t hungry and thought we might go back to the hotel as Dan and Stacy had dinner, but that seemed stupid. It is our last free night in Paris! We went to Chouchou. Keith ordered lasagna instead of nothing. It was delicious. I helped him eat his salad. We both had creme brulee. It was a wonderful meal. I could see the fantastic, clean, FREE public restroom on the sidewalk. I do not think enough people are using it. They need to be used, so every city learned to put them out for tourists. C’mon, every city!
