France

We took a train to France from Amsterdam. (We will travel to The Netherlands two more times and will post the visits all together) We are big train fans! What a nice break from the chaos of an airport. You can show up 15 minutes before your departure, no TSA, security, or lines. There is a giant, amorphous cluster to board your specific car but nothing like the anarchy of a Spirit Airlines flight. We arrived in Paris and walked to our stay in the Montemarte neighborhood so our immediate impression was of the breathtaking Sacre Coeur Basilica perched high up on a hillside. We had a cheeky “view” of Sacre Coeur from our Airbnb kitchen.

Our first full day was packed starting with a visit to Musee l’Orangerie and seeing Monet’s Waterlillies. The dude really fucked with that pond. It was a powerful experience sitting in two different rooms surrounded with his huge masterpieces. There were a lot of heavy-hitting artists displayed at Musee l’Orangerie as well like Rousseau and Renoir. It was a great first museum in Paris and a foreshadowing of more to come! We had a lovely afternoon in the Jardin Tuileries eating jambon buerre sandwiches from La Petit Vendome (ham and butter- how could they not be great?) It felt like a perfect time to be in Paris in spring with lilacs, tulips, and poppies in full bloom.

We walked to Ile de la Cite and visited Notre Dame. What an absolute behemoth and feat of architecture. It looked like they have made miraculous progress on the rebuilding from the 2019 fire that destroyed the spire and much of the roof and arches. We walked back to Montemarte across the Pont Neuf bridge and stopped to watch a very talented piano player bang out a Chopin tune. We stopped for a bowl of French onion soup (they just call it onion soup here) at Au Pied de Cochon. At the end of every day in Paris we wondered why our feet hurt so much but realized we were walking about 15 miles every day to explore this incredible city. We slept well.

On our second day, we started with coffee and pastries at Galleries Lafayette and a visit to the National Library of France to admire the scale of the buildings here. Our museum today was Musee Dorsay which had a lot of impressionist bangers from Monet, Manet, and Renoir.

We walked up Champs Elysees to see the Arc de Triomphe which was commissioned by Napoleon for those who fought during the French Revolution and now houses the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier from WWI with an eternal flame. It was a sight to behold. We wanted to see the Eiffel Tower sparkle at night which only happens for 5 minutes every hour after sunset so we had a nice picnic on the lawn and snacked on some crepes waiting for the show to start. 

We had a date with The Louvre museum first thing the next day and learned from our Musee Dorsay visit that we might want to develop some sort of a game plan to make the most of the Louvre, which is a beast of a museum. Luckily, Em had been before so with her guidance we laid out our priorities and saw the Mona Lisa, Liberty Leading the People, The Winged Victory of Samothrace, The Coronation of Napoleon, the Venus de Milo, Psyche Revived by Cupid’s Kiss, The Raft of the Medusa, and a temporary exhibit with sculptures from Michaelangelo and Rodin.

Most of our meals so far were from grocery stores in Paris because they are easy on the budget and also surprisingly delicious but we sprang for a lunch at Louise Brasserie which was unreal. Lobster bisque as a dressing- the audacity! It may seem hack to seek out good beers in Paris, but it had been a long time since we found a sour on our trip so when we found La Binouze had a Hudson Valley sour on tap we were forced to imbibe. What a treat! We visited an art installation called Colonnes de Buren. We ended the night with a laundromat speakeasy. They really went for it with the secret entrance! 

We had some chores to do the next day in Paris- laundry and post office- but all was in preparation for visiting the Catacombs. The catacombs were built in the late 1700s to help with the city’s overflowing cemeteries. Starting in 1788, there was a nightly procession of wagons transferring remains from the overfilled Paris cemeteries to the Catacombs to avoid shocking the public. Now the remains of over six million people are housed in these underground tunnels. What a humbling and haunting experience to be in the presence of the millions of bones, each from someone who used to walk the very streets over our heads.

Rory bought some low-light film for the catacombs and had a few frames left afterward, so we wandered back to the Eiffel Tower and the Arc de Triomphe for a few night shots.

We panicked that it was our last day in Paris and bought far too many pastries at Mamiche but we had no regrets. We took a metro over to Père Lachaise graveyard which was one of the graveyards built after the creation of the catacombs to take some pressure off of the graveyards in Paris (it was outside of the city limits at the time) and we saw Jim Morrison’s grave and took a long walk through the maze-like grounds of the graveyard. 

We left Paris feeling like we did the most with the 5 days there that we could possibly do. It was a magical city and what surprised us most were that the Parisians were very kind to us! We had heard the typical story of non-French speaking folks being hated in Paris, but it was the opposite experience for us. Maybe they got a talking to before the Paris Olympics?

Our next stop in France was the Côte d’Azur in Southern France to walk along the coast near Marseille via a trail called the GR-51 which stretches for 270 mile along the French Riviera. We decided to do a 36-mile stretch through Calanques National Park between Marseille and a town called Saint-Cyr-sur-Mer. “Calanque” is a French word that refers to an inlet of the Mediterranean with steep walls of limestone or dolomite. They are stunning, and many are quite hard to get to.

Our first day was 8 miles from Marseille to a small town of Les Baumettes. We had our first glimpse of the stunning limestone cliffs jutting into the Mediterranean and had our first dip into the ocean at Calanque de Podestat where we saw an octopus swimming without a care alongside us. As we had stashed our backpacking equipment in Amsterdam (including our proper backpacks and trekking poles) we were a bit shocked by how difficult these miles were. We used our duffles as backpacks for these miles and we felt the difference without a hip belt or cushioning. We would call it “brutal” if not for the nearly-constant 180-degree views of the Mediterranean coast.

Our second day was a long one- nearly 15 miles with 3,500 feet of elevation change. But, it climbed along the coast up to 1,500 feet on the limestone cliffs with incredible views. We climbed down to a calanque called d’En-vau and swam in the refreshing and chilly inlet. We ended our hike in Cassis. We did not expect this place to be so wealthy and we found ourselves priced out from any restaurants here. We heard this is “where the wealthy go to play” which means we were destined for cold grocery store dinner.

From Cassis, we had a nice 8-mile day to La Ciotat. It would have been a pretty easy day but we both got slammed with a virus and were feeling quite ill for this walk. We swam in the calanque de Figuerolles which helped revive us and we got to our Airbnb and crashed.

Luckily, our fourth final day was an easy 6-mile stroll along the beach and through some farmland with artichokes growing and red poppies blooming. We got to St. Cyr Sur Mer early and could lay low and recover. 

The next day, we were still in the throws of sickness, but our fevers broke so we went ahead as planned from Saint-Cyr-sur-Mer to Nice by train and went to the Matisse museum. The museum has one of the largest collections of his works and most of it was donated by Matisse himself as he lived in Nice for over 30 years. 

Although our last few days in France were marred by sickness, we loved our time here and it felt very special. The contrast between bustling Paris and the tropical coast was stark. We definitely had underestimated the natural wonders that France has to offer. We will now not only think of croissants, coffee, baguettes, and butter when France gets mentioned, but also calanques and limestone cliffs and steep descents towards emerald waters.