Parisian Retrospective OR Merry Christmas, Mssr. Brown!

 The astute reader may have noticed that we are currently approaching the end of the year. There's lots of tiny lights on trees, sappy songs playing everywhere, and a noticeable increase in the number of office parties.

But every year for the last three years, the end of the year has largely reminded me of one thing:

That on New Year's Eve, just as 2009 was turning into 2010, I married my wonderful and incredibly amazing wife. At a villa in the Roman countryside.

Which reminded me of the adventure we went on around said Italian wedding, and how that was long before this little blog was in existence.

So I bring you:

Christmas in Paris

My soon-to-be-wife only had a certain number of days she could take off, and only at a certain time. So instead of traveling to Paris after the wedding, we spent five days there before meeting with our families outside Rome. One of those days was, in fact, our first Christmas together.

But enough of my sappy-lovey-dovey ways, and onto the adventure!

We had booked a 1 bedroom apartment for the five days we were there, which was kind of awesome. This was the view outside our window:

Paris: Where even the alleys are picturesque.

To get there, we had to trudge up the most awesome set of Hitchcockian stairs I've every seen. Seriously, every single time it brought a smile to my face.

"Quick! Walk creepily down the stairs so all
we can see is your hand on the handrail!"
"Yes, sir,  Mr. Hitchcock!"

Just down the street was an incredibly tasty patisserie because, well, there's always an incredibly tasty patisserie down the street in Paris.

Just a bit of the way beyond that was a bridge to an island, an island which had a fairly well-known church:

10 points if you instantly recognized it from this photo.

Note the perfectly placed star in the center of the stained glass.
...I worked hard framing that shot correctly.

Notre Dame also has one of my favorite saint sculptures. If you look around the doorways, there are a whole bunch of saints carved into the stone.

One of them is St. Denis. It's the only one I can easily recognize. How do I know? Well, the story of St. Denis involves his head being chopped off, then he picked it up and walked a mile or something before falling down. Which is why he's easy to spot:

"Pardon moi, Mssr. Denis, but I think you dropped something..."
"Don't you worry, girl. It ain't no thing."

As we wandered the very stone and very drafty cathedral, we discovered one very large disadvantage of late December in Paris: It's frikkin cold. Seriously.

Maybe that's why Gaulish men grew such incredible mustaches...

But this was also a tremendous advantage: With the exception of the Eiffel Tower on Christmas Day (it was the only tourist attraction open that day), there really weren't huge crowds.

Side note: Enormous steel towers should not try to be sneaky.

Which meant we got to enjoy the landmarks like normal Parisians. Freezing our asses off.

Fortunately many museums were inside, including my favorite Parisian museum, Musee D'Orsay.

"Bonjour! Would you like some cheese, Pierre?"
"I hate cheese, François. Just like you hate wine."
"We're not very good French stereotypes, are we?"

And, of course, the Louvre, which draws every tourist in France into it by the sheer gravitational pull of the mass of artwork and relics inside.

A museum so big the walkway between buildings gets its own monument.

There are plenty of books and pictures about those two museums, so I won't rehash them here.

I will, however, show you this guy. The moment I saw him a phrase and voice popped into my head, which, of course, meant it instantly popped out of my mouth:

"You wan' sum hot chocolaaaat...?"

Trust me. It's hilarious, really, even if it doesn't translate in written form. And I solemnly swear to any reader that if you meet me in person I will gladly demonstrate it.

But there was one museum that stuck with us. We saw this museum faintly on the map just around the corner from our apartment and were intrigued. So of course we ventured in, only to find that this museum was not for tourists. This was a museum of the French, for the French. As exemplified by all the informative plaques being only and proudly in French.

L'Informative!

To this day I'm not entirely sure what we saw there and why. Perhaps you might know:

The exhibition hallway ended here. That's all we know. 

Perhaps a bust of Unseen University's Librarian...?

This one we almost figured out. Some sort of diorama of a...
...something. It involved soldiers.

And it was awesome.

Just like other random things we spied around Paris:

Indiana Tex-Mex.
...Perhaps they just don't know our geography...?

...or they're just confused in general.

An awesome display of the wonderful things one can make with chocolate...

...Including this. Yes, it is, in fact, chocolate.

To bring it all back to Christmas (full-circle, yo!), I would like to share some nighttime pictures of the Champs Elysees:

Lights in the trees... how understated...

...Nevermind!

And because I didn't know where to put this, but really, really wanted to include it...

...I end with this photo:

Excuse me, but my film noir is calling:
"It was a foggy, cold day lit by the light of a lone lamppost.
...just like that dame was the only light in my life."

And now, gentle readers, I do, in fact, wan' sum hot chocolaaaaat...