Refreshments At The Sarah Bernhardt Cafe

En route from the Arc de Triumphe to our next sight, the Sainte-Chappelle, we decided we needed a rest and some refreshment. Penelope is an aspiring thespian, among her many other interests and undertakings, and I thought...where better rest and refresh than Le Sarah Bernhardt, the cafe in the old Theater Sarah Bernhardt?

Her most recent role, the Wicked Witch, in a Raleigh
young persons' theater production of The Wizard of Oz

Bernhardt leased the theater for some years in the twilight of her long
career, already the greatest actress of her time, or perhaps any time; she
was also a writer (8 plays and books), a painter, a sculptor, the model
for my favorite Madeline (Alfred Stevens); a feminist; a vegetarian; a
collector of exotic animals, a world traveler...reading even a short biography
of her is like a who's-who of the later 19th century...

View From the Arc de Triumphe

Over the years, we've been around, under, and through the Arc de Triumphe, but never atop it, and so, with Penelope and our Passion Monuments pass*, we thought we'd give it a go. The old and infirm (also their grand-children) get to ride an elevator up and down, which only added to the attraction. The last time we saw the Arc, it was under wraps (thank you, Team Christo), so it was nice to see it close-up without the silly disrespectful stunt obscuring everything.

Ample interpretive stuff all around

Plus helpful models

Looking past the Grand Palais to Notre Dame (crane in distance)

Tower of Montparnasse

Montmartre

Looking into the Tuileries, the Louvre, Notre Dame to the right

La Defense and its Grand Arch

Tour Eiffel

Windy day

The church of St. Augustine in the middle distance

Oh no, that large building is about to fall over onto
the Pantheon (actually its a couple miles further away)

The Etoile--the round-about on which the Arc de Triumphe is situated--
is fed by twelve major arteries, and thus you are looking here at 1/12th of
Paris

*acquired when we were in Nice; check it out; the Passion Monuments pass is good for the holder and one guest; thus it pays for itself if you're a couple after only 3 or so uses; best of all, flash the pass and you're like a VIP and walk right in through a dedicated entrance, no lines, no waiting...none at all.

Monet's Other Things

Monet's boats or their descendants

Monet's water supply station (note trap)

Monet's chickens or their descendants

Spare parts

Monet's Garden gift shoppe...a madhouse...formerly his studio

Monet's street; and possibly the then-pedestrianized street we
drove down in 2019

Monet's House

After the ponds and gardens, we toured the house, where the crowds were beginning to grow...

Lots of historic pix, in part, one assumes, to demonstrate that most
everything is as it was...

Pix by Monet, many others he admired

Guide to some of the pix

Gotta' find out what brand he smoked

We acquired a very similar (genre) work in Japan, 1983; now hangs
in daughter Rachel's basement bath

Colorized, but evocative and memorable