No Photos. Wait...what?! (Tuesday at the Musee d'Orsay)

Formerly Jet-Lagged Toddler Update

Yes indeed, Mr. Max slept all night again.  Whew.  I think, I hope, I pray that I will not need this heading in any more posts.  Yay for sleep!  And boy did we sleep.  One different thing about Disneyland Paris is that their nighttime show doesn't start, say, a half hour before the park closes.  They say it starts "at the closing of the park" and they mean it.  That show didn't start until 10pm sharp and it lasted a good 20+ minutes.  Then we had to get all the way out of the park with the giant mob of everyone else doing the same, get to the train station, take our 40 minutes train back into central Paris and change Metro lines.  We didn't get home until about midnight.  Everyone was so exhausted that the next morning we slept until 10am!

Musee d'Orsay

Yep, that's where we went Tuesday.  But you'll just have to trust us when I tell you that, because the Musee d'Orsay has a new (~1 year old) policy of no picture taking AT ALL in the museum!!!  Gah.  We have lots of lovely pictures from our last trip here of us with our favorite works of art and of the beautiful architecture and layout of this museum housed in a former train station; just not from this trip.  Double gah.  Well, ok, we have two contraband photos that Scott took before we realized that their annoying little graphic on the sign meant "No Photos" not "No Flash" like everywhere else.  At least our story is that they were taken before that...don't ask too many questions.

If you'd like to see what the rest of the Musee d'Orsay looks like inside, or see some of the collection, head to their website, 'cause we sure can't show you.  Triple gah.

In the past, the Musee d'Orsay was my favorite museum to go to, since it is the museum with the most Impressionist works.  Today, however, it was a bit chaotic and there were many fellow tourists there who were downright rude!  We had the stroller for Max and of course the girls were walking, and let me tell you, wherever these people come from they must have either figured out cloning of full-grown adults or they just ship kids off at birth to be raised in giant farms because they did NOT like children.  Many of the side rooms in the museum are quite small, so everyone files past each painting in a little moving circle, feeding into the next room.  More than once someone shoved in front of the stroller as Scott was pushing it, getting between him and the paintings; there was also much huffing and puffing and obvious annoyance at the girls, as though they certainly didn't belong there.  I'm happy to note, though, that the joke was on them as Nicole could clearly tell the difference from across the room between, say, paintings by Cezanne and those by Monet thanks to all the French art we studied leading up to our trip!  :)

We did however, get some stroller-love out of the trip, from the staff at the museum.  We arrived at the museum around 12:00 (having added a leisurely breakfast and getting ready time to our already leisurely morning sleeping in!) and found about 65,000 people waiting to buy tickets and enter.  Hooboy...so we got into the back of a long line that snaked back and forth and back and forth throughout the whole outdoor plaza and wondered how long this would take.  Then this incredibly nice man who I think was one of the chestnut roasters (more on them later) came up and told me we could use the side entrance because we had the stroller.  Wait, what?  That one all the way over to the right with the wheelchair sign on it?  That one without ANY line AT ALL?!  Really?  Sure enough, they let us walk right through.  Not so much as a moment's wait.  Ah, what a blessing with 3 kids who were not looking forward to the wait!

Our Little Corner of Paris

So, since we have no breathtaking photos for you from Tuesday I thought it would be a good time to show you around our little place.  The apartment we are staying in is right in the 7th arrondissement of Paris.  You can see where that is on this handy little map that I borrowed from another site.

That's us, down near the Tour Eiffel!

This is a very, very quiet area of Paris.  Our area, on the east side of Les Invalides, is not actually touristy at all.  Our street itself (rue de Varenne) is where many embassies are located, as well as the homes of several of the French Ministers (Minister of Finance, Minister of Education, etc.)  At each corner of our street there are policemen on duty 24 hours a day.  There are also armed guards at each and every driveway of significance (each embassy, each minister's residence, etc).  We definitely don't feel like we have to worry about safety around here!

Our closest street corner.  The guys in black with their back to you are the policemen stationed on the corner 24/7.

The bakery just across the street from us

The blue door is our apartment building entrance.  We are up on the 7th floor.

