bickety

My friends and I walked from the Louvre, through the Tuilleries to the Place de la Concorde and down the Champs Elysee all the way to L’Arc de Triomphe (stopping for lunch at a cafe, of course.)

It doesn’t seem that far of a walk, but it’s deceiving because from the Place de la Concorde, you don’t realize how huge the L’Arc de Triomphe really is.

The rumor about Paris is that the natives are rude to visitors. It is SO not true! Everyone I met was incredibly nice. Even a couple of actual Parisians stopped to help me when I was puzzling over my tourist map.

I think a few words of French is enough to grease the wheels. As long as you can say “Bonjour,” “S’il vous plait,” “Merci,” and “Je voudrais” you should be fine.

If you’re definitely going to the Van Gogh and/or the Rijks Museum, buy your tickets on line before you go. That way you can avoid the long lines for the ticket window. It was fabulous to cruise past literally hundreds of people waiting in line. I felt like a VIP sailing past the velvet rope at a hot New York nightclub.

Anyway, unlike the Rijks, the Van Gogh is a “do-able” sized museum. The Rijks is like the Louvre, you can spend days there and not see it all. Obviously it concentrates on Van Gogh and some other impressionist painters.

The Van Gogh, though, is not for the faint hearted. I went for a special exhibit of Rembrandt and Caravaggio works, so it was especially crowded. It can be tough to see some of the paintings because of the crowds. There was some real jostling for position. The day I was there, the ladies restroom flooded, causing a major line for the one remaining facility.