By day seven in Paris, I was exhausted and starting to come down with a cold. Our last day was a Friday and my husband wasn’t working so we could finally have a full day together to explore Paris. Our plan was to visit a few sites and then visit La Louvre in the late afternoon because of their extended Friday hours.
We began our day at the local pastry shop in Grenelle with lots of sugary treats and cappuccinos then boarded the Metro headed for Rambuteau station in the fourth arrondissement on the right bank Seine to see Centre Georges Pompidou.
This enormous high-tech multicultural complex houses the Public Information Library, the Musée National d’Art Moderne (the largest museum for modern art in Europe) and IRCAM, a centre for music and acoustic research.
It was named after French President Georges Pompidou who commissioned the behemoth. It’s doors opened in 1977 and has seen millions of visitors every year since. The Center sits on 5 acres of land, spans over one million square feet, and rises seven levels. The architectural team was made up of British and Italian designers who were awarded the project in a design competition. It was the first time that international architects were allowed to participate. In 1977, the building cost 993 million French francs and underwent renovations in 1996 costing 576 million francs.
Reaction to the building wasn’t always pleasant. The French newspaper compared it to Loch Ness and in a 1980 article, National Geographic described the reaction as “love at second sight.” More recently however, the architects have been praised for their unique approach and out-of-the-box design.
We wanted to sneak in a lot on this last day, so rather than spend hours inside the modern art museum, we settled for taking in its grand majestic exterior and kept on moving.
Just past Centre Pompidou we spotted some wonderful Parisian graffiti. One of the largest and most well known was painted by Jeff Aérosol in 2011. Chuuutt!!! (Shh!) is over 3700 square feet!
Next, we headed over to Les Halles which was once the center for the open air fresh food markets. Now, it is a massive construction site as the RER (French transit system) hub is undergoing a huge design overhaul. However, just past all the chaos you can still spot a few fresh food stands in the area.
Beyond the construction and food stalls lies the gardens of Les Halles and the beautiful catholic church of Saint-Eustache.
Considered a masterpiece of late Gothic architecture, its origins date back to the 13th century. Louis XIV received communion here and Mozart choose this church as the location for his mother’s funeral.
Saint-Eustache’s pipe organ is considered the largest in France with 8,000 pipes! Imagine the sound – it would surely be heaven on earth!
We ducked inside to rest for a bit and revel in all its glory. Directly in front of the church is a giant modern sandstone sculpture created in 1986 by French artist Henri Miller called l’Ecoute – Listen.
I love the ying and yang of Paris – the juxtaposition of old and new makes one feel more connected to each other; knowing that you are walking on the same earth as others who have come before so long ago.
After Saint-Eustache and Les Halles we headed over to the Louvre – our last major stop in Paris. I must say we were both exhausted by now but there was no way I could travel to Paris and NOT visit the world-famous art museum. We spent some time outside in the Louvre courtyard taking in the grand massive scale of the building itself. Once inside we made our way through only a few sections of the museum.
Of course we saw the Mona Lisa a mile away behind closed glass. I knew what to expect, so I wasn’t that eager to fight the crowds to get close enough for a decent picture. I enjoyed viewing the Rembrandts and I really wanted to see Vermeer’s Lacemaker and actually walked right past it. After asking an attendant we found it. It is so small I was shocked!
After only a couple hours we called it a night and took the Metro back to Grenelle. We grabbed dinner at our local cafe, dragged ourselves back to La Tour Eiffel and settled in for the night. In the morning, we said Au revoir and Merci to the lovely hotel owner and staff and caught a cab to the airport.
Til we meet again…