The "Elevator"

Yes, you saw that right, we are on the 7th floor.  But luckily the listing said there was "an elevator."  Of course we wouldn't be here if it hadn't!  Ha!  We arrived the first morning and found that yes indeed, there is an "elevator" but it is what is known as a "luggage elevator."  This small format elevator was put into many older French buildings lacking space for real ones once they had become commonplace.  It is basically just deep enough for a big suitcase to fit in (not much deeper than a paper grocery bag is wide).  You can definitely use them for people to go up and down too, which we do daily, but it is definitely strange being in such a tiny little elevator.  I've taken pictures of Scott inside it so you get an idea of scale.  On the second one you can really see how shallow it is compared with his shoes.  The whole thing is about twice as wide as you can see, so we can fit one of us and two kids, or you could fit two adults if both stood straight, side-by-side and facing outward like he is.  Luckily the kids all love the mini-elevator!

Our Apartment

The apartment itself works well for us.  There is one big bedroom with a double bed, which the girls are sharing.  (These photos are from the apartment listing on the rental site we found it on, http://www.abritel.fr/)

The living room also has a couch/futon that turns into a bed, which is where we are sleeping

The kitchen area has a nice big table, as well as a fridge, stove, sink and washer.  Yes, in the kitchen.  In France washers are usually in your kitchen, though sometimes in a bathroom.  Laundry rooms are nearly unheard of, even in bigger homes.

Note that I said it has a washer, NOT a washer and dryer.  This is something I did not realize before we arrived.  After we packed quasi-lightly, planning to do laundry while we are here.  With 3 kids.  For 18 nights.  Oops.  The French actually typically don't like dryers, believing that they "cook" your clothes (which is kind of true, clothes do break down faster when they are dried.)  Since the French typically buy less clothing, but more expensive clothing meant to last, they do not subject much of it to the dryer.  So now we are learning to wash a small load at a time and hang them to dry.  The shower has a built in collapsible drying rack and we have a 2nd standalone one in the kitchen.  So eco-friendly (and y'all know that's my first concern.)  :)

Freshly washed jeans hung to dry over the tub

Distilled Water as a Controlled Substance

The one thing we haven't quite figured out is how to do this whole CPAP thing for Scott in France.  His machine has a humidifier and you're supposed to use distilled water in them for a variety of reasons.  Well distilled water isn't sold in the grocery store here in Paris like it is at home.  A search online revealed that is it usually only available at a "Pharmacie."  Now you have to understand that a Pharmacie is not like an American drugstore, like Rite Aid or Walgreens.

Pharmacies here do not sell makeup and nail polish, chips and beer.  They sell over-the-counter and presciption medications, as well as a few other "natural" products of the pharmacist's choosing.  In fact you cannot even buy OTC medication in most grocery stores, all of this passes through the Pharmacie.  Les Pharmaciens here are also not quite like Pharmacists in the US.  I'd say they are a bit more then Pharmacists, a bit less than Doctors (they are even specifically trained to be able to identify poisonous mushrooms!)  People often go to them first for various maladies, so sometimes you can have a wait to speak to one.  So I went into one of our local Pharmacies (they are all identified by large green neon crosses and each arrondissement has at least one that is open 24 hours, which is impressive in a city where you cannot find a grocery store open after 8pm or any grocery stores or restaurants open on a Sunday evening...).

When it was my turn I explained to the Pharmacien that I needed distilled water.  He looked at my strangely and I explained that my husband has a CPAP machine that he needs it for.  He asks how much I need...a 1/2 liter?  A liter?  I said at least a liter, saying again what it is for (I think the machine holds at least 2 cups in the reservoir for each night!)  He thinks a moment and decides that, yes, he can sell me some, as apparently I had an appropriate justification.  He said he will have to go into the back "to fill it."  A few minutes later he comes back, I kid you not, with a glass bottle for which he has handwritten a tag.  It feels like something you would have gotten from the Apothecarist long ago.  He announces that it will cost 6.50 Euros.  That is about $8.50!!!  And this is for 1 liter.  At home I get about 4x that much (1 gallon) for about $1.00.  This had better be some dang awesome distilled water.