Les Invalides and environs

Today was one of the more touristy days on the schedule. It also involved quite a lot of walking, which, while quite enjoyable, provides an excellent rationale to finish off that bottle of wine in the apartment. (I am sipping as I type. Caveat lector.)

The morning started with a walk down the river to the Pont Alexandre III, the most ornately exuberant bridge I have ever seen. Bronze gilt statues sit on top of four high pillars, and the bridge is adorned with nymphs, lions, and other wildlife, as well as ornamented with many gilt embellishments. Yesterday on the boat tour, I enjoyed seeing the different characters of some of the bridges, and this one is by far the most easily recognized from a distance, even from atop the Eiffel Tower.

We crossed this bridge when we came to it, and it took us to Les Invalides. This group of buildings was established in the 17th century by Louis XIV as a hospital and retirement home for veterans. A history of Paris that I read before the trip mentioned that health care until then had been supplied by members of various religious orders or by lay people working with the church, and this was a very early effort at state-supplied health care, a topic still of interest today. Today the buildings contain museums and monuments having to do with France's military history. We chose not to go inside any of the buildings, but there is a gorgeous chapel (the Église du Dôme) that I wish there had been time for; it contains Napoleon's tomb, which is not that big a deal to me, but from the outside it was quite a lovely building, and I would have liked to have seen the inside. (Next trip...) The square enclosed by the buildings of Les Invalides contained various cannons with plaques describing them; I was surprised and somehow oddly touched to find that each one had a name (L'intrepide, Hercule, etc.).

For lunch, I got to try croque monsieur in a very pleasant restaurant in Rue Cler, a nice little street filled with food and shops. I was enchanted by the name; I had heard that it was a ham and toasted cheese sandwich, but that description doesn't quite do it justice. The ham goes on a single slice of bread, and the cheese (my best guess is something resembling mozzarella) goes on top, and then the whole thing apparently goes under the broiler. Nom nom.