If you’ve read parts I and II, you know that using my lightweight mobility scooter in Paris was particularly challenging, and that we ate a lot of lovely, delectable food!

Now I’ll take you along to some of the places we visited and things we did—other than eat and scoot!

Our first evening in Paris, as I said before, was taken with just getting settled in our first hotel, Hotel d’Aubusson, and noting that its neighborhood was full of eateries.

After a long sleep, a good breakfast, and a swim, we took a walk of just over a half mile to Notre Dame Cathedral, to see if it was easy to gain entrance. The cathedral was mostly rebuilt and refurbished after the fire from six and a half years ago. Part of it is still under construction, but the nave, the large “main room” was completely re-done and cleaned up better than before, or so we’d heard. On the first day we just hung out in the large pavilion in front of the church for a while. I was surprised to see young women posing provocatively for selfies or having their male partners photograph them with the church in the background. Although I am not Catholic, I am always respectful of other people’s holy places, and treating the venue as a sexy pouting photo op just seemed discourteous to me. I mean, I took pictures of the place because it is so beautiful, but it seems different to me to take off your cardigan, coyly lift your shoulder and make a kissy expression. Well, things have changed socially since we were here 13 years ago.

We did try to make a reservation for a time slot later on and found that some bots or somebodies had bought up all the reserved line places and were charging a ton of money, but I also was told by someone that they had a separate line for people with disabilities. So, we thought we’d take our chances and went back another time, expecting we might have to wait in a lengthy line (the lines were moving quickly, we discovered, even without a reservation) and I saw the disabled entry area. I rolled my scooter up to it with Richard at my side and the attendants just moved the rope aside, smiled, and ushered us through. We went right in and were immediately struck by the almost gleaming ivory colored marble. It seemed like a brand-new cathedral with all the same ancient art and architecture.

A mass was in session, so we quietly and slowly went around the sides of the nave, as the docents indicated, but again, there were people actually walking up to perhaps ten or fifteen feet from the altar where the priests were delivering the mass, turning around and taking selfies of themselves standing in front of the service. I was so taken aback. In any case, the money put into refurbishment was well spent and the mass was beautiful.

On one of our walks (I am always on my scooter and Richard is always on foot), we stopped by the hotel we had stayed in several times before, Parc St. Severin in the Latin Quarter, of which we had fond memories. There are some terraced rooms there which have marvelous views, but we had not been able to get a room there for more than three nights this time, because I booked so late. The concierge on site was very personable, but we were a little disappointed that none of the staff we’d come to know in the past worked there anymore. We were offered coffee but declined and just took their card in case we ever returned to Paris.

We had several rainy days, and decided to use one of them, our first Sunday, to visit Musee d’Orsay, famous for its vast collection of Impressionist paintings. It used to be a train station before conversion, and the main hall is always impressive. Since the time we’d visited before, perhaps twenty years ago, they had made the entire building accessible with marble floor ramping on both sides of the main staircases, and the elevators were more clearly (but not entirely!) marked. At one juncture we needed the assistance of a docent to find the elevator.

Because it was rainy, and because we are apparently not the only people without children in tow in September, the museum was jammed with people. Many of them were from other countries although many were also French. And nearly everyone was determined to stand up close to each painting (especially the more famous ones) and either take phone photos of each painting or listen to every last word on the audio tour for ten minutes. Because I sit down low on my scooter, it was almost impossible to get close to much of the artwork and I was sitting behind people standing four or five deep. I took several semesters of art history when I was in art college nearly sixty years ago, so I didn’t need an audio tour; I knew which paintings moved me and would have me deeply enthralled. We waited, sometimes patiently and sometimes using some “disability card” polite pushiness, to get closer to the ones I really cared about.

It was worth going, but I wouldn’t do it on a rainy day when the city is full of tourists again. The gift shop had little I was interested in, except a small square card print of a Van Gogh painting, “Les Roulettes,” 1888, three bohemian trailers or caravans encamped in a field. In my twenties, I used to fancy that I’d love to live in a trailer and be a vagabond, possibly too enamored with The Virgin and the Gypsy. Now within my older realism, I still love the painting.

The following day we had tickets for a showing of Georges de La Tour paintings at Musee Jacquemart Andre. De La Tour was a French Baroque painter in the early 1600’s. I’m impressed that his artwork still exists. He is famous for his use of light, particularly for showing how candlelight illuminates people and things. That would have been the main light source back then, but many painters in that era were not capturing this and painting everything in a flat manner. This museum on blvd Haussman requires a taxi or Uber ride from the 5th and 6th arrondisements; it’s very much out of the way of other attractions. But worth transversing the distance. My ulterior motive was to gain a seating in their fabulous tearoom, La Nelie, for lunch (see photo in prior post); they don’t take reservations.

Afterward we went to the lovely Parc Monceau, where I wished I had brought my book, because it was so nice to sit on a bench in a little sunshine and enjoy the foliage. We did see two separate groups of toddlers with their teacher/caregivers, and each group had their own color of vests to identify the children. They all held on to a rope with little handles to keep together and looked like ducklings waddling along in a line. One taller and bigger fellow was disciplined for disrupting and stopping the flock somehow, but once that was sorted out, they were on their way again.

Next installment: More fun in Paris!